The Alleys of Marrakesh

by PETER MAYNE

13

THE rhythm of life in this city has been changing perceptibly during the past week or two. The atmosphere has become drier and drier, with the thermometer rising. All this time the Sahara has lain patiently beyond the peaks of the Atlas biding its moment, and no one has given a thought to it. But now we remember that we have had no visitors from the desert recently. The caravans have stopped coming. And when we look up we remark that the snows have all melted from the mountains.

“Quarante deyres,” the French boulangère said to me last week, fanning herself with the Petit Marocain. Forty degrees. Centigrade, of course. I can’t remember the formula for conversion to Fahrenheit. Thirty-two must come into it somehow. Anyway, we are having hot weather.

People don’t move about in the sunshine as they did before, and they go to bed still later. The nights have continued cool, however, and for three days I have been leaving the door between my room and the “kitchen" open, as well as mv window, in the hope of creating a draft. The boulangère says that, most of the European residents of the new town have left for France or the Atlantic coast — those that can afford to. The Djema’a el-Fna is halfempty from about midday till six o’clock, and the cafés lower their canvas blinds, so that it is no longer pleasant to sit on the terrace of the Café de France and write. I work at home on the suitcase as best I can. But when evening comes it is heavenly and I have taken to strolling about on the Djema’a el-Fna after dinner, often in the company of Maurice D. Maurice is a tall, slender Chinese man of about thirty who speaks beautiful French and has considerable charm of manner. On his father’s side he comes of an ancient Chinese family settled in Indo-China since the seventeenth century. He has a natural reserve bordering on austerity, so that the warmth of his smile, which he obviously takes from his French mother, is a surprise. In repose he is like a good drawing, very Chinese.

We have a coffee together and then stroll, up and down, up and down, talking. Sometimes he tells me about China and Indo-China and I tell him about places I know, each of us taking pains to show interest in what the other has to say. In actual fact he talks well, and I am glad to listen. I then exact my turn from him. He also likes to discuss his antiquaire business and the reorganization of his newly acquired pavilion which he is planning to use as a showroom.

He is a curious man. His intellect is purely French, and of a high order at that — and his temperament is Oriental. He has told me how he came here a year or more ago for a visit, and how within a couple of weeks he had bought a house in the knowledge that it was here that he must settle, He asked me why I came, and I prevaricated: it seemed presumptuous to have chosen Marrakesh with a pin, blindfold, and then to have found that I was entirely happy with my choice. But I know why he chose it. There is something Mongol about it to which he can respond immediately. I asked him about this. I was thinking about the pavilion, partly, but more about the Meehouar beyond the Sultan’s palace. The Sultan has a palace in Marrakesh, and outside its battlements lie two enormous, flat, empty places. They are surrounded by walls of their own, divided from each other by a common wall pierced with an arch. It is here that the Sultan shows himself to the people when he visits the city, and they are called Meehouar. I am drawn by their emptiness; and each time I go to the Aguedal, which involves passing through them, their Mongol aspect strikes me — China of the far north, I say to myself. At intervals along the walls are little gates or watchhouses, surmounted by roofs of green tiling which suggest pagodas. But it is coarser than anything I think of as purely ( hincse. And in the same way there is often something suggestively Mongol about, the features of Berbers, but again coarser, heavier. Maurice, who is so very Mongolian in looks, has sometimes been asked if he is a Moor, or at least a Muslim from some other country. So Moors can see it too; and yet, as far as I know, the races have no common ancestry of any kind, and I have never heard this Mongol aspect commented upon, or read of it. Maurice admitted it readily when I asked him.

“ I feel at peace here,” he said. “I think I understand the people, and that perhaps they understand me.”

It is only now that I begin to understand him.

