Travels: Collected Writings, 1950-1993

by Paul Bowles

  House near Tafraout in the Ammeln Valley. ‘The houses were wonderful colors ... rose-pink and orange and gray. It’s what they had handy, it’s made of earth, that’s the color of the earth ... This was the main door.’ (PB)

  Several children who had seen us arrive and park the car had run ahead into the village to announce our advent; now as we went along the oven-hot alleys, on all sides doors were being unceremoniously slammed shut and bolted. There was no one visible. But Monsieur Rousselot knew where he was going. He sent us ahead around a corner to wait out of sight while he pounded on one of the doors. It was a quarter of an hour before he reappeared and called to us. In the doorway where he had been standing talking stood an exceptionally pretty girl. The baby she held had an infected arm. Its forehead and nose were decorated in simple designs applied with kohl; one would have said that its face had been inexpertly tattooed. The room we went into was as dark and cool as a farmhouse cellar; the dirt floor slanted in various directions. A short flight of mud steps led up into an open patio with a well in its center. Seven or eight very white-skinned women sat there on a bench around the well; they wore medieval headdresses like those Tenniel gave the duchess in his illustrations for Alice in Wonderland. But they were all exceptionally handsome – even the old ones. No pictures could be taken, Monsieur Rousselot warned. The excuse they gave was that it was Friday afternoon.

  We were beckoned on into a further patio, this one full of men and boys, all wearing yamakas on their heads. From there we went into a small room with a brass bed at one end and a straw mat on the floor at the other. Asleep in the bed was a baby, naked and besieged by flies. We sat down on the mat in the sunlight, disturbing several hundred groggy flies; the men and boys came in from the patio one by one and solemnly shook hands with us. The big tray they put on the mat in front of us was piled high with almonds, dates, and flies – both alive and dead. Then the patriarch of the house was helped into the room by a younger man and eased into a sprawling position on the floor. His face was drawn and sad, and his replies to Monsieur Rousselot’s questions were apathetic. “You must come to the hospital and let us examine you,” urged Monsieur Rousselot. The old man frowned and shook his head slowly. “They’re all afraid,” Monsieur Rousselot explained to me in French. “They consider the hospital a place where one goes to die, nothing more.”

  “Do you know what’s wrong with him?” I asked.

  “I’m almost certain it’s the scourge.”

  “The scourge?”

  “Cancer,” snapped Monsieur Rousselot, as if the word itself were evil. “It carries them off, whsht, whsht.” He clicked his fingers twice.

  Someone came and carried the baby away, still asleep. The flies remained behind. A small bottle of mahia was produced, and miniature glasses of it were passed around. Surreptitiously I poured mine into Monsieur Rousselot’s glass. Only the old man and I went without.

  “He can’t eat anything,” explained one of the sons to Monsieur Rousselot. “Haven’t you any pills for him?”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” said Monsieur Rousselot jovially, opening his doctor’s bag. He took out two large jars, one filled with aspirin tablets, the other with Vitamin-C pills, and poured a pile of them onto the mat. A murmur went around the patio, started by those who were crowding the doorway watching. “This is the only medicament I ever carry with me. It’s all I have to give them. Mais vous allez voir. The pills will all stay behind here in Tahala.” The flies crawled on our faces, trying to drink from the corners of our eyes. Monsieur Rousselot conferred quietly with one of the younger members of the family; presently two liter-bottles of mahia appeared and were packed into the medical bag. When we got up to leave, Monsieur Rousselot said to the old man, “Then it’s agreed. You’ll bring your grandson on Tuesday.” To me he muttered, “Perhaps for the baby he’ll come, and I can get him to stay for an examination. But it’s doubtful.”

  Outside the front door a crowd of people had gathered. Word had got around that the toubib was there with his medicine. Monsieur Rousselot’s prediction was accurate; there were not enough pills to go around.

  On the way back up to Tafraout I said to him; “This has been an unforgettable day. Without it our trip to Tafraout would have been a failure.” And I thanked him and said we would be leaving in the morning.

