I creep into the city at dusk.
I have not been here for many years. Years or decades? I cannot tell, but when I see her, I will know how long it has been. Every city carries a distinct feeling like every human carries a unique scent and when I return to Casablanca it feels the same; old grandeur, stale smoke and the sense that everything is changing.
Of course, every city these days has a feeling of change, but here it has always been so; this is a city rich with the history of movement; a well-worn pathway from Europe into Africa and Arabia; the western human’s ultimate gateway into the exotic, also a site for planning wars and a place for its own revolution. It has never been a still place.
Now there seems to be more urgency to the change; the dust is insistent, a sense of burning fills the air, people no longer brush against each other, but bump shoulders as they hurry past.
They no longer look back.
There is an intensity to the change that I do not recognise; a forewarning if you are used to reading such things.
Perhaps she will explain to me what it is.
If I can find her again.
•••
I first met her when she was a child walking the streets of the medina. She was trailing her mother, falling behind as she stopped to inspect carts filled with fruit, brass pots and bundles of mint. She was only six but already she carried the spirit of one who knew how to face the world, her chin thrust out, her eyes bright and fierce. I was fond of taking the form of a particular dog in those days, a brown and white Beldi, a mixed breed common on the streets of Morocco. In him I could wander around unnoticed and untroubled by humans as I took to exploring the alleys of the medina. I was lolling in a patch of sunlight in front of a tailor’s shop when I felt her shadow over me. As I opened my eyes, I saw her face above mine.
“What a beauty you are,” she said to me, her Arabic almost musical. “You almost do not look real. Tell me, oh dog, are you actually a real dog?” She bent down to touch my head and while I usually did not allow humans to touch me, I found myself unable to move. “I wish I could take you home with me,” she said softly. “You would be mine and I would be yours.”
I do not know why but I found my tail began to thump gently behind me.
Ahead of us on the street, a woman in a djellaba stopped and turned around searchingly before beginning to call out for someone. The girl looked up and shouted that she was coming, before turning to me. “Maybe we will see each other again soon, oh beautiful dog,” she said before she stood up and disappeared into the crowd.
Maryam.
Her mother had called her Maryam.
The next day I looked for her until I found her in the market. In the afternoons she and her mother would sell the fish her father had caught from the sea. I would settle next to her as she called out to passersby, enticing them to her wares. Or, she would shout out questions to strangers, asking them about what they had bought that day, how much they had paid or what they were going to cook that night, until her mother had to shush her; saying it was inappropriate for little girls to have such big voices. But that didn’t stop Maryam. She haggled with customers loudly, berating them for meagre offers. Were they not ashamed, she asked, taking food from the very mouths of her brothers and sisters? She was proud. She never took anything less than she felt was deserved, even if her mother was desperate for the money. But she was generous too; she would keep the tastiest morsels for me, the head or the tail or the tiny pieces of squid she knew I so loved to chew.
On quiet afternoons, she would reach for me and scratch my head. She loved to tell stories. And since I was no ordinary dog, I loved to listen. She told me Moroccan folktales, stories of the Prophet and his companions and when she tired of telling me the stories she had heard, she made up new ones. These were the ones I liked best. Curled at her feet I would hear about princes who visited other planets, queens who turned into termites and snakes that flew through the air like birds. She described to me other lands where pomegranates were filled with liquid gold, where the air was so dry no one could live outside and where people could talk to one another without words. Even I, an ancient djinn who had seen many things a human being had not, was bewildered by the things she dreamt up. She was not in the world of men nor of djinn – she lived in her own world, one of her making.
In her real life she lived with her family in a small room in a lane off the medina. I did not visit her there – it was too loud and noisy – everyone slept in one room and her siblings were always squabbling or shouting at her, never showing her the respect I thought she deserved.
They treated her as if she were ordinary, but I knew she was not.
•••
I head to the medina first – I know she will no longer be living there but it is the place where I left her all those years ago.
I slip into the streets just as the adhaan begins. The call to prayer is the only thing that feels familiar. The rest is so changed. It is as if I have walked into a town after the effects of a tornado; things have been uprooted; they seem moved or misplaced. There is little of what I remember now. I can hardly smell the sea like before, its view is blocked by buildings. The air is filled with the sound of cars, generators and the clang of cranes in the distance. High buildings emerge into the landscape suddenly and abruptly like magazine pictures torn and stuck in the sky. Glass and steel compete for the sky now. Piles of rubbish lie everywhere; discarded furniture, clothes and shoes. It is not what it used to be, this new Casablanca, even though it feels fuller, it also feels more lonely, a heartlessness has crept in.
