by Paul Bowles
We did finally cross the border and amble into Tunisia, where we were immediately apprehended by the police. The camel driver and his beasts were sent back to Algeria where they belonged, and I started on my painful way up through Tunisia, where the French authorities evidently had made a concerted decision to make my stay in the country as wretched as possible. In the oasis at Nefta, in the hotel at Tozeur, even in the mosque of Sidi Oqba at Kairouan, I was arrested and lugged off to the commissariat, carefully questioned and told that I need not imagine I could make a move of which they would not be fully aware.
The explanation was that in spite of my American passport they were convinced I was a German; in those days anybody wandering around l’Afrique Mineure (as one of the more erudite officers called this corner of the continent), if he did not satisfy the French idea of what a tourist should look like, was immediately suspect. Even the Moslems would look at me closely and say: “Toi pas Français. Toi Allemand,” to which I never replied, for fear of having to pay the prices that would have been demanded if my true status had been revealed to them.
Algeria is a country where it is better to keep moving around than to stay long in one place. Its towns are not very interesting, but its landscapes are impressive. In the winter, traveling by train across the western steppes, you can go all day and see nothing but flat stretches of snow on all sides, unrelieved by trees in the foreground or by mountains in the distance. In the summer these same desolate lands are cruelly hot, and the wind swirls the dust into tall yellow pillars that move deliberately from one side of the empty horizon to the other. When you come upon a town in such regions, lying like the remains of a picnic lunch in the middle of an endless parking lot, you know it was the French who put it there. The Algerians prefer to live along the wild and beautiful sea coast, in the palm gardens of the south, atop the cliffs bordering the dry rivers, or on the crests of the high mountains in the center of the country. Up there above the slopes dotted with almond trees, the Berber villages sit astride the long spines of the lesser ranges. The men and women file down the zigzagging paths to cultivate the rich valleys below, here and there in full view of the snowfields where the French formerly had their skiing resorts. Far to the south lie the parallel chains of red sawtooth mountains which run northeast to southwest across the entire country and divide the plains from the desert.
No part of North Africa will again be the same sort of paradise for Europeans that it has been for them these last fifty years. The place has been thrown open to the twentieth century. With Europeanization and nationalism have come a consciousness of identity and the awareness of that identity’s commercial possibilities. From now on the North Africans, like the Mexicans, will control and exploit their own charms, rather than being placed on exhibit for us by their managers, and the result will be a very different thing from what it has been in the past. Tourist land it still is, and doubtless will continue to be for a while; and it is on that basis only that we as residents or intending visitors are now obliged to consider it. We now come here as paying guests of the inhabitants themselves rather than of their exploiters. Travel here is certain not to be so easy or so comfortable as before, and prices are many times higher than they were, but at least we meet the people on terms of equality, which is a healthier situation.
If you live long enough in a place where the question of colonialism versus self-government is constantly being discussed, you are bound to find yourself having a very definite opinion on the subject. The difficulty is that some of your co-residents feel one way and some the other, but all feel strongly. Those in favor of colonialism argue that you can’t “give” (quotes mine) an almost totally illiterate people political power and expect them to create a democracy, and that is doubtless true; but the point is that since they are inevitably going to take the power sooner or later, it is only reasonable to help them take it while they still have at least some measure of good will toward their erstwhile masters. The die-hard French attitude is summed up in a remark made to me by a friendly immigration officer at the Algiers airport. “Our great mistake,” he said sadly, “was ever to allow these savages to learn to read and write.” I said I supposed that was a logical thing to say if one expected to rule forever, which I knew, given the intelligence of the French, that they did not intend to try, since it was impossible. The official ceased looking sad and became much less friendly.
At a dinner in Marrakesh during the French occupation, the Frenchman sitting beside me became engaged in an amicable discussion with a Moroccan across the table. “But look at the facts, mon cher ami. Before our arrival, there was constant warfare between the tribes. Since we came the population has doubled. Is that true or not?”
