Tuesday
6 November 2001
It was a most
wonderful moment when it started to rain in Moulay Idriss. Just a light sprinkle as we headed up the mountain but
turning into a pour just as we ducked into the little market before the shrine
where pilgrims buy candles.
The shrine of Moulay
Idriss the First was being renovated and the green and white zellige tiles on the floors and walls had been laid in place.
The town was getting ready for the annual moussem
during which people from the surrounding villages and further afield come
to pay homage to this great grandson of the Prophet Mohamed (PBUH) and to
simply enjoy themselves. Lots of
pretty little family-friendly restaurants, food stands and funadaq/fondouks
line the streets leading up to attractive the shrine with its distinctive
green-tiled pyramidal roof.
One hopes that by the
Mouloud in the month of Moharrem the parched fields around Moulay Idriss will
have drunk their fill of winter rains and will sway with tall grain with
bright red poppies mixed in. Right
now the people are suffering. It's
been three years. It's still
beautiful countryside beyond the walls of Meknes, but its beauty is severely
sculptured and geometric in many hues of silver, gray,
green and brown. Hemispherical
ochre hills are ringed with metallic-leafed olive trees laden with black
olives. Country roads are lined
with Agave cactus and prickly pears. The
landscape dips and folds bearing with it villages and people whose lives
certainly must be difficult, little changed from when I was last here,
although with better levels of health care and more village schools.
We arrived at the top
of one of the towns twin hills just at sunset to the sounds of the mu'adhin
calling people to prayer at the
mosque and shrine of Sidi Abdulkader El Hajjami, the barber of Moulay Idriss. We stopped to listen. Later
in the bus, our guide, Ishmael, chanted the 'adhin in his beautiful trained voice. Starting with Allahu
Akbar (God is Great), each of
the first four lines is repeated, while the final la
ilaha illa Allah (There is no God but God) stands alone.
Much to our
surprise and delight we discovered that two members of our group have had
fairly close contact with members of the royal family.
Stan Olivier, who
looks 50, was actually in Morocco in 1952 working in an Air Force
communications station in Rabat. At
the time he met not only the future King Mohamed V, who would soon be exiled
by the French, but also his father. In
fact, he played golf with the young Moulay Hassan who was just his age and
would reign 36 years as King Hassan II.
And as we discussed
the funeral of Hassan II on 25 July 1999 as we were driving down Avenue
Mohamed V our way to the mausoleum where both former kings are buried,
Hassan Samrhouni mentioned that he has been one of the pall bearers who
made the long hot trek in the midst of the worlds' heads of state and a
million weep and waiting mourners.
"How'd that
happen, Hassan?" we asked. Hassan
is a completely normal, unpresumptuous American of Moroccan descent who lives
in Virginia and runs Casablanca Travel and Tours, which set up the trip.
Well it seems that Hassan distinguished himself as a footballer with
the Widad Athletic Club (WAC) of Casablanca.
He was one of the earliest Moroccan immigrants to the Washington area
and is a pillar of that community, known to everyone at the Moroccan Embassy
and called n to welcome the stream of high-level visitors from Morocco to
Washington. He has also founded a new WAC, the local Washington Athletic
Club, and now has plans to turn a mobile exhibit to promote tourism in Morocco
into a vehicle of cultural understanding and Muslim-non-Muslim dialogue.
Hassan's account of
how he made it back to Morocco in time for not only the King's funeral, but
for his unexpected recruitment as pall bearer has moments of high comedy.
For example, as the heads of state were paying their respects at the
Royal Palace, Hassan arrived wearing his white jelleba
but having forgotten his red fez. Finally
when he realized that he would be in the spotlight so to speak, he pointed
forlornly to his bare head. Thanks
to Moulay Hichem, the brother of the new king, a red fez was quickly
"borrowed" from another mourner and popped onto Hassan's head.
The group is great and
I am getting my questions about life in the United States answered.
It's unlikely that I could find a more locally-rooted but
globally-oriented and well-informed group in one place in the U.S.
Wednesday
7 November 2001
Amy Fishburn
is Director of the Office of International Programs at Al Akhawayn
University is a most gracious woman. Ellen
Hunt had been in her Peace Corps morph and together they arranged for our tour
and meeting meeting with Al-Akhwayn Moroccan faculty and staff members who has
been associated with Peace Corps training.
We introduced ourselves round the table and several people connected
across the years and countries.
Today Amy and her
husband are building a 32-bed guesthouse and are deeply involved with
sustainable eco tourism, something not yet well-established in their area of
the Middle Atlas.
As for the university
itself, it is lovely and quite luxurious but one wishes it didn't have a
reputation for being a somewhat boring place.
One reason for this is that the faculty heads home to the cities on
weekends and Al Akhawayn still has the feel of a commuter school. In terms of its rural and urban Morocco's schizophrenia is
worsening. Thirty years ago a
city like Casa emptied during holiday periods as people went home to their
villages. Most of today's urban
professionals seem uncomfortable in villages and generally clueless about
rural development. Let's hope
that Al Akhawayn can reverse the pattern as more Americans enroll, as alumni
continue to stand out in the Casablanca job market start solving problems
closer to campus and as eco-tourism catches on.
Having enjoyed
ourselves a bit too long in Ifrane, our supremely capable and polite driver,
Mohamed, did his best to keep us on schedule and to avoid night driving on the
narrow and ever-hazardous mountain road that links Fez with Marrakesh.
