A House in Fez: Building a Life in the Ancient Heart of Morocco (20 page)

She told me that when someone died their body was put on view for the family, after first being ritually prepared by those of the same gender. It was washed with perfumed oils, the feet were bound, and the right hand was placed over the left on the chest.

‘They wrap the body in a piece of white cloth and they put it in the middle of the courtyard and read the Koran on his soul,’ explained Ayisha. ‘Then they put it on a plank of wood and take it out the door to the cemetery. Women are not allowed to go with it, they can only visit the grave on the second day.’

I was grateful for the way Ayisha would volunteer these insights into Moroccan customs. Shortly afterwards I was the one giving
her
the insights – on the mysteries of academic writing when she asked me to correct an English assignment for her. She had almost completed her arts degree and was understandably nervous about her job prospects once she graduated. Morocco has tens of thousands of unemployed graduates competing for an extremely limited pool of positions, but that didn’t deter students from working hard to obtain a degree – on the contrary.

On our way home through the Medina one night, Sandy and I were bemused to see groups of young men gathered under streetlights, reading. What were they doing? The mystery was solved by David the next day. It was close to exam time and people studied on the street because they had no private space to do so at home. Nor could they turn on a light when everyone else was sleeping. I wished that a number of Australian students I knew could see them.

I suggested Ayisha write a CV, backing it up with some references, which I could give to the owners of guesthouses I knew. I thought she’d make an ideal front-of-house-person. When I told her she was welcome to come to a tutorial Jon was giving me on Excel spreadsheet, so she could include it on her CV, she inexplicably burst into tears, putting her head on my shoulder and sobbing.

I comforted her for a moment and then went on in a matter-of-fact way. With my Anglo-Celtic reserve, I didn’t know quite what to do with the weepy young Ayisha, who, like many Moroccan women I’d met, was far more used to openly expressing her emotions than I was.

At the end of their first week of work, I sat down at a table to pay the workers in the customary way. Si Mohamed called them individually and explained the amounts to them.

‘Six days at a hundred and fifty dirhams a day is nine hundred dirhams.’

I handed them the money and waited while they counted it, then thanked them for their work.

‘You look the picture of a colonial administrator,’ Sandy laughed, and for a brief uncomfortable moment, I had a vision of myself as the patron of a rubber plantation, doling out a pittance to exploited workers. Yet the reality was that we were giving six people full-time work for several months on above-average wages. Local unemployment was so high you could virtually walk out into the street and say you wanted unskilled labourers and you’d have an instant queue. It was finding people with traditional building skills that was difficult.

We liked our workers. All were over the age of forty, except Si Mohamed, and they had a steady, reliable air. The men were usually silent while they worked, the only sound a rhythmic
chink, chink
as they removed plaster. Fatima and Halima, whom we’d dubbed the decapo ladies, maintained a constant chatter, and as I couldn’t understand what they were saying, it was a pleasant background noise that could almost lull me to sleep. There was a wonderful sense of purposefulness in the house, of a shared goal.

‘Your house is my house,’ Mustapha declared one day. ‘I am working from the heart.’

The riad had not had any proper maintenance done for decades. Now was its time.

The following week, the plumber came to repair the fountain. We watched with concern as he began to dig a channel through our beautifully tiled courtyard to find the pipe.

I had ignored David’s disparaging comments about the Victorian style of the fountain. ‘It’s not at all traditional,’ he protested. ‘Fassi fountains were very low.’

Sandy was all set to take it out, but I wanted to wait until we had something better to replace it with. Antique marble fountains being rare and expensive, I knew we were in for a long wait.

But even the prospect of sitting in the courtyard with the sparrows chirping to the sound of tinkling water did little to assuage our dismay at the destruction of sections of the courtyard. Thankfully the plumber came across the pipe after digging only a couple of small holes. It was completely rusted up. He removed and replaced it.

He made a couple more visits, installed a small pump, and when he switched it on everyone stood around to watch, clapping and cheering as the water shot skywards. Sandy adjusted the pressure to a gentle spray, which fell into the bowl and splashed over the edge into the pool below. It was so pretty that we spent hours at night watching the play of water – much more restful than television.

Meanwhile more discoveries were being made. Beneath the dull grey paint on the
massreiya
doors, the decapo ladies uncovered an exquisite geometric design painted in yellows and browns. We estimated it dated from the mid-nineteenth century, about the
same
time the Iraqi glass windows in that room were created. The women had already damaged one section by leaving paint stripper on it overnight, so we halted work on it until we got some advice.

David came to the rescue yet again and recommended a restorer. Using cotton buds, the man painstakingly removed layer after layer of paint. It took three days before the design was revealed, and fortunately it was largely intact. It amazed me that someone had painted over it in the first place.

The Fez Festival of World Sacred Music, held during June, was a reminder of what the world outside had to offer. It had begun in response to the first Gulf War of 1991, as a way of bringing different religions together to share and appreciate one another’s traditions. This year’s nine-day festival had a smorgasbord of spiritual and religious music from Syria, Iran, India, Mali, Latin America, Japan, Tibet, Azerbaijan and the Mediterranean, along with a talkfest on such topics as wealth and poverty, spirituality and ecology; a literary café; and documentaries that were to be presented by the filmmakers.