The Moroccan leaned forward. “We can take care of our own births and deaths,” he said, smiling. “If we must be killed, just let other Moroccans attend to it. We really prefer that.”
The Rif, to Music
Kulchur, Spring 1960; Their Heads Are Green, 1963
THE MOST IMPORTANT single element in Morocco’s folk culture is its music. In a land like this, where almost total illiteracy has been the rule, the production of written literature is of course negligible. On the other hand, like the Negroes of West Africa the Moroccans have a magnificent and highly evolved sense of rhythm which manifests itself in the twin arts of music and the dance. Islam, however, does not look with favor upon any sort of dancing, and thus the art of the dance, while being the natural mode of religious expression of the native population, has not been encouraged here since the arrival of the Moslem conquerors. At the same time, the very illiteracy which through the centuries has precluded the possibility of literature has abetted the development of music; the entire history and mythology of the people is clothed in song. Instrumentalists and singers have come into being in lieu of chroniclers and poets, and even during the most recent chapter in the country’s evolution – the war for independence and the setting up of the present pre-democratic regime – each phase of the struggle has been celebrated in countless songs.
The neolithic Berbers have always had their own music, and they still have it. It is a highly percussive art with complicated juxtapositions of rhythms, limited scalar range (often of no more than three adjacent tones) and a unique manner of vocalizing. Like most Africans, the Berbers developed a music of mass participation, one whose psychological effects were aimed more often than not at causing hypnosis. When the Arabs invaded the land they brought with them music of a very different sort, addressed to the individual, seeking by sensory means to induce a state of philosophical speculativeness. In the middle of Morocco’s hostile landscape they built their great walled cities, where they entrenched themselves and from which they sent out soldiers to continue the conquest, southward into the Sudan, northward into Europe. With the importation of large numbers of Negro slaves the urban culture ceased being a purely Arabic one. (The child of a union between a female slave and her master was considered legitimate.) On the central plains and in the foothills of the mountains of the north the Berber music took on many elements of Arabic music; while in the pre-Sahara it borrowed from the Negroes, remaining a hybrid product in both cases. Only in the regions which remained generally inaccessible to non-Berbers – roughly speaking, the mountains themselves and the high plateaux – was Berber music left intact, a purely autochthonous art.
My stint, in attempting to record the music of Morocco, was to capture in the space of the six months which the Rockefeller Foundation allotted to me for the project, examples of every major musical genre to be found within the boundaries of the country. This required the close cooperation of the Moroccan government, everyone agreed. But with which branch of it? No one knew. Because the material was to belong to the archives of the Library of Congress in Washington, the American Embassy in Rabat agreed to help me in my efforts to locate an official who might be empowered to grant the necessary permission, for I needed a guarantee that I would be allowed to move freely about the untraveled parts of the count
ry, and once in those parts, I needed the power to persuade the local authorities to find the musicians in each tribe and round them up for me.
We approached several ministries, some of which claimed to be in a position to grant such permission, but none of which was willing to give formal approval to the project. Probably there was no precedent for such an undertaking, and no one wanted to assume the responsibility of creating such a precedent. In desperation, working through personal channels, I managed eventually to evolve a document to which was stapled my photograph, with official stamps and signatures; this paper made it possible to start work. By this time it was early July. In October, when I had been at work for more than three months, I received a communication from the ministry of foreign affairs which informed me that since my project was ill-timed I would not be allowed to undertake it. The American Embassy advised me to continue my work. By December the Moroccan government had become aware of what was going on; they informed me summarily that no recordings could be made in Morocco save by special permission from the Ministry of the Interior. By then I had practically completed the project, and the snow was beginning to block the mountain passes, so this blow was not too bitter. However, from then on it was no longer possible to make any recordings which required the cooperation of the government; this deprived the collection of certain tribal musics of southeastern Morocco. But I already had more than two hundred and fifty selections from the rest of the country, as diversified a body of music as one could find in any land west of India.
