by Paul Bowles
I HAVE ALWAYS believed that Paris is most strongly itself during twilight. At that hour, whatever the weather or season, the vast range of grays in the stone of which it is built becomes fully visible: appearance and essence concur for a few exquisite moments. Why is it called “gay Paree?” I have no idea. If you look you can see the open soul of the city anywhere along the Seine from the Quai de Javel to the Quai Saint-Bernard. It is there, along the banks of the river and among the bridges, that you touch the spirit of Paris, and while that spirit is not a tragic one, surely it has little to do with gaiety. Rather, it bears witness to an essential consciousness of the need in life for beauty, and to an understanding of the use of proportion and harmony in the achievement of beauty. It provides the artist with heartening, ever-present proof that man-made beauty is attainable, and does so in such a natural fashion that when one thinks of the banks of the Seine one thinks simultaneously of artists, for the two belong together.
Fez
Holiday, July 1950
FEZ IS A CITY whose site was chosen purely for aesthetic reasons. Before its founding there was no village -nothing but a cup-shaped valley of pleasing proportions nestling at the edge of the place where the fertile plain goes slightly mad, drops off into tortured, eroded, semidesert country. Idriss II came down out of the Djebel Zerhoun one day at the beginning of the 9th Century, saw the spot, admired the way the river broke into many separate streams as it rushed downward through the little valley and, with the uncomplicated simplicity of that heroic age, determined to build a city there which would outshine the one his father had founded among the Berbers to the north. As the homes, mosques and universities grew in splendor the inhabitants came to have a fierce pride in their city, a pride which is still justified, since the place is virtually unchanged. Many of the Fassi believe that the Western world is about to disintegrate; obviously it can only be Islam which will triumph! This very narrowness of ideas has kept the place pure, kept it medieval. For the Westerner does not so much feel in a distant place here: the removal is rather in time. A thousand years ago the cities of Europe must have been very much like this; from all accounts there is little difference save in detail.
There are elderly men in the town who have never to this day seen an automobile. It is a self-imposed rule, a kind of protest, of course, since by walking to one of the many gates and peering through they could see clusters of ancient trucks and buses outside. Sidi Driss el Yacoubi, for instance, a delightful old gentleman who looks as so many Fassi do, rather like Santa Claus, spends his time between his home, the Djamaa Andalus (the mosque with the great façgade, which is at the top of the hill in his quarter), the homes of his friends, and his little garden; all of these places are well within the surrounding walls. Years ago he moved about occasionally from town to town like most Moroccans, but that was before the advent of the French.
It is a small excursion to the garden; the servant carries along tea, sugar and teapot. The charcoal, mint and water are already there. Toward sunset, when the many storks have stopped circling and making their ratchet-like calls, a little fire is built in an earthen brazier, tea is brewed, and Sidi Driss el Yacoubi asks the servant to play a while on his lute. The conversation is likely to center around the taxes collected by the French – very small taxes by our standards, but hotly resented by the Moroccans, who consider themselves a sovereign people, not colonials in any sense.
Ask Sidi Driss why he is not interested in seeing an automobile. He replies: “What good is it? The wheels go round fast, yes. The horn is loud, yes. You arrive sooner than on a mule, yes. But why should you want to arrive sooner? What do you do when you get there that you couldn’t do if you got there later? Perhaps the French think if they go fast enough death won’t catch up with them.” And he laughs, because he thinks that Western civilization is attempting to escape from a fate which is predetermined, “written” as they put it in Arabic; any such effort naturally is doomed to failure.
Fez is pastoral. On all sides the sheep graze beneath the olive trees, right down to the city walls, and it is forbidden to build outside the wall. Even in the center of town one does not manage to shake off the impression of being in a limitless village rather than a city, perhaps because of the constant presence of rustic things – bare earth, straw, the ceilings of reed latticework over the alleys, the white herons and storks wading by the banks of the rivers, and the odors in the air; cedar and thuya wood, the ubiquitous mint, ripe figs or orange blossoms, depending on the season, and the familiar smells of the stable. No passageway is paved. One can take only a few short steps without rubbing up against a donkey, a mule or a horse.