  “Oh, no! You can’t go!” he cried. “I have something much better for you tomorrow.”

  I said we had to start moving northward.

  “But this is something special. Something I discovered. I’ve never shown it to anyone before.”

  “It’s not possible. No, no.”

  He pleaded. “Tomorrow is Saturday. Leave on Monday morning. We can spend tomorrow night in the palace and have Sunday morning for exploring the oases.”

  “Two days!” I cried. But the curiosity he had counted on awakening must have shown through my protestations. Before we left his house, I had agreed to go to Tassemsit. I could scarcely have resisted after his description of the place. According to him, Tassemsit was a feudal town at the bottom of a narrow canyon, which by virtue of being the seat of an influential religious brotherhood had so far escaped coming under governmental jurisdiction and was still functioning in a wholly traditional fashion. Absolute power was nominally in the hands of a nineteen-year-old girl, the present hereditary saint whose palace was inside the walls. In reality, however, said Monsieur Rousselot, lowering his voice to a whisper, it was the family chauffeur who held the power of life and death over the citizens of Tassemsit. The old Cherif, father of the girl-saint, for many years had run the zaouia where religious pilgrims came to pray and leave offerings. Not long ago he had bought a car to get up to Tafraout now and then, and had hired a young Marrakchi to drive it. The old Cherif’s somewhat younger wife had found the chauffeur interesting, as wives sometimes do, and l’inévitable had happened: the old Cherif had suddenly died and the wife had married the young Marrakchi, who had taken charge of everything: the woman, the holy daughter, the car, the palace and the administration of the shrine and the town around it. “It’s an equivocal situation,” said Monsieur Rousselot with relish. “You’ll see.”

  TASSEMSIT, OCTOBER 16

  Early morning. Others still asleep. Big grilled window right beside my head. A world of dappled sunlight and shadow on the other side of the wrought-iron filigree, an orchard of fig trees where small birds dart and chirp. Then the mud wall, and beyond, the stony floor of the canyon. A few pools of water in the river bed. The women are out there, getting water, bringing it back in jugs. Background to all views: the orange sidewall of the canyon, perpendicular and high enough to block out the sky from where I sit on the mattress.

  More lurid details about the place from Rousselot yesterday during lunch. When the chauffeur took over, he instituted a novelty in Tassemsit: it seems he conceived the idea of providing girls to keep the pilgrims occupied at night, when the zaouia is closed. A great boost to the local economy. “A holy city of sin,” said Rousselot with enthusiasm. Merely speak to the chauffeur, and you get any woman in town, even if she happens to be married. He had hardly finished telling us all this when a little fat man came in. Rousselot’s face was a study in chagrin, dropped jaw and all. He rallied then, introduced the little man around as Monsieur Omar, and made him sit down with us for coffee. Some sort of government employee. When he heard that we were about to leave for Tassemsit, Monsieur Omar said very simply that he would go with us. It was clear enough that he wasn’t wanted, but since nobody said anything to the contrary, he came along, sitting in back with Monsieur Rousselot and Seddiq.

  Trail rough in spots on the way up over the peaks just south of Tafraout. Going down the other side it was narrower, but the surface was no worse. Had we met another car, one of us would have had to back up for a half-hour. The landscape became constantly more dramatic. For two hours the trail followed a valley that cut itself deeper and deeper into the rock walls as it went downward. Sometimes we drove along the bed of the stream for a half-mile or
so. At the date-palm level we came across small oases, cool and green, that filled the canyon floor from cliff to cliff. The lower we went, the higher the mountain walls rose above, and the sunlight seemed to be coming from further away. When I was a child I used to imagine Persephone going along a similar road each year on her way down to Hades. A little like having found a back way out of the world. No house, no car, no human being all afternoon. Later, after we had been driving in shadow a good while, the canyon widened, and there on a promontory above a bend in the dry river bed, was Tassemsit, compact, orange-gold like the naked rock of the countryside around it, still in the sunlight. A small, rich oasis just below it to the south. The zaouia with its mosque and other buildings seemed to occupy a large part of the town’s space. A big, tall minaret in northern style, well-preserved. We stopped and got out. Complete silence throughout the valley.

