In Favor of the Sensitive Man and Other Essays (Original Harvest Book; Hb333) (14 page)

From
Travel & Leisure,
October/November 1973.

Fez was created for the delight of our five senses. My first impression is a fragrant odor of cedarwood from the furniture of the Hotel Palais Jamai, a smell that reappears in the
souk,
or street, amidst the intense activity of the carpenters. My room already bears the colors of Fez: blue tile, copper tray, copper-colored draperies. When I open them, the whole city of Fez lies before my eyes. The earth-colored houses huddle together, following the sinuosities of the hills, encircling every now and then a mosque with its minaret of green tiles shining in the setting sun. On the terraces are draped what I mistook for trailing bougainvillea and which turned out to be dyed skins and wools drying in the sun, draped over the walk and ramparts of the city like bright cherry vines.

The minarets are numerous, three hundred or so, one for each quarter, giving the sense of protection and serenity so characteristic of the Islamic religion. Fez lies very still. It is a city of silence, which makes it appear more and more like an illustration from the Bible. The draped figures in their varicolored jellabas keep their age and weight a secret. They could be sketched by a child who has never learned drawing: a blotch of color against the landscape, moved by the wind, women’s faces hidden in
item,
or veils, the men’s faces hidden by burnouses. It is a life bent towards inner self-perfection, whose dynamic activity lies in the skill, the incredible creative activity of their hands.

The hotel is high above Fez because it was once the palace of the vizier, and he could see the entire city from his terrace. A new hotel has been added right next to the old, but the ancient one can be visited. It has a room with encrustations of gold in the ceiling; and the favorite’s room in the garden, with its deep rose and red rugs like a carpet of flowers from Persian fairy tales, its dark, sumptuous bed with a shell-like headpiece encrusted with copper and mother-of-pearl, exhaling the perfume of cedarwood, its copper myriad-eyed lamps diffusing a soft jewelled light, the many pillows of damask and silk, the low divans, the ornamentation enriched by the lovingly carved wood, by stucco, and by meticulous tile work. There is a cabinet of cedarwood, deep and ample, for the favorite’s jewels.

Because the souks of Fez are a maze, it is necessary to have a guide. Only those born in this ancient city can find their way. The streets were built narrow originally for coolness against the relentless sun. Some of the ninth-century streets are only a yard and a half wide. As soon as you step out of the hotel courtyard, with a handsome, tall guide dressed in a brown wool jellaba and bright canary yellow
babouches,
or slippers, you enter the
medina,
or old Arab city. The beauty of this labyrinth is that it takes you into a world of crafts and arts and awakens your five senses every bit of the way. Every small boutique, sometimes as small as eight feet by eight, is a revelation of some skill. Men are sewing the embroidered caftans worn by the women, with gold braids, embroidered edges, trimmings of colored sequins. The transparent chiffon and gauze dresses worn by the dancers are made to shine like jewels, and as they hang in front of the boutiques they seem like pennants of exotic tribes. A man in a blue jellaba and a white skull cap is shaping the various colored babouches, made from the leather we saw drying on the walls and terraces of Fez.

Colors seep into your consciousness as never before: a sky-blue jellaba with a black face veil, a pearl-grey jellaba with a yellow veil, a black jellaba with a red veil, a shocking-pink jellaba with a purple veil. The clothes conceal the wearers’ figures so that they remain elusive, with all the intensity and expression concentrated in the eyes. The eyes speak for the body, the self, for the age, conveying innumerable messages from their deep and rich existence.

After color and the graceful sway of robes, the flares, the stance, the swing of loose clothes, come the odors. One stand is devoted to sandalwood from Indonesia and the Philippines. It lies in huge round baskets and is sold by weight, for it is a precious luxury wood for burning as incense. The walls of the cubicle are lined with small bottles containing the essence of flowers—jasmine, rose, honeysuckle, and the rose water that is used to perfume guests. In the same baskets lie the henna leaves that the women distill and use on their hair and hands and feet. For the affluent, the henna comes in liquid form. And there is, too, the famous
kohl,
the dust from antimony that gives the women such a soft, iridescent, smoky radiance around their eyes.

