by Annie Hawes
Was there? I had no idea. I’d been too deeply sunk in what I believe someone called the Idiocy of Rural Life. The only North African news I’d heard for months had been from the plant expert down at the Farmers’ Co-operative in San Pietro, when I’d taken him a few samples of miserable twisted leaves from my sickly quattrostagioni lemon tree. Alas, he had said, examining my exhibits with his magnifying glass, he could not help. The definitive cure for this disease was still to be determined, though they were working hard on it at the University of Genoa. It was a new form of blight, unknown here in Italy until a couple of years previously. It had probably come over from North Africa, where it was already doing a lot of damage, in a cargo of imported lemons.
Imported lemons! From North Africa! It is hard adequately to convey the full horror of the tone an Italian horticulturalist will employ when using these phrases. Suffice it to say that riots, strikes and street violence would be infinitely preferable. Possibly Islam too.
A fearful phone call to Gérard established that among the news he had recently weighed and found wanting there had indeed been reports aplenty of riots and strikes. Not in Morocco; but Algeria, he said, had recently fallen into the clutches of the IMF and the World Bank. It was in the process of being forcibly globalized, and its people were not taking too kindly to the chill winds of the World Market, far less to the joyous commitment of their present government, known for its corruption and nepotism, to this novel form of Freedom. Thousands were jobless; people could no longer afford the basic necessities of life. Last month the Front for Islamic Salvation had won a whole quarter of the votes cast in the national elections. That might not seem a lot, but the government itself had only got twelve per cent. It had simply suspended operations, fearful of an Islamist victory, then declared a state of emergency and resigned, leaving the army in charge of finding a substitute.
And now, of course, the whole country was in uproar – not just the Islamists, but anybody who believed in democracy. Including, at a guess, the sixty-three per cent who had withheld their votes from both parties. So altogether, said Gérard, this should be a very interesting time to visit!
Should it? I didn’t think it sounded too restful, myself.
Fortunately for my nerves, I now discovered that I actually had an Algerian acquaintance here in Italy: a very calming influence. I’d always assumed that Samir was Moroccan, thanks to the local habit of calling all North Africans Il Marocchino. But no. It now turned out that Samir, who often lent a hand at busy times in my friend Ciccio’s restaurant up in the hills, was from the city of Oran, in Algeria.
Would you be afraid, asked the sensible Samir, to holiday in Ireland, because of the troubles?
Well, no, I said. Of course I wouldn’t. I’d often been to Ireland.
Exactly! said Samir. Every year many people go there to relax and rest! Maybe if they would go into the ghettos of Belfast, or some such place, they could get caught up in the problems, but why would a visitor go to such a place? The argument is only between Algerians – and then, only between a few extremists on either side.
Comforting. And far from warning me off the trip, Samir and his Dutch wife, Mireille, were delighted to hear of it. I was going to love it. They now insisted on writing me out a great long list of places we mustn’t miss en route, of foodstuffs we must be sure to try, and of relations we absolutely must drop in on. They had been going back home to Algeria every autumn for ten years, said Mireille. She and Sammy always spent the whole month of October there. It was the perfect place to recover from the stress and strain of the full-on summer months, spent catering for demanding Italian diners on the Riviera dei Fiori.
Much better. Never mind religion and politics. This is what you really need when you set off travelling to an unknown land. A list of attractions, relations, and tasty snacks, scribbled on the back of a restaurant napkin.
We have arrived here in Morocco on a warm, bright spring morning. It is still only March, but bright fingers of early-morning sunlight are streaming in through the curlicued grilles at the window of this tiny backstreet bar, picking out the basket of fresh croissants on the worn zinc counter and pixillating the brightly tiled walls behind it. Occasionally, as the proprietor prepares our three cafés-crème, a stray beam catches his grizzled stubble and turns it to gold. But there’s to be no luxuriating outside in the sunshine for us three yet: not if we want our breakfasts. The inviting little tables in the street are, we have just learned, not to be used until after dark.
