Some travellers shook their heads and others craned their necks and looked around. A few well-to-do looking people grabbed their luggage and brought it down from the overhead racks. Everybody was happy to have a break from the rattling, nauseating coach. The French woman collected everything belonging to her as if it were the final stop. Obviously, she didn’t trust anyone on the coach. Curiously, even when the coach was running, she checked all her belongings under her feet and above her head whenever she opened her eyes.
Shortly after the driver’s announcement, the coach pulled up in the front of a few small huts on the outskirts of the town. Coffee and tea were served there, and several cars and passengers were scattered around, but there was no toilet. Passengers scuttled around like ants to relieve themselves, but there was no paper, no water – not even a hiding place. For me this was no drama, as I had never used paper or water, just small stones picked up at random from the ground to wipe my bum. I had learned from an early age to run as far away as I could to find a private spot where small stones were available and abundant. It wasn’t dangerous during the daytime, but it could be lethal during the night. It was always possible to make a mistake, to pick up a snake or a dangerous spider instead of a stone. My cousin Jamila had picked up the head of a dangerous snake. She had been bitten, and her right hand and left leg had been paralysed for the rest of her life.
Most travellers were enjoying breakfast. An abundance of croissants, eggs, hot tea, hot coffee and milk was offered by the main café hut and street vendors.
‘I want a coffee with milk and a croissant,’ I said.
Moussa thought coffee with milk and a croissant was rather extravagant, and the fact that I had thought of it made him somewhat jealous. ‘Why not wait until Fez?’ he asked.
Watching Moussa’s face, I didn’t want to give the impression that I had more money than I did or more than they had, so I passed on the croissant. But Samir was angry and thought Moussa’s economising was unreasonable after a long night in a rattling coach.
‘Avoid croissants,’ Kamil butted in. ‘Pick a pain au chocolat. A croissant is just a bubble of air. You need a bag full of them to settle your churning stomach.’
I didn’t know the difference between a croissant and a pain au chocolat, but the aroma was appetising. A croissant appeared bigger and fatter than a pain au chocolat.
A street vendor threw himself in the middle of us and said, ‘Help yourselves. Pastries, tea, coffee, boiled eggs with salt, pepper and cumin. No charge. All free.’ Nobody believed him. We just looked at him in silence. ‘Decide what you want. I will be back shortly,’ he added.
He went away, selling his victuals to other travellers. We called a second street trader and asked prices. The first trader rushed at him and shouted, ‘Don’t take an order! Someone has already bought their breakfast. I’m just waiting for them to make up their minds.’
Puzzled, the second trader slunk away. We were equally bemused. ‘Look! Take whatever you like! The French woman over there will pay your breakfasts. You can pick whatever you want from my tray. Help yourselves!’ he emphasised.
I picked coffee with milk and a petit pain au chocolat, and the others did the same. We didn’t trust the vendor, were frugal and prepared to pay, but he didn’t ask for payment. He went straight to the French lady who had sat beside me in the coach. She paid the bill and waved to us.
We couldn’t make sense of her generosity. Because I had sat beside her, Samir expected me to provide an explanation, but I had none.
The stop changed the travellers’ moods; what a cup of tea or coffee and croissant could do! Travellers befriended each other, but there were still a few sad faces, although nobody bothered with them. I returned to my seat, and the French woman was already settled. I felt anxious and embarrassed; a woman, let alone a French woman, paying for a man wasn’t in my tradition. Before I sat down, she muttered a few words, but I had no idea what those sounds meant.
Sitting beside her again on the jostling coach, looking at her, I didn’t know if she was married or not, but I wished I were old enough or in a position to marry her. Her massive heart swallowed my tiny one, but my sweet dream was swiftly drowned by chaotic voices shouting, ‘Bab Ftouh!’ and people peering out of the windows.
9
We were greeted by a huge funnel of spiralling dust clouds rising high into the air, enveloping the coach and hiding the gate in a mass of grey. Shocked at what I was witnessing, I turned around to check on my new friends. Samir’s face looked old, worn and depressed, with trembling lips. As if a snowball had smashed into his face, Moussa’s mouth was wide open, in a desperate struggle to catch his breath. Watching Samir and Moussa drowning in shock and despair, Kamil threw out a lifeline – ‘This is Bab Ftouh, boys!’
