A Year in the World (25 page)

“Then you must restore.”

“Yes,” he shrugs, “but I am here for that.”

His friend Rachid meets us. A man of about forty, Rachid was born in the medina and grew up here. He will be our guide. We drink mint tea on the roof and tell him we’d like to see all the important sites, but also the medina he knows. He would like to discuss William Faulkner and Saul Bellow. He has a degree in literature and loves the modern American writers. We set out on a walk. He has no set speeches, fortunately. We simply walk, taking in the scents and scenes. The crafts practiced are mostly for local use. One souk, or district devoted to a particular function, specializes in marriage thrones, enormous shiny metal-faced chairs of hammered designs for the bride and groom. They look like props from
The Wizard of Oz.
In the carpenter’s souk, they’re making all kinds of carved tables and also coffins. One is ready for a child. One worker displays washboards. I haven’t seen a washboard since I was a child in Georgia and my mother dropped off our laundry at Rosa’s in colored town, where she scrubbed our clothes on a washboard, then boiled them in a black iron pot.

We pause at carved cedar arches and doors with hinges shaped like the hand of Fatima to protect the house from the evil eye. Rachid takes us to several
madrasahs
, the elaborate medieval theology schools where students lived in cubicles above the courtyards and studied philosophy and astronomy downstairs. Someone must have studied advanced geometry because the mosaic and tile patterns, the layers of borders, and the tooled cedar ceilings inspire investigation into
how
such a panoply synchronizes into pleasing and harmonious spaces.

Months from now when I think of Fez, I will think of mint. I love seeing the mint sellers. They hold out big bouquets or special baskets packed with mint. Tables are heaped with mint. No little handfuls are available; mint is not a garnish, and mint tea is not served with a sprig, as in a mint julep or southern iced tea. Boiling green tea is poured into a glass stuffed with mint, and you take the hot glass to your mouth with your thumb and forefinger at the top and bottom. Everyone drinks mint tea constantly. Rachid takes us upstairs to a teahouse where men sit on rough stools talking. The owner’s equipment consists of a table holding a small hotplate for boiling water, a few metal teapots, a bucket for rinsing the glasses (uh-oh), and a mountain of mint. I am the only woman, and no one acknowledges us at all. Rachid says, “The mint from Meknes is the best in Morocco.” I don’t even like mint tea, but I am drinking it with pleasure. The quantity of mint gives the tea a robust dimension. It tastes curative, it tastes of summer in a desert tent, it tastes like time.

Rachid says, “There are nine thousand streets in the medina. One thousand have no exit.” For lunch he leads us into a mobbed small space presided over by a magical-looking man I wish I could understand. He’s fey and strange and light on his feet like a dancer. Rachid says he used to be a storyteller in Marrakech. He still weaves a spell. He grabs Ed and takes him through the kitchen, giving him spoonfuls of spicy ground meat, lamb
tajines
, cauliflower, and a layered cheese and pastry dish just out of the oven. Ed selects too many dishes, and Rachid is perhaps embarrassed. But he eats. The
kefta
, the ground meat, he says, is camel. The joke he tells us involves tourists who refuse to eat camel and are tricked constantly. Regular customers go in and out of the kitchen, serving themselves. The barbecued turkey on skewers may be the best thing that’s happened to turkey. We clean the plates, except for the ground mystery meat.

Surely the tannery souk is not long for the world. Every tourist is taken there, followed by detours into leather shops. Before you arrive, the traffic of donkeys loaded with fresh animal skins stiff as cracker bread announces where you are. The hides are soaked in pigeon excrement as part of the curing process. A man stands up to his knees dunking skins. Vats the size of hot tubs contain bright colors. Where is the industrial revolution? We’re not exactly rushing toward it here at the vats; this work goes back to roots of industry.

Rachid says, “The yellow is from saffron or mimosa, the red from poppies, the green from mint.” I don’t believe that; the colors are lurid. His shop-owner friend hands customers a sprig of mint to hold to their noses. I buy a pair of the yellow slippers everyone wears. Rachid says, “Everything goes with yellow.” Later I leave them on the roof under the sun to dispel the smell. Couldn’t they give the leather a dip in rose water as well? Bins of pink rosebuds are my favorite sight in the food stalls.

