by Tahir Shah
'Jumar Khan shifted in his seat. "Oh, respected guest," he said, "as you know, it is our tradition to provide a feast for a visitor. And the more esteemed the visitor, the finer the meal is required to be. In my state of poverty, I was unable to provide a meal fitting for a distinguished guest such as yourself," said Jumar Khan, placing his hand on his heart. "The only way I could keep my honour was to serve you my beloved horse."'
The road wended southeast down the Draa Valley. An ocean of palms rippled out on either side, emerald green in a landscape so dry it seemed miraculous life existed there at all. The local bus ran the route, transporting merchants and their fruit up to Ouarzazate and ferrying their purchases back down to Zagora.
On our childhood journeys to Morocco, we visited Ouarzazate time and again. It was little more than a hamlet then. But providence had delivered fortune in an unlikely way. Hollywood had discovered the stark beauty of the region and used the mud fortresses and adobe villages as backdrops in a thousand movies, from Lawrence of Arabia to Gladiator.
Film money had delivered to the local people the kind of wealth that fuels the most fantastic dreams. Once he had dished up a third helping of his stew and finished his tale, Mustapha gave me a single piece of advice.
'I cannot tell you what story is in your heart,' he said. 'But I can tell you that money earned with ease is the devil's currency. Everything it touches is cursed. If you want prosperity, work hard for it and don't take charity unless you are a day away from being drowned.'
'Drowned by water?'
'Drowned by life.'
As the bus grunted and wheezed between the potholes, my mind flitted back to the days when our Ford Cortina made the same journey south. My mother spent her time sorting through brocades and kaftans she had snapped up at the previous souq, and my father would be in the front with our gardener at the wheel. He never stopped talking for a moment. Conversation was a kind of lifeblood to him, a way to process his thoughts before he committed them to paper.
My school friends went on family holidays. We never did. We went on expeditions, journeys with a purpose. My father would use them to draw our attention to aspects of life we might otherwise have missed. He used to say that anything the senses showed you could be regarded in a different way.
On a journey down the Draa Valley a generation before, he had asked the gardener to pull over.
'I have to get something,' he said, opening the door. He crossed a patch of scrubland and made his way down through a grove of date palms to the stream. We asked our mother what he was doing.
'Wait and see,' she said.
Ten minutes later he was back. There was something in his fist. When we were all looking, he opened his hand and showed us. It was a smooth black pebble, with two veins of white running down one side.
'What is this?' he asked.
'It's a pebble,' I said.
'What else is it?'
We shook our heads.
'That's all. It's a pebble and that's that.'
My father put the pebble in my hand and told me to look at it carefully.
'Do you see anything else?'
'No.'
'Really look,' he said. 'Change the way you are looking at it.'
'Baba, I'm looking. Really I am.'
A few minutes passed. The gardener stepped out to stretch his legs. When he came back, we were still looking at the pebble.
My father weighed it in his hand.
'What you see here and you call a pebble is all sorts of things,' he said. 'It's a fragment of something else, but is complete as it is. It's been rounded smooth by the river, moulded by time. If it stays in the river for a few million years longer, it will become sand. To an ant it is a mountain and to an elephant it's almost too small to be seen. And to us it's an object of beauty, something that feels very nice to touch, but it's useful too.'
'Baba, it's a pebble,' I said, 'and it's not useful at all.'
'Tahir Jan, that's where you are wrong,' he said. 'You see, this little pebble has a thousand uses. You could put it in a pan of milk and the milk wouldn't boil over. Or you could throw it at a wild dog that's attacking you, or scrape it on the ground to draw a map, or use it as a paperweight. Or,' he said quietly, 'you could just keep it on a shelf and look at it from time to time, as a reminder of our journey and of this very beautiful place.'
That evening, the bus reached Zagora after three punctures and a quick stop to barter chickens at the side of the road. In the countryside of Morocco, there are tokens of modernity – transistor radios, colour televisions and plenty of mobile phones. But the essence of life has not changed in centuries. The man sitting beside me on the bus had five chickens, all trussed up by the feet. Oblivious to their evident discomfort, he pulled them down from the luggage rack and took them on to the road. He bartered them directly for other goods at a line of makeshift stalls.
One was swapped for a jar of honey, another for a bag of clementines; the third was traded for some pomegranates, the fourth for a bottle of olive oil; and the fifth for a rough wicker basket in which to carry his goods.
When I stepped down from the bus at Zagora, I was immediately attended to by a boy of about ten years. He was holding a fishing rod in one hand and a jar of worms in the other, and he swaggered when he walked.
'I will help you,' he said.
'How do you know I want your help?'
He shook the jar of worms and peered in to see if they were moving.
'I know because you are a tourist,' he said, 'and tourists have money but no wisdom.' He tapped his temple. 'Nothing in their heads.'
'Who told you that?'
'My father did.'
'What does he do?'
'He sells carpets over there.'
'What's his name?'
'Ashraf.'
'And what's yours?'
The boy shook the worms again.
'I'm Sami,' he said.