The air we breathe has changed suddenly to an eddying whirligig of heat, laden with grit. Men hide their faces in the hoods of their djellabas and remember the Sahara now. Things have been working up for some days, of course. There has been a grayness in the skies over the Atlas and we seemed to be living in a little microcosm of sunshine while something banked itself up behind us. The Sherghi. It has been filling its lungs with the sands of the Sahara, gathering itself together while we waited a little apprehensively, and now at last it has altacked. It is appalling: related to the Sirocco but infinitely less civilized. This is what the people of Tangier meant when they said that I was mad to come to Marrakesh in the summer, and they have been wrong until now. Mercifully the Sherghi is said to respond to the magic of numbers, and works to a formula 3-3-3. The numbers represent days, and at intervals of three some power decides whether the Sherghi should continue for a further three — and then a further three. This is the first day of the first three, and I think I prefer to remain stifled at home with what I can find to eat in the biscuit tin I use as a store cupboard, rather than brave the Sherghi and discover that perhaps all the stalls in the market are closed because the stall-holders have been less courageous.

The Sherghi is intolerable. It is in its second period of three and, for all we know, will continue for a third period also. Maurice D. and I have decided to leave these inland plains for the Atlantic. It is only two hours by autocar to Safi and we leave at dawn.

14

THE thrust of the waves and their long sighing withdrawal makes a thrrrump and a wheeesh in the darkness ahead of us. I write by the gleam of a little nineteenth-century paraffin lamp that forms part of Maurice’s camping equipment. It is called la lampe Pigeon. It is really a night, light for Second Empire nurseries; of graceful design, brass, with a calligraphic inscription. It has a glass shade which fits into a crown of metal, pierced with a pattern of fleurs-de-lis. The spindle which was intended for winding the wick up and down so long ago does so no longer. Tonight Maurice has a safety pin for this. La lampe Pigeon gives a tiny yellow light that scarcely flickers at all since the wind dropped. It illumines our restricted world — in particular Maurice (who looks more than ever Chinese with no clothes except a yard of batik), the undersides of the rock, and me. I am dressed in tartan drawers.

We have brought a tent with us — a tent so light and convenient that it will roll up and contain itself in something not much larger than a large sponge-bag. It is made of nylon, sides and ground sheet all in one. But the sand on this beach is soft as a feather bed, offering no hold for tent pegs— at least this was the case at sundown when the wind came whipping over the sea, filling the gossamer envelope of the tent as we tried to pitch it, flicking the pegs out as fast as we could bang them in. Actually Maurice banged them in while I lay inside the tent, spread-eagled to hold its corners in position with my hands and feet. Lying inside this mad, prancing runaway balloon of a tent, I soon had so strong an impression that, the wind was in my own stomach that I had to come out.

We were unable to pitch the thing and have therefore decided that we shall do as well in a crevice between two large overhanging rocks, the tent folded to serve as a ground sheet. It is this crevice that la lampe Pigeon now lights with its little yellow gleam. The wind has dropped, but it may be lurking somewhere, and it is too dark to think of tents again. And why should we? We are quite resigned, and it is getting less oppressive as night advances. The heat has been appalling all day, and they were saying in the little seaport town of Safi, when we started out to look for a camp site, that no living person can remember it hotter. That was this morning, before déjeuner. It is night now and the moon will soon be up.

Maurice says it is very poetic. ” Lc site cst plein de poesie,” he says, and he is right. The little bay with its two protective promontories, the smooth yellow of the sand, the cliffs towering behind us in striations of mustard on a surface shot with mauveand-steel, like taffeta — these strange colors that we remember from an hour or two ago but can see no longer because they have been swallowed up in the purple of the night. The site is full of poésie. Quite close to us a cascade of greenery comes tumbling down the cliffs and halts suddenly at a point perhaps fifty feet above the beach. It must mean water, fresh water. We shall explore in the morning. It is too dark now. We shan’t bother about supper; we are not hungry. I am nevertheless exceedingly thirsty — all that trudging and site-searching, laden with rucksacks, with the batterie de cuisine, with our matelas pneumatiques, with Maurice’s two-volume edition of Spengler’s Déclin de l’Occident and three-volume edition of Malraux’s Psychologie de l’Art, and some Edward Lear for me, with the elaborate American War Department Disposals paraffin-vapor cooker, not to mention the weight of the provisions and the heat, cruel heat of the sun. I should like to have some coffee at least, but Maurice has just said from an impassive Chinese face that coffee prevents slumber. It is obvious that he doesn’t wish to search for the stove which is somewhere in the shadows behind us. He knows that my prejudice against paraffin-vapor stoves will prevent me from lighting it even if I can find it. I shall perhaps make do with vin rosé, warm and undrinkable, or water. Maurice has foreseen everything. He says, “We must preserve the water, in case . . .” I

know what he means, though neither of us has yet. admitted his fear that the spring of fresh water may be foul. We have of course ignored the first rule of le camping: to make sure of the water supply. Never mind. There is nothing to be done about it now. We cannot escape from this enclosed and beautiful bay tonight. Tomorrow will be time enough to consider such problems. At present we are hoping to sleep.

