In other ancient workshops, wrinkled cobblers sew bright yellow leather from Fez’s famous tanneries into men’s babouches. In the dars devoted to selling carpets to unwary tourists, looms are powered by teenagers and women, who need extraordinary patience to make the hundreds of knots required. Down in One-Armed Ali’s weaving shop, the only sound is the clatter of the wooden shuttle flying back and forth over the warp. And in a little workshop in a side alley can be found the last surviving brocade makers in Fez, working on looms so complex they take days to thread and need two people to operate. The fabric they produce is sought after by designers in Casablanca and Rabat.
Countless other craftsmen service these artisans. The men who dye the yarns have permanently stained arms from hefting skeins out of steaming vats and wringing out the excess dye, before hanging them to dry in a rainbow of colours. A forge is constantly in action, where the blacksmith melds metal tools to order. The brass makers are serviced by speciality shops selling teapot spouts, handles and feet. Belt makers supply the shops selling long, mediaeval-style dresses for special occasions, and the hat sellers are close to the djellaba makers.
Some crafts are dying out as they become less sought after. The street of the saddle makers used to be full of workshops, but now only a few remain. And just a couple of gunsmiths are still licensed to make rifles for the Fantasia riders, who charge about on Arab stallions firing off volleys of shots in a display that is now mainly a ritual for tourists. But in the souk of the wedding-chair makers, fabulous thrones are still in big demand – plywood frames covered in glittering gold and silver fabric.
Every quarter in the Medina has workshops of carpenters, indispensable in a city whose skeleton is made of trees. Carpenters too have their specialties. There are those who repair and build houses, and others who decorate them, carving intricate designs for doors, tables, chairs and cupboards.
The henna souk at the bottom of the Tala’a Kbira is a quiet oasis, with a big plane tree shading a small square crowded with tiny shops selling pottery, pot-pourri, henna, argan-oil soap and rose moisturiser. At the back of this, housing another collection of shops, is an old building which was once an insane asylum. The sixteenth-century traveller and writer Leo Africanus, chiefly remembered for his Description of Africa, which became the basis of knowledge of Africa for scholars in the West for centuries, worked in the asylum for two years. He wrote that the mentally disturbed received no treatment other than being fed and fastened to the walls with iron chains. When they were brought food a whip was always handy to ‘chastise those that offer to bite, strike, or play any mad part’. The hospital was still in use as late as 1944, although treatment methods had improved somewhat, and musicians occasionally came to play to the inmates.
For all the souks to function, the goods need to be moved around. Making your way through the streets of the Medina is a constant exercise in avoidance. You have to squeeze into doorways so that you’re not mown down by heavily laden donkeys or mules, or wiry old porters with impossible loads. Fassis seem to have a special awareness of these ancient modes of transport and move instinctively out of the way, yet they are quick to lend a hand when a porter or hand-cart driver needs help. Tourists, on the other hand, are a real worry; they wander around in a daze, as oblivious to danger as a puppy on a highway.
Turning into the alley that runs past Karaouiyine University, I led the now footsore Nicole and John to my favourite Fez café. Liberace was waiting to welcome us, as he had done for patrons for more than forty years, resplendent as usual in a white suit with peacock feathers sprouting from one lapel and medallions on the other. His hair was hennaed bright red and teased into a fetching frizz. Large brown eyes dwarfed a mouth that was constantly in action.
His real name was Abdulatif, and although retired he still often turned up at the café. He had never married, and the staff and patrons of the place were his family. His other pastime was keeping his decrepit Renault 19 in immaculate condition. It was never driven – simply owning it gave him sufficient pleasure.
We squeezed up the café’s spiral staircase, bending our heads as we arrived on the first floor, which is so low you feel like a giant in a dwarf world. I had dubbed the establishment Café Seven and a Half, as this oddity reminded me of the similarly height-challenged rooms in the film Being John Malkovich, Sipping rosewater milkshakes, we watched the constant flow of people and animals in the alley below, one of the busiest and narrowest in Fez.