Bundles on the street are often incredibly tiny women beggars, their faces the color and texture of walnut shells, their hands like paws.

Rachid says, “A good Muslim gives alms to the poor.”

Ed, only a fallen-away Catholic, reaches into his pocket. “How much?”

“One cent.”

Late in the day we return to the
masseria
to meet Fatima, a cousin of Hafid, who has come to prepare a home-cooked dinner for us. She sets up a round clay habachi-sized charcoal cooker and wipes off her
tajine
, the conical glazed terra-cotta dish that gives its name to the famous Moroccan one-dish meal of infinite variety. Fatima, who must be sweltering in her heavy pink
djellaba
, is a substantial woman with her hair covered. Her eyes are not downcast, however, and she smiles as she unloads her sack of groceries and starts to prepare vegetables for the
tajine
. She improvises a kitchen on the roof, drawing a bucket of water from the faucet for rinsing, and spreading an oilcloth tablecloth for her work surface.

She minces more parsley than I would have thought, then cuts up a parsnip, potatoes, zucchini, onions, and tomato. How easily she starts the charcoal going. As soon as the coals glow, she pours oil in the
tajine
and sets it on the fire. Then she lays the beef—I hope it’s not from one of the fly-specked piles I’ve seen for sale—in the oil, then places onions on top of the beef. She makes sure we understand that the vegetables go on the meat, not in the oil. She sprinkles on some salt, lots of black and white pepper, paprika, and cinnamon, then covers the
tajine
and finishes cutting the vegetables. I’ve never seen anyone hollow carrots before, and Hafid says she always cuts away the center. They don’t look woody. After the meat has cooked for about twenty minutes, she layers the other vegetables on top of the onions and adds half a teacup of water and several more pinches of seasoning. The roof is hot, even late in the day, and I’m shocked when Fatima peels off her
djellaba
and continues to cook in her long cotton knit undergarment. Under that I see that she has on another layer of something. I’m warm in a short-sleeved linen shirt. The fire burns slowly now, and the
tajine
cooks on gentle heat for another hour.

We drink mineral water and look out over the medina at sunset. Ed asks, “Are you going to get on the plane carrying one of those
tajines
on your lap?”

“Yes.”

“Why does it have that carnival-hat top?”

“Steam collects on the inside of the cone and drips down on the meat and vegetables, a self-basting process.” I make that up, but it might be true.

“Fatima’s
tajine
looks like beef stew, only layered.”

“Basically, yes—but with a liberal use of spices.”

“A stew with attitude. Wish we had some wine.”

“We’re in the medina. Lightning would strike us. Or a donkey mow us down.”

Fatima pulls some jars out of her bag and serves eggplant spread and a tomato and cucumber salad with small round loaves of bread. All over the medina I’ve seen children running, holding aloft boards covered with cloth. Rachid says everyone still makes their own bread dough, then sends it to the bakery. Peering inside one, I saw the children’s boards on tables, stacked with warm bread, ready to be picked up. Every tiny quarter of the vast medina has its own ovens. The face-size flat loaves are perfect for the salads, spreads, and juices of the
tajines
.

We dine under the moon. The
tajine
retains the separate tastes of each vegetable, and the meat is tender. We dip all the bread into the bottom, soaking up every drop of the sauce. The medina turns oddly quiet at night. Considering the density, I find it odd that no TV blares, no one on an adjacent roof plays rap music, and no voices shout, sing, or squabble. The people fold themselves into their houses the way they fold themselves away in their clothing.

Fatima dismantles her makeshift kitchen, dons her
djellaba
, and gives me, not Ed, a big hug. She solemnly shakes Ed’s hand, not looking at him, and goes home to her husband and three children.

Three hours later Ed becomes violently ill. I am alarmed at his fever and clammy skin. He spends the night in the bathroom throwing up. His stomach feels ripped and turned inside out. After six hours of this he calms but still feels on fire with pain. He’s vacant; his eyes swim; he’s so weak he cannot lift his arm. I’m on the phone calling our doctor in Italy, who says this probably is simple food poisoning, not salmonella, since the heaving has stopped after only a few hours. I write names of medicines he recommends, hoping Hafid can help at the pharmacy. I remember the rag Fatima wrung out in the bucket, remember the ground meat at lunch. But I feel fine, in fact unusually energetic. “Did you brush your teeth with the faucet water?” He doesn’t answer. Hafid arrives and says Ed ate too much, it often happens when guests come to Fez because the food is so good. Maybe.

