Lulu in Marrakech [Paperback]

 

 

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Espionage, threats of terrorism and a romantic relationship collide in Lulu in Marrakech, a cross-cultural exercise in tolerance and diversity. The main protagonist Lulu Sawyer is an American "human intelligence" officer sent by her handler Sefton Taft to the Moroccan city, ostensibly to track whether someone with Western connections is cooperating with or running the Islamists to send money through charities to various terrorist organizations. But Lulu also wants to reconnect personally with her wealthy British lover Ian. The sudden onset of this kaleidoscopic place with it's strange and beguiling treatment of women, and the machinations of various foreigners eventually thrusts Lulu into some of the most compromising circumstances.

It is the destruction of Ian's factory building, leased to a manufacture of fertilizer that jump-starts Lulu's investigations and leads her to realize that perhaps her beloved Ian is not an innocent party as she first thought. The fire only increases the chatter, and the certainty that something might happen. The metaphorical significance of the flames, "like lurid colors of purple," the force engulfing the Englishman's building causes Lulu to almost faint with anxiety. If the fire wasn't an accident, what did it mean or portend? The incident provides a wake-up call, forcing Lulu to ask how much has been orchestrated, and how much might be the collusion of unforeseen events.

In a world where people - especially women - hide in baggy robes and veils, author Diane Johnson peppers her story with an unlikely smorgasbord of both Western and Arabic characters: The gangly but useless British laureate poet, Robin Crumley and his pregnant wife Posy, "a sturdy girl with the English ankles," whose greatest achievement is the study or arcane topics like water imagery in Moroccan poetry; Gazi and Khaled Al-Sayad - a Western educated Saudi couple with Gazi's traditional veil hiding hints of Khaled's abuse, but both proud of their ability to mingle and be accepted among Westerners as if there were nothing odd about them; Marina Cotter and her effusive husband with her decisive British upper-class tones and their sense of entitlement; Tom Drill and his partner Strand who runs a tea shop in the center of the City; and Suma, the woman in the black chador whose brother, Amid, a French Algerian is perhaps mixed up in something illicit and is the current subject of surveillance.

All of these people mired in a retro form of political correctness even as Lulu acts as a type of cipher wandering the alleys of the souk sometimes with Posy while she attends dinner parties and luncheons and begins to understand even more about the limitations of her situation, a woman alone, caught between the demands of her mission and her intimacies with Ian. Meanwhile, Ian seems content to entertain in his old grand house, the personification of "lordly colonial master," always powerful and preoccupied, and often disinterested. Lulu finds herself more deeply committed to Ian than ever, but part of her essential dilemma is that she's not prepared to forget her personal history with him, even as she ends up being stupefied by her own deficient powers of observation and the power of her hopes to drown out common sense.

Subplots involving infidelity and hints of treachery circle around the main theme of love's misunderstandings, which "thrives on stolen moments" and the inevitable complications of Lulu's Moroccan intrigues. Strangely, the book starts out strong, the exotic sites, sounds and smells of Marrakesh - and Lulu's reaction to it - a veritable feast for the senses. The spy sections, however, come across as a bit limp and uninspiring, the social of realities of Arabic women, and their attitudes to sex proving to be far more interesting than anything else that springs forth. As a field agent, Lulu has to be analyst enough to know what to report in the first place and what to take seriously, and what to fear. How much has been orchestrated, how much is "the collusion of unforeseen events." He real mission, however is one where she must overcome this idea of clinging to beauty and sincerity, particularly of the sexual act as she comes to acknowledge that perhaps Ian doesn't love her after all. Mike Leonard December 08.

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