And it makes me think if so much has changed so quickly here, then how much has Maryam changed?
I do not measure time like humans. I see the land and smell the air and I have a sense of how much time has passed. But here it feels as though things have accelerated so that I cannot know.
What has happened?
•••
From the series Take A Walk With Me (2025)
I finally arrive at Maryam’s old home.
The streets here are familiar although things look newer; paint is fresher, there are bigger and newer signboards and there are more tourists. I hear English spoken more often. The house is still the same although now it is a shop selling traditional Moroccan beauty products. European women inside dab fingers into clay pots and stain their cheeks crimson.
I wonder if anyone still goes onto the roof. I wonder if the clothesline is still there, full with clothes that flap in the wind. That was where I saw her last. Her eyes glittering with tears as swathes of colored fabric fluttered around her, pulling her in and out of view.
I turn away. She is not here.
She has not been here for a long time.
I can feel it.
•••
When Maryam turned 16 and boys began to suddenly hover around her like bees to blossoms, I found myself annoyed. They teased her and called to her and I knew what was in the heart of men. I knew how they destroyed everything around them and I could not bear to see this for Maryam. I thought, or perhaps I convinced myself that it would be easier to protect her from other men if I were a man too.
So, I took the form of a strong young man. I thought I could say I had come from another city, that I was seeking work and that with the excuse of buying fish I could strike up a friendship with her. I thought with time, we could know each other well enough to continue our friendship as before, except now I could return speech and this this time I could do more than growl at the feet of the men who tried to approach her. But Maryam was clever; she had always been clever, the disappearance of her beloved dog and the sudden appearance of a young man in the market was too much of a coincidence to her.
“Which real dog,” she said between peals of laughter, “would sit and listen to my stories so well? I knew you were no ordinary dog from the day I met you.”
She told me that she had long suspected that I was a djinn. In fact, she thought it from the very first day she saw me in the medina. She said even in a different form she could see who I was within my eyes. I felt ashamed then, that I had tried to trick my old friend who had known and fed me so well. She said she would accept my new form of friendship if I brought her meals now. I took a job as a laborer, climbing scaffolding and laying down concrete, the city was always changing and post-independence it had begun to undergo rapid modernization. I felt part of the city then, no longer a traveler wandering the alleys merely watching. I felt quite human in those days, not only because of my form but also because my work was part of how the city was changing. With the money I earned I bought her flatbread and semolina pancakes and bowls of spicy harrira. I told her I fed her far better than she had fed me and she laughed at this, saying dogs had less refined palates than humans. In my new form, we could converse and have real conversations. I told her about my world and how there were always stars in the sky, even in the day. How we could go for weeks without seeing anyone because the landscape was so empty. She told me she could not imagine that, that she loved the markets and the streets and the sound of life around her. She loved to talk and hear other people’s stories and how they lived their lives. She told me that she wanted to study; that she wanted to learn about people and share her stories far and wide. I told her I thought she could put her stories into songs for she had such a sweet voice.
Sometimes at night on her roof, when her family was asleep, she would sing for me. Her voice was so beautiful, I thought she could be the next Haja El-Hamdaouia.
I thought she could be anything.
•••
On her 18th birthday, I asked her to marry me.
I felt it was inevitable. I could not imagine my world without her and I thought she could not imagine the same without me. And I desperately needed to return home; I had spent too much time in the world of men, doing the things of men and I was beginning to fade. Men are made of clay and I, of fire; and this life of man was meant for those of the soil. Already I could see my human form could no longer hold me, my fingers and hands were slowly beginning to disappear. When I worked I wore gloves despite the heat, so the men could not see how transparent my fingertips had become. Some days I could see the shadows of others pass through me.
I had to return home but I did not wish to part from her.
I told her if we married, she could come to my world and there we could be husband and wife. In her world I was not recognised in my true form – I could not even be seen by humans unless I took on another form, but if she came with me, it would be a better life for us together in my realm. It could be many human years before I was strong enough to return her world.
Maryam loved me, I am sure of it.
But she told me no. She told me she could not come with me. She said that her life was here in this world, in this city where she had grown up. Her people and her culture were here. This was the world she was born into and this was the world she wanted to leave from.
