by Tahir Shah
A GENUINE ENTHUSIASM TO make use of my finishing touches coaxed me to call the architect. I pleaded with him to send more men, men with the ability to finish the job. I told him about the ship’s container filled with furniture that was about to arrive, and about the thousand final details ready for use. As far as he was concerned, I had become just another angry voice on the end of his cellular phone, an angry voice stupid enough to have paid in advance. During our brief conversation, I sensed the architect had moved on, to new, richer pickings of another foreign client.
“Don’t worry, my old friend,” he said cheerily. “Just relax. The work is wonderful.”
“When will they start laying the floor tiles?”
The architect shouted that his car was heading into a tunnel. His phone went dead.
THE NEXT MORNING A team of shabby artisans arrived at the house. They weren’t wearing suits like the others. As a result, they appeared rather underdressed. I asked the foreman who they were.
“The tile men for the floors,” he said.
My dream was to restore the Caliph’s House to its former glory, to a time when it would have been decorated in traditional Arab styles. The wrecking crew had assisted in stripping out any trace of European detail. On this blank canvas, I planned to reinstate the ancient crafts of Morocco—terracotta tiled floors from Fès, known as bejmat; fragments of colored mosaics called zelij, and tadelakt, the fabulous marble-dust-and-egg-white plaster from Marrakech.
As a foreigner learning about Morocco, you quickly get a sense that the place is a treasure trove of tradition, bursting with artistic skill. Western bookstores overflow with beautifully produced photographic books showcasing the arts and crafts of the kingdom. It’s easy to imagine that everyone is making use of these age-old crafts, just as they have done for a thousand years. Nothing could be further from the truth.
For generations, the royal family of Morocco have patronized the kingdom’s crafts. In succession, they have created astonishing mosques and public gardens and sumptuous palaces. By funding such projects, they have kept the flame of apprenticeship alive and ensured that the traditions are not lost—as they have been across most of the Arab world.
While they revere their cultural heritage, the majority of Moroccans these days go for modern decor. They embellish their houses with wall-to-wall carpets and glittering factory-made tiles, with mass-produced lighting and prefab furniture. Their homes are cozy and easy to clean. And, as I was finding out, the new decor from the West saved them plenty of money and time.
THAT WEEK WHEN I found Hicham Harass sitting alone in his shack behind the mosque, he was despondent. I asked what was wrong.
“Life is wrong,” he said grimly. “My son has been killed. He was about your age. He was so alive, so full of life. Then in an instant a car swerved and my boy had the life sucked from his lungs. He is dead. Nothing. Just dead.”
Hicham wiped a hand to the tears. They say the only time an Arab man can weep with honor is at the death of his son. I leaned over and held his hand in mine. He reached out and clasped my shoulder.
“We will talk soon,” he said.
THE MEN WHO ARRIVED to lay the terracotta floors heaved twenty sacks into the salon and threw them on the floor. The sound of tiles shattering echoed around the unfinished rooms. The artisans declared that they were master craftsmen, the sons of master craftsmen, the grandsons of master craftsmen. Each one, they boasted, was from a line of craftsmen twenty generations long. I was delighted to hear it, and I welcomed them with small patterned glasses of extra-sweet mint tea. The aged foreman seemed unhappy at my display of hospitality. He marched over, wrenched the glasses away, and snarled at the newcomers in Arabic. Then he bore the tray of tea to his own grubby suit-clad team across the room and lurched over to kiss me on the cheeks.
“You’re going to have more than problems,” said Kamal. “You’re going to have meltdown.”
A FEW DAYS AFTER the death of Hicham Harass’s son, the old stamp collector called unexpectedly at the house. He was dressed in his formal wear—tweed jacket and faded cloth cap. I welcomed him inside and dusted off a green plastic chair in the freezing salon. We sat quietly for about ten minutes. I didn’t know what to say. I am awkward when it comes to offering condolences. Sometimes silence with a friend is more memorable than the most animated conversation. Hicham glanced up at me once or twice and strained to smile.
