by Anais Nin
The smell of cedar grows stronger. We are now in the carpenters’ quarter. It is spacious, high enough for the beams of wood, brought by the donkeys, to be turned into tables, chairs, trunks. The smell is delicious, comparable only to that of fresh-baked bread. The wood is blond, and the carpenters work with care and skill. The art of working mother-of-pearl encrustations is rare. Two members of the distinguished family that alone knows the art are teaching it to children. I watch them work in the aisle of the museum, with pieces as tiny as one-eighth of an inch, shaping and fitting them to a sculptured rosewood box. It is not an art found in tourist bazaars. To watch hands at such delicate work is to understand the whole of the Moroccan character—patience, timelessness, care, devotion.
And now we are in the street of spices. They look beautiful in their baskets, like an array of painter’s powders. There is the gold-red saffron, the silver herbs, the scarlet-red peppers, the sepia cinnamon, the ochre ginger, and the yellow curry. The smells surround you, enwrap you, drug you. You are tempted to dip your whole hand in the powdery colors. Later these herbs and spices will appear subtly in the local cooking.
The Moroccan can work in a small space because he knows the art of stillness, he is concentrated on his work, immobile. He does not know restlessness. He is unravelling silk skeins, rolling the silk onto bobbins, tying and braiding belts. But just as you begin to float on a dream of silk, muslins, embroidery, you are plunged into the hundreds of hammer blows of copperwork. Copper trays, copper-edged minors, candelabra, tea pots, are being carved with a burin and hammer. The men hold the large trays between their knees. The oldest and the best of the artists works with infinite precision, reproducing designs from famous mosques. His dishes shine like gold, and the designs open and flower and expand and proliferate like intoxicated nature. There are always children and young men in the background, learning the craft.
After the roar of copper works, the hammer strokes, comes a different tone of clatter. It is the work on pewter, iron cauldrons for laundry, pots and pans for cooking.
The barber shop is a mysterious cavern, with four huge thronelike chairs taking the whole space. In ancient times the barber was also the circumciser and sometimes the surgeon.
Children pass by, giggling and running, carrying trays of dough prepared for the communal oven. Every quarter has its own mosque, its fountain, its school, its hammam, or bath, and its communal oven. The little girls of five and six carry the baby of the family tied to their backs with shawls. They manage to play in between their duties.
A small stand sells sugar loaves—the gift to bring when invited to dinner—sugar for the mint tea and for the sweet pastry, so flaky and light, that they bake.
Two women pass me in gold and silver caftans, on their way to a party or a wedding.
The only sights I miss from my former visit, many years ago, are the handsome cavaliers in their full regalia, white burnouses, red trimmings on the horses, gold knives in their belts. The rich families of sheiks have gone to live in Casablanca. So all I see now are donkeys and mules laden with wood for burning, with dried skins, with furniture, with fruit and garbage, with bolts of material, with potato sacks, with bricks. And when they come with a shout of warning you have to squeeze yourself against the walls.
Now we come to the dyers’ souk. The whole crooked, serpentine street of cobblestones belongs to them, and your foot discovers first of all a river of colored water overflowing from the vats. The guide says: “Don’t mind. Your shoes will be dyed in beautiful colors.” In every dark cavernous lair there are cauldrons with dyes of different hues. The men dip the wool and silk and then squeeze them dry. Their legs are bare, and both legs and hands are dyed the color they work with. Children are watching, learning, and helping when they can.
Glancing into one mosque, discreetly, I see a sumptuous blood-red rug given by the king. There is a separate prayer room for the women. Before entering, the faithful wash their feet and faces at the fountain.
Mosques, markets, souks, schools, baths, are all intertwined, giving a feeling of common humanity, or intimacy. Every trade is carried out in the open. Passing by the schools I hear the chorus of recitation from the Koran, which children learn at the earliest age. Wooden trellised windows conceal them from the street, but some come to the door to smile. Learning the verses by heart is difficult, and the discipline severe.
There are no schools for women, but they learn their arts and crafts from the skilled workers who serve them: dressmaking, embroidery, painting, pottery, weaving. Their knowledge is not confined to housekeeping. In ancient days they excelled in poetry, philosophy, and music.