15

A NEW day. No doubt it will be hot later, but for the moment it is cool and delicious. I have been looking out of the rock crevice and am delighted to find that the bay is as beautiful as we have been saying so determinedly. The sun has risen behind The cliffs, so that the sand is still in shadow, but the waves, where they break, are touched with brilliance, a long moving crescent of brilliance.

There is a scalloping of sea wrack and little pieces of what seems to be charcoal marking the point where the tide has reached during the dark hours, and by a curious chance our rocks stand midway between two swags of this uneven high-water line.

Though we slept well, there was a period when the wind drove veils of sand into the rock crevice and later, about one o’clock, when for an hour we believed ourselves threatened by the sea. We sat up, waiting to be drowned and too tired to protest, but the waves went back again. During that hour I had time to learn that a pneumatic mattress just sufficiently inflated to support the distributed weight of a body at full length is insufficiently inflated to support the same body balanced on its rumps. Sitting, it was as if I were on whatever was underneath the mattress — in this case, rock. We slept again when the tide went back.

In the cool of the morning, we made and ate our breakfast — coffee, porridge (which Maurice calls “Quakaire”), bread and butter glistening with sand granules. The American stove, fearlessly operated by Maurice, worked like magic. “Quakaire" used up a lot of water, and our emergency supplies were almost gone. So I scaled the cliff face, armed with a canvas bucket, to get at that spring. Where the tumbling line of greenery suddenly stops fifty feet above the beach, there proved to be a shelf, hidden by the bamboos which grow round the edge of it. In the middle of the shelf is a pool which fills slowly with water that comes trickling down from above. Someone had stuck a section of bamboo leaf into the clayey substance of the cliff in such a manner that water flows along the leaf and spills over the point of it in a pipettethin stream. A foot or so below the leaf the same person had also stuck a couple of bamboo twigs horizontally into the clay as a support for his rusty mug. This was someone who had reached the shelf before me. He was an old Moor and he must have been there for some little while because already he had had time to wash out a ragged-looking coat of military cut, a shirt, and a patchwork djellaba. These garments were hanging out to dry among the bamboos. He was now starting on the pantaloons. He had wetted them and laid them on a stone bordering the pool and was rhythmically stamping some of the dirt out of them. For soap he used a fleshy-looking plant that I had seen growing at the foot of the cliff. With each stamp he blew through his teeth, and he was as naked as a fish except for his turban. He greeted me very politely all the same and at once removed his mug so that I might fill our bucket. I did not actually manage to fill it, because it would take too long; moreover, I could see from the first inch that the water drawn from the leaf was almost as foul as the water in which the old man was washing his pantaloons. We exchanged details of personal history (he is an old soldier, for example, Classe 1914). and he said that the water was good to drink but should be passed through a cloth to filter off the impurities, “Thus,” he said, demonstrating with the tail of his turban. He had finished the pantaloons and begun on a tiny djellaba by now.

“Thank you,” I said, and then pointed to the djellaba. “Your son’s?“

“No.” He sighed and looked down at the wrinkled ravages of time, adding bitterly: “My wife is no good.”

I told him how sorry I was and he said that that was the way God had willed it and it was a bit late now.

“Nonsense,”I exclaimed. “Look at Abraham!

“Ibrahim was a prophet, he said with resignation, and returned to the question of water. It is good from the leaf. You can see. Look! Of course I am obliged to wash my turban in any case.”

A thickish red deposit now stained the turban tail. Strange. I had not expected it to be so red. Maurice believes that boiling removes all impurities from water. He adds that in boiling water for tea the Chinese rule is that the water bubbles should not exceed the size of shrimps’ eyes. But I was not sure, looking at this water, if shrimps’ eyes would prove to be big enough.