The smell of fruit, the smell of perfumes, and the smell of leather intermingle with the smell of wet wool hanging outside of the shops to dry—gold bedspreads hanging like flags in the breeze, sheep’s-wool rugs, the favored cherry-red wool blankets, and rose carpets, like fields of daisies, lilies, apple blossoms. Blue is the symbolic color of Fez, a sky blue, a transparent blue, the only blue that evokes the word long-forgotten and loved by the poets: azure. Fez is azure. You rediscover the word “azure.”

The smell of cedar grows stronger. We are now in the carpenters’ quarter. It is spacious, high enough for the beams of wood, brought by the donkeys, to be turned into tables, chairs, trunks. The smell is delicious, comparable only to that of fresh-baked bread. The wood is blond, and the carpenters work with care and skill. The art of working mother-of-pearl encrustations is rare. Two members of the distinguished family that alone knows the art are teaching it to children. I watch them work in the aisle of the museum, with pieces as tiny as one-eighth of an inch, shaping and fitting them to a sculptured rosewood box. It is not an art found in tourist bazaars. To watch hands at such delicate work is to understand the whole of the Moroccan character—patience, timelessness, care, devotion.

And now we are in the street of spices. They look beautiful in their baskets, like an array of painter’s powders. There is the gold-red saffron, the silver herbs, the scarlet-red peppers, the sepia cinnamon, the ochre ginger, and the yellow curry. The smells surround you, enwrap you, drug you. You are tempted to dip your whole hand in the powdery colors. Later these herbs and spices will appear subtly in the local cooking.

The Moroccan can work in a small space because he knows the art of stillness, he is concentrated on his work, immobile. He does not know restlessness. He is unravelling silk skeins, rolling the silk onto bobbins, tying and braiding belts. But just as you begin to float on a dream of silk, muslins, embroidery, you are plunged into the hundreds of hammer blows of copperwork. Copper trays, copper-edged minors, candelabra, tea pots, are being carved with a burin and hammer. The men hold the large trays between their knees. The oldest and the best of the artists works with infinite precision, reproducing designs from famous mosques. His dishes shine like gold, and the designs open and flower and expand and proliferate like intoxicated nature. There are always children and young men in the background, learning the craft.

After the roar of copper works, the hammer strokes, comes a different tone of clatter. It is the work on pewter, iron cauldrons for laundry, pots and pans for cooking.

The barber shop is a mysterious cavern, with four huge thronelike chairs taking the whole space. In ancient times the barber was also the circumciser and sometimes the surgeon.

Children pass by, giggling and running, carrying trays of dough prepared for the communal oven. Every quarter has its own mosque, its fountain, its school, its
hammam,
or bath, and its communal oven. The little girls of five and six carry the baby of the family tied to their backs with shawls. They manage to play in between their duties.

A small stand sells sugar loaves—the gift to bring when invited to dinner—sugar for the mint tea and for the sweet pastry, so flaky and light, that they bake.

Two women pass me in gold and silver caftans, on their way to a party or a wedding.

The only sights I miss from my former visit, many years ago, are the handsome cavaliers in their full regalia, white burnouses, red trimmings on the horses, gold knives in their belts. The rich families of sheiks have gone to live in Casablanca. So all I see now are donkeys and mules laden with wood for burning, with dried skins, with furniture, with fruit and garbage, with bolts of material, with potato sacks, with bricks. And when they come with a shout of warning you have to squeeze yourself against the walls.

Now we come to the dyers’ souk. The whole crooked, serpentine street of cobblestones belongs to them, and your foot discovers first of all a river of colored water overflowing from the vats. The guide says: “Don’t mind. Your shoes will be dyed in beautiful colors.” In every dark cavernous lair there are cauldrons with dyes of different hues. The men dip the wool and silk and then squeeze them dry. Their legs are bare, and both legs and hands are dyed the color they work with. Children are watching, learning, and helping when they can.

Glancing into one mosque, discreetly, I see a sumptuous blood-red rug given by the king. There is a separate prayer room for the women. Before entering, the faithful wash their feet and faces at the fountain.

