Tangier (19 page)

Sheet steel gates closed the hotel patio from the narrow alley we'd now entered. Driss knocked with the flat of his hand. A rumble like distant thunder was followed by the opening of a wicket. The porter who appeared was to become more than a good friend, but philosopher, confidant, even letter-writer when inevitably, if totally inappropriately, I fell in love. But at this moment the porter was simply a squat, bald, instantly friendly man with a deep chuckle. Within hours I was to discover he was also chef, chambermaid, gardener, laundryman, handyman, waiter, housepainter, builder, Classical Arabic scholar, nanny and private tutor to the French
patron
's younger children. On this, and subsequent visits of mine, he became
el-Fassi
– the man of Fes.

Marcel, the French proprietor, proved equally friendly. Twenty years before he had married a Moroccan, and he himself, and all his family were naturally bilingual,

Driss departed with a promise to show me around next day. 'But,' he insisted, 'there is absolutely nothing to see or do in Tiznit.' 'That's why I came,' I said. It seemed the wrong moment to explain that wandering dead-end alleys, alone, and with wide eyes, was the tonic for which I'd fled the hectic little world of Tangier. 'There is the cinema.' said the
Fassi
, loyally it proved, for the
patron
owned it. '
Bien
entendu
!' Marcel added now.

The hotel was charming. Built about an open patio, two sides were shaded cloister, one plain wall, and the fourth the two-storey residence with kitchen, lounge and dining-room on the ground floor; and half a dozen bedrooms on the first. It was modern, dead simple, tiled, colour-washed and sparkling clean from the ministrations of the indefatigable
Fassi
. When it proved empty of guests into the bargain I decided to stay two weeks. At the beginning of my third a young English couple arrived in a car. I gratefully accepted a lift to Goulimine and its Saturday camel market; then hitched and bought truck lifts to Tantan and the Mauritanian border beyond, entertaining fantasies of carrying on to Timbuktu, Unfortunately it was July, my pockets were empty, and a Saharan crossing was probably impracticable for a penniless Christian whose shoes were falling apart simply through walking around Tiznit. Instead I contented myself with buying a castle. It has crenellated battlements, no windows, a four-inch thick wooden door, and cost nineteen pounds. As even close friends are highly sceptical about this property, suspecting its very existence to be fantasy, I won't write about it here except to say that it is let, free, to a herdsman, and to his sons in perpetuity, upon the simple condition that when the owner arrives they, their womenfolk, hens and the goat, must move from the best bedroom to the second best. The following year the owner arrived with a sleeping-bag to test the thesis. The key to the castle gate, a sacred object in Moroccan law, and this one a foot long and weighing a kilo, was promptly given to me. Gravely I handed it back because its pocketing would have pulled my trousers down. The laird stayed three days, All arrangements worked perfectly. During that time everything I had ever worried about in my life became irrelevant, which of course was, and is, my castle's
raison d'être
.
The only sadness was that the eighteen-year-old daughter, about whom deference to custom inhibited designs, had gone to work in an earthquake-proof hotel in Agadir. So much for what Morocco is pleased to call 'the Miami of Africa'. Did I know the hotel X? my tenants asked anxiously. I explained I knew only the airport, the bus station, the best kebab stall, and a craftsman who worked in wood, This last was difficult. Why? they wanted to know. One of the sons
spoke French, and translated. In fact I'd tendered for, and commissioned a hinged cedar board to unfold across my knees in table-less cafés, or when sitting with my back against a wall or a fig tree. Its function was to provide a writing surface. When I returned to the craftsman to collect my simple board he'd been apologetic. Sensibly puzzled by the idea that anyone should want to lay paper upon a flat board and scribble, he had made modifications. The dimensions, the hinge were precisely as specified. But what he handed me was inlaid with seven different woods, mother-of-pearl and a modest quantity of ivory. The veneered surface smelled deliciously of bees-wax. Within the ornate periphery the severe, geometric pattern was somehow familiar, 'You can – you can
also
– play chess on it.' the wood-worker said.

Now, that Tiznit hotel was to provide a more polite solitude. I settled to an easy routine: early breakfast, no lunch, simple dinner. When I looked hungry the
fassi
would slip in a dish of fried eggs between his rather standard soup and more delicious pigeon with almonds,
tajine
of lamb, or giant sole from Aglou, some twelve kilometres away on the coast. I'd envisaged Aglou as a miniature Essaouira. In fact there is nothing there at all except a concrete restaurant with bathing facilities and a number of
koubbiyet
, or marabouts' tombs, springing like white puff-balls from the rocky soil.