We have headed for the town of Tetuan straight from the Spanish ferry, to be dropped off in the main square that divides the city’s ancient walled heart, the warren of narrow streets inside the medina, from the newer, colonial-built part of town. Somewhere not too far from here, the buses leave for the Rif, the rugged mountain range running right along the coast, parallel to the Mediterranean – the length of which we must travel to reach Morocco’s eastern border and Algeria. A fifteen-hour ride, if we did it all in one go. But we have no plans to do any such thing. We will be taking it slow and leisurely. We’ve found ourselves a lift for the first leg of the journey, anyway – in the car of a certain Tobias, whom we met on the boat. He had a few errands to do here in Tetuan, he said, but he would be back to collect us in no time. We could get a coffee in the square while we waited.
As Tobias had predicted, there were several large, commodious-looking cafés around the square. But alas, not one of them was open. Were we too early? You wouldn’t have thought so: there was a hum and buzz of activity around the picturesque keyhole arch that led into the medina, and it looked as if a market was well under way within the walls.
Then we spotted this little bar, on a side-alley, the shutters half-open at its doors. Above the doorway, a Hand of Fatima palm-print, keeping the Evil Eye at bay. Not in the cobalt-blue I used to see in Portugal, though, but in a kind of rust-brown. Still, it seemed to be bringing us luck. Peering inside, detecting signs of life, we took our seats at one of the three little tables in the alley, stretching and yawning in the early rays while we waited for the place to finish opening. Gérard pulled out his travel guide and set to studying the entry for Tetuan. Guy glowered and sighed loudly. The book, a French guide called Le Petit futé – The Little Cunning One, or maybe it should it translate as The Small Wily One, since its cover is decorated with a smug-looking fox – was already a bone of contention. Guy had announced firmly, when Gérard first produced it, that he did not wish his travels to be guided by a book: he wanted his experience firsthand, not filtered through someone else’s eyes. Gérard, on the other hand, maintains that you see better when you have some idea of what you’re looking at.
Leaving them to this philosophical debate, I set to checking out the scenery. A particularly rowdy scene from the Bible; that is the first thing that springs to mind when you arrive in North Africa. A thousand and one stereotypes lurch into life at your first sight of Moroccans going about their daily business. You can’t help yourself. Wizards and sorcerers, Jesus and his Disciples, Barbary pirates and desert sheikhs, Ali Baba and Aladdin, the Blessed Virgin and Mary Magdalene, medieval monks and Chaucerian nuns . . . all the way on through The Lord of the Rings to Obi wan Kenobi. How many childhood hours can I have spent, swathing myself in tablecloths, towels and dishcloths, my head filled with a jumble of romance, mystery, and wild adventure, trying to achieve just the effects that these passers-by carried off so casually?
Across the square, two youths in cleverly twisted-and-knotted head-cloths were loading barrows stacked high with crates of bottles; closer by, a bunch of older men with dark five o’clock shadows and crocheted skullcaps clambered – in ankle-length jellabas, no problem – onto a lorry laden with chickens in twiggy wooden coops, and began unloading. A middle-aged woman in bright draperies, several layers of knotted scarf and shawl, walked elegantly through the middle of this scene, balancing upon one shoulder a massive sacking bundle of some feathery-leafed vegetable: carrots, maybe, or fennel? She turned in through the a
rch, showing tough bare heels decorated with henna, and crossing the path of two dignified bearded men, each wrapped in a good half-dozen toga-like yards of fine cream cloth. One of them had draped the last few feet of this garment casually across his head, and looked like nothing so much as the classic image of God himself, from some Renaissance chapel ceiling in Italy. Now came a man leading a donkey half-swamped by an eccentrically ancient-and-modern load: on one of its flanks a bundle of home-made besoms, simple brooms made of tied twigs; on the other a great tangle of multicoloured plastic sieves and colanders. Its master was a tall, cadaverous-looking man in an ankle-length burnous of rough-spun wool, his face half-hidden in the sinister shadow of its deep, pointed hood.