Inevitably the rug merchant invites you to drink mint tea and to glance at the rugs. They are spread on the floor of an ancient palace, now a warehouse for rugs. You learn to distinguish between the designs of Fez and the Berber. The Fez recall the flowery, intricate designs of Persia, but the Berber rugs, in natural wool with austere, abstract designs in pure colors, recall American Indian patterns in their simplicity.
The old inns, or fondouks, are still there, as they were in the Middle Ages. Donkeys and camels rest in the courtyard, and in the cells all around, the merchants who come from other cities sleep in their burnouses. But many of the inns have been turned over to the craftsmen and artisans. One is filled with sheepskins, which are being dipped in lye to make it easier to pull off the wool.
A heavy cedarwood gate, elaborately carved, with a heavy silver lock or a tree-sized bolt, indicates a wealthy home.
In a dark lair men are feeding the fires for the hammam, throwing into the furnaces chips left over from carpentry or bundles of odorous eucalyptus.
Baskets of mint are sold in abundance, sometimes by one solitary old woman. When I stop at a very small and dark café, I see the samovar they keep going, and watch the ritual of making mint tea. I sit on a plain rough bench, and the boy in charge of pressing the mint into the tea pot brings a tiny stool for the glasses.
The tall red hat the Moroccans love to wear, with its black tassel, came from Turkey and is called a tarbouche by the natives, a fez by the tourists.
I say to a merchant, persistently pointing inside his shop, which is filled with antiques: “I am not shopping. I am writing about Fez.” He bows and replies in flowery French, “Come in for the pure delight of the eyes.”
For the pure delight of the five senses!
The strong pungent smell of tanning is the only unpleasant one. Tanning occupies a whole square all to itself, with immense vats holding a cement-colored liquid. The men work half-naked, using hooks to handle the skins. Eight or ten vats are worked at the same time, and the skins hung on the wall to dry.
Knowing that Fez—one of Morocco’s Four Imperial Cities—was the center of religious and cultural life from ancient times, I want to visit the library of the Karaovine University, which contains original Arabic manuscripts. For this visit I am given a guide called Ali. He is tall, handsome, dark-haired, with an olive complexion, and he speaks French with beautiful diction. He is dressed in the traditional brown jellaba and pointed yellow slippers. I know the Arabian love of poetry, the cult of the spoken word, the gift for storytelling. Ali transports me to the year 900 by his recitation of verses from the Koran, his chanting of the poetry of Omar Khayyam. He is deeply concerned about the survival of Fez. He shows me the exquisite students’ quarters, those which were opened and reconstructed by the Beaux Arts. But he also shows me those which have been condemned for lack of repairs, with their sad, plain wood bolts drawn tight, and those which have been put to other uses such as the carving of cedarwood by an artist. He shows me the neglected fountain with the tile decoration partly eroded. He makes me fearful that this vision of other centuries might vanish, like a dream out of A Thousand and One Nights, through carelessness or indifference. He wants America the bountiful, America the rebuilder of Versailles, to intervene, to rescue the sculptured cedar beams, the subtle tile work, the lace patterns of the stucco, the delicate arches. I
n between his canto to the beauty of Fez, so much more refined, so much more intellectual, so much more spiritual than other cities, and his canto to its skilled artisans, Ali recited verses from Omar Khayyam:
Lo! Some we loved, the loveliest and best
That Time and Fate of all their Vintage prest,
Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before,
And one by one crept silently to rest.
He makes me aware of the fragility of Fez, that we should see it well before it vanishes, that we should learn the myriad gestures of its craftsmen’s hands, their patience, their delight in transforming every stone, every piece of wood, every layer of stucco, into an object of beauty. He makes me lament the corroded woods, the broken tiles, the neglected palaces abandoned to time, and the fig tree cut down in the square in front of the library where the students once gathered for discussions, to read their poems and pin them to the tree for passers-by to judge.