As the helpful youth had promised, the sights of Tiznit could be 'done' in a morning. It was the atmosphere of the remote town busy with leatherworkers and silversmiths, soporific with old men and goats, rattling with the current children's toy (a tin can through the axis of which ran a length of stiff wire by which it was propelled), the blistering vacuum of midday, and the cool, starlit nights that were compelling. I hired a bicycle.

Some five kilometres of wall enclosed the town's 9000 inhabitants and the simple baked-mud mosque of Idaou Kfa. The minaret bristles with ingenious drains, precaution against torrential rainstorms blowing in from the Atlantic. Today there was only blinding sunlight, the whisper of subterranean water, and the depressed, even craven, look palm trees assume in totally still air. Despite the heat there was no discomfort. Even twelve kilometres from the Atlantic the pre-Saharan atmosphere is so dry that perspiration has no chance to form. Better, it is invigorating. I've never breathed pure oxygen beneath a battery of infra-red lamps, but the effect must be similar. We bumped away on our bicycles.

In itself this was an experience for me, Not having ridden one for fifteen
years, it required concentration akin to flying a light plane at hedge height. Downhill was particularly exciting. I seem to remember that, on my bike, the chromium levers beneath the hand grips applied brakes. On this machine they didn't. Uphill would suddenly have me working a futile treadmill. The chain had fallen off. In Driss the conflict between educated appraisal of mechanical failure, embarrassment over the discourtesy of the hire shop, and a suspicion that perhaps God had not intended I tour Tiznit on such a contrivance, was
Instructive. At the end of the morning our fingers were black with oil. Braking was easy. I simply thrust and braced my legs forward like a show jumper refusing a fence. Of course horses take off from soft surfaces and their hooves are shod with steel. The Tiznit ground is sharp stones and my moccasins humble leather. Thus began the destruction of my shoes.

Tiznit is best viewed from half a mile outside the walls. The die-straight battlements, the towered gates, the desert plain, the horizon of which one can imagine a visible segment of the globe's curvature. The ochre mud bastion convinces the eye of Tiznit's heroic centuries. Mind confirms the message, for what besides enormous antiquity presents such monochrome monotony? In
fact Tiznit was founded six years after the first practical application of colour photography (probably Louis Ducos du Hauron's 1877 View of
Angoulême
).

In 1882 Moulay Hassan wanted two things in the
Sous
: cash, and tougher control of the Berbers. Both ends were best met by the creation of a fortified base; and Tiznit was built as strategically commanding the road to the sea port of Ifni, and the entrance to the Draa valley.

The
harka
-
literally the 'burning' - was a Moroccan peculiarity dating back to the Idrissid dynasty in the eighth century. Politely, its function was tax-gathering. But in the
bred es-siba
-
uncontrolled lands - this could only be accomplished by
bloody subjugation. The nucleus of such expeditions comprised the Sultan himself, his harem, ministers, personal guard regiments, cavalry and artillery, and a mighty host of lesser, but loyal soldiery. The composition of the majority changed constantly as the fire raged upon its way. Tribe X would lend strictly temporary allegiance to the Sultan for the convenience of decimating their personal enemy tribe Y. In this way tribe X might also save some fraction of their crops and livestock. Tribe Y, if they were lucky, would be left with a few old women and very young children. The result was self-evident; no trouble from the Ys for at least a generation, Razing of crops and livestock had a similar motive. The dissidents would be too preoccupied with starvation to wield flintlocks; or, as the saying went, 'An empty sack cannot stand up.'