No, no, not sinister, of course; get a grip! Romance, mystery and wild adventure were not about to break out, in spite of the wondrous array of clothing and headgear. This was perfectly ordinary outerwear here: the local equivalent of overalls and boiler-suits. The white toga, Guy says, is the business suit of the prosperous in these parts, made of the finest of wools. His family had one in their chest of souvenirs from their old life in Algeria: it was always protected by vast quantities of mothballs and was the only item so precious that he was never allowed to use it for his dressing-up.
A whole chest of North African souvenirs? Really? Some people have all the luck. I had only the contents of my mother’s airing cupboard.
Two of the skullcap men were carrying the chicken-coops up into the market now, while another casually tossed the cargo down, crate by crate, the merchandise fluttering and squawking, red-wattled beaks stabbing through the bars. One of the wheelbarrow boys passed close enough for us to see the labels on his bottles: sinuous Arabic script, brilliant white against scarlet red. Something strangely familiar about the format, though. Of course: Arabic Coca-Cola. The next woman to pass us, with an assorted basket of aubergines, bunches of spinach, and loose eggs, wore an extra scarf veiling the lower part of her face. And on her head (could it be?) a genuine, no-doubt-about-it cotton dishcloth. The classic white glass-cloth with a red border, such as we use every day in the heartlands of Europe. The cloth was just sitting there, plain and unselfconscious, casually – no, stylishly – draped over the top of her various other layers of headscarf. Guy and I caught one another’s eye, but the mutual giggle was stifled before it was born. Something about this woman’s bearing made her dishcloth, unlike our own childish dishcloths of the past – or, indeed, our green bath-towels – look utterly, proudly, authentic.
Beyond her, a pair of mules entered the arch, heavily laden with rolls of cloth. The donkeys and mules were essential here. Just like the streets of Granada’s Albaycín, where you still meet beasts of burden aplenty, no lorry could possibly fit down the narrow streets of the medina. It was built in the days when donkeys and mules were the only form of transport. They would never be out of a job as long as this place survived.
Which would be for a very long time, contributed Gérard all of a sudden, taking his nose out of his book. Because UNESCO has declared the medina of Tetuan a World Heritage Site, he added, waving the publication at us triumphantly.
There! said Guy. That was a classic example of exactly the sort of pointless information a guidebook gave you! Why did we need to know that?
I for one was rather happy to hear that UNESCO had assured a future for those lovely, gentle beasts of burden. Though it didn’t seem politic to mention this just at the moment.
All right, then! said Gérard, on his mettle now. Did Guy know that the medina had been built – or rather, rebuilt from the ruins of an earlier city – in the sixteenth century, by Muslims and Jews who’d been driven out of Spain by the Inquisition? And that was why the medina looked so Spanish?
Guy looked at Gérard. Then he looked pointedly at the distinctly Islamic-looking keyhole archway in the twenty-foot-high wall of the medina.
Are you mad? he said. What on earth looks Spanish about that? Bin the book!
Spanish Islamic, I contributed knowledgeably. Moorish.
I was with Gérard, I decided, on the topic of the guidebook. And as soon as I’d got some breakfast inside me, I was going to take a quick look at the works of my old friends from el-Andalus before we left town, Tobias or no Tobias.
With perfect timing, a portly gentleman now emerged from the café, ducking under the blind. But, rather than take our breakfast order as we were expecting, he gazed mournfully at us for a long moment, lowered himself into an empty chair, and finally announced that perhaps we might prefer to sit indoors.
Well, no, we said. We were enjoying it out here in the fresh morning air. We’d just like a coffee and some small breakfast snack.
It might perhaps be better if we came inside, still, said our host, inscrutably.
Why? asked Gérard. Was he expecting rain?
No, no, said our host, smiling at last. Inshallah! How welcome a drop of rain would be! Spring had been so dry this year . . . But the thing was, he added after another lengthy pause, with a gesture towards the square, that there were many hungry, thirsty people about, who might take it amiss . . .
I took another look over the road, perplexed. It’s not that I imagined Morocco was a rich country, of course, but surely people weren’t actually starving in the streets here? Wouldn’t we have heard? In fact, not a few of the market shoppers passing by looked somewhat on the stout side.
