We dine under the moon. The tajine retains the separate tastes of each vegetable, and the meat is tender. We dip all the bread into the bottom, soaking up every drop of the sauce. The medina turns oddly quiet at night. Considering the density, I find it odd that no TV blares, no one on an adjacent roof plays rap music, and no voices shout, sing, or squabble. The people fold themselves into their houses the way they fold themselves away in their clothing.
Fatima dismantles her makeshift kitchen, dons her djellaba, and gives me, not Ed, a big hug. She solemnly shakes Ed’s hand, not looking at him, and goes home to her husband and three children.
Three hours later Ed becomes violently ill. I am alarmed at his fever and clammy skin. He spends the night in the bathroom throwing up. His stomach feels ripped and turned inside out. After six hours of this he calms but still feels on fire with pain. He’s vacant; his eyes swim; he’s so weak he cannot lift his arm. I’m on the phone calling our doctor in Italy, who says this probably is simple food poisoning, not salmonella, since the heaving has stopped after only a few hours. I write names of medicines he recommends, hoping Hafid can help at the pharmacy. I remember the rag Fatima wrung out in the bucket, remember the ground meat at lunch. But I feel fine, in fact unusually energetic. “Did you brush your teeth with the faucet water?” He doesn’t answer. Hafid arrives and says Ed ate too much, it often happens when guests come to Fez because the food is so good. Maybe.
By midmorning Hafid has found various pharmaceuticals, and Ed is sleeping as if in a coma. I try not to think of the man who dies in Paul Bowles’s The Sheltering Sky, leaving his neurotic wife to become a harem prisoner. The lure of the exotic for innocents or rootless people always seems to end badly.
So the gods have conspired again on this trip. For the next three days Ed does not emerge from the masseria. I go out for the day with Rachid, and we bring him food he does not eat and bottle after bottle of water, which he forces himself to drink. His state seems beyond the illness, as though he has fallen into a trance. I would like for the ministering angel I was promised at the start of my travels to step forward now.
Without Ed, I find a different dynamic with the place and with Rachid. I follow behind him, and distracted by a pile of hooves or iron lanterns for sale, I often miss his turns and suddenly stand in the swarm of people where streets cross, having no idea where he is. But he doubles back. I wonder how odd this must be for him—out all day with an infidel woman who constantly pauses to see the man who sells forks, bracelets, and combs fashioned from horn, his ten items spread on a table the size of a platter, and the real estate agent in his cubicle, with twenty iron keys to his listings hanging on nails behind him, and the tomb carvers chiseling epitaphs on marble headstones. “Anyone has to taste death,” they write. Rachid says, “A good Muslim visits his dead every Friday.”
Brilliantly tiled public fountains for water are everywhere. Surely someone has published a book of photographs of these long basins surrounded by exciting patterns and colors, some of which date from medieval times. They still draw women with buckets and children holding out plastic bottles. Rachid says, “They have water at home, but this way they do not have to pay for it.”
He explains the difference between a caftan (no hood) and a djellaba (with a hood handy for protection against rain or dust or heat) for men and women. The clothing begins to make sense. At first it seemed that everyone was in their bathrobes. Quickly, when my dust allergy awakened and when the wind felt like a hair dryer aimed at my face, I began to wish for one of those mysterious veils. The sun and dust are formidable. The loose, light robes look elegant, certainly comfortable, while protecting the wearer from the elements. I follow Rashid’s tan djellaba and almost imagine that I am wearing one myself instead of black pants and black shirt. The women flow in the impossible narrow lanes, a river of color: saffron, burgundy, sage, pistachio, peacock blue threading the crowds, Nile greens and mustard parting, rust, magenta, emerald merging, tomato red, ochre and all the earth colors, the occasional white worn by a woman in mourning. Some are secluded, occluded behind black veils, some wear modest scarves, and some neither. I see them look at me then quickly away.