A few minutes later, I was sitting in a cramped carpet emporium, across from Sami's father. The shop was a concrete box, airless and so dusty that everyone inside coughed almost all the time. Ashraf's face was hidden by a mask of scruffy beard and dominated by a long, hooked nose.
He poured me a glass of mint tea.
'They call me the Eagle,' he said.
'Are you cruel and eagle-like with your clients?'
'No, it's because of my nose,' he said.
I told him it had been fortunate that I had met Sami at the bus stop.
Ashraf flared his nostrils.
'He was fishing,' he said.
'For river fish?'
The carpet-seller coughed hard and gulped down a lump of phlegm.
'For tourists.'
'Oh, yes, he told me that tourists have nothing between their ears. Empty heads.'
Ashraf grinned. 'You are different. You are a man of intelligence,' he said.
He poured me more tea.
'Well, I am also fishing,' I told him.
'For what?'
'For a story.'
'Then, you are in the right place,' Ashraf replied. 'You see, each of my carpets is a story, a window that looks into another world.'
Sami started coughing so violently he had to go outside for air. When he was gone, his father stood up and pulled down a fine tribal rug, alternating red and white lines, ivory tassels at the ends.
'Look at this one,' he said, kneeling again. 'It's a story of the desert. The sheep which grew the wool were nourished by the plants that were themselves nourished in the soil, on the banks of the Draa River. The dyes came from berries in the trees, and the knowledge to create this masterpiece came from an ancient wisdom, trapped in the memory of the tribe.' Ashraf coughed again. 'There are stories in all my stock,' he said.
'But I'm looking for another kind of story . . . something with a beginning, middle and an end.'
The carpet-dealer lit a cigarette and filled the cubicle with smoke.
'They do have a beginning, a middle and an end,' he said.
&nbs
p; 'Not in the same way, though.'
Ashraf exhaled, and coughed some more.
'Two things can look very different,' he said. 'They can be different shapes, different colours, made out of quite different things. But to the heart they are exactly the same.'
SIXTEEN
When a man's sleep is better than his waking, It is better that he should die.
Saadi of Shiraz
REAL TRAVEL IS NOT ABOUT THE HIGHLIGHTS WITH WHICH YOU dazzle your friends once you're home. It's about the loneliness, the solitude, the evenings spent by yourself, pining to be somewhere else. Those are the moments of true value. You feel half proud of them and half ashamed and you hold them to your heart. The road south from Zagora was like that. I half wished I was somewhere else, or that I had a companion to bore with conversation.
A farmer with a pick-up full of sheep gave me a lift to his village. Facing the road, the community was a jumble of square Berber homes, built with the same giant blocks of mud that I have so often seen used in Afghanistan. The farmer pointed to a single lamppost and told me to stand under it.
'A white taxi will come,' he said.
'When?'
The moment I asked it, I heard how stupid it sounded. Punctuality and timetables were concepts that hadn't reached the Draa Valley.
'It will come today or tomorrow,' said the farmer after some time. 'If God wills it.'
I thanked him and waited obediently under the lamp post. The February sun was hot on my neck and the scent of bread baking in a nearby mud-brick oven was almost too much to bear. I had not found any breakfast in Zagora and so I followed the smell of baking bread. I came to a low adobe building with a chicken coop and a crazed dog on the roof. A boy ran out, shouted, laughed, burst into tears and fetched his father.
The man was unusually lean, muscular and alert, like a greyhound in the starting trap. I wished him peace and he echoed my words, shook my hand firmly and looked at the dust.
'Taxi,' I said, pointing at the lamp post.
The man repeated the word twice: first as a question and then as a statement. He shook my hand again, praised God.
In a single movement, he bent round to his house, poked his head inside, barked at his wife, turned round again and invited me in. I entered the cool, dim room in time to see the hem of a woman's kaftan rushing out of the back. It would, of course, have been unseemly for a male guest to have set eyes on, let alone to have met, the women of the house. There was a single room, furnished with a low table and cushions on the floor. In one corner was a nest of embroidery and, in another, a Qur'ān wrapped in a scrap of green silk.
An ancient figure was asleep on the cushions. I didn't see him at first, not until my eyes had adjusted to the lack of light. The lean man prodded him awake and whispered. The ancient roused from his sleep, fumbled for a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and struggled to fit them over his eyes. He looked at the lean man, then at me, jerked upright and greeted me in French.
'I am waiting for the taxi,' I said.
The old man seemed confused.
'Where are you going?'
'To M'hamid, the end of the road.'
'That's far,' he replied, nodding.
We sat in silence. In Morocco, a family's life is put on hold for a guest, even one who has invited himself. I found myself thinking about our world. If we found a stranger, a foreigner, on our doorstep we might be more likely to point him elsewhere rather than invite him in.
The arrival of a guest into a home is quite different in Oriental society. Nowhere is it more pronounced than in Morocco. Hospitality is a ritual built on honour, something of such importance that no family would ever stint in their duty. The ceremony developed through centuries of nomadic movement and intertribal conflict and is part of the soul of all Arab people.