I thanked the old man and clambered down again to the beach with the bucket. I was thinking: “If we filter it and leave it standing, filter it again, boil and reboil, perhaps by lunchtime . . .”

We lazed in the sun and bathed. The sea was ice-cold. When the day grew hotter we lazed in the shadow of our rocks and bathed again. A party of Moorish women appeared, picking their way round the promontory. They seemed elaborately dressed for beach strollers, and as they came nearer we could see that none except the biggest, whose gait suggested an old woman, wore a veil. They seemed not to notice us as they settled themselves down twenty yards away and undressed. It was a confusing performance. They had so many garments, all shapeless, so many bits and piece’s, so many bells and clips and etceteras. One of the girls proved to be wearing a brassière and nylon panties under all her finery, and a good many bracelets—gold. The other two young ones just wrapped a length of cloth round their hips leaving their breasts bare — big, swelling, Gauguin breasts. They all gave their clothes to the old woman, who sat guarding them. If the girls had been European I would have put their ages at between twenty and twenty-five; Moors, they were probably a good deal younger.

Then they bathed. They ran the three of them to the edge of the sea, hand in hand, squeaking, tossed their heads, turned, slapped each other playfully, scampered back, pretended to trip, actually fell, were slightly wetted by a wave, screamed again and were wetted again, clung together for protection, and did not so much as glance our way except to make sure that we were watching. Of course we were watching.

“They are little virgins,” Maurice said. “And that must be their nurse.” He said “nurse” in English, pronouncing it as if it were spelled neeurse.

I agreed. “They are little Gauguin virgins.”

Then suddenly the nurse started screaming. The girls glanced round with the most convincing anxiety and saw for the first time, as indeed did we, two shaven Moorish heads peering from behind a rock — shaven heads and mustaches. The three girls promptly closed into a circle, their arms round each others necks, and knelt quite silent in the surf. Someone’s left breast was peeping out from under her arm but it was quickly thumbed back into hiding. Three fuzzy heads, three backs, three square behinds. One of the shaven-heads whistled. The girls quivered, screamed in unison (who knew which of them had been marked by Fate, after all?), the Moors laughed, and the nurse came shrieking as fast as her legs could carry her to throw a hāik, as a fisherman easts his net, over all that shrinking flesh. Now only the three behinds were visible. It was a very moving spectacle. Another Moor had meantime come up, rather grand in a djellaba with a poniard slung under his left armpit. I cannot imagine where he had come from. He said something to the old woman which impressed her. Then he waved to the shaven-heads, who hid themselves behind their rock again. To us he gave a cold, warning glance and stalked away. The old woman collected her charges’ clothes together and they all waddled off down the beach. We saw the grand Moor speak to them again and a wrangle ensue, but the man won. The girls’ spirit was broken, evidently.

“Do you think they aren’t virgins after all?” I suggested to Maurice. “And that that man is the one who collects the takings?”

We could only guess at the truth. Nor did the final episode reveal it to us. Furtively the girls came hack and addressed us through the layers of clothing and veils and belts they had again assumed. The grand Moor had gone—or if he had not altogether gone, he was in hiding. They told us that he claimed to be an official, a policeman, and had said to them, “Defendu!” What was forbidden? None of us knew.

“Yallah!” the old woman said to her charges, “Come! Men are animals of ravishment and lust.”

16

BEFORE inflating our mattresses last night — the second we have spent in this rock crevice — we built a little wall of sand and sea-smooth stones round the entrance. This was to keep out the sea, and this morning we were gratified to find that it had worked perfectly in the sense that it had been merely licked with foam and had stood solid. Moreover we slept perfectly too. The tide had come up even further than on the previous night, and with considerable energy too, but we owe our deliverance really to the fact that for some reason it had attacked the section of beach in front of us too fiercely to succeed. The force of the waves had driven up a bank of sand they could not surmount. Further along the bay the comparatively gentle slope has been overrun by the tide to a point much further inshore. We have congratulated ourselves on this.