  Monsieur Rousselot had seemed pensive and nervous all during the afternoon, and now I understood why. He got me aside on some pretext, and we walked together down the trail a way, he talking urgently the whole time. It worried him very much that Monsieur Omar should be with us; he felt that his presence represented a very real danger to the status quo of the place. “One false move, and the story of Tassemsit can be finished forever,” he said. “C’est très délicat. Above all, not a word about what I told you. Any of it.” I said he could count on me, and promised to warn Christopher. It came to me as we walked back up toward the car that there was probably another reason, besides the fact that he wanted to keep the place as his private playground, why Monsieur Rousselot was worried. A Frenchman’s job in Morocco, if he works for the government, is never too secure in any case; it is easy to find a pretext which will dispose of him and replace him with a Moroccan.

  When we got to the car I spoke to Christopher, but he had already guessed the situation. At Monsieur Rousselot’s insistence we waited another half-hour; then we drove down a side trail to the right, to within two hundred feet of the town gate. A mist of sweet-smelling wood smoke hung over the canyon. Several tall black men in white cotton robes appeared at the top of the rocks above us, came down to the car, and recognized Monsieur Rousselot. Smiling, they led us through a short alley into the palace itself, which was small, primitive and elegant. The big room where they left us was a conscious synthesis of luxury and wild fantasy; with its irresponsible color juxtapositions it was like something Matisse would have produced had he been asked to design a Moorish salon.

  “This is our room,” said Monsieur Rousselot. “Here we are going to eat and sleep, the five of us.” While we were unpacking, our host, the late Cherif’s chauffeur, came in and sat down in our midst for a while. He was pleasant-mannered, quick-witted, and he spoke a little French. A man in his late twenties, born in the country, one would guess, but used to living in the city. At one point I became aware of the conversation he was having with Monsieur Rousselot, who had sat down beside him on the mattress. It concerned the possibility of an ahouache, performed by the citizens of Tassemsit later on in the evening.

  Afterward, when the host had left, Monsieur Rousselot announced that not only would we have the entertainment, but that there would be a certain number of women taking part in it. “Very unusual,” he commented, looking owlishly at Monsieur Omar. Monsieur Omar grinned. “We are fortunate,” he said; he was from Casablanca and might as well have been visiting Bali for all he knew about local customs. “You understand, of course,” Monsieur Rousselot went on to say to me with some embarrassment, “this ahouache will have to be paid for.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “If you and Monsieur Christopher can give three thousand, I should be glad to contribute two.”

  I protested that we should be delighted to pay the whole five thousand francs, if that was the price, but he wouldn’t consider it.

  Through the windows, from the silence in the canyon outside, came the thin sound of the muezzin’s voice calling from the mosque, and as we listened, two light bulbs near the ceiling began to glow feebly. “It’s not possible!” cried Christopher. “Electricity here?” “Tiens,” murmured Monsieur Rousselot. “He’s got his generator going at last.” I looked wistfully up at the trembling filaments above my head, wondering whether the current and voltage might conceivably be right for recording. A tall servant came in and announced that the Cherif was expecting us on the floor above. We filed out under the arcade and up a long flight of stairs. There at the top, on an open terrace, surrounded by roaring pressure-lamps, sat our host with two women. We were presented to the mother first. She would have been considered elegant anywhere in the world, with her handsome head, her regal white garments and her massive gold jewelry. The daughter, present titular ruler of Tassemsit, was something else; it was difficult to believe that the two had anything in common, or even that they inhabited the same town. The girl wore a pleated woolen skirt and a yellow sweater. She had had her front teeth capped with gold, and noisily snapped her chewing gum from time to time as she chatted with us. Presently our host rose and conducted us back down the stairs into our room, where servants had begun to arrive with trays and small tables.

