The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty (15 page)

When your face has been slathered in foundation and powders, the wardrobe woman takes a scarf and wraps it around your head. Unsatisfied with the result, she removes it and wraps it once more. The three of them, the Elizabethan, David Bowie, and the tattooed man, discuss your appearance while only occasionally glancing at you. Then phones are removed and photos are taken.

“This is so we can make sure the scarf falls the same way on her,” the tattooed man says.

You don't need to ask who
her
is. You know that he means the famous American actress.

The tattooed man escorts you through real Casablanca traffic, until you turn the corner and arrive at the traffic that's been manufactured for the film. Of course the trailers couldn't be on this street—they would be too conspicuous in the shots. Filming has not yet commenced and so the sidewalks are still open to the public. The pedestrians yell at the parked cars, and in particular, at one extra who, for some reason—perhaps he's getting into character—won't stop honking.

It's still morning but you can feel the heat of the day seething up through the cement. This day is hotter than the preceding ones. The old cars are diesel, the smell of their exhaust potent.

The tattooed man walks you to a white car in the middle of all the others. You slide inside the backseat, and greet the driver, who, you know from the
situation that has arisen
with
the producers, cannot drive. The tattooed man closes the door. You note the old car has ashtrays, and that it's without seat belts. The upholstery on the backseat bench is leather, cracked. You run your fingers over the ocher stuffing that's trying to emerge.

There's a speaker in the car through which the director is talking. He speaks for five minutes in Arabic, and then translates for you with one sentence: “We start filming in two minutes.”

In twenty minutes an announcement comes through the speaker saying the filming is commencing. You sit up tall, looking forward intently. Maria is supposed to be growing increasingly frustrated with the traffic. Your driver has been instructed to honk, joining in on the cacophony being created by the other cars around yours. The horns of old cars sound cartoonish, like horns on bumper cars at an amusement park.

Despite the incessant honking, as you sit in the backseat of a period car in a constructed traffic jam in the heart of Casablanca, you begin to feel something that approximates joy. The film will come out, and though no one will know that you were in the backseat of this car, that you are the one whose scarfed profiled appears in the distance, you will know. You will have existed. You will have proof that you were here.

You are picturing yourself at seventy, looking back on your youth. You will remember that you were young once, that you were thirty-three. You were in a movie in Casablanca. Now that you are on the cusp of being a full-fledged adult, as you now see adulthood, your youth has been documented.
Your youth will not be defined by the events of the last several months.

An announcement comes on the speaker and the honking ceases. Twenty minutes later, filming commences again. The cars honk, you sit up straight and look forward intently.

Two hours pass, during which filming occurs five more times. The wardrobe woman comes to the car to rearrange your scarf. She consults the photo on her phone.

You sit for another hour, two hours, three. You try not to think of anything at all.

Then, almost too soon, the famous American actress is escorted under an enormous silver umbrella—the sun is hot—toward the car. The door is opened and you greet her hello. You switch places with her. She slides onto the leather red bench of the backseat.

“Ouch,” she says. “The seat is cracked.”

You head to the food trailer (they can't have the food outside today, due to the traffic, and the pedestrians who might graze). You eat licorice, olives, cheese, crackers, and slices of salami. The salami here is larger, but cut thinner, like ham. You wait to see if you are needed again.

You are needed one more time, when the actress's makeup needs to be reapplied. The temperature in the car is rising as the day progresses and her mascara is clumping, her lipstick fading as her lips grow increasingly chapped. You return to the car.

“Hello,” you say to the driver.

He grunts in return.

The director approaches.

The director asks you to help him block the scene in which Maria exits the vehicle—that's his word, “vehicle”—in a storm of rage so they can get the cameras set up right. You are to open the door, slam it, and walk through the traffic.

You do this three times.

Then the famous American actress returns to the car, her forehead dabbed, her lipstick reapplied and outlined with a red makeup pencil.

It's her turn.

You walk through the fake traffic and back to the food trailer. Even you, who knows better, can't seem to forget the traffic isn't real. You signal to every driver to stop, to not drive; with your hands and your eyes you implore them to not run you over.

You spend the remainder of the day waiting. You eat more olives, more licorice. You chew on mints to cleanse your breath (you're too impatient to slowly let them dissolve in your mouth). Your services might be needed at any minute, you tell yourself. But you are not needed for the rest of the day.

The sadness of being unuseful, which is a particular type of sadness, begins to vine through your body. By 7
P.M.
you are wondering if you can take off your wig, scratch your scalp. You have already consumed too many rolls; you were instructed to not eat the sauce-laden dishes offered at the dinner buffet in case you spilled on your outfit, your scarf.

Another two hours pass. The famous American actress comes to the food trailer.

“Hey,” you say, surprised that filming, which has gone so slowly, has ended so suddenly.

“Hey,” she says. “I'm starving.” She picks up a submarine sandwich and bites into it and a slice of tomato slips onto her scarf. She pays it no attention. “This tastes terrible,” she says, and places it back down on the tray with the other sandwiches.

“Are you going back to the hotel?” you ask.

“No,” she says. “There's this music festival going on—Jazzablanca. Get it?” she says. “My friend Patti Smith is playing.” You're tempted to say,
You're friends with Patti Smith?
Instead you say: “She's considered jazz?”

“It's just the name of the festival,” she explains. “Anyway, you want to come to the show?”

You shrug only because you're too excited to speak.

The famous American actress opens the jar of M&M's. She doesn't use the silver serving spoon but instead she grabs a handful and pours them into her mouth.