The great wall surrounding the city is intact; certain of the gates, such as Bab Mahrouk (where until recently the heads of the Sultan’s enemies were exposed on pikes), are still locked at sundown, and many of the inner gates across the passageways that serve as streets are regularly closed at night, so that the man who has stayed out late and wants to take short cuts to get home often finds he must go all the way back to where he started and try another route.
But a polite host will never let his guest depart unaccompanied. If there is no slave or servant handy he will go himself until he comes across one of the public guardians curled up asleep at the side of the passageway, and entrust his guest to this ragged phantom. Or if he happens to meet a younger acquaintance he will ask him to see that the guest arrives home safely. It may be several miles and one may complain that one prefers to go alone; there is no escape; the other will be adamant. He remains until the end, and you both go uphill and down in the darkness – through tunnels, across bridges, nearly always accompanied in the nocturnal silence by the faint sound of running water behind the walls, until you reach your door.
THERE ARE NO true streets in the city, and neither automobiles nor wagons can enter; because the passageways are not flat, but often turn into stairways, not even bicycles can be used. Everything that moves inside the walls moves on legs, so one hears no horns or bells. What rises from the city by day is a humming: two hundred thousand human voices blended into one sound. At night there is absolute silence, unless the women of some house have gone upstairs to the terrace and are beating drums. Five times a day the muezzin calls from the tower of each mosque, as in all Moslem towns; but there are more than a hundred mosques, and they can all be heard at once from the surrounding hills. There is a custom peculiar to Fez whereby, shortly before the daybreak call to prayer, the muezzins sing for half hour or more. If one can imagine a hundred powerful flamenco singers at varying distances, projecting their songs from the minarets over the silent city, one can understand that the effect is electrifying.
In the hearts of the Fassi there is a great nostalgia for the golden age of Spain; like the janna of the Koran, Andalusia is supposed to have been a collection of palaces whose gardens were watered with rushing streams; fountains played eternally in the rooms and the courtyards were planted with trees so that the rustle of leaves could be heard behind the music of the lutes. Fez calls its music Andalus, because the idiom was evolved in Spain at the time of the Khalifat of Cordoba and brought back here when that country had to be evacuated. The Fassi are firm believers in the importance of satisfying the senses: they love perfumes, colors, rich textiles. If at the same time they place a high value on the accumulation of money, it is only so that they may surround themselves with things that will give them sensual pleasure; they mistrust and ridicule miserliness. When they romanticize about the past I remark that Fez has all those things that Andalusia once had. “Ah, but it is more beautiful there.” Of course.
It is important to know when to agree and when to disagree. Conversation seems sometimes to be a game whose principal object is to catch the other person off his guard and make him commit a faux pas. If your host says to you: “I am a Cherif; there are six thousand Chorfa in Morocco; that is a great many,” you will not be invited again if you agree. The Chorfa are the descendants of Ali, Mohammed’s son-in-law, and form the count
ry’s aristocracy.) You must exclaim, “Only six thousand! That is very few. I thought there were many more.” However, if he says: “We want to be Americans. It is better to be American than Moroccan,” you must agree briefly, and thank him, because if you protest politely you will show him that you actually believe he means what he says, which of course is impossible, and you will prove yourself extremely ill-bred.
Once when I wanted to go to Karia in the mountains and had been told vaguely there was a bus that made the trip, I asked the waiter in a native restaurant what time and from where the bus left. The boy said simply that there was no such bus. But the manager of the restaurant heard me reply that there must be a bus to Karia. He pushed the boy aside impatiently, “Of course there is,” he said. “It leaves from Bab el Guissa at half past six in the morning.” The next day after a three-and-a-half-hour wait I went around to the restaurant to inquire again, probably somewhat peevishly, just when the bus usually made its appearance. The manager looked startled. “You’ve been waiting since half past six? But there’s no bus, monsieur.” It took a certain amount of self-control for me to point out to him that this information was not completely in accordance with what he had told me the day before. “Oh, yesterday,” he smiled, “I just said that to please you.”