Anxiously staring through the window, I was gripped by a cold, icy feeling of disappointment. All we could see was a high, crumbling wall made with soil and sand, but full of holes. This looks like a besieged town, I thought.
The full horror of the scene caught me when I looked to my left – a high shrine surrounded by a massive graveyard in the middle of a hill. The shrine door was painted green, yet there was nothing peaceful about it, and it opened onto Bab Ftouh. Was this some ancient ritualistic design or pure coincidence? I wondered. Women lumbered from Bab Ftouh and went straight up to the shrine, while others descended from it and disappeared through the gate into a black hole – like ants, but there was no sense of rush or urgency.
Shrines and graveyards I had seen before, but I had never seen men, women and children wandering through them. Some were sitting on the gravestones and using them as tables for their picnics! From an early age, I was taught that a cemetery was a silent city of souls. Every person carried a seed of immortality under his armpit, and his seed was indestructible. Although it was detached from the body that was buried under the ground, the living seed preserved all its prime characteristics: life, feeling and memories. The seed would bloom at some point. It would begin like a mushroom in the form of a human being, but footless, armless and neckless with the head looking up to the sky. That was how resurrection had been explained to me and I believed it implicitly.
Disappearing behind the gate of Bab Ftouh and inside the old town, the medina, I didn’t know what would happen next; certainly nothing was as expected, and the streets were not paved with marble. No palm trees lined the way, nor in fact were there any trees to hide the billowing dust. The coach squirmed through a narrow winding street, and the driver had to fight peddlers for every inch.
The road ended a few hundred metres away from the gate and in front of a dilapidated garage, which was small and narrow, but deep like a vault. Parked in front of the garage, the driver stood up and shouted, ‘Get off! Bab Ftouh travellers!’
I stood quickly and glanced at the French woman, waved goodbye and wished I could speak French. She nodded with a gentle smile.
In the chaos, luggage had been lost or mixed up. ‘My luggage is at the back!’ yelled an angry traveller to the porter on the roof. ‘Open your eyes! My bag is right beside you!’ shrieked another. ‘Mine isn’t that colour!’ screamed a woman. ‘I know you have no brain!’
The porter became confused amidst the shouts and personal insults. We secured our luggage and turned to Kamil, a returning student, as our guru. Older and more experienced, he had been to the medina before, but seemed to be struck by amnesia and remembered nothing of his previous life here.
‘Kamil,’ I said, ‘we need a roof over our heads.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Samir.
‘Funduqs are the places to find a cheap room,’ instructed Kamil.
‘Do you know of any funduqs nearby?’ I asked a porter passing by on his mule.
‘Yes,’ he said. With the possible exception of Kamil, we didn’t know what funduqs looked like or even exactly what they were, only that they had cheap rooms for hire. ‘Good funduqs are in the new French town,’ the porter said. ‘You will need to take a taxi there. They are e
xpensive, though. They are for the Americans, the owners of the dollar! Most funduqs in Medina are no more than brothels.’
‘We are not Americans,’ I said, ‘but we don’t want to stay in a brothel either! What else do you suggest?’
‘There isn’t much left, son,’ he said sympathetically. ‘Ah,’ he muttered to himself. ‘I know of one or two places,’ he said. ‘Though they are far away, they are worth a try. But, there is one close by we should try first.’
I cheered with relief at our close escape from a brothel. I didn’t, however, trust the porter straight away. ‘How much do you charge?’ I asked.
‘Charge is according to the distance! Can’t you see who I am?’ he said wearily, looking at me. ‘I am a black Saharaui. I charge the right price and people pay me for it. I wouldn’t have done this job for forty years otherwise! This is my fifth mule. They all perished from hard work and overload. If this present mule dies, I will stop, but maybe I will die first! I am old and frail. If I’m first, my mule will be orphaned, left to starve.’ He gently pulled the reins of his mule and loaded our luggage. ‘Zid! Zid! (Move on! Move on!)’ The mule cocked its ear, head down and refused to move. Familiar with the pain, it scurried when it saw the whip twirling in the air.