The concatenation of colors repeats and rings in the food stalls: mulberries, figs, dusty capers, leafy coriander, mint, burlap sacks of golden turmeric, dates, bloody haunches of camels, and stacks of sheep and goats’ heads. Rachid says, “First you singe off the hair, then thoroughly clean out the maggots. Cumin and hot pepper—very good for breakfast when it’s hot and spicy.” I will be skipping that cooking tip. The whole pale palate of lentils, cumin, couscous, dried fava beans, semolina, coriander, chickpeas, and sesame recalls the colors of the desert. The food stalls reflect the abundance of the table, the love of bold tastes, the agricultural richness of the slopes of the Atlas Mountains. A donkey lumbers by carrying a load of spiny artichokes the size of dates. I stop to photograph the goat cheeses on palm leaves. Rachid says, “Everyone eats camel meat once or twice a week.” But Hafid has told me he never has tasted camel. Scrawny cats and new kittens are everywhere. There must be no marauding rats in the medina, I point out, but Rachid says, “The cats in the medina are afraid of the rats.”
Rachid shows me a spring where a man is filling a jug and points to where a river used to flow before it was routed underground. We see jacaranda trees outside the Blue Gate. Rachid says, “They send out their musk at night.” A few figs protrude from walls, and in the copper and brass souk a large tree startles the eye. Great cauldrons that could hold whole goats and sheep are for sale under the tree. Rachid says, “We rent those for weddings.”
“Are weddings in the mosques?”
“No, you ask someone who has a nice house. Mosques are only for prayers.”
Not being a Muslim, I am not allowed inside a mosque and only can peer into the courtyards with fountains for the faithful to cleanse themselves. We happen to be outside a huge mosque when Friday services end. A stampede of men feeling holy and righteous thunders out and into the street. We have our backs to a wall to let them pass when a trotting donkey scrapes us and Rachid slips into a pyramid of eggs, knocking several to the ground. No one called balak, balak.
On our walks we weave by the house several times a day to check on Ed. Rachid says, “The mailman must be born in the medina, otherwise no one ever would receive mail.” Rachid thinks Ed should sit up. I’m giving the doctor in Italy an update. Ed says, “Maybe tomorrow.” He has turned a few pages of a book, has showered. He seems cool and peaceful.
I’m not mentioning the slow-roasted lamb with cumin sauce, the pastilla (or bastela, pigeon in flaky layers of pastry, dusted with confectioner’s sugar), or the chicken couscous with melted onions and honey. Rachid and I go by taxi to the new town to buy buns from a French pastry shop and bland cheese and bread for Ed. He takes me to a bookstore with books by Mark Twain and Sherwood Anderson. I find a Moroccan cookbook in English and wish I could make for Ed the chicken stuffed with couscous, cinnamon, and orange flower water, or the lamb with apricots, raisins, and nutmeg. I see much more use of spices than of herbs. And the range of ingredients must be inspiring—quince, pumpkin, feggous (a rough, skinny cucumber), Jerusalem artichoke, cardoon, barley semolina. The uses of pomegranate syrup, orange flower oil, almond milk, and rose oil intrigue me. Too bad Ed never wants to eat again. The new town’s broad avenue shaded with trees and lined with cafés seems like another world. Many women and young girls here have abandoned the traditional dress altogether, though some still cover their heads even though they’re in low jeans. Rachid says, “I like for my wife to dress modestly.” And, “I like for my wife to stay at home with our son.”
I tease him. “Do you want a second wife?” I know men are allowed to have four.
“One is enough. And who can afford two women?”
“Why would any woman put up with her husband bringing another wife into the house?” The first edged question I have asked him.
“Maybe the first wife cannot have c
hildren. There’s a law,” he says proudly, “that you cannot just throw away the wife.”
“What if I wanted two husbands, or four?”
He smiles in Arabic.
On the hottest day so far, I tell Rachid I would like to look at fabric. We visit workshops where men sit on rugs sewing djellabas and embroidering the necklines. In the street, they card the thread, extending it and pulling it onto rolls. I resist ordering one of these splendid garments because it would hang in my closet until doomsday. I would like to find silk for table draperies or curtains. But most everything is precut to three meters, enough to make the djellaba. I find one square of antique ivory silk embroidered with apricot flowers. Rachid steps back when bargaining begins. Nothing ever seems to have a price, and I’m pressed to offer one. I offer so little that the seller appears to be shocked. Rachid puts his hand to his mouth to hide a smile. “What will you pay, madame?” I offer slightly more, then the seller says he must have at least four hundred euros. That is so far from what I would pay that I thank him, compliment him on the silk, and walk away. He’s dumbfounded that the American has escaped, having bought only a small silver hand of Fatima.