The modern-minded, bourgeois Fassi are very different from old Sidi Driss el Yacoubi. Sidi Abdallah Lalami lives in a house whose main patio was originally two hundred feet square. At the death of his father he and his brother built a wall across the middle of the court, making a separate house for each of them. As usual, from the outside there is nothing to see but a windowless, crumbling gray wall rising high above the dirt-floored passageway. Inside, the court is paved with mosaics; there are fountains, grape arbors, orange trees. Twenty-four stone columns support the galleries that line the three original sides of the patio. Silk awnings twenty-five feet square are let down to cover the doorways of the enormous rooms inside, if the womenfolk happen to be there. An unexpected call can precipitate great excitement when the ladies are in the court. Slaves rush to hide them by holding up an old sheet kept outside for that purpose.
Once I glanced inadvertently to the side as I passed through, and saw the women cowering against the walls, their hands over their faces; they were making absurd little moans of simulated fright.
I WAS APOLOGETIC to Sidi Abdallah for my behavior.
“Not at all,” he said. “It’s silly, all this hiding. Next time you come, I shall present you not only to my wife but to my daughters.” This incredible thing he did, to the surprise and, I suspect, disapproval of the ladies concerned. Since that time he always made a point of calling his wife and mother in at some point during my visit – only occasionally a daughter.
The bellboys at the Hotel Belvedere, where Bowles lived in Fez in 1947. “I never returned to the hotel until night time, and it was always locked, the lights were out... I would knock at the door and hear a giggling inside. It was these two; they had already gone to bed. And then they had to get up and open the door..” (PB)
Sidi Abdallah has a slave girl by whom he has had a child. The slave market has been abolished by the French, but the institution of slavery still persists. There is no distinction made by Koranic law between a legitimate child and one of the same father by a concubine – even in matters relating to heritage. However, it does not take much perception to see that little Hajja, although she is treated kindly, belongs much more to her mother’s world than to her father’s: she is the errand-runner for the entire household.
Dinner in Fez is a complex ritual. It is essential to plan to devote at least five hours of your evening to it. At the innumerable dinners I have eaten with Sidi Abdallah in his home never once has the meal been shared with any of the women. That would be going too far! There are always several other male guests, however, often as many as twenty. The slave carries out one course, brings in the next on another huge tray. Everyone eats out of the same mass of food with his fingers, using only the thumb and first two fingers of the right hand. Sometimes Sidi Abdallah hires a small orchestra (rebab, lute, tambourine, hand drum) to divert his guests, “to make the stomach happier.”
A MERCHANT from Ouezzane brings forth a little tin box and offers me some of his hashish. I scoop the black paste out with my finger and eat it. Soon afterward the last course is cleared away and a massive samovar is brought in. The food the men have left is scraped together in the kitchen for the women to eat.
By the third glass of tea there is no doubt that the hashish has begun to take effect. I laugh, perhaps a little strangely, since the others also laugh. All at once the great room, the seated figures, the shoes ranged by the door, the fountain beyond, are remote and unlikely, although I remain quite aware of each word being spoken. I lie back on the cushions and announce: “Safi... el majoun.” They laugh some more, continue talking. Certain of them fall asleep, stretching out on the gaudy mattresses that line the four walls of the room. I wish violently to be back home in my own bed because I know how many strange and agonizing months it is going to take to navigate the three miles of passageway and tunnels which lie between Derb el Heurra and my home. And I should like to be alone when the visions start.