Early next morning, we set out by grand taxi to the Roman ruins at Volubilis, a couple of hours’ drive from Fez. Whereas petit taxis are restricted to intra-city fares, grand taxis travel between towns. The driver of our rickety old Mercedes was a grey-haired, tubby fellow of about sixty who won my respect when, shortly after picking us up, he stopped the cab and dashed out into the traffic to scoop up a kitten that was about to be flattened. Later he spent long hours waiting while we wandered around the ruins. We returned to the taxi to find him performing prostrations on a prayer mat rolled out in the dirt.
The World Heritage-listed Volubilis ruins sit on a rise overlooking a vast plain and cover an area of 4500 square metres. We arrived before the tour buses, but I was disturbed to see men in a field nearby digging what looked to be footings for the foundations of a large building. I found out later that a hotel was going up, but it was uncomfortably close to the ruins for my liking, and given their heritage status I couldn’t understand why permission had been granted to build there.
Settled by the Romans in 40 AD, Volubilis was the breadbasket and administrative centre for the westernmost Roman province of Mauretania Tingitana. The daughter of Cleopatra and Mark Antony once ruled there with her husband, a Berber prince. When the Roman garrison withdrew at the end of the third century, many residents stayed on.
I had a vision of those Romans who had chosen to remain, sitting around in what had become a rural backwater, remembering the glory days of a vibrant and dynamic empire. The town was devastated by an earthquake a hundred years later, and although it was resettled by Latin-speaking Christians, it did not become significant again until the Arab invasion in the seventh century.
The foundations of the ancient stone houses are grouped around the remains of a Roman road. One of the larger houses is known as the House of Orpheus, named for the mosaic covering the floor of a reception room. Orpheus is surrounded by a variety of African animals, real and imagined. Once, the house also had a swimming pool, courtyard, garden, toilet, kitchen, and several other decent-sized rooms, all with underfloor heating. It was more appealing by far than many modern houses.
It’s easy to see at Volubilis the origins of Fassi architecture. The Fassis still have courtyard houses, with zellij that bears more than a passing resemblance to Roman mosaics, although with geometric rather than figurative designs. Art in Islamic societies is generally used to display the underlying order and unity of nature, which is seen as a representation of the spiritual world. The bathhouses of Fez, its bakeries, guilds and public fountains, also owe much to the Roman style.
For public spaces, Volubilis had a large forum, civic buildings and a triumphal arch. Lining the main road, which is wide enough for two chariots to pass at speed and has a covered drain running down the middle, are the remains of shops and houses. Walking through the ruins it occurred to me how permanent the town must once have seemed to those who lived there, but after six hundred years or so, life took an unexpected turn.
In 683 the Arabs swept into North Africa on horseback. It was half a century after the death of the Prophet Muhammad and they were passionate about spreading the word of Islam. Despite an initial resistance, many Berbers found the certainty and absoluteness of Islam appealing, and were won over in a way they had not been by the Christianity of the Romans. Those Berbers who converted to Islam helped spread the religion south of the Atlas Mountains and north to a country they called Al-Andalous, now Spain. They made excellent soldiers (as the French were to find more than a millennium later), having honed
their battle skills in intertribal warfare, and by 718 they had taken over most of the Iberian Peninsula.
Meanwhile the acceptance of Islam in Morocco was far from wholesale. Pockets of Christians remained, along with Berbers who still followed their indigenous religion. It wasn’t until the arrival in 788 of a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, a man who became known as Moulay Idriss I, that greater unity was achieved.
Idriss had fled Damascus for political reasons. He must have been a self-assured man with considerable charisma, because they made him King not long afterwards. Idriss became so popular in fact that the caliph of Baghdad felt threatened and sent his personal poisoner to get rid of him. After Idriss was buried, his wife, a young Berber girl, was discovered to be pregnant. She gave birth to a son, Moulay Idriss II. He was supposed to have been a remarkable child who could read at the age of four and recite the entire Koran by eight. At twelve he was appointed ruler.