On the other hand the paraffin-vapor stove does not work any more. So we have had to use twigs and dried bamboo-shoots lying about at the foot of the cliffs. Though much safer in my view, it is less satisfactory than a stove that works, and it makes a great deal of smoke in the rock crevice. I have decided that the water from the pool is fit only for shaving with. This means that we must get drinking water from the town. Safi is two or three kilometers away, but we shall need cigarettes too because some fishermen turned up yesterday afternoon and, seeing a packet lying beside us, asked for some. If the positions had been reversed and thov had owned the packet and we had asked for cigarettes, they would automatically have given us as many as they had. Moors are astonishingly generous in this sort of way. So we have no right to be surprised or annoyed that they left us with but one each.

It is very hot again. If you look up to the clifftops you can see the gray veil of the Sherghi flying westwards to drown in the Atlantic. At sundown the Sherghi takes a rest; the hot air rises from the poor parched lands, and then the wind from the sea comes roaring in to fill the vacuum. Nature is sometimes very cruel.

By late afternoon I knew that I had had enough of our rock crevice, I had spent most of the day in it because it is really too hot to remain in the sun. Maurice had found a protected section of rock on which he was able to stretch himself out to sleep or read. He appeared quite content. But all our water had gone now. I read a little, tried to write but found that I couldn’t concentrate, and put the notebook down again. I bathed, of course, but the sand burns the feet, and the waters of the Atlantic are cold as a winter douche, and there seems to be no moderation in our present lives. So about six, when the crudest part of the day had passed, I suggested we struggle back to Marrakesh. Sherghi or no Sherghi, I wished to go home.

The journey back to Marrakesh was abominable. The autocar was crowded, and someone had loaded a sack of fish on the roof which dribbled its juices down the windows and smelled very bad. The heat was still such that the petrol was continually drying up to the point of complete evaporation in the feed, so that the driver had to stop and bind wet rags round it. But we arrived back; and except for a note, apparently in French, from someone whose signature I cannot clearly read, I am again without worries.

17

THE first batches of tourists have started to arrive now that the summer is passing. Quite a lot of Moors I am acquainted with, and had always supposed to be either out of work or else gentlemen of leisure, have suddenly turned out in very spruce new djellabas or else American-style shirts and gabardine pants. They prove to be “guides” when the season is open.

The tourists come and take a look at the Djema’a el-Fna and the Koutoubia and all obvious sights, and today I saw a file of them mount on camels and start out from the Wagon-lits/Cooks office for a lour of the ramparts, conducted by very convincing sheiks. They do not much disturb our lives, on present form: they only want to look and go away again, with sections ticked off in the margins of their guidebooks. Sidi Haroon, the friend of Idrees the real-estate agent, tells me that the American tourists are the best, and that he wishes all tourists were Americans.

“Because they are richer?” I asked.

“They are richer, yes. But they are better, too: because the others who are not American do not speak to me; and if they do speak to me and give me felūs, they drop it into my hand from above, in this manner . . .” and he mimed a man embarrassed into almsgiving. “Do they not know that almsgiving is blessed and a duty, and that kind speech and pardon are better than almsgiving followed by annoyance? What sort of kafir are such men that they do not even know this?”

“Bite them on the leg,” I counseled him.

“I would like, sometimes.”

“There will be many Americans later, perhaps,” I said to comfort him. I think that what he says is true: Americans — and, from a sense of national pride, I must add also British sailors — are less embarrassed by freaks of nature than other people.

Haroon’s eyes shone with anticipation. “Yes. Insha’Allah there will be many Americans.” Then they clouded over again. “Do you think that if I wore new clothes they would wish me for a guide? This djellaba is become a little old, yak?" He was busy refitting a triangular rent into position, but it gaped open again as soon as he let it go. The poor little djellaba was disgracefully shabby and old.

“Don’t waste new clothes on tourists, Haroon. Save the new clothes for the ‘Aid el-Kebīr“ The mutton feast will be fairly soon now. New clothes will be very important then.

“But I have none for the ‘Aid el-Kebīr,”he murmured sadly.

A very good friend of mine, an Englishman, has written telling me he will soon be visiting Marrakesh. I have fixed him up in the Hotel Mamounia for the two days he will be able to spend here.