Consequently, our stop
in Beni Mellal was very brief. Though
I taught there during my third year as a Peace Corps volunteer I have not been
back. Nor would I even be able to
find my way to my old school and home without considerable help.
In 1970, the sleepy town nestled against the mountains the edge of the
Tadla plain only came alive on Tuesdays, the day of the huge weekly market.
The souk was such a huge part of life that very few classes were
scheduled that day so that teacher and students alike could do their shopping,
join the halaqi (circles) of
itinerant musicians, and observe medical practices of the day.
These included tooth pullers, who laid their victims out on the ground
and whose growing pile of unrelated teeth made their experience known to the
general public. There was a row
of barbers in individual tents with mirrors and wooden chairs, incised their
customers' backs, placed shiny brass cones over the incisions and drew blood
using an ingenious suction method.
Today I don't know a soul who has seen a tooth-puller or a blood-letter
in many many years, much less in Beni Mellal, a metropolis of 140,000 citizens
from all over Morocco's heartland.
But when I mentioned
to the waiter who brought our café au lait that we were former Peace Corps
volunteers and that I had taught at Lycée Ibn Sina, Beni Mellal became a
village again. The customers at
near by tables started talking about the Americans who had lived among them
while the waiter went off to ask around the café to see if there was anyone
who'd been at Lycée Ibn Sina. He
succeeded and though the man was not from my time, he'd been taught English by
Mr. Pant, an Indian who introduced his colleagues to our first home made
curries and evidently stayed on some time after I left.
Thursday
8 November 2001
The group has gelled
very nicely - all while going off in different directions. There is a lot of story-telling in our brand new half-filled
35-seat coach expertly driven by Mohamed.
When someone has a story or an observation on changes he as observed,
he moved toward the front of the bus and takes the mike.
Doug has left us to
dash back to Rabat for a special visit to Parlement with Aziz, a
parliamentarian who hosted an event for us in Rabat. Today he took off before
dawn with David and Juanita for a quick little run partway up the Toubkal,
which he's climbed several times. Jim,
Steve and I, in turn, were offered a guided tour on historic preservation by
David Amster, who heads the American Language Center.
While the medival
medina of Fez is still a wonder to behold - particularly from one of the
fortresses that look down on the city - it has radically changed since my
first visit in 1968. At that
time, the city was still inhabited by its original inhabitants the Fassis. The Ville
Nouvelle was also growing as middle class families started to abandon their
centuries-old lifestyle, buying Renaults and Peugoets and moving to villas
where they could park them. Still
Fez was Fassi and a city that exuded affluence and material culture. In the very heart of Fez adjacent to the 9th
century Quariawiyn Mosque and the shrine of the city's founder Moulay Idrriss
II, hundreds of stalls in the kissaria
gleamed with luxury fabrics and handcrafts - silks and brocades from the world
over, diaphanous handwoven woolen cloth from Morocco, embroidered slippers,
red felt fezzes, trims and threads for tailors who turned out sumptuous jellebas
and kaftans. Walking out of
the medina up the main street, the Tala'a Sighira , you would find yourself
surrounded by well-heeled matrons carrying packages of fine goods, as if they
had just spent the afternoon shopping at Saks or Harrods.
This time it was very
different. Many
of the shops in the kissaria are
closed. Parked at the
entrances of the market are push carts with prickly pears - delicious fruit
but free those who go through the pain of harvesting it to earn a meager
income. And in front of the numerous shuttered shops of the Tala'a
Seghira, ambulatory merchants were selling plastic dishes and buckets, panty
hose (hung from the waist on clothesline) and cheap hairpieces in many shades
of blond.
As the Fassis have
drifted out of the medina and into the Ville and from the Ville to Casablanca,
Fez has become a city of country folk, where several
families may crowd into a stately home.
House prices are extremely low compared with Marrakesh and Essaouira,
cities where gentrification is underway and enjoys official blessing. Fez
houses are perhaps 15% the cost of similar places in Marrakesh or Essaouiria,
where some control of take over by non-Marrakeshis and non-Saouris may be
warranted. But attempts to
preserve Fez house by house makes a lot of sense, particularly since the
government and UNESCO are working to rehabilitate the city's decaying
infrastructure.
David Amster says that
a few Moroccan professionals have moved into old Fez houses with the intention
of fixing them up and hopes this trend will continue. Similarly, using restored houses as maisons d'hôte (bed-and-breakfasts) is starting to catch on and can
help a family recoup costs.
David's own approach
to house preservation is nothing less than perfectionist. Rather than sand doors and iron grillwork, he painstakingly
removes paint layer by layer so that the original decoration or patina is laid
bare. Similarly, he removes
colored concrete floor tiles (recycled to preserve the 20th century
architectural masterpieces of Casablanca) and recreates the original zellige
patterns. He is tremendously
well-informed on preservation opportunities and threats, as well as on little
known or as yet untried techniques. Best
of all, he is piloting approaches to community participation and cost-sharing
that deserve attention. It would
be good for FOM to pay attention to funding sources he may miss, particularly
with the new interest in and support for Islamic history and culture that is
coming from some quarters in the U.S. Already
he is raising small amounts of money locally and cooperating with UNESCO and
the Fes-Saiss Association to clean up and restore fountains and to rebuild the
small roofs protecting the woodwork of old shops. Best of all he raising awareness and hundreds of students of English and dozens of students of
Arabic in these efforts.