Mosques, markets, souks, schools, baths, are all intertwined, giving a feeling of common humanity, or intimacy. Every trade is carried out in the open. Passing by the schools I hear the chorus of recitation from the Koran, which children learn at the earliest age. Wooden trellised windows conceal them from the street, but some come to the door to smile. Learning the verses by heart is difficult, and the discipline severe.

There are no schools for women, but they learn their arts and crafts from the skilled workers who serve them: dressmaking, embroidery, painting, pottery, weaving. Their knowledge is not confined to housekeeping. In ancient days they excelled in poetry, philosophy, and music.

Inevitably the rug merchant invites you to drink mint tea and to glance at the rugs. They are spread on the floor of an ancient palace, now a warehouse for rugs. You learn to distinguish between the designs of Fez and the Berber. The Fez recall the flowery, intricate designs of Persia, but the Berber rugs, in natural wool with austere, abstract designs in pure colors, recall American Indian patterns in their simplicity.

The old inns, or
fondouks,
are still there, as they were in the Middle Ages. Donkeys and camels rest in the courtyard, and in the cells all around, the merchants who come from other cities sleep in their burnouses. But many of the inns have been turned over to the craftsmen and artisans. One is filled with sheepskins, which are being dipped in lye to make it easier to pull off the wool.

A heavy cedarwood gate, elaborately carved, with a heavy silver lock or a tree-sized bolt, indicates a wealthy home.

In a dark lair men are feeding the fires for the hammam, throwing into the furnaces chips left over from carpentry or bundles of odorous eucalyptus.

Baskets of mint are sold in abundance, sometimes by one solitary old woman. When I stop at a very small and dark café, I see the samovar they keep going, and watch the ritual of making mint tea. I sit on a plain rough bench, and the boy in charge of pressing the mint into the tea pot brings a tiny stool for the glasses.

The tall red hat the Moroccans love to wear, with its black tassel, came from Turkey and is called a
tarbouche
by the natives, a
fez
by the tourists.

I say to a merchant, persistently pointing inside his shop, which is filled with antiques: “I am not shopping. I am writing about Fez.” He bows and replies in flowery French, “Come in for the pure delight of the eyes.”

For the pure delight of the five senses!

The strong pungent smell of tanning is the only unpleasant one. Tanning occupies a whole square all to itself, with immense vats holding a cement-colored liquid. The men work half-naked, using hooks to handle the skins. Eight or ten vats are worked at the same time, and the skins hung on the wall to dry.

Knowing that Fez—one of Morocco’s Four Imperial Cities—was the center of religious and cultural life from ancient times, I want to visit the library of the Karaovine University, which contains original Arabic manuscripts. For this visit I am given a guide called Ali. He is tall, handsome, dark-haired, with an olive complexion, and he speaks French with beautiful diction. He is dressed in the traditional brown jellaba and pointed yellow slippers. I know the Arabian love of poetry, the cult of the spoken word, the gift for storytelling. Ali transports me to the year 900 by his recitation of verses from the Koran, his chanting of the poetry of Omar Khayyam. He is deeply concerned about the survival of Fez. He shows me the exquisite students’ quarters, those which were opened and reconstructed by the Beaux Arts. But he also shows me those which have been condemned for lack of repairs, with their sad, plain wood bolts drawn tight, and those which have been put to other uses such as the carving of cedarwood by an artist. He shows me the neglected fountain with the tile decoration partly eroded. He makes me fearful that this vision of other centuries might vanish, like a dream out of
A Thousand and One Nights,
through carelessness or indifference. He wants America the bountiful, America the rebuilder of Versailles, to intervene, to rescue the sculptured cedar beams, the subtle tile work, the lace patterns of the stucco, the delicate arches. In between his canto to the beauty of Fez, so much more refined, so much more intellectual, so much more spiritual than other cities, and his canto to its skilled artisans, Ali recited verses from Omar Khayyam:

Lo! Some we loved, the loveliest and best
That Time and Fate of all their Vintage prest,
Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before,
And one by one crept silently to rest.