I wonder what he will think of Marrakesh.

18

I WAS at the station to meet the midday train today but Cato was not on it. Nīmero six, the porter who had carried my suitcase for me the last time I was on this platform, saw and recognized me at once.

“ Tiens! C’est l’. Américain!”

I laughed and said that I wasn’t American at all but that I probably was the person he thought he knew. Then he said that directly all the passengers had gone — the usual breath-taking rush for the exit was in progress — we should go together to a bistro and drink an anisette. I tried to say no but failed under his determination, so we had our drink and then he insisted that we feed together at a little stall a Moor had set up near the station. The next possible train was not due till evening, so I had plenty of time in hand.

After lunch I left Nīmero six and went back to the city, rather despondently, calling in at the Mamounia in case the hotel had news of Cato. They had. In fact he had already arrived by air. He had left a message for me: he had gone to Maurice’s, where I was staying temporarily, and would be waiting for me there, if I were not in.

So it did not surprise me to find an empty taxibaby waiting outside our walls. I questioned the driver. He said yes, it was an English milord, like a pasha. “He holds his stick in this manner, his head held thus, his lips smiling and saying salām ‘aleykum to the people.” He was evidently impressed by Cato.

A taxi-baby is a very small three-wheeled taxi, powered by a motorcycle engine, with a toadstool for the driver to sit on and a minute double seat behind. Taxi-babies stop at nothing and go anywhere that a mule can. I made hurriedly for the pavilion but Maurice’s major-domo stopped me on the way. “ Ta camarade est dans la chambre,‘ he said, so I turned down towards the cottage instead. Cato was sitting on the bed with my journal on his knees and another folder beside him.

“Cato!”

“Well, well, well! I came by air. I hate flying! Dull and dangerous! Didn’t you get my telegram? Haven’t you been to the telegraph office? I suppose you wonder how I found your house — well, I simply asked at the Mamounia for Monsieur le Chinois and they told me at once. I’ve been here hours — hours. Anyhow, never mind. I’ve got taxi-baby waiting — isn’t it nice? — and I thought I’d take you out for some culture while the daylight still lasts — I’ve read it all up — Guide JUeu, Michelin, a man called Major Something, Budgett Meakin, Augustin Bernard, Edith Wharton, a Frenchman who came in a caravan, Walter Harris — all of them. Culture seems to be very easy here and of course you haven’t seen a thing, have you? All this time and not a thing! However, no matter, I shall have the pleasure of telling you all about it. How are you? You look well. I like your cottage

— and the pavilion — I’ve seen everything — an Arab as big and noble as a horse showed me round and I caught sight of Monsieur le Chinois but he hid himself away and quite right too. Why should he wish to meet me? Now tell me your news quickly, because we really ought to be going. Or you could tell me as we drive along in taxi-baby. I very much like driving in taxi-baby — did you notice that I made it take its hood down? And we’ll talk about this” — he patted the typescript

— “later. Very interesting.”

I said, “I didn’t want you to read that.

“And why not?”

“It’s just a journal — a personal journal.”

He looked at me in surprise. “And what do you expect me to do, sitting here all this time with nothing but a guidebook I already know by heart? Would you like to examine me on it — the guidebook, I mean?”

I looked unhappily at the manuscript. Whatever else could be said about it, I knew that it could not please Cato. “Let’s put it away, shall we, and go out for some culture?” I took the journal from him, but he reached for it again.

“Yes, of course. The journal,” he said. “Hm-m. Full of . . . do you know, Peter, I don’t find a single word about the French? I suggest you infuse them into the text from the beginning. However, that’s easily done.”

“I don’t see why —”

“Good heavens! Weren’t you planning to?”

“I don’t think so. This isn’t a journalist’s journal.”

“But the French are the most important thing that has happened to Morocco since the seventeenth century!”

“Of course, but —”

“Well, then?”

I tried to explain. “Naturally France is important here. She’s like the engine of a car. You go driving and you lake the engine for granted. You only start thinking about it if it works badly, plugs missing and big ends going, and so on. But the mechanics of my life here go so smoothly that I’m not even conscious that it’s a French Protectorate, except to be thankful to France for having pacified the country and made it possible for me to lve here at all. I don’t come into contact with the administrators or . . .”

