Her husband was a political prisoner, who divorced her in order that she be left in peace, and also to have a place to hide from surveillance from time to time, when he got out of prison. Finally he was released. He came to see her secretly, and they spent some time together.

When the police came later asking questions about him, she lied. “That guy,” she said bitterly, “He let me down. He divorced me. Never came to see me. I wouldn’t want to see him.” The police left.

A few days later, she was raped by five men. But she didn’t go to the police. They might have done it, she reasoned, in revenge for her lies. On the other hand, they might be innocent of the crime, in which case they would be helping her. Then she would find herself on the opposite side of the law from her husband. And she didn’t want that either.

“Tourists!” he spat. “They think Moroccans are poor. They give money to beggars. They’re the ones who are poor, coming here with a couple of hundred pounds.”

A woman was gathering a sort of wild lettuce, to make salad, when she met a smallish man wearing a djellabah with the hood up. “What are you doing?” he asked. She explained that she had handed over her last few dirhams to her landlord. It was payment for the jobs he had promised to get for her two sons. Since then he had done nothing. She was desperate. She had no money left to buy food. “What about the king?” the man asked, “did you ever think of asking him?” “A liar and a Jew,” replied the woman. The man nodded thoughtfully and went away. The next, day a car arrived for her sons, and took them off to jobs in the police force. The woman was given an apartment in town. She does not know who was responsible, but says she is sure that the man in the djellabah was the king himself.

A few years ago, a man was appointed sheikh in a lost corner of the country about three hours’ walk from a tarred road. And he kept an eye on all that happened locally.

One day he saw a man chopping wood in the forest. He went and informed the forestry people, although this was not part of his job as sheikh. A few days later he was beaten up by the man who had stolen the wood. So the sheikh went to the Qa’id, his local immediate boss, and complained. The Qa’id called the stealer of wood and asked, “Why did you beat up the sheikh?”

“I never beat up the sheikh,” said the man, “and I’ll prove it.”

So he went off and found twelve witnesses who swore on the Koran that he hadn’t beaten up any sheikh. And the sheikh was fired and the affair closed.

Fatima’s house is small, with a low tin roof and a bare cement floor. In the main room there are two banquettes and a low table in the centre covered with an embroidered cloth. Pride of place in the room is taken by a cupboard with a glass door, which contains a patterned cup and saucer made in China, two bowls and a few glasses that don’t match each other. They are never used, never resorted to even in moments of high entertaining. She is happy just to look at them.

”Will you take a gander at that,” he said, flicking the pages of a Vogue magazine which showed Yves Saint Laurent’s apartment, crammed with objets d’art.

“A veritable museum,” he said.

The other looked, and wondered if there were any difference between Yves St. Laurent’s and Fatima’s little museum of treasures.