The treasure of the library, the illuminated manuscripts, are locked away from my eyes, but Ali is a living spokesman for all I have read about Fez. His softly modulated voice comes from the intellectual and literary past of luminous Fez.
He reminds me of a storyteller I had seen in Fez years before. Ali says he will not be there in the winter. The square where sword swallowers, water carriers, rug sellers, dancers, acrobats, and storytellers gathered is too cold and no place to linger in. But I am stubborn, and on Friday, the Islamic holiday, I go to the square. Even though it has only fifty or a hundred visitors, I find my storyteller standing in the center of an attentive, rapt group of listeners of all ages. They squat on the ground, absolutely absorbed by him, not wavering in their attention for one moment. He is young, wears a heavy wool jellaba of black and white stripes, and a white skull cap, and he carries a stick for emphasis. He has huge glowing eyes, a swarthy skin, and regular features. He is telling the story of Ali Baba with dramatic emphasis, with suspenseful pauses, with a flowing, incantatory style.
Because of Ali’s emphasis on the ephemeral beauty of Fez and the possibility of its vanishing, my recurrent feeling that I am dreaming within other centuries, I seek with even more intensity to hold this dream close at least during my stay. I see the tiles broken into small pieces for the mosaic work, I see the lightness and clarity of the air, I see the old ramparts, the city’s walls, covered with soft verdigris, lichen, and moss. The secret essence of Fez is serenity. It is expressed in its stillness at night, the rare lights, in the tamarisk trees that never look dishevelled, in the figures stirred by the wind, in Cézanne blues, Dufy pinks, pearl whites, and charcoal blacks. The secret essence of Fez comes to me at five-thirty in the morning when I awaken to the muezzin, the prayer call, from the minaret. Five times a day this prayer is chanted; it seems like both a lament and an invocation, a consolation and a lyrical thanksgiving. At five-thirty in the morning it takes on a special quality, that of a lonely faith protecting the sleeping city, a prayer which is also a call to awaken those prodigious, dynamic hands, agile and supple, never still and never lazy, resting only at the moment of prayer.
It is Ali who tells me the legend of the name of Fez. It had its inception in the democratic spirit of the founder, Idriss II. When the site was chosen and building began, the king took a pick and gave the first stone-breaking blow. The word for pick was fez. During later excavations a gold pick was found, said to have been given to the founder as a symbol. When this legend is questioned, museum keepers are apt to answer with silence—respect for legends being as great as respect for fact.
Ali is not content with quoting Omar Khayyam and the Koran, but he recites his own poetry, poems to the beauty of Fez, naming its trees—araucaria, ginger, bamboo, date, monkey puzzle; its fruit; its flowers.
He has theories about visitors. They should not be treated as tourists. They should be invited as friends to weddings, funerals, birthdays, and feast days.
This makes me accept the invitation of the waiter at the Palais Jamai, who says his wife wants to cook a real couscous for me. We go to a tiny house, climb tiny stairs, and find her cooking in a tiny kitchen on the terrace. She is beautiful, with large eyes and a noble profile. She has been cooking all day. I sit in the living room, with its low divans all along the wall and the round copper table in the center. On the walls hang the blue Fez pottery dishes. Cookies are brought in, made like the domed pewter dish I saw being shaped in the souks. The wife’s mother is visiting. She comes from the north. Neither woman speaks French, but we manage to convey friendliness, and I show my appreciation of the couscous, which is delicious: a mound of millet, saffron-colored, topped by vegetables, chicken, and raisins. We eat from the same dish. The mother’s hands are hennaed, and I notice she is not eating. When I ask Mr. Lahlou why, he explains she cannot eat with spoon and fork. So I say we are the clumsy ones who do not know how to eat with our hands. Then the mother eats, skillfully and neatly, making little balls out of the millet. The meal ends with a large sweet orange, which the host peels and shares with all. And, of course, mint tea. When I am about to leave, the host takes down from the wall the blue pottery dishes and gives them to me. He explains that the tourists are not properly welcomed. The ancient ideal of hospitality is still in evidence. Hospitality is sacred among the people of Islam.