I find myself standing up, looking down at my distant feet, saying I must go. The protests are endless, but eventually I get out into the night, a servant having been sent with me. My only thought then is to escape him by darting into a doorway. Obviously it is impossible. The moon is full, unbelievably bright; the city looks like an early movie, when in order to make a night sequence they printed scenes shot in sunlight on blue film. The expedition lasts forever, but I do get home somehow, even though it is not before the visions have already begun to project themselves on the moonlit walls around me as I stumble along.
With the growth of Casablanca, Fez has lost much of its commercial importance, even during the few years I have known it. It is no longer the great market of Northern Morocco. Thus the vast crowds that used to gather outside the walls and in the immense Mechouar near the Sultan’s palace, attracting all the ambulant dancers, musicians and fakirs in the region, are no more.
The barbaric side of Moroccan life is to be found elsewhere – not here. As if further to make Fez the purely religious and academic center which every good Musulman desires it to be, the Sultan in 1937 issued an edict forbidding public demonstrations of the two dissident religious sects which have been much in evidence here: the Gnaoua and the Aïssaoua. This does not mean that the cults have been abolished. On certain occasions one has only to travel an hour from Fez to see the Aïssaoua eating their scorpions and serpents, lacerating themselves and drinking their own blood while the women scream and dance themselves into unconsciousness. The Gnaoua are Negroes and the Aïssaoua are Berbers; both have adapted the Islamic faith in such ways as to suit their emotional needs, but the orthodox Moslem population of Morocco will allow them no latitude.
This disapproval of the indigenous elements in the culture is carried to an extreme in the case of the students who attend the college of Moulay Idriss and the various médersas (theological seminaries). These young bourgeois object to Moroccan music and customs, even to Moroccan clothing. Their overwhelming obsession is to do away as speedily as possible with whatever is specifically Moroccan. However, their loyalties remain wholly within the Moslem world; they are not interested in becoming Westerners. Cairo is their idea of a really civilized place. They sit for hours under the willow trees in the outdoor cafés by the river, dressed in clothing more or less European, listening to the latest records by Abd el Wahab, Om Kalsoum or Farid el Atrache; they patronize the Cinema Bou Jeloud because it shows Egyptian films. Perhaps one viable excuse for this attitude is the great disparity between the social liberty they know exists elsewhere and the complete lack of it here.
On Friday, the day of rest, the town goes to stroll along the paths around the lake in Bou Jeloud. Here sometimes a group of young men will hazard some fleeting remarks to a ground of veiled female
figures; apart from such meetings, which are viewed with distaste by the older people going by, there is strict segregation between the sexes; the marriages still take place without the groom’s ever having seen the bride “There is no love in Morocco,” say the young men bitterly.
THE FRENCH QUARTER, built, thanks to the discernment of Marshal Lyautey, at a distance of several miles from Fez itself, is the most changed of all since prewar days. The buildings, hastily erected in typical colonial-exposition style, are in a lamentable condition. Civic pride, which existed to a certain extent at least while things were new, appears to have disappeared entirely, and the place looks like a slum. The flimsy edifices, being of European build, require European materials for repairs; these are still not available. It is a depressing spot, a potpourri of broken windows, peeling paint, cracking concrete, wheezing old automobiles, short-tempered Frenchmen and begging native children – a hideous contrast to the soothing homogeneous beauty of the old city.
The Fassi have always known how to live – they still do. And a good many of them, far more than one would expect, have the means to live well. There is a complete lack of nervous tension in the life, an utter ignorance of what it means to be bored, all of which makes for a satisfaction in existence, a thing that very few Westerners are able to attain. At the same time, I suppose the average American would consider the life of even the wealthiest Fassi shocking in its absolute disregard of the principles of hygiene. The Moroccan, educated or otherwise, simply does not believe in germs. Every aspect of his daily life gives eloquent proof of this. One of the most amusing is the lollipop rental stand in the quarter of Guerniz, where the children pay according to the length of time they keep the lollipop in their mouths.