By midmorning Hafid has found various pharmaceuticals, and Ed is sleeping as if in a coma. I try not to think of the man who dies in Paul Bowles’s
The Sheltering Sky
, leaving his neurotic wife to become a harem prisoner. The lure of the exotic for innocents or rootless people always seems to end badly.

So the gods have conspired again on this trip. For the next three days Ed does not emerge from the
masseria
. I go out for the day with Rachid, and we bring him food he does not eat and bottle after bottle of water, which he forces himself to drink. His state seems beyond the illness, as though he has fallen into a trance. I would like for the ministering angel I was promised at the start of my travels to step forward now.

Without Ed, I find a different dynamic with the place and with Rachid. I follow behind him, and distracted by a pile of hooves or iron lanterns for sale, I often miss his turns and suddenly stand in the swarm of people where streets cross, having no idea where he is. But he doubles back. I wonder how odd this must be for him—out all day with an infidel woman who constantly pauses to see the man who sells forks, bracelets, and combs fashioned from horn, his ten items spread on a table the size of a platter, and the real estate agent in his cubicle, with twenty iron keys to his listings hanging on nails behind him, and the tomb carvers chiseling epitaphs on marble headstones. “Anyone has to taste death,” they write. Rachid says, “A good Muslim visits his dead every Friday.”

Brilliantly tiled public fountains for water are everywhere. Surely someone has published a book of photographs of these long basins surrounded by exciting patterns and colors, some of which date from medieval times. They still draw women with buckets and children holding out plastic bottles. Rachid says, “They have water at home, but this way they do not have to pay for it.”

He explains the difference between a caftan (no hood) and a
djellaba
(with a hood handy for protection against rain or dust or heat) for men and women. The clothing begins to make sense. At first it seemed that everyone was in their bathrobes. Quickly, when my dust allergy awakened and when the wind felt like a hair dryer aimed at my face, I began to wish for one of those mysterious veils. The sun and dust are formidable. The loose, light robes look elegant, certainly comfortable, while protecting the wearer from the elements. I follow Rashid’s tan
djellaba
and almost imagine that I am wearing one myself instead of black pants and black shirt. The women flow in the impossible narrow lanes, a river of color: saffron, burgundy, sage, pistachio, peacock blue threading the crowds, Nile greens and mustard parting, rust, magenta, emerald merging, tomato red, ochre and all the earth colors, the occasional white worn by a woman in mourning. Some are secluded, occluded behind black veils, some wear modest scarves, and some neither. I see them look at me then quickly away.

The concatenation of colors repeats and rings in the food stalls: mulberries, figs, dusty capers, leafy coriander, mint, burlap sacks of golden turmeric, dates, bloody haunches of camels, and stacks of sheep and goats’ heads. Rachid says, “First you singe off the hair, then thoroughly clean out the maggots. Cumin and hot pepper—very good for breakfast when it’s hot and spicy.” I will be skipping that cooking tip. The whole pale palate of lentils, cumin, couscous, dried fava beans, semolina, coriander, chickpeas, and sesame recalls the colors of the desert. The food stalls reflect the abundance of the table, the love of bold tastes, the agricultural richness of the slopes of the Atlas Mountains. A donkey lumbers by carrying a load of spiny artichokes the size of dates. I stop to photograph the goat cheeses on palm leaves. Rachid says, “Everyone eats camel meat once or twice a week.” But Hafid has told me he never has tasted camel. Scrawny cats and new kittens are everywhere. There must be no marauding rats in the medina, I point out, but Rachid says, “The cats in the medina are afraid of the rats.”

Rachid shows me a spring where a man is filling a jug and points to where a river used to flow before it was routed underground. We see jacaranda trees outside the Blue Gate. Rachid says, “They send out their musk at night.” A few figs protrude from walls, and in the copper and brass souk a large tree startles the eye. Great cauldrons that could hold whole goats and sheep are for sale under the tree. Rachid says, “We rent those for weddings.”

“Are weddings in the mosques?”

“No, you ask someone who has a nice house. Mosques are only for prayers.”