I’m not very interested in shopping here. I buy an embroidered black cotton blouse and a blue one for my friend Aurora, and slippers for my daughter. Rachid takes me to the ceramics district, and we watch pots and bowls being thrown from gray clay and painted. The Fez blue decorates most everything. I pick up a couple of small bowls for olives.
We stop into a herb store. Rachid says, “The owner is a special person. You will see.” Mon Kade Khalid, a pale man with a slight hunch, introduces himself and shows me his oils, hennas, and barks. He holds to my nose something that looks like yellow erasers—the musk gland of the gazelle. “The animal rubs against a tree, and we then gather the gland. It will scent your drawer for two years.” He has jars of colored rocks on a high shelf and explains that they ward off the evil eye. I pick out a packet of the forty-spice seasoning called rasse el hanoute, which translates as “heat of the shop.”
“How do you feel, madame?” he asks.
“Very good.”
“People come to me. If they have problems. I have things to make the baby. I have argan oil against arthritis. I have things also for the cooking. Here, give me your hand.” He rubs my hand between his, then holds his hands an inch away from mine, above and below. I feel a definite warmth emanating from his hands. He is staring into my eyes. Oh no, the lure of the exotic. The odd thing is, when he moves his hands away, I feel a sudden shiver. “Now how do you feel?”
“Wonderful,” I say. And I do. A fresh push of strength courses down my back, through my legs, like an adrenaline rush. All afternoon I experience a euphoria, a feeling of bodily force I knew in childhood.
We see tombs and museums. I think my feet have covered every inch of the medina. We walk a long way in the heat and stop at what looks like remains of a fortress. Rachid says, “This is Palais Glaoui. Since you are interested in houses.” He knocks at a huge wooden door in a block-long wall. A dark, narrow-faced man who looks like a forgotten jazz musician opens the door. They embrace. “Welcome to my family,” Abdel Khalek says. “This is my home.” We enter a vast tiled courtyard with a fountain surrounded by a grand pool. Weeds grow out of the fountain, and the pool is home to a lone goose standing in mud. The scale of the house triples any house I’ve seen in the medina. Ballroom-size rooms open on the outer side to overgrown gardens, where I glimpse remains of tiled fountains and scraggly citrus trees. My mind restores the gardens to those I’ve seen in old Persian paintings. Abdel takes us through corridors to another wing, where his grandfather once kept one hundred women. The hallways overhanging the courtyard sag, but the floral delicacy of the carved plaster still bespeaks the feminine world of the harem.
“Did he say one hundred?”
Rachid says, “His grandfather was a busy man.”
Abdel leads us to the palace kitchen, not so different, except for being run-down and dusty, from a big kitchen in an English manor house—a bank of stoves, copper pots, cavernous space. Then he shows us “the first bathroom in Fez,” with English Edwardian fixtures and even a porcelain, not tile, tub. In his room, also a large room with a center door to the courtyard, I see a picture of his grandmother, perhaps age twenty, in a stiff, voluminous white dress, her face young and bright. No veil, no robes—I want to ask who she was in the hierarchy but don’t dare. This complex is only one of seventeen adjoining houses, all closed, all verging on ruin. I don’t ask, but I imagine that with a hundred women producing children, the inheritances won’t ever be sorted out. We sit on long banquettes and are served mint tea and gazelle horns, an almond cookie in a crescent shape. Not a jazz musician, Abdel paints as a vocation and wanders his ancestral home, sometimes showing it to guests the guides bring.
Ed feels like walking out, so we stroll to La Maison Bleue, a fine palace house restored as a hotel. A scattering of French and English tourists are having drinks in the courtyard where two men play crude string instruments. We sit by a fountain, and I drink a glass of champagne while Ed sips water. Then we are shown to colorful banquettes and a low table. I love the Moroccan style of dining. “Tajine?” the waiter offers.
