The Eye

Paul Bowles

BACKGROUND

This story takes place in Tangier. Tangier is a country in Africa. It is about weird magic spells and voodoo magic.

MAIN CHARACTERS

Duncan Marsh: The story is about him. He is this rich Canadian dude who dies.

Narrator: He is this curious guy who wants to find out all the details behind Duncan’s death.

Larbi: A Moroccan guy. He was the night watchman at Duncan Marsh's’ house. (Before Duncan died)

Meriam: The lady who was Duncan’s cook at his house.

PLOT

The story starts out with the narrator telling the story of Duncan Marsh. Duncan was this old rich Canadian guy who moved to Tangier. He rented a huge house, and hired a Moroccan kid to be his night watchman. Duncan fired the gardener and the cook at the house and the teenage security kid brought in a new cook. Then Duncan got sick and went back to Canada for medical treatment. Then he died. Lots of people thought it was his employees poisoning him.

The narrator is very suspicious of his death because of 2 things: Duncan signed some paper for some reason that gave the Moroccan kid some kind of document promising him money AND the doctors found some weird cuts on Duncan’s feet.

Then one day (many many years after this whole thing) the narrator finds out where that Moroccan kid (now a man) who was Duncan’s night watchman is. The guys’s name is Larbi. So the narrator goes to the restaurant where he works. Then the narrator asks Larbi about the document that Duncan gave him promising him money. Larbi shows the narrator the document. The document was a promise from Duncan that as long as he was alive, he would give Larbi money every month. Too bad Duncan is dead, so Larbi stopped getting money. The narrator is still suspicious.

So he and Larbi go to Duncan’s old house and Larbi tells him the REAL story about what happened. When Larbi was a teenager, doing security for Duncan, Duncan fired the cook because she sucked. Larbi suggested another cook. This cook (Meriam) had a kid though, but Larbi said the kid would be quiet when she came with her mom to work. The kid was not quiet though. Duncan wanted her to be quiet. One day he went to the kid and stared at her. The kid went home and got really sick. Meriam took her to a hospital and the doctors said Duncan put a spell on her called "The Eye". So she poisoned his food with a poison that would only relax Duncan. By relaxing him it would be easier to get him to take the spell off the kid. Then Duncan got really sick. Meriam had some Muslim voodoo doctors come and perform some weird ritual on him. They held him over a well and made weird cuts in his feet. Then he died. The narrator doesn’t find out whether the kid was ever healed.

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