The proprietor quickly identified the problem. We had just arrived from Europe now, this very morning, évidemment?
Yes, we certainly had.
Of course! Then he must explain to us that today was the last day of the month of Ramadan – during which the faithful of Islam must fast during the hours of daylight. No food, not even a glass of water, nothing at all would pass their lips until the sun had set: in memory of the Prophet Mohammed, and in solidarity with the poor of the world. That is why his shutters were kept half-closed at the moment. Not everyone is religious, of course, and since there were plenty of Unbelievers like us about the town wanting refreshment, he was only too happy to oblige. But all those people hard at work in the market would not be eating or drinking for many hours yet. It was better to show some respect, not to flaunt our breakfasting – our breaking of the fast – before their eyes. Did we not agree?
What idiots we were. We knew perfectly well that it was Ramadan. We’d even made sure to time our arrival today for the end of the fast, in case it made travelling more complicated. We’d done our research, too. We could tell you reams of stuff about Ramadan. If you break the fast, you must pay penance by feeding a poor person; if you have marital intercourse, which is also forbidden by daylight, you have to feed fifty poor people. (How embarrassing would that be? Think of the smirk-worthiness of your situation as you went about rounding up your fifty poor people, all only too aware of exactly why you were so keen to feed them.) We knew that the fast commemorated the period when God was busy revealing His Word, the Koran, to Mohammed, and that the duty to observe it was the Fourth of the Five Pillars of Islam. We could even, on a good day, list off all Five Pillars. But it hadn’t occurred to any of us, having no actual experience of a fasting city, what that would mean in practice. Obvious: a lot of hungry, thirsty people everywhere. Rude and inconsiderate to eat and drink in front of them.
Light having now dawned, we rose with alacrity and followed our host in under the blind.
Safe indoors, he relaxed visibly. Poor man. Was he fearing that we were about to make a stand, some kind of up-yours-Islam gesture to the local populace? Maybe so. There is a lot of mindless anti-Muslim feeling in the Western world these days, after all.
He must introduce himself, he said. He was Moustafa, propriétaire. And he shook each of our hands ceremoniously, placing his right hand over his heart each time in what seemed an oddly melodramatic manner – though we would soon discover that this was just the normal way to greet a new acquaintance here in Morocco.
This was a much better idea, was it not? Moustafa said. All the more so since the month
was nearly over, and after weeks of discomfort, people’s tempers often got somewhat short!
Ah. Of course. There would no doubt be plenty of mindless anti-Western feeling in the Muslim world too.
And what, asked Moustafa, getting down to business, did we desire?
Now at last, sitting at our tiny table by the even tinier window, we were reaping our just reward: three large bowls of deliciously aromatic coffee, accompanied by a basket of those fragrant golden croissants. My travelling companions, uttering muted cries of joy, fell upon their national breakfast like starving men, sugaring and stirring the café-crème, tearing frenziedly into the croissants and dipping the buttery fragments into the heavenly beverage . . .
Gérard finally came up for air again two croissants later. Perfect! he exclaimed. Just like home!
Better than home, said Guy, taking another slurp. When did you last get your breakfast coffee served in a good old-fashioned bowl? Not since your mother made it! Merveilleux!
I sat observing this scene with some misgiving. What an advantage it is, when travelling abroad, not to have much of a national cuisine to miss. I was certainly used to Italians carrying on like this: I’d often found myself accompanying Italian friends, holidaying in Britain, on desperate – and usually hopeless – missions to hunt down the Proper Espresso without which their day could not begin. But I had thought the French were made of sterner stuff. Evidently not. After a mere two days of foreign breakfasts – Spanish breakfasts at that, nothing too exotic – they were already pining for their home comforts. And we three still had well over a thousand North African miles to travel together before the parting of our ways. Still, Gérard and Guy might be in luck. Tetuan was in the ex-Spanish zone of Morocco, and they’d done all right here. Much of the rest of the Maghreb had been run by the French themselves for well over a century. There was certainly a good chance that the rich vein of ex-colonial croissants-and-café-crème-served-in-a-bowl we’d struck here would extend right the way down to the Sahara . . .