Overwhelmed by the porter, we followed blindly. Despite the narrow, crowded street, he moved fast, very fast. The mule stumbled several times, but never fell. We scurried behind him like mad. At the corner of a dark, twisted tunnel, Moussa collided with a veiled woman who was waddling behind her husband. She stumbled and yelled.
‘Barbarians should be kept out of Fez!’ shouted her husband. Twice the size of Moussa, he lost his temper, lurched on him, grabbed and tore his shirt, then pushed him against the wall. Moussa gathered himself and punched the man straight on the nose. To everyone’s horror, the man’s nose became a fountain of blood. At the speed of light, Moussa lunged at him again, pushed him to the ground and trampled over him. The event and the speed at which it had happened terrified me. Words had ended in blood. Nobody butted in to help.
The wife shouted, ‘Scum! Thugs!’
Kamil and I pulled Moussa off the man and sprinted to catch up with the porter, who had been waiting for the fight to finish. God forbid I ever fight Moussa, I thought to myself.
The porter took us to the nearest funduq. It was built in the middle of a poor, narrow, dark, busy street. A man emerged, his face a patchwork of varying pigmentation, with beady eyes staring out of the incongruous whole. He looked surprised, twitched and glanced at me, but looked disturbed by the sight of Moussa. Apprehensively, I peered inside the building. A clothesline dangled in front of each room. A few seconds later, two women emerged from the back and moved to the front door. Both of them were wearing short nightgowns, half-naked. I realised we had been taken to the wrong place and urged the porter to try somewhere else.
‘Are you prepared to go farther away from here?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I responded.
He took us straightaway to the other side gate of the town, Bab Guissa. Confused, we followed him down a dark alleyway. ‘Here we are. This is another funduq,’ he said.
Two men emerged, the owner and the caretaker. The snooty owner was unmistakeably a city dweller; he had light skin and was wearing traditional Fezzi clothes: the Fez hat with swishing tassel and yellow, clomping mules. His assistant was an Arab, a country man, rough like a cob, short, wide, and wrapped in a very heavy woollen jellabah.
We were raw enough to take anything, and the owner was desperate for cash. The funduq was a dilapidated complex. On the ground floor, it stabled between five and seven horses. Big piles of raw sheepskins covered practically two-thirds of the courtyard. A steaming stench, worse than a frog’s puff, circulated through the air. There were two men sweating and toiling over the hot tanning vats. A blind woman and a crippled boy were busily involved in pulling the wool. There was a tiny toilet with a teeny hole in the middle, but no door. To keep people away, one had to make noises, whistle or sing. The funduq had a few rooms on the first floor. Some were rented to artisans, some to shoemakers, and the rest were for cursed tenants like us. Desperate, we hired the room.
‘Follow me!’ said the caretaker with a loud, booming voice. ‘Here is the key.’ He stomped down the stairs.
I opened the door tentatively, but Samir dived straight in; he jumped about and shouted, ‘Look! Look!’ Cockroaches were jumping and crawling everywhere. Samir grimaced and shook his head, indicating that he didn’t want the room, and in actual fact neither did I. Looking at Samir, Moussa murmured, ‘Well, what did you expect?’
What Samir had seen was just the tip of a filthy iceberg. I switched the light on, and the room immediately turned into a blaze of fire, the dancing flames made of what seemed to be thousands of copper-coloured cockroaches jumping about in the rubbish, which filled the room. Samir, in shock, kept moaning softly to himself. We deliberated leaving but it was getting late. It was either a filthy room or a night on the street, and however unpleasant the cockroaches were, we thought we would be a lot safer here than on the street where we had seen gangs roaming this part of town after dark.
I whispered to Samir in the hope of calming him, ‘Let’s stay tonight and look for other places tomorrow. We can tidy and clean up the room.’