If one averts one's mind from the horror (and this is no place for comparison with western 'sack emptying' techniques by napalm and chemical defoliants, a process that is both impersonal and gathers no taxes) a
harka
must have been a tremendous spectacle. The camp followers of such expeditions, encompassing prostitutes, saddlers, musicians, cooks, armourers, blacksmiths, canny magical potion 1/4,ndors, medicine men, mad marabouts and dancing boys, could outnumber the military. I could imagine these gathered on the plain about Tiznit, since surely Moulay Hassan would reserve the sanctuary for his own elite. There would be literally thousands of cooking fires in the dusk, an endless procession of women bearing water through the palm groves from the spring of Lalla Tiznit, roasting smells, mint tea smells,
kif
smells, wandering flute music. and lanterns, diaphanous in the makeshift tents of rags sewn
together. The ten courses of a formal
diffa
, music of
Aissawa
or
Gnawa
groups, politely organized sex would be happening in and about the mosaic patios of the town's houses. Besides Islam, a common denominator of the two groups would be instant mobility. Neither Arab nor Berber values anything which cannot he transported. The beautiful house, tiled court, fountain and fig tree remain. The master's bed (sometimes bed mates) and cooking utensils go with him.

Tiznit was to be the
starting point of a counter
harka
; one
against
the ruling Sultan. On 31 March 1912 El Hafid signed the notorious Treaty of Fes, giving France a mandate to 'protect' Morocco, represent it abroad, and pacify the
bled es-siba
. The entire French population of Fes, though numbering only some seventy people, was massacred in protest. Hafid resigned, humiliated; and a younger brother, Moulay Yussef, was installed as puppet Sultan.

Dissidents in the south found a leader in the Berber, El-Hiba, son of a popular marabout. He proclaimed himself Sultan in Tiznit, raised a
harka
and cannily marched on Marrakesh where the French had not yet arrived in any force. While negotiations went on between
El-Hiba and the Glaoui brothers, the French did arrive: and with them artillery, mortars and machine-guns. Armed only with flintlock rifles, their long barrels chased with silver and stocks inlaid with mother-of-pearl, El-Hiba's tribal army was massacred outside the city walls. His march was to be the last true
harka
.
From now on the subjugating columns were led by Christians, colonizing French and Spanish, amply equipped and competent with the machines of modem war.

In Tiznit I was able to indulge a hobby of playing at silversmith. My skill is not great. But then Berber jewellery is relatively simple, and after a week's apprenticeship I was improving. The silversmiths'
souk
is in an enclosed courtyard containing some dozen tiny workshops. Driss introduced me to a sympathetic smith, and I spent my first two days watching him from dawn till dusk. When I protested that I must be getting in the way, Rachid's reaction was to send out for more mint tea, and ask me to hold something. Usually this was
one end of a doubled length of silver wire. The other end he screwed into a simple drill, which might have been from a child's carpentry set, with the bit removed. He then turned the handle, and the result was finely-twisted silver wire, basis of much filigree work, and also the skeleton of some types of ring The particular job at the moment was the manufacture of enamelled rings for local ladies, About the periphery of a flat, petal-shaped plate, the wire was soldered to form seven symmetrical divisions, also of petal shape. With the silver wire once more, a cone was formed in the centre of the ring, composed of four tiny triangles. The plate, like some Lilliputian formal garden without colour, was then soldered to the band. This was also flat metal, but decorated with less tightly coiled silver wire, like an extended spring. The object was intricate, browned from the soldering torch, and exceedingly drab. Rachid now went to work with the brilliant enamels, melted from sticks like sealing wax. One by one the symmetrical beds of the miniature garden were filled with blue, green, and honey. A fascination of these last two colours is that the enamel on the silver scabbard of a dagger bought in Marrakesh in 1917, and dating from the 1850s, matches them exactly. I bought Rachid's ring the moment it was cool enough to hold, Its cost was twenty-three pence.

The previous year an American girlfriend had bought an antique silver ring in Marrakesh. I asked Rachid whether there was any possibility of finding one in Tiznit. The next day he opened a twist of newspaper and spilled a dozen at my feet. Not one was phony, and I'd seen nothing but trash in the town's few tourist bazaars. Why I didn't buy the lot I can't now think. Partly it was a Fantasy that a dozen tribesmen must have been murdered in the night to obtain them, but more an obscure sense that to buy indiscriminately rings that didn't fit my own fingers would be an abuse of my relationship with this craftsman. I bought four. Three are simple, engraved with cabbalistic patterns, wafer-thin at the edges through wear. The Fourth was a problem. Presumably once the property of a
very pudgy finger, cut into its top in crude Roman capitals were the initials TA. Besides being incongruous with its finely graven band, I have no affiliations whatsoever with the sometime Territorial Army; the terrestrial arts perhaps.