Tales and Stories

Chapter 12 - Arabic Cities

“Splendid.” Kifkef cried, the beer already rousing his spirits. “Such characters could surely have found a meritorious place in the legends of 1001 Arabian Nights.”

“I’d sooner choose suicide than go that long with you two.’ Gypsy Lou muttered, opening a bottle of wine that she did not intend to share.

“It puts me in mind of Fez, the city of my childhood,” The Arab declared, undeterred, “It is a city of mystery and enchantment. The streets twist and turn with a life of their own, most of them barely wide enough for two to walk side by side.

I used to peel my eyes for the anxious traveller, lost within the folds of our city. Taking his hand I’d lead him out of the labyrinth he’d stumbled into - But only for a price, naturally.” Kifkef smiled and cracked his knuckles so loudly that they competed with the sound of castanets from the other side of the taverna.

“One day, Kifkef, those fingers of yours will shatter to the floor like falling porcelain.” Baba Gene told him.

“These fingers? No, no, my friend - Perhaps your eyes are fading along with your wits as age clutches at your grey beard and smothers your heart with an icy breath and draws a veil over your face that sets like stone, never more to move?

For had you the life of Allah moving through you then you would see that these fingers are smooth and supple, unblemished by the indignities of hard work.

Why as a child my fingers were so long and dextrous that every pipe and flute maker in Fez desired to take me as their apprentice.”

“And as I’m sure they knew,” Gypsy Lou smirked, “ The soft and slender hands of a young boy can be used for things other than hollowing bamboo.”

Kifkef scowled and readied himself to deliver a counter-insult of exceeding vulgarity. But seeing that his host wielded a bottle of wine in her hands he decided that discretion may, after all, be the better part of valour.

“Now if I may approach the subject of my story, I might tell you that as vast and impenetrable a city Fez still is, yet it was only named after another city long lost in the stuff of legend - A magnificent metropolis of ancient times that was swallowed only by time itself.

Listen now as I tell of

The Story of Fezzle, the Labyrinth City