Christopher is a level-headed Canadian with a Volkswagen and all the time in the world. Mohammed Larbi, a good contact man and assistant, as a youth had spent a year accompanying an expedition across the Sahara to Nigeria. The three of us set out together from Tangier following four roughly circular itineraries of five weeks’ duration each: southwestern Morocco, northern Morocco, the Atlas, and the pre-Sahara. Between trips we recuperated in Tangier. The pages which follow were written from day to day during the course of the second journey, most of whose days were spent in the mountains of the Rif, in what used to be the Spanish protectorate.
ALHUCEMAS, AUGUST 29, 1959
THE ROAD TO KETAMA goes along the backbone of the western Rif. You can see for miles, both to the Mediterranean side and to the southern side, big mountains and more big mountains -mountains covered with olive trees, with oak trees, with bushes, and finally with giant cedars. For two or three hours before getting up to Ketama we had been passing large gangs of workmen repairing the road; it needed it badly. We had been going to cook lunch in a little pine grove just above a village between Bab Taza and Bab Berret, but when we got in among the trees, wherever we looked there were workmen lying on the dry pine needles in the shade, sleeping or smoking kif, so we set up our equipment in the sun and wind, a little below the crest where the pine grove was. The wind kept blowing out the butagaz flame, but in the end we managed to eat. Christopher drank his usual Chaudsoleil rosé, and Mohammed Larbi and I drank piping hot Pepsi-Cola, since there was no water left in the thermos we had filled in Xauen. That one thermosful proved to be the last good water we were to have for three weeks.
During lunch Mohammed Larbi insisted on amusing himself with the radio; he was trying to get Damascus on the nineteen-meter band in order to hear the news. When eventually he did get it he could not understand it, of course, because it was in Syrian Arabic, but that made no difference to him. It was news, and they were talking about Kassem and excoriating the French, which was easy enough for even me to understand. Mohammed Larbi had been smoking kif constantly all morning and was a bit exalted. We packed up and started on our way again.
It was about half past four when we came in sight of the wide plain of Ketama they call Llano Amarillo. It is aptly named, at least in summer, for then it is dry and yellow. Here and there, scattered over a distance which went toward infinity, was a herd of cattle or a flock of sheep. They looked as though they had been put there purposely to give the place scale. At first you saw nothing but the yellow flatness with the great cedar trees along the sides. Then you saw the dots that were the nearest sheep, then to the right the pinpoints that were cows, but smaller than the sheep, then far over to the left almost invisible specks that were another herd.
The parador of Bab Berret, which has about twenty rooms, looked completely abandoned, but there was a chair on the wide front terrace, and the door was open. I went in to inquire about sleeping quarters. The inside seemed deserted too. The dining room had furniture in it; the other rooms had been stripped. In the town of Bab Berret, the Spanish, when they relinquished their protectorate, took the generator with them; the vicinity has been without electricity ever since. There was no sign of life at the reception desk, no piece of paper or ledger in sight – nothing but the keys hung in three rows on the wall. I called out, “¿Hay alguien?” and got no answer. Finally, behind the big door of what had been the bar, I saw a pair of legs lying on a decayed divan and peered around the door. A young man lay there with his eyes open, but he wasn’t looking at me; he was staring at the ceiling. When he did see me, he slowly sat up and stretched a little, never answering my “excuse me’s” and “good afternoons.” I decided he must be a guest and went out again into the main hall, but in a minute he was there behind me, and then he did not ask me what he could do for me, but what was the matter.
When he heard I wanted rooms he turned away with disgust. “There are no rooms,” he said.
“None at all?”
“None at all.”
“Is the hotel open?”
“The hotel’s open and there are no rooms. Tomorrow you can have some if you want.”
“And tonight where am I going to sleep?”
He turned around again and looked at me blankly. Too much kif, I could see that. He was scratching his crotch voluptuously all this time. He yawned and began to walk around toward the bar. “You couldn’t put up a cot somewhere?” I called after him. But he continued to move away. I went out to the car to report. Christopher and Mohammed Larbi came back in with me; they didn’t believe any of it.