“Or Moroccan nationalists?” Cato interrupted.

“I don’t think I know any — of the sort you mean. Though I suppose everyone, no matter what his country, is a nationalist by instinct.”

“Hm-m,” Cato said, “I still can’t see how you can pretend to live quite untouched by politics.”

“Well, if you insist, I daresay the Pasha’s police can be dragged in under the heading — and the municipal refuse-men; I just live a back-street life here, and the back-street horizon isn’t as far off as a state, or even a district, frontier. Our horizon’s the city ramparts and perhaps just far enough beyond them to sniff the air. Of course nationalism is important, but I’ve been through other people’s nationalism before — years ago, in India; and let’s face it, nationalists are apt to be bores. As private individuals, I mean. It’s like other people in love. Bores, I can quite understand the need for freedom, or the need for love as far as that goes, and I want to be free myself—I feel that I am free, and I’m in love with this place — boringly, no doubt. But you know, in spite of the newspapers the great majority of the Moors worry more about living than about concepts of government.”

“Of course you’re right. Let’s go! Taxi-baby*s waiting.”

We went. The Koutoubia, the Mosque of Yacoub el-Mansour, the tombs of the Saadian sultans, the Minara, the Thursday Market outside the Thursday Gate (the Bab el-Khemis), discreet glimpses of the shrines of Sidi bel Abbès and Sidi ben Sliman, the Bahia, the Medersa Ben Youssef, Dar Si Said, El-Bedi, and finally a breathless circuit of the ramparts in taxi-baby, finishing up at the Aguedal. Cato was enchanted.

“Wonderful, wonderful! And you mean to admit it is I who must tell you all about these wonderful places? ”

What could I say? They are part of the background that influences the people of Marrakesh who in turn influence me, and I am happy to be here surrounded by this magical past that is really the present too. There was no need to say anything, however, because Cato was talking again.

“But the Moors went wrong in the seventeenth century, didn’t they — here in Marrakesh in any case? Look at the Saadian tombs the guidebooks get so excited about! Marble, stucco worked as if it were filigree, overdecorated columns. That sort of thing was so much better done elsewhere, in India, Italy. Here it is as it would inevitably be if some Victorian craftsman had reinvented the style. It seems to me that luxury and airy grace are foreign to the Moroccan genius. The Moors need simplicity, space, and bigness to show their quality. Look at the ruins of El-Bedi! The same period too. But when it was built and before Moulay Ismail destroyed it out of spite and took away all the marble and chiseled ornament, it was probably just like the Saadian tombs but on a bigger scale. Now, with nothing left but the ground plan and crumbling masonry, you can see what I mean about the Moroccan genius for using space as an architectural element.”

I agreed wholeheartedly. I dislike the Saadian tombs, which beside the Diwan-i-Khas in the old fort of Delhi would seem like store suits beside a Paris couturier’s models. Cato hadn’t finished.

“Look at the Koutoubia! Look at the mosque and minaret of Yacoub el-Mansour! Both twelfthcentury and both monuments to the Almohade dynasty. There’s the sort of splendor that reflects the true spirit of the Moors! From what I have heard, Moulay Ismail recaptured it in Meknès in the seventeenth century, but with a new emphasis.”

The minaret of Yacoub el-Mansour. It is the minaret I had seen and coupled with the beauty of the Koutoubia the first day I came here. it was nice to have one’s purely instinctive judgment supported by a specialist.

“You will dine with me,” Cato ordered, “and after dinner you will take me to the Djema’a el-Fna.

I wish I were staying longer, but I can’t. And I want to say one thing more about the journal. You’re being unfair. It isn’t Marrakesh you are recording — it’s only a tiny interior part of it. You give a completely lopsided view.”

“I live a completely lopsided life, perhaps. But that’s the way I live it.”

Cato laughed. “Then I’ve no more to say.”

Cato has gone, leaving me with three guidebooks and a list someone in France had given him of the “ten people in Marrakesh worth meeting,” None of my friends appears in it. Am I missing something?

(The End)