“You may think me strange,” he said at length. “But I have a request.”
“Of course, anything.”
“I hoped I could hold little Timur, as I held my son so many years ago.”
I went into our room where Timur was sleeping, fished him out from the cot, and handed him to the old man. He cupped the baby to his heart and closed his eyes.
“You must value every moment,” he said.
THAT NIGHT, THE NEW moon was sighted in a cloudless sky, and the holy month of Ramadan began. For Muslims, observing Ramadan is one of the central pillars of faith. It is a time of prayer and strict fasting during daylight hours, when the gates of Heaven are open and those of Hell are shut. During Ramadan, Muslims are forbidden to tell a lie or to think unclean thoughts, and their actions must be cloaked in purity at all times.
No one living in Morocco can escape the holy month, and nowhere is the contrast with regular life greater than in Casablanca. Many of the city’s young women preferred to swan about with faces caked in makeup, their youthful bodies stuffed into the skimpiest outfits imaginable. They would spend all day lounging in street-side cafés, preening their hair, gossiping, and smoking imported cigarettes. With the shroud of Ramadan hanging over them, they were forced to do away with makeup and the racy clothing and move around in billowing jelabas, their tasseled hoods dangling down behind. During the day, the cafés were closed, and smoking was forbidden for all.
The French expat, François, had been quick to warn me on the hazards of Ramadan. He said it was thirty days of anguish, when every Moroccan was twice as grumpy as the day before. But worst of all, he said, was that nothing got done.
“What about the building work?” I asked limply.
“Forget it!” he yelled. “You might as well pack up and go home.”
“But this is my home.”
“Well,” said François acerbically, “stay home!”
Like everyone else, Kamal was abstaining from the vices that formed the bedrock of his life. He wasn’t drinking, and the cloud of cigarette smoke that normally followed him was gone. He was abstaining from food and drink from before dawn until dusk, and was trying his level best to entertain clean thoughts. At the start of the holy month, he arrived at the Caliph’s House in a chauffeured black Mercedes limousine. It had yellow diplomatic license plates and a miniature flagpole on the offside wing.
“I called in a favor,” he said by way of explanation.
“Who from?”
“From the ambassador of Mauritania.”
I asked Kamal for a rundown on Ramadan.
“It’s the lack of sleep that gets to you first,” he said. “You eat dinner at midnight, sleep for three hours, then go to the mosque, eat a mouthful of food, sleep a little more, and then get up.”
“Ramadan’s going to finish off the workers,” I said.
“It does have some advantages,” Kamal replied.
“Like what?”
“Like when you want to buy a bath.”
THE BLACK LIMOUSINE ROLLED up the hill away from the ocean and turned right toward the sprawling new residential zone of Hay Hassani. Hundreds of plain, whitewashed apartment blocks lingered there, crisscrossed with washing lines and filled with people who had realized their universal dream.
“My uncle was mayor of this area,” said Kamal as the stretched Mercedes swerved to miss the potholes. “He built the entire place from scratch.”
“What kind of people live here?”
“People who have broken free and escaped the slums.”
The limousine veered left off th
e main drag and descended a slope. We passed a man with a homemade cart on which was heaped a pyramid of odds and ends. There was a coffeemaker and a tangle of ropes, a crate of onions and a box of springs. At the apex of the pyramid was a large glass fish tank. It caught my eye. The tank was still filled with splashing water and fearful fish.
On one side of the street stood more low carts arranged in a line. At each one, energetic men were touting bruised vegetables and fruit. On the far side of the street lay a flea market of astonishing size. Kamal ordered the chauffeur to stop. We got down and he led the way into the souq. Every inch of the place was taken up with secondhand bric-a-brac. There were heaps of televisions with their guts ripped out, stacks of smashed VCRs twenty feet tall, industrial welding gear, and giant balls of barbed wire. There were bales of old magazines, too, a thousand doorframes and toilet bowls, spiral staircases, marble fountains, and mounds of old shoes.