You get a ride to the concert in the famous American actress's van. She has a van and a driver assigned just to her. You sit next to her in the first row of seats. One bodyguard sits in the passenger seat of the van, the other in the row behind you.

The driver has difficulty finding the venue. It's not a normal concert pavilion, but the grandstand of a racetrack that they've closed up with tenting. This is your experience of Casablanca thus far: no one can find the address they're looking for. Most places that are not hotels are identified only by landmarks. The horse track has been described to the driver as exactly that, “the horse track.” It doesn't help matters that
the driver has been traveling with the film and is from Fez. This is his first week in Casablanca.

Finally, you arrive at the racetrack. One bodyguard gets out of the car, followed by the famous American actress, and the other bodyguard is close behind. You're the last out and you slide the heavy van door shut behind you. Cheers are erupting from inside the tent; the concert is beginning. Two people from the festival are waiting for the famous American actress at the now empty will-call line. She walks up to them and they escort her, you, and the two bodyguards into the makeshift theater.

The stands in the back are filled with people and in front of the stage chairs have been set up in rows, the way they would be in a high school auditorium.

The actress, the bodyguards, and you are escorted to your reserved seats six rows back from the stage. You always wondered who the assholes were who came late to a concert and took up a whole row near the stage, and now you know.

You get into the chairs without drawing attention. Everyone's focused on Patti Smith.

Patti stands on a stage with a neon sign that says
JAZZABLANCA
behind her. She's talking to the audience about how she's always wanted to perform in Morocco because of the desert and because of Moroccan mint tea. She holds up her cup, which ostensibly is filled with Moroccan mint tea, and the audience cheers loudly. Very loudly. They love her.

The actress whispers to you: “If I have to leave early, can you please go backstage after and say hello to Patti for me? Let her know I was here?”

“Okay,” you promise, wondering why she'd have to leave early.

You smell expensive perfume, and this is also when you notice the fur. All the women in the rows in front of you are wearing fur. They're extremely dressed up for a rock concert. Some of the women are with men, all of whom are wearing ties, but the majority of women have come in groups with other women. They have coiffed hair and well-applied makeup, and are blessed with either good genes or the funds to improve upon them. None of the women wear hijabs. This is the upper crust of Casablanca. You observe that your group might be the only Westerners in the audience.

Onstage Patti Smith is wearing faded baggy blue jeans, a white blouse, and a man's blazer. Her gray hair is long and parted in the middle. She wears no makeup. She introduces a guitarist and a bassist, and the crowd claps politely.

She sings a cover of Lou Reed's “A Perfect Day” and the crowd goes crazy. Especially the women. The women of Morocco love Patti Smith.

When she sings “Because the Night” everyone around you sings the lyrics too.

    
Come on now try and understand

    
The way I feel when I'm in your hands

    
Take my hand come undercover

    
They can't hurt you now,

    
Can't hurt you now, can't hurt you now

    
Because the night belongs to lovers

    
Because the night belongs to lust

    
Because the night belongs to lovers

You're unable to keep your eyes on the performance because you're focused on the women around you. They know every word, and sing along, joining Patti in proclaiming the night belongs to them, the lovers, the women who lust.

Everyone is up on his or her feet except one woman sitting in front of you. She doesn't want to stand. Every thirty seconds or so, her furred friends try to get her to join them, and she refuses. You notice that the bodyguards have their eyes on her, on this woman who won't get up on her feet at a Patti Smith concert. Her refusal to stand makes her intriguing to the bodyguards.

When Patti Smith sings “People Have the Power,” the crowd is raucous. Even the reluctant stander in front of you finally raises herself to her feet and you sense the bodyguards relaxing.

But then a sound startles you—it's the sound of trampling, like horses stampeding. You turn around to see if the audience members in the back are dancing so intensely that the stands are collapsing. Everyone near the stage begins turning around. And then the audience starts to collectively look up. You follow their gaze and see what they see—it's raining. Torrential rain. The downpour sounds like rocks avalanching onto the tent, and it seems likely that the rain might succeed in bringing down the tent on top of everyone inside.

You turn back to the stage and see that Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye and Tony Shanahan look confused; they have no idea why the front rows of the audience have turned around.
They keep playing, but you feel you're seeing them without their performance faces on. They seem baffled, concerned. It's then that one of the furred women two rows ahead, who is looking back to observe the center of the tent, catches a good look at the famous American actress. The furred woman does a double take to be certain, and then tells her friend standing next to her. The friend turns around to stare, and then says something to the friend standing next to her. Within a matter of seconds you start to hear the famous American actress's name being spoken. Then it's not spoken but being called out. They're calling out her first name as though she's a friend they haven't seen for a while. They want to see if she turns and looks in their direction. If she responds to the name they'll know it's her.

Suddenly, a collective gasp erupts behind you. You turn to see what's happening. The rain breaks though the tent. The power goes out. But Patti Smith and her guitarist and bassist don't stop. They continue singing a cappella:

    
I believe everything we dream

    
Can come to pass through our union

    
We can turn the world around

    
We can turn the earth's revolution

    
We have the power

    
People have the power . . .

The crowd grows crazier than before. The rain is hitting the floor and you can feel the vibration of stomping feet. The energy of the crowd has swarmed and collected and is harnessed
toward the stage. You are certain the performers can feel this focused beam of energy too because they're singing louder and no longer look at all confused, but the opposite: they have intention. Everyone is singing now about
the power to dream, to rule, to wrestle the earth from fools.
You know this is the reason many people come to concerts, come to witness anything live. There exists the possibility of surprise, of power outages, of connection and communion, the possibility of people who have never before met singing the same song to each other about the power they have to change the world.