In the sixth century, before the foundation of Islam, the tribes of Arabia passed their lives fighting one another. These interminable battles might have ended in their mutual extermination had they not developed a code of honour governing their wars. According to the rules that they developed, the object of war was not to win battles or destroy the enemy, but to provide a field for the performance of heroic deeds, which were subsequently immortalized in poetry.
For the early Arabs, to fight honourably was more important than to win.
Tea was served, boiling hot and thick with sugar. After it came bread and olive oil, followed by a platter of fresh dates. The lean man piled all the food in front of me and urged me to eat. He picked through the dates, chose the best ones and gave them to me a few at a time. I praised their sweet taste. The older man shooed a hand towards the door.
'We grow them out there,' he said.
'I've seen the palms in abundance.'
The ancient pushed his glasses up his nose.
'This is the desert but God gave us the palms for every need,' he said. 'We eat the dates, and make baskets from the leaves, and use the trunks as beams in our houses, or we hollow out the wood and make buckets. What more could we ever need?'
At that moment a teenage boy sloped in, greeted us all and pulled out a new radio. The old man strained to focus on the object, which began crackling out music.
'It's music from Casablanca,' said the youth.
His grandfather took off his glasses and wiped his old eyes.
'The world is not what it used to be,' he said dismally.
'All the way from Casa,' the boy repeated.
'It's nonsense,' said the old man. 'This boy here has no interest in what is important. His head is filled with things he hears on that radio thing.'
'What is important?' I asked.
The grandfather thought for a long time. He smoothed an arthritic hand over his hair.
'Palms,' he said. 'Date palms.'
Another round of tea was poured and I stood up for Casablanca. The old man scowled.
'It's a place of loud music and loose women,' he said.
'Some of the music is not too bad and not all the women are loose.'
He looked up from his lap.
'How do you know this?'
'Because I live there.'
The young man dropped his radio and ducked his head in respect.
'You live in Casa?'
'Yes.'
'How is it?'
'It's fantastic,' I said.
The boy wriggled.
'I want to go there. I want to see the ocean.'
His grandfather lay back on the cushions and closed his eyes. I described the ocean.
'It's the most magical thing in the world,' I said. 'Each time you look at it, it's different. Sometimes the waves are furious, like a wild monster, and at other times it's so calm and blue that it looks like a sheet of glass. And over the ocean lies another world.'
'America,' said the boy dreamily.
'That's right.'
'One day I will cross the ocean to America,' he said.
In the afternoon, a white communal taxi screeched to a halt at the lamppost and I was pulled inside. Before the door was even closed, the vehicle sped away; it disgorged me at the small town of Tamegroute a few miles on. I got down, dusted my shoulders and found myself touching the pink ribbon on my wrist. Ariane was thinking of me. I vowed then I would never leave the children at home again if I could avoid it. I had brought them to the kingdom for the purpose of experiencing real Morocco, not to remain in an oasis in its greatest metropolis. From then on we would travel as I had done in my own youth, on our own journeys with a purpose.
In the late afternoon, I found myself at a zaouia, the study centre beside the tomb of a saint. Tamegroute may not be famous outside Morocco, but it holds a special place in the cultural core of the kingdom. A thousand years ago, the town was already famous, celebrated for its scholarship and as a rest point en route to Timbuktu. It houses one of the most important libraries of Islamic texts in the Arab world and dispenses charity to the elderly and the mentally infirm.
A cluster of wrinkled men were sitting on the steps. When the
y saw me, they moved into action, like automata. One of them put out a hand; another staggered to his feet; a third began to sing. I was going to ask them directions to the library. But before I could say a word, a fourth man, much younger than the others, led me aside. He was dressed in a black wool jelaba, the hood up over his head like a monk. His hands were hidden, pushed up opposite sleeves, his face concealed by shadow.
'I need directions to the library.'
'I will tell you,' he said.
He took me out into the bright sunlight away from the others and seemed to have authority. He handed me a sheet of crumpled paper.
'I work with the patients,' he said.
'What is wrong with them?'
'They are fragile, fragile in their heads.'
He pulled off his hood and I saw his face. It was energetic, unshaven and a little pallid, the kind of face that keeps your attention because of the eyes. They were green and glittery, like wood opals.
'I am Ilias,' he said.
'You look after the patients?'
'Yes.'
'Do you heal them?'
'We try to.'
'With medicines?'
'No. There is no money for medicines.' He kicked a stone from his sandal. 'So we talk to them,' he said.
Ilias took me on a tour of the library as the sunlight faded into dusk. The building housed an extraordinary collection of manuscripts, most of them Qur'ānic commentaries, works of mathematics and astronomy, law books and historical texts. Many of the books were crafted from gazelle-skin velum, all written by hand, and some were more than seven hundred years old. In the West there would have been security systems, glass cases and lists of rules pinned up on the walls. Part of the charm was the library's simplicity, its sense of peace.
Ilias invited me to take tea in a café not far from the zaouia. I was impressed by his natural ease. Everyone who saw him appeared to be energized by his greeting.
'You know everyone,' I said.
'The town is very small. Even an ant couldn't get lost in Tamegroute.'
I laughed and then asked about the treatment.