On this day of no wind the smoke of the communal ovens can be seen from the window of the hotel, a clean white smoke. And on such days the five golden balls on the tip of the minarets, symbolizing the five prayers, shine like suns.
When two little boys quarrel in the souks, wrestling angrily, Mustafa, the guide, not only separates them but insists they kiss each other’s hair. The men greet each other also with a kiss on the hair when they meet in cafés, and hold hands in the streets as they talk. The whole of life exudes a fraternal tenderness.
“Now when it was the thousand and first night, Dunyayad said to her sister . . .”
Morocco
From the diary of Anaïs Nin.
At the Club Méditerranée in Moorea, we were really in Tahiti. But at the club in Agadir, Morocco, we are in a French pension. Arabs are not invited. Agadir, after the earthquake which razed it, is all new. The chef de village was a chef de village from a French suburb. The curse of rock-and-roll is not limited to the pool and dining room, for the loud-speakers are set far from the club, to its very edges, to reach every cottage. The architecture is Moroccan, but that is all. The pool is like a pool in Paris or Long Island, the rock-and-roll spoils the meals. The sea is ice cold. The only solution is to travel, to go on tours, and then it is wonderful. We leave early on a Land Rover, with a young French college student as a guide. We drive into the Atlas Mountains in southern Morocco, to solitary mountain towns with houses built out of the red earth. We drive through mountains and flatlands and sand dunes, often without roads. After hours of dust, dry air, extreme heat, we get desperately thirsty, and only then does one understand the deep beauty of an oasis. The green, the fruit, the shade, the water. There are rivulets in which we bathe our feet, fountains at which we drink. After the desert, the trees seem a hundred times greener, the water a hundred times fresher. At one place lunch is served under a tent. The ground is covered with rugs. The tables are copper trays on mother-of-pearl bases. The lamb on a spit is brought whole and we eat with our fingers. Couscous has a golden color. For dessert we have figs and sweet tea. Another time, after a long desert drive, we arrive at dusk at Ouarzazate where we find a beautiful hotel belonging to the Club, native architecture, a sober castle of red earth. A fountain, high and wide, falls from the wall into the pool. A baby antelope greets us and then returns to her bed of straw in the open fireplace. The dining room is below the pool, and as we dine we can see the swimmers like fish in an aquarium. The rooms are named after minerals: Azurite, Serpentine, Quartz, Onyx, Alabaster, Calcite. This is the land of minerals. Children see them on the road, exhibited on tables or sometimes, if they are small pieces, inside of bottles.
The view from the bedroom is a never-ending deser
t colored a delicate sepia or mauve with silver-grey bushes. The endlessness gives a feeling of infinity. In infinity both death and life are suspended. It is a moment of freedom from both. The air is clear, pure. The silence is soothing, matching the space. Facing us is the walled-in city used in films. One film company has reconstructed the gate.
I want to stay here. I love the women so mysteriously wrapped in black, their rhythmic walk, their proud carriage as they carry their jugs on the way to the fountain. I love the jewelled eyes from behind veils, the children with a beauty so vivid, so dazzling. I love the men, austere, violent, proud of bearing. In the evening the women dance, dressed in many layers of pastel-colored chiffon and layers of jewels. The men ride and shoot long, old-fashioned rifles in the air. I love their secretiveness and their curiosity. They watch us from the roofs of their houses. The windows are small, no more than half a yard high and twelve inches wide, like jail windows, intended to keep out the hot sun. They are grated too. We are allowed into one of the homes built into the hill like a prehistoric cave. The floor is of beaten earth, the shape follows the contours of the hill. On the left there is a dugout for the donkey, on the right a dugout for the baby asleep on a sheepskin. We walk uphill to the bedroom. A rug on the floor, one dress on a nail, one necklace. One holy picture from the Koran, which I have seen on sale in the market. On the corner is a site for the fire and a cauldron suspended over it. The whole place, carved into the earth, was built for shelter, shade, the earth walls and tiny windows keep the place cool and sunless. A life in the bower of the earth, in darkness. As we leave the place, we see that the husband is crippled and that he may allow the visitors in for the sake of a small donation.