  It was an old-fashioned Moroccan dinner, beginning with soap, towels, and a big ewer of hot water. When everyone had washed and dried himself, an earthenware dish at least a foot and a half across was brought in and set in our midst; it held a mountain of couscous surrounded by a sea of sauce. We ate in the traditional manner, using our fingers, a process which demands a certain minimum of technique. The sauce was bubbling hot, and the tiny grains of semolina (since the cook knew his business) did not adhere to each other. Some of the food we extracted from the mound in front of us got to our mouths, but a good deal of it did not. I decided to wait a bit until someone had uncovered some of the meat buried in the center of the mass, and when my opportunity came I seized a small piece of lamb which was still too hot to touch with comfort, but which I managed nevertheless to eat.

  “I see that even the rudiments of local etiquette remain unknown to you,” remarked Monsieur Rousselot to me in a voice which carried overtones of triumph rather than the friendly concern it might have expressed. I said I didn’t know what he meant.

  “Have I committed an infraction?” I asked him.

  “Of the gravest,” he said solemnly. “You ate a piece of meat. One is constrained to try some of every other element in the dish first, and even then one may not try the meat until one’s host has offered one a piece of it with his own fingers.”

  I said this was the first time I had eaten in a home of the region. Seddiq, the medical student, observed that in Rabat such behavior as Monsieur described would be considered absurd. But Monsieur Rousselot was determined to be an old Moroccan hand. “Quelle décadence!” he snorted. “The younger generation knows nothing.” A few minutes later he upset a full glass of tea on the rug.

  “In Rabat we don’t do that, either,” murmured Seddiq.

  Shortly after tea had been served for the third time, the electricity began to fail, and eventually it died. There was a pause in the talking. From where he sat, the head of the house shouted an order. Five white-dustered black men brought in candle lanterns; they were still placing them in strategic positions around the room when the lights came on again, brighter than before. The lanterns were quickly blown out. Candles are shameful. Twenty minutes later, in the midst of a lion story (stories about lions are inevitable whenever city people gather in the country in South Morocco, although according to reliable sources the beasts have been extinct in the region for several generations), the current failed again, abruptly. In the silence of sudden dark- ness we heard a jackal yapping; the high sharp sound came from the direction of the river bed.

  “Very near,” I remarked, partly in order to seem unaware of the host’s probable embarrassment at having us witness the failure of his power system.

  “Yes, isn’t it?” He seemed to want to talk. “I have recorded them many times. Not one jackal – whole packs of them.”

>   “You’ve recorded them? You have a tape-recorder here?”

  “From Marrakesh. It doesn’t work very well. At least, not always.”

  Monsieur Rousselot had been busy scrabbling around his portion of the rug; now he suddenly lit a match and put it to the candle of the lantern near him. Then he stood up and went the length of the big room, lighting the others. As the patterns painted on the high ceiling became visible again, there was the sound of hand drums approaching from the town.

  “The entertainers are coming,” said our host.

  Monsieur Rousselot stepped out into the courtyard. There was the increasing sound of voices; servants had appeared and were moving about beyond the doorway in the gloom. By the time we all went to look out, the courtyard had some fifty or sixty men in it, with more arriving. Someone was building a fire over in a corner under the far arcade. A drum banged now and then as its owner tested the membrane. Again the electricity came on. The master of the palace smiled at Monsieur Rousselot, disappeared, and returned almost immediately with a servant who carried a tape-recorder. It was a small model made by Philips of Holland. He set it up on a chair outside the doorway and had great difficulty connecting it because none of the wall plugs appeared to work. Eventually he found a live one. By that time there were more than a hundred men massed under the arches around the open center of the courtyard, and in the middle were thirty or more musicians standing in an irregular circle. The host had propped the microphone against the machine itself, thus dooming his recording from the outset. “Why not hang it up there on the wall?” I suggested.