Moulay Idriss II became known as the founder of Fez. While it had been his father’s idea to build a new capital (having thought Volubilis a bit on the small side and too Roman in appearance), it was the son who was left to fulfil the vision. The name Fez means ‘pickaxe’ in Arabic, as this was the primary implement used to construct the city, and legend has it that a golden pickaxe was discovered while the building was being done.
John and Nicole left in mid-September and I had only one more week before I returned to Australia. I started looking in earnest for someone to oversee the restoration when Sandy and I returned the following year.
I had met an architect called Hamza, who’d done a wonderful job on his own house and overseen restorations for other people. An Iraqi refugee who’d studied in Europe, Hamza had a partner called Frida who was a graphic artist. Both spoke excellent English, and I invited them to dinner to discuss my plans, even though Hamza had told me he was far too busy to take on our house. But when he walked in and saw the open courtyard, the massreiya with the wonderful ceiling and plasterwork, and all the other interesting architectural details, he became enthused.
Dinner was beset by a few problems. Because the floor was at a strange angle, my new stove sloped forward and the fry pan would slide to the floor if not watched. I’d bought three turkey legs for dinner and put them in a supposedly heatproof dish at the bottom of the oven, with some vegetables on a higher shelf. I’d heard a loud crack shortly after turning on the gas, but it wasn’t until smoke began pouring from the kitchen that I went to investigate. The dish had shattered and the turkey pieces were lying singed on the bottom of the oven. I rescued them and put them on top of the roast vegetables.
It didn’t seem to matter too much, as I’d made a salad with fresh figs, mint and soft cheese, and a side dish of beans in tomato and onion. With a good bottle of Sahari Reserve to wash it down, it was very edible, and smoothed the way for further conversation about the house.
Over dinner I suggested a compromise to Hamza. What if he were to act as a supervising consultant, paid on commission, visiting once or twice a week to make sure things were on track? If his team wasn’t available, I could hire another to do the work.
To my surprise he agreed, even suggesting that, to get a head start, he’d arrange to have the carpentry work done on the doors and windows immediately. I was thrilled.
The next day, Hamza returned with his carpenter, who had a look around and quoted twenty thousand dirhams, which covered two new doors, three windows, a set of traditional shutters and numerous repairs. It did not include cleaning the wood or removing the paint from the forged iron on the windows and catwalk.
As we trailed around in the carpenter’s wake, Hamza told me what he thought would need doing next year – this zellij taken up, these walls stripped of plaster, this decorative plaster repaired. One of the things that needed immediate attention was the kitchen ceiling, which was about to cave in. On the floor above it was a tap without a drain outlet, and years of sluicing the floor had resulted in water soaking into the insulating layer of earth above the beams, adding to the weight and causing the wood to rot. I felt both excited and alarmed by the extent of the work he was suggesting, but having seen his own house, I trusted him.
Hamza also took me to see a house he was working on for a French man. The entire place had been stripped back to the bricks, and a team of men were removing a layer of rubble from the roof. In the stream of light from the hole they had made, a cloud of dust motes swirled. I felt a familiar tightening in my chest, the onset of an asthma attack, and quickly escaped to the street. I began to doubt that we’d be able to live in our house while work was being done.
And what must the dust be doing to the workers? The air was filled with minuscule lime and wood fragments, and who knew what else besides, none of which could be healthy. The only workers I’d seen wearing any protection were the men shovelling rubble on the terrace, and even then it was just a simple scarf. I reminded myself to bring some masks back with me, and to make sure ventilation was adequate.