Ed sinks back and whispers, “Never.”
We order couscous with lamb and all the usual salads. Ed takes a few bites; he’s on his way but not there yet. The serene beauty of the place takes me far from the rough and heady medina I have come to know through Rachid.
Ed wants to go out on our last morning. Rachid guides us to a taxi, and we get out in the mellah, the old Jewish ghetto. Rachid says, “Give the driver one euro.” The low, low prices here continue to startle me. The ghetto, with timbered overhangs, the characteristic windows where women could see out but not be seen, twisted alleys and small shops would seem atmospheric if I had not seen the medina still sunk in its medieval mindset. This ghetto is quite spruced up. We look at a UNESCO-restored synagogue, with a ritual bathing tub underground where the crypt would be in a Christian church. Rachid then leads us through the Jewish cemetery with blinding-white humped graves. Rachid says, “The mellah was formalized in 1438, but Jews had lived here for centuries. The wall around it was actually built for their protection from Arabs but later became a confinement. The Jews were kept to their quarter by the ban on wearing their black shoes outside it. Only in the seventeen hundreds were they allowed a woven sandal, which enabled them to leave.”
“What does mellah mean?” Ed wonders.
Rachid says, “Salt. The place of salt processing. This is the old word for the place. And the legend is that heads of victims killed in battle were salted and preserved here so they could be displayed on the walls.” He points toward the king’s palace.
“Any Jews left?”
Rachid says, “A few. They live in the new town. Everyone lives together in the new town with no problem.”
We stop at the Royal Palace, huge and shut tight. There must be gardens—even trees—inside that the sun-struck populace could enjoy of a Friday evening.
In a side street we meet a boy toddling with his older brother. The small one wears a red fez and a white robe. Rachid says, “He is very important. He has recently been circumcised.” He lets us take his picture.
We eat almond pastries and sesame cookies with our late morning tea, then go back to the masseria to pack. Rachid talks about Joseph Conrad. Ed is limpid and insubstantial, like an angel. Rachid says, “You are leaving two kilos in Fez.” The energy imparted to me by the hunched man still courses. We give Rachid four Times Literary Supplements that we brought with us, knowing he will devour every word. We promise to send him books. Perhaps he surprises himself—he gives me a goodbye hug.
Hafid appears with the handcart. Ed is happy that we are not going home with a tajine. We’re picked up in front of a hotel, and I am presented with a bouquet of flowers by the representative of the company who stranded us on the road into Fez. We are whisked to Casablanca, whe
re we see nothing but a fringe of harbor, palm trees, and the hotel, which we reach in the dark. In bed Ed recounts the whole movie Casablanca to me. When he sleeps, I think of my sister Nancy. When she married, her husband had just graduated from the University of Georgia and had become an ensign in the navy. They were assigned to a base near Rabat in Morocco. Our family was stunned by this posting. We took out the atlas to see exactly where that remote outpost on the globe might be. She sailed away, knowing our sick father would die while she was gone. He ranted that she would be among people “only three generations away from cannibalism.” We were remote people ourselves. Soon the letters arrived with descriptions of Berbers and hot springs in the desert and the bleak navy base. Her son was born there. I was fourteen. I devoured the letters. They were allowed to travel around the Mediterranean on a navy ship that called for several days in Marseilles, Naples, Athens, and Cyprus, a list of over-the-rainbow names. I followed the trip through the rose, aqua, and yellow colors on the map. My mother cried when pictures of Boo, the baby, arrived. He was held by a dark woman with sparkling eyes, jewelry on her arms and ankles, and henna tattoos on her hands.
Now, late at night in Casablanca, so many eons later, I can follow my sister and her husband around a souk, see them young again, intent on buying a leather hassock. They drive off in their minute Morris Minor, across a plain that looks like an enormous loaf of bread, then through sesame fields, mint fields, the forests of cork oak, back to that dot on the map where they started their life together.
A Year in the World Page 20