I begged her to reconsider but she said she could not leave this city.
Standing between the clothes pinned on the washing line she looked beyond the roof at Casablanca and said this place was where her stories were born from and without it she would be nothing.
I left that night.
I returned to my home in the other realm and did not look back. I could not even bear to speak the name of the city anymore. It often felt like I was burning and I would sit in cool pools of water and watch the stars. It is not in our nature to have our hearts broken. But perhaps, such a thing happened to mine. Perhaps there is part in me where the land and fire meet. I knew she would marry and I knew she would have offspring. I did not begrudge her these human things. They are, after all how humanity survives. I looked to the east and did not look back.
Time passed.
I do not know how long.
•••
But the time came when I felt I could return to the world of men. And though I thought I had forgotten, I had not. I knew it was not a good idea but the desire to see her face again became too big in my mind.
This morning, without thinking, I returned to the world of men, to my old city, to Maryam.
•••
Young and old women pass me and I wonder if Maryam is among them. Perhaps I will no longer recognise her? My heart tells me this is impossible.
I will know her when I see her.
A young boy passes and I call to him. “Do you know where the Hassan family who used to live here have gone? They sold fish in the market. They had a daughter – Maryam.”
But the days of people knowing such things are gone. No longer it seems can you ask anyone to tell you about a family who may have lived here before. Perhaps people here do not even know their neighbours anymore.
The boy shakes his head and runs away.
But perhaps this city can still surprise me. Perhaps this city remembers what it once was, for a minute later, a woman in a red hijab comes forward.
“I heard you asking about the Hassan family that sold fish in the market. I know Maryam. Everyone knows Maryam. She lives outside the medina now, in a new apartment block.’
I feel a sudden relief. Maryam is still here, in this city, in this world.
The woman gives me instructions of how to get there.
I thank her and follow her directions, thoughts swirling in my mind like the dust around me.
•••
From the series Take A Walk With Me (2025)
I walk to her building through the streets that seem so changed. The buildings are bigger, there is construction everywhere. Maryam and I used to sit on the roof and call this our city as if we ruled it and for a long time it felt like we did. We knew every alley and every street, the old uncle who sold mint tea in the corner, the tailor who mended the holes in our clothes and the local mosque where the Imam cleared his throat into the speaker for five minutes before beginning, but now I recognise nothing and our kingdom is gone. There are only signs of the future emerging with construction everywhere and the past disappearing with its ruins.
•••
I press a buzzer at the door of a shiny building and say I am a friend of Maryam’s. A woman
on the other side – I cannot recognise her voice – tells me to come up to the eighth floor.
When I knock on the door and it opens – I feel a shock run through me. I see her big eyes and dark hair and I am stunned into silence. But then I blink and realise something; she looks like Maryam – but she is not Maryam. She is older and her nose is not exactly the same.
The woman greets me with a smile as if she knows me.
“My mother has been expecting you,” she says. “You almost did not make it.”
Before I can ask her what she means, I am ushered through the apartment into a dim room and she shuts the door behind her.
The room is so dark when I enter, that at first, I cannot see. I can smell herbs and camphor and mint. I see a small light and I make my way towards it.
Finally, I see her; she is laying on the bed, her head propped up by a pillow.
I have been wrong. So wrong.
Too much time has passed.
Maryam is old, older than I could have imagined. I approach her gently, creases of skin hide the face I once knew but then she turns to me and smiles and I see her eyes – there is the old Maryam I know from the medina, the one who chased after me in the streets of the bazaar, who shouted for people to buy her fish, who came one day with her shadow over mine and said, “One day, you will be mine and I will be yours.”
“I thought you were never coming. I thought I would leave this world having never seen you again. I did not think you would be so cruel.”
I move closer and lay my hand on hers. “Oh Maryam,” is all I can say.
“Am I really that terrible to look at now that I am an old woman?” she laughs.
Before I can reply, before I can say that yes, I did not imagine her this way and before I can say that she could never be terrible to me, that she is still the Maryam I know and that I would transform right now into an old man to be with her, that I would lay down on the bed next to her and hold her hand in mine and wait with her for whatever is coming, but before I can say any of this, she shushes me as if all of that that does not matter and says softly, “Tell me, have you never come back since?”
I shake my head. “Never,” I say.
She nods as if she suspected so.