I voiced surprise at the sheer quantity of stuff on offer. Kamal motioned for me to keep silent.
“Speak English,” he said, “and the prices will quadruple.”
“But we don’t need any of this stuff,” I said.
We turned down an alley and walked through cool shadows thrown by what looked like a row of ships’ boilers. At the end of the track was a mountain of rotting bread. Rats the size of house cats were running over it, gorging themselves. Beyond the bread lay a cornucopia of old clothes, more shoes, and a sea of broken glass. We kept going. More televisions, more bread, boots, and magazines, then, at the end of the alley, we spotted an elderly man asleep. He was lying back in a rolltop bath, with a ginger cat asleep on his chest.
The bath was French cast iron, with a slow curve to the back and attractive clawed feet. It was Art Deco, about eighty years old. In London such a gem would have been in the window of a swish store on the King’s Road.
I whispered for Kamal to check the price. He tugged at the salesman’s sleeve. The cat woke up and flexed out its claws. There were groans of pain followed by conversation. The salesman was tired, hungry, and wanted to go back to sleep. He asked us to come back in the night. But, as Kamal was about to demonstrate, the one advantage of Ramadan was that Moroccan traders had no energy for the fierce bargaining that has made them famous. At the same time they were desperate for cash. During Ramadan nagging wives nag all the more.
“The price is two hundred dirhams,” the man croaked, the lids hanging heavy over his grapelike eyes.
“I’ll give you half that,” said Kamal.
“No,” said the salesman, “I always charge two hundred for baths like this.”
Kamal nudged me to hand over the money. The salesman breathed in deep, swished the cat from his chest, and clambered out of the tub. He kissed the bills and thanked God. The bath was loaded onto a cart. Three men set off pushing it toward Dar Khalifa. We walked with them, with the Mercedes crawling behind. The sun was searing down, and the men pushing the cart were very soon drenched in sweat. After thirty minutes we were nearing the house. I was startled by the sound of small feet shuffling behind us. It was the tradesman who had sold us the bath. He was extremely agitated.
“Stop! Stop! Please stop!” he called.
“What is it?”
The man waved a fist of worn bills. I prepared myself to hear we had cheated him.
“I had to come after you,” he said. “I ran all the way. I had to stop you.”
“Why?”
The salesman seemed embarrassed. “I told you the bath should cost two hundred dirhams,” he said, mopping his brow with his sleeve, “but that was not true. They are always a hundred dirhams. So please, take back this hundred dirhams and forgive me.”
“Why the sudden honesty?”
“It’s Ramadan,” said the man, “and I’m forbidden to lie.”
EIGHT
Rain came, wind came, a lot of troubles came.
AT THE END OF THE FIRST week of Ramadan, I received another postcard from Pete. His spidery black writing announced that progress was being made. The father’s telling me to convert, he wrote. He wants me to have the chop below the belt. He says he’ll do it himself. He’s got a sharp penknife. It’s a small sacrifice if it means I can be with Yasmine.
The thought of adult circumcision being performed by a future father-in-law put me off my lunch. I was in the kitchen, crouching under the dining table, with a plate of cold couscous on my knees. The house was full of workers. They leered poisonously at anyone who entered the kitchen during daylight. As they rightly knew, the kitchen meant eating, and eating during Ramadan was a blasphemous act beyond all comprehension. The workers noticed that I went in and out of the kitchen frequently. They had taken to peering in through the windows. I was quite happy to be open—to tell them that I was not observing the fast, but they didn’t want to hear the truth.
THE WORKMEN HAD SLID into a Ramadan routine of doing even less work than usual. They reeled about, their faces rapt with self-pity, hoping to win sympathy. François called me on the Thursday of the first week. There was an urgent tone in his voice.
“I have to warn you,” he said, “you’ve got to tread carefully in Ramadan. Don’t push people around. They could snap and run amok. You see, they’re not getting any nicotine. Their chemicals are all screwed up.”