At Hamza and Frida’s house, I gave him a cheque for twenty thousand dirhams for the carpenter, along with a list of the work agreed to. In the back of my head was my grandmother’s voice, telling me there were two types of bad payers, those who paid in advance and those who didn’t pay at all. When I’d suggested paying after the carpentry had been done, Hamza said he didn’t work that way. I consoled myself with the fact that, as he’d be in charge of our project, it could be considered a start-up fee.
I then spent a couple of hours taking photos of Hamza and Frida’s place for their website, as a favour. They were planning to run it as a guesthouse, something it was ideally suited to, with its huge courtyard and terrace. One of the main suites was without doubt the most beautiful room I had seen in Fez. The view across the river had probably changed little since the place was built hundreds of years before, and the interior decoration was superb – intricate, detailed, with delicate paint and plaster work.
The other thing I needed to organise before I left was someone to stay in our riad. I certainly wasn’t about to ask Larbi again, but David had a young American student who was willing to act as caretaker in return for a place to stay. Sarah was twenty-two, petite and pretty, with an eager-to-please manner. When I gave her a tour of the riad she loved everything about it, and she said all the right things – she was serious about her studies, and not a party person. She’d lived on her own a lot and didn’t like large numbers of people around. That was the problem in her current student house, which was constantly full of people. A Moroccan friend had advised her not to invite the neighbours in because they gossiped about the valuables in the house, and word got around. I’d broken that rule, I thought ruefully.
There was just one thing that concerned me. Sarah was wearing a tight T-shirt with a plunging neckline and the slogan ‘Boys R Toys’. Bringing her to the house, I had seen the way the local youths stared at her, as if they were about to eat her up. This district was one of the oldest in Fez and very traditional. Expectations of behaviour here were different from the more touristy areas and the Ville Nouvelle. Local women dressed conservatively, with no bare heads, legs or arms. Western women could get away with bare heads, but bare arms and close-fitting shirts were pushing the boundaries.
It was the equivalent, I explained to Sarah, of living in a Western city and seeing the woman next door heading out to the shops in just her bra – this was the way Fassis saw it. A local man had told me recently that only prostitutes had bare arms. As the new person on their patch, Sarah’s behaviour would be watched closely. People would know very quickly where she was living and whether she came home late at night alone, so it would help, I pointed out, if she had the reputation of being respectable. That way she’d be less likely to run into trouble.
No doubt she thought me a stupid old bat, but I figured that since she was the one moving into traditional Fassi territory, it wasn’t up to the locals to change their perceptions, but for her to be respectful of theirs. Moreover I didn’t want her creati
ng problems in my relations with the neighbours.
Months later, when I returned, I learned she’d taken my advice to heart and bought a couple of djellabas for wearing in the Medina at night.
On my last evening in Fez, I took a drink up onto the roof and gazed across the city, watching the horizon shift from gold to pink to deep blue. A dark stain of smoke from the potteries hovered over the north. I was far from alone – on nearby rooftops, other women and their cats were doing the same thing, except without the gin and tonic. As devout Muslims don’t drink and the Fez Medina is a holy city, alcohol is not on public sale. To buy it you need to go to the Ville Nouvelle, and if on your return the taxi driver hears the telltale clink of bottles, he will most likely refuse to take you and your shopping. Many Fassis have a similar attitude towards the demon drink as we do to heroin.
Now that my departure was so close I didn’t want to leave. Apart from seeing Sandy and friends, I wasn’t looking forward to going home. Western cities may have their physical differences but the organisation of modern life, with its automated services, cars and franchised businesses, lends a similarity to them. Australian streets, by comparison to those of Fez, seem devoid of colour and life. It struck me that we have traded vivacity for the myth of safety. We exist within bubbles of cars and houses, and view the rest of the world through the glass wall of television. Where are all the people, donkeys, cats, the women waiting in doorways with trays of uncooked bread? The touts and spivs, the children playing in the alleyways? The evening streets crowded with those who hide all day from the sun? All the myriad small dramas that make up everyday Fassi life.
A House in Fez: Building a Life in the Ancient Heart of Morocco Page 7