As the writer and photojournalist behind ‘The View from Fez’ weblog, Sandy and I were given media passes in order to do reviews; I was also working on a travel story for my paper in Australia. Fortunately for us, the concerts began in the late afternoon, after our workers had left for the day. They were held beneath the spreading branches of a giant oak tree in the courtyard of the old Batha Palace, which was now a museum of Moroccan arts. The evening
concerts
were held at Bab Makina, an enormous space with crenellated walls at one of the entrances to the palace, about ten minutes’ walk from Bab Bou Jeloud.

Built in 1308, Bab Makina had spent part of its life as an armaments factory, so it seemed appropriate that it should be the main venue for an event promoting cross-cultural understanding. The audiences were a mix of upper-class Moroccans and Europeans, mainly French. The high prices for the tickets subsidised free concerts for poorer people in a square near Bab Bou Jeloud.

On the first afternoon, I watched in fascination as a whirling dervish from Syria began to rotate slowly in the palace courtyard. There wasn’t a lot of room and I wondered if he would spin off like a top into the audience. His eyes closed, a peaceful expression on his face, he spun faster and faster, arms akimbo, until the hem of his long white tunic lifted to form a complete circle. As it wasn’t possible to see his feet, it seemed as if he were levitating, about to take off to another realm entirely.

Late every evening, a Sufi group performed. Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam, is focused on letting go of all notions of the individual self in order to realise unity with the divine, and many Sufi groups use music and dance to achieve an ecstatic state. This face of Islam is very different from the hardline Wahhabism that has parts of the Middle East and Africa in its grip. Whereas Wahhabists must deal with God through intermediaries, Sufis feel they have a personal connection with God – a God who is loving, not a judgemental deity to be feared. Sufi brotherhoods are particularly prevalent in Fez.

The Sufi performances were extremely popular and getting in wasn’t easy. The night we went, there was such a crush of people that Sandy opted to stay in the gardens, but I needed to get as close as possible to take photos. Despite having a media pass, I had to argue the point with a security man, who eventually took pity on me and led me to the front of the queue. I worked my way slowly through the crowd, trying not to step on toes or babies.

The group performing was a local Fassi brotherhood who regularly played at weddings and circumcisions, and the audience was mostly locals, families with kids, teenage boys with tight T-shirts, veiled women. I found a spot wedged beneath a huge fountain and a French camera crew, and ended up almost sitting in the sound guy’s lap. The proximity of so many people was overwhelming. It was easy to see how people get crushed to death by the sheer force of numbers on pilgrimages to Mecca.

When it came time for the musicians to enter they were led by an angelic young boy carrying a candle, and people cleared a path to let them through. The musicians stood in a line facing the audience, and the chanting, drumming and shaking began. The oldest Sufi, a wrinkled prune of a man, had his eyes closed, lost in the rhythm. The singers were dressed in pale robes and sat on one side of the stage, facing a row of musicians in elaborate woven tunics with red and white stripes. A man in the middle led the refrain, keeping time with a small drum.

The songs were sung very loud, and to an untrained ear sounded a little tuneless, but the rhythm and repetition and sheer energy they exuded was exhilarating. The audience swayed as they
sang
along to what were obviously familiar numbers. Little girls tossed their hair around wildly, and even demurely dressed matrons looked as if they were about to faint. Every song pushed the outpouring of energy up a notch, until the noise and dancing of the crowd were at fever point.

Then two young musicians rose and blew with such ferocity on their long silver trumpets that those close by were in danger of suffering permanent hearing damage. In the brief lull that followed the trumpet blasts, I made my escape, to avoid becoming a human pretzel. People were still trying to squeeze into the already overcrowded area and meeting resistance from the security staff. One male journalist being denied access was on the verge of fisticuffs. I slipped past into the night just as the shouting reached crescendo level.

Afterwards, wondering what it all meant, I sought out the maker of a documentary called
Sufi Soul
, which was being shown at the festival. Simon Broughton, who also edits a world music magazine, told me there are some fifteen main Sufi brotherhoods in Morocco, each with its own
tariqa
, or ‘way’. One of the most popular, and also the most flamboyant and theatrical, is the Aissawa brotherhood, the group we had seen perform.

Simon knew a member of the Aissawa brotherhood who worked at the Chouwara tanneries, and for him the hard work there was made bearable by the thought of performing after it was done. ‘The music is intended to bring the djinns in, not drive them out,’ Simon told me. ‘They’re brought in to deal with specific needs and problems – to relieve anxieties and tension, for example.
Different
people need different djinns. Sometimes a djinn is summoned by name. The musicians might call on the lady Aisha, and a woman in the audience will jump up, seized by Aisha. It’s believed that the djinn has manifested in her.’

I had heard that Aisha is supposed to be beautiful and seductive, but with the hooves of a goat. She appears to men in dreams, and sometimes when they’re awake. Children are often afraid of her.

According to Simon, the majority of Moroccan Sufi bands are male, although there are plenty of female devotees. ‘And there are all-female groups,’ he said, ‘some of which have been around a long while.’