I could make out shouting in the background, as if a disgruntled employee was picking a fight. François cried out once, then again, before the line cut.
The bejmat team had gone against my wishes and started to lay tiles in the library. I had asked them to begin anywhere but there, as it was the last room we needed finished. As the weeks of renovation passed, I learned that ignoring the client’s wishes was a method of control perfected by Moroccan artisans, as it was by the guardians and everyone else.
Every so often, I would walk past the library and glance at the zigzagged tiles. The workers were laying beige bejmat, made from Fès clay in a herringbone design. The pattern is known locally as palmeraie, as in the zigzags created when palm fronds are laid one against the next. The artisans had started at the far end of the library, a room fifty feet in length. The original floor had been torn up and a new foundation of cement slapped down. A great heap of terracotta tiles had been towered up in one corner. I noticed that many of them were badly chipped or broken in half. The system seemed to lack the precision more usually associated with Moroccan tilework. Handfuls of the rectangular tiles were grabbed from the heap, casually tossed down into the cement, and poked into a crude herringbone arrangement.
I stopped the team leader and asked him about quality control, or the apparent lack of it.
He jabbed an index finger at the work, then gave an assertive thumbs-up.
“Très bien, non?”
I shook my head. “Non, pas bien.”
The leader thumped both hands to his chest, like a primate attracting a mate. “Je suis un expert,” he said.
I am naturally a calm person, but at that moment I felt inspired to rip up the tiles and hurl them across the room. But François’s caution held me back. I fought the anger, and instead of shouting, I blew a kiss at the artisan, backed out of the library, and phoned the architect.
“The work’s not good,” I said coldly. “It’s not good at all.”
“My friend,” came the silken reply, “trust me. We are brothers.”
Again, another unforeseen road tunnel, and the line went dead.
THE NEXT DAY A new team arrived: six men with dark, morose eyes, torn clothes, and matching maroon hats made from felt. They said that they had been sent to prepare samples of tadelakt, the plaster for the walls. After a few hours, they had pasted up a dozen swatches in what was to be the children’s nursery. Their work looked good at first, applied with broad, flat trowels, like frosting on Christmas cake. But by the next morning, the plaster was cracked with a thousand miniature lines. Kamal shouted at me when he saw it.
“You have to fire the architect,” he said. “You need craftsmen, and he’s sending you clowns.”
“Teething problems,” I replied. “He’ll sort them out.”
Kamal grabbed my arm and marched me into the library. The workers were sprawling on the floor telling jokes. Some of them had taken off their trousers.
“Look at this work,” he said. “Ariane could lay better bejmat than that!”
He hadn’t been working with me long, but I could see Kamal was the sort of person who was always right. It was in his character to be so. You could fight his opinions, but in the end you found yourself giving in. However optimistic I tried to be, I saw that the architect’s men were not up to scratch.
“Fire the architect,” Kamal said again.
“But I paid in advance.”
“Walk away from it,” he said. “Risk not getting the money back and you will be stronger for it.”
I dialed the architect’s office. His silky voice cooed pleasantries.
“You’re fired,” I said. “Your men are clowns and I’m not running a circus.”
The architect choked on his excuses. Kamal snatched the phone, barked, “We’re going into a tunnel,” and hung up. Fifteen minutes later he had rounded up the three teams of workers and their motley possessions and had routed them from the building. As they ran down the lane fearfully, some clutching their trousers to their chests, with Kamal chasing them, I said a prayer. I prayed that goodness would emerge from the chaos.
DURING RAMADAN THE SHANTYTOWN became more lively in the night. To say there was a carnival atmosphere would be an exaggeration. But the usual stalls—peddling thirdhand clothes and vegetables—were joined by half a dozen more. An old woman started selling pink boiled sweets in clusters of three. Beside her sat a man with a crate of chickens, a scale, and a knife. You chose your chicken by weight, its head was then lopped off, and it fell into a box on the ground. The sea of blood attracted the limping dogs.