“How is our kingdom? Have you seen how much it has changed? I am almost without sight now but I hear everything. The birds have gone. I think to where the sky is not so full anymore. All I hear are cranes outside now. Bang. Bang. Bang. And cars, too many cars. Do you remember when we could hear the ocean? I cannot hear that anymore. Even our mosque – do you remember it? The small one down our street. With the Imam who cleared his throat so much. That even they have closed. They say they are building a bigger one there, a better one with one hundred stain glass windows, a mosque that can fit twenty thousand worshippers! Can you imagine – twenty thousand worshippers?”
I sit down beside her, still looking at her face. I have forgotten how much I love to hear her talk.
“I cannot,” I say.
“I had been wishing that you would come before I leave this world. That I could set my eyes on you one last time.”
Oh, Maryam.
“Was it a good life?” I ask.
“I lived it how I wanted it to be lived. I chose my husband. He gave me a good home. I had children as I wished to. I sang them my songs and told them my stories. Along the way there were hardships: I lost a child, we did not have money for food, my husband got sick and died and there were days when I thought I could no longer wake up. But I have family and neighbours whom I love. I have a market where people call me Maryam Jada as if I am everyone’s grandmother. I have told stories and listened to stories from this place and I have stayed in this city that I love, as I wanted to. It was a good life because it was the life I chose.”
I smile.
“I am glad you came to me as the young man,” she says raising a hand to touch my face gently. “I am glad you came like this. I did not know how to warn you to not take the form of the dog here. It is no longer safe. This was once a city where you could wander freely as an animal, but no longer.” She sighs. “They are killing them. Murdering them on the streets. There is this sports event coming to our city, they say it is very big and they are building so much for it and they are also killing the dogs, they say they have killed thousands of dogs already.”
I shake my head at the folly of men.
“It feels like only yesterday I was that young girl in the market; finding the most extraordinary dog in the world. Isn’t time so strange?”
I have never thought clearly about time until now. I have never known how much changes for man with time, how much is gained and lost so quickly. How it marks the passage of human life.
“Time is strange, here in the world of man,” I say.
“How long did you think you had left for?” she asks.
“As though it was perhaps a day, or perhaps a lifetime,” I reply.
She smiles. “It is the same for us. It feels like I was only a child with my dog yesterday.”
My wise little Maryam. Wise beyond her years.
“I am dying,” she says flatly.
I know this.
“I am so happy you returned.”
“I will never leave again,” I say.
•••
From the series Take A Walk With Me (2025)
When she dies, it is Friday, the most blessed of days and her children bury her in the ground in a white cloth and read the Fatiha over her.
I keep my promise.
I do not leave.
I sit at her graveside and talk to her even though she no longer talks to me. Even when I press my ear to the ground, she remains silent.
I stay like that, crouched, listening.
After months, I feel the change. The bones inside me soften. At first my legs no longer move and soon they begin to disappear into the ground, then my arms thicken and turn rough. Everything in me adjusts and grows rigid and I can no longer form words in my mouth. Soon I am no longer able to move.
I give in, I let it happen. I knot together and stretch out and push deep into the earth.
By morning I am a weeping fig, swaying in the breeze with lean and slender branches. My roots reach down into the ground until they reach her.
And finally, she and I are one.
Shubnum Khan is a South African author and artist. Her latest novel, The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years is a New York Times Editors Choice, an NPR’s Books We Love 2024, Brittle Paper’s 2024 Notable African Books. It was longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award, shortlisted for the Book Lounge Book of the year and winner of the 2025 HSS Award for Best Novel. It has been translated into Italian and Ukranian. She was selected as a Mellon Fellow at Stellenbosch University and a finalist for the Miles Morland Award for African Writers. She is a fellow with the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai and Art OMI in New York. She has been published in the New York Times, Huff Post, Marie Claire and McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern amongst others. She serves on the board for the African journal, Imbiza and as a mentor at The Ledby Foundation for Muslim women in India. Her first novel, Onion Tears was shortlisted for the Penguin Prize for African Writing and her collection of travel essays, How I Accidentally Became a Global Stock Photo was longlisted for the Sunday Times nonfiction prize. She lives in Durban by the sea.
Throughout January, Tender Photos has showcased Yasmine Hatimi's work on the changes in the Moroccan urban landscape. Previously we have published Hatimi's portfolio and an essay by Ife O. Olatona. For press, sponsorship and other media inquiries, contact us.