The room had been used as a dumping ground: hard boards, hundreds of sheets of paper of all kinds, odd pieces of leather and the remainder of a long-since eaten watermelon all littered the floor. As a team, we worked hard, throwing everything out, sparing nothing. The change in the room was unbelievable; the bare rectangle suddenly looked spacious, if still not clean, as we had no brushes, brooms, water or soap, let alone disinfectant.
Like refugees, each one of us occupied a corner of the now-barren room. Despite the conditions, we were pleased to be in Fez, and even happier not to be in the street. It was dark, and we were ravenously hungry. I ventured outside alone to buy two loaves of white bread and a handful of olives, dumped in salt and smelly garlic. I hurried back to the room with the shopping in my hands, but I found the bread had little taste and was not at all filling.
This was too much for Samir. He wept and ranted. I buried my face in an old manuscript on Arabic grammar and pretended to read.
Seconds later, we heard a thump on the door, and the caretaker’s voice boomed out, ‘Switch off the light! Switch off the light!’
‘No!’ I shouted, but nobody supported me.
Dawn burst with the cobblers’ hammering. In a tiny room with no window adjacent to ours, several cobblers, sitting side by side, rubbing shoulders, shook the walls with hammers in their hands and anvils on the floor. It sounded like machine-gun fire. I got up, went out, and peered through their door.
Not happy with my staring, one spat and said, ‘Push off!’
One of them shouted, ‘He’s our neighbour! Four of them!’
The first man retorted, ‘Trash!’
Their hammering, however, was nothing in comparison to their gigantic radio – very tall, one metre long and volume turned up to its max. The shoemakers were tireless workers and never had a complete day off. After work at the end of the day, they rushed to the auction market to sell their mules, but often came back with them, many scorned, unsold.
Alternative accommodation proved to be impossible. Three weeks passed, and we had found neither a better funduq nor discovered how to register at the school, much less take the entrance exams. Those were still looming.
Disorientated in this town with which I had nothing in common, I went out to find the headquarters of the Scientific Assembly of the school, whose Board was composed exclusively of those who, after years of study, had obtained their degrees from Kairaouine University. They were arrogant, dismissive and politically dangerous, but also masters of their subjects. They also played an important part in Moroccan culture, its judiciary system and its political history. As academics, they were ruthless. I could expect no charity from these people, but had to prove I was worthy of bei
ng given a chance.
The office was on an unassuming corner of a noisy street, facing an open square filled with an army of silversmiths working their trade, feverishly hammering, looking demented, arms flying, engraving tea pots and trays. The noise permeated the surrounding area like an out-of-tune orchestra. While some artisans were working silver, others were dipping wool into large vats of dyes of different hues, then hanging the yarns over cords strung from tree to tree. Watching the artisans made me feel like a confident tourist rather than the lost boy I was.
Clusters of people were coming in and out of a narrow wooden door ornate with black metalwork. Pushing the door open, I was surprised by what I found. What I had seen from the street gave no indication of the secret jewels hidden there; the Scientific Assembly was a mini-palace hidden out of sight of the world beyond. Beautiful ceramic tiles glistening like a copper-red carpet stretched out before me.
‘Walking barefoot on the tiles would have been preferable to having them spoiled and demeaned by my scruffy shoes,’ I told Samir and Moussa later.
The walls were covered in complex mosaics that spiralled like coordinated rainbows up to the grand ceiling twenty feet above. The huge doors leading off the room were covered in leather and brass. Mosaic sinks were built into the wall and jutted out in each corridor like mini-fountains, each of which had two streams of water; one ran constantly and the other was controlled by a tap. For me, used to travelling many miles to a half-dry well for water, the sight of so many continually running streams was nothing short of miraculous.
I waited nervously to register and find out when I could sit my entrance exams. By midday, it became clear there were unfortunately no staff except the caretaker on site, neither professors nor secretaries, and only empty corridors stretching endlessly into the distance. I was not the only boy left waiting; hundreds of boys of all ages gathered in the hall day after day to register, but the assembly remained a lifeless shell. I went back to our room, optimistic that I would be able to register the next day. The following day, however, turned out to be no different from the one before.
A Riffians Tune Page 9