Paul Bowles with Mohammed Larbi on their recording trip to the Rif
The scratcher was already back on his broken-down couch, getting himself into a comfortable position. This time he looked really hostile. I decided to go back out onto the terrace. I didn’t want to see him any more. Mohammed Larbi was examining the main entrance hall and the staircase. When Christopher came out he said there were plenty of rooms, that the young man was finally awake, and that we could stay after all. The foremen of the various road construction gangs had requisitioned several rooms (for which they were not paying), but there were a dozen or more vacant ones.
The scratcher was manager, bellboy, waiter, dishwasher and accountant. Besides him there was a crazy-looking cook and an old Riffian woman who made the beds and scrubbed the floors, but that was the entire personnel. The cook also ran a small generator in the garage; he took us out to admire it later on.
Someone had removed the doorknobs from the bedroom doors, so that if the door of your room happened to blow shut, you had to pound on it until the manager heard you and came upstairs with a piece of metal of his own fashioning which he stuck through the hole where the knob had been and turned the lock to let you either in or out, depending on where you happened to be. This was true of the hotel’s one toilet, too, but that was of no importance because the place was so filthy that you didn’t go into it anyway. The toilet bowl had been filled up and so people had begun using the floor. In 1950 I had spent a night in that one bathroom. They put a cot beside the tub and hung a scribbled sign on the door saying the bathroom was out of order, but that didn’t prevent a steady stream of French tourists from pounding indignantly on the door throughout the long night. Some of them tried to break the door in, but the bolt was strong. Now that I stuck my head into the stinking room, I remembered that endless night and the noise of the unloading bus beneath my window at five in the morning, the bugle calls from the ba
rracks back in the cedar forest and the gobbling of the turkeys in crates out on the terrace.
We wanted to get down to Laazib Ketama as quickly as possible, in order to see the caid or the khalifa before the government offices closed, so after leaving our luggage in our rooms we started out, bumping down the crazy, wide Tirak d’l Ouahada. Hundreds of Riffians on horseback, muleback and donkeyback, the women walking, were on their way up. We covered them all with layers of white dust; there was no help for it. They were in a fine humor, however, laughing and waving.
At one point you could look directly down from the road into a deep ravine whose sides were planted wholly with kif. Ketama is the kif center of all North Africa, and very likely of the world now. It is the only region where it is legal to grow it, and that is because the Sultan has agreed to allow the cultivation of it to continue until the land has been made feasible for other crops. At present the only crop that will grow is kif, and although any Moroccan can plant a few stalks in his garden, the only really good kif is the Ketami. So you have miles and miles of it growing out of the stony soil on the edges of the steep slopes, and under the present ruling this will go on until some other means of livelihood has been found for the inhabitants.
At present the kif situation is ridiculous. Tons of the drug are grown each year and shipped out of Ketama in all directions. That is legal. But if anyone is caught selling it he is immediately given a heavy fine and/or a prison sentence. No penalties are attached to the possession of it, but the official attitude toward the smoking of it in public places differs according to the way the local authorities of each town feel about it. I was in Marrakesh in August and found it wide open. In Fez I saw only one old man holding a sebsi. In Tangier and Tetuan clouds of kif smoke pour out of the cafés. In Rabat, Essaouira, Oujda, nothing. In some towns it’s easy to get and cheap and good; in others, you almost might as well not even try. These conditions are of course far from static. The city in which two months ago you could run around the corner for a paper of kif is suddenly closed tight, whereas in another town where previously there was strict vigilance, men are observed puffing on their pipes in the street, in full view of police headquarters. Generally speaking, when you get to the southern side of the Grand Atlas, kif is a luxury and greatly prized, whereas in the extreme north, among the Djebala, for instance, the average village male over fourteen has his little mottoui full of it and his sebsi in his pocket.