them. We ducked into another alleyway, something there was no shortage of in Casablanca apparently, and she showed me how to tie mine around my head before tying hers in a completely different way. After she hit up an ATM in a convenience store—“A haroun,” she explained, “they’re kinda everywhere”—to get a wad of cash, we kept walking, past mud-brick buildings painted in white in an effort to bounce back some of the dry, burning sun. My head felt much cooler in its own coat of white.
“Sort of a disguise,” she said. “Obviously not great. But it helps us blend.”
“Yeah. You look much better. Lots of people here have green eyes and you’re almost tan enough to get away with it.”
“I think that’s my dad’s side,” she said, holding out her bare arms and admiring them next to mine, ringed with red from the cuffs. “I’m almost as dark as you!”
“You wish.” I looked around, seeing nothing I recognized as a street sign. “Holy shit. We’re in Morocco. Man! Can we check your map here?”
We pulled into another alley and she got out the tiny laptop she’d built last year, its solar panel flashing onto my face. The screen was hard to see in the sunlight. “Turn. I need some shade. Thanks. Uhh, shit. Jesus. Shit.”
“Oh, that sounds so hopeful. So encouraging.”
“I didn’t take into account that we might not be able to use the airport,” she said, pointing at the screen; I didn’t understand what I was looking at, but nodded. Two large round black dots were connected by a long wavery line on the green background, surrounded by smaller dots, none of them labelled. “Because it’s not a long flight to Fes—it’s about an hour—but it’s almost a four-hour drive.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Come on,” she said, starting to walk again, briskly. “I’ll figure something out.”
WE ENDED UP circling back to the airport like movie spies trying to lose a tail, walking then taking a bus from a random stop, Johnny pushing bills carelessly into the farebox. Even from a distance I could see dozens more uniforms at the airport’s doors than I would have guessed. Not all for us, surely. Or maybe they were for us, because we’d gotten into a fight?
But the nearby bus depot was so crowded that I doubted anyone would be able to spot us, and half the crowd was wearing scarves like ours. My height was the main conspicuous thing about us—at six feet, barely remarkable back home, I towered over this crowd. I slouched as I followed Johnny.
The heat was like nothing I’d ever experienced, like being trapped in an oven. Waves of it coming off the white sidewalks, practically a physical force, pushing me around with every step. The occasional humid ocean breeze barely cut through it. She walked purposefully towards the ticket office, elbows out to nudge people aside.
“Keep a hand and an eye on your bag,” she said. “Thieves like bus stations.”
“Well, you too, then,” I said, annoyed.
“Mine’s steel-mesh reinforced and there’s wires in the strap,” she said. “National Geographic Store. Can’t beat it. Here we go. Act surly; they’re not gonna like me doing the talking.”
“Act surly, she says.”
Frowning and acting worried was the easiest thing she’d asked of me so far; I scanned the crowd, looking for cop hats and aviator sunglasses. A towering group of white tourists, maybe Swedish—was that the blue flag with the yellow cross on their bags?—argued with someone in an airport uniform, both in heavily accented English. I wondered if either side understood the other. A much larger group of Japanese tourists in matching t-shirts, shepherded by three guides, moved sedately towards a charter bus, shiny and green in the low, gold light. We weren’t using one of those, though, Johnny had said; she wanted something less conspicuous.
I remembered, out of nowhere, the time we had been riding an Edmonton bus back to St. Albert from a book-signing and been accosted by an angry physicist, a famous one, she’d said later. “You’ve ruined my life!” he shrieked. “You’ve ruined my life! Ruined!” White hair, red bowtie, yellow teeth every which way. But he wouldn’t tell her what she had done or when, and she just hung her head and apologized. She knew, though. “I was right,” she whispered when he was gone. “About everything.”
Johnny was yelling at the ticket agent now, her high voice carrying over the crowd; I looked over nervously, as did several other people. The ticket agent was pointing at me,