III
FEZ
I
THE FIRST VISION
Many-walled Fez rose up before us out of the plain toward the end of the
day.
The walls and towers we saw were those of the upper town, Fez Eldjid
(the New), which lies on the edge of the plateau and hides from view Old
Fez tumbling down below it into the ravine of the Oued Fez. Thus
approached, the city presents to view only a long line of ramparts and
fortresses, merging into the wide, tawny plain and framed in barren
mountains. Not a house is visible outside the walls, except, at a
respectful distance, the few unobtrusive buildings of the European
colony, and not a village breaks the desolation of the landscape.
As we drew nearer, the walls towered close over us, and skirting them we
came to a bare space outside a great horseshoe gate, and found
ourselves suddenly in the foreground of a picture by Carpaccio or
Bellini. Where else had one seen just those rows of white-turbaned
majestic figures, squatting in the dust under lofty walls, all the pale
faces ringed in curling beards turned to the story-teller in the centre
of the group? Transform the story-teller into a rapt young Venetian, and
you have the audience and the foreground of Carpaccio's "Preaching of
St. Stephen," even to the camels craning inquisitive necks above the
turbans. Every step of the way in North Africa corroborates the close
observation of the early travellers, whether painters or narrators, and
shows the unchanged character of the Oriental life that the Venetians
pictured, and Leo Africanus and Windus and Charles Cochelet described.
There was time, before sunset, to go up to the hill from which the
ruined tombs of the Merinid Sultans look down over the city they made
glorious. After the savage massacre of foreign residents in 1912 the
French encircled the heights commanding Fez with one of their admirably
engineered military roads, and in a few minutes our motor had climbed
to the point from which the great dynasty of artist-Sultans dreamed of
looking down forever on their capital.
Nothing endures in Islam, except what human inertia has left standing
and its own solidity has preserved from the elements. Or rather, nothing
remains intact, and nothing wholly perishes, but the architecture, like
all else, lingers on half-ruined and half-unchanged. The Merinid tombs,
however, are only hollow shells and broken walls, grown part of the
brown cliff they cling to. No one thinks of them save as an added touch
of picturesqueness where all is picturesque: they survive as the best
point from which to look down at Fez.
There it lies, outspread in golden light, roofs, terraces, and towers
sliding over the plain's edge in a rush dammed here and there by
barriers of cypress and ilex, but growing more precipitous as the ravine
of the Fez narrows downward with the fall of the river. It is as though
some powerful enchanter, after decreeing that the city should be hurled
into the depths, had been moved by its beauty, and with a wave of his
wand held it suspended above destruction.
At first the eye takes in only this impression of a great city over a
green abyss, then the complex scene begins to define itself. All around
are the outer lines of ramparts, walls beyond walls, their crenellations
climbing the heights, their angle fortresses dominating the precipices.
Almost on a level with us lies the upper city, the aristocratic Fez
Eldjid of painted palaces and gardens, then, as the houses close in and
descend more abruptly, terraces, minarets, domes, and long reed-thatched
roofs of the bazaars, all gather around the green-tiled tomb of Moulay
Idriss and the tower of the Almohad mosque of El Kairouiyin, which
adjoin each other in the depths of Fez, and form its central sanctuary.
From the Merinid hill we had noticed a long façade among the cypresses
and fruit-trees of Eldjid. This was Bou-Jeloud, the old summer-palace of
the Sultan's harem, now the house of the Resident-General, where
lodgings had been prepared for us.
The road descended again, crossing the Oued Fez by one of the fine old
single-arch bridges that mark the architectural link between Morocco
and Spain. We skirted high walls, wayside pools, and dripping
mill-wheels; then one of the city gates engulfed us, and we were in the
waste spaces of intramural Fez, formerly the lines of defense of a rich
and perpetually menaced city, now chiefly used for refuse-heaps,
open-air fondaks, and dreaming-places for rows of Lazaruses rolled in
their cerements in the dust.
Through another gate and more walls we came to an arch in the inner line
of defense. Beyond that, the motor paused before a green door, where a
Cadi in a silken caftan received us. Across squares of orange-trees
divided by running water we were led to an arcaded apartment hung with
Moroccan embroideries and lined with wide divans; the hall of reception
of the Resident-General. Through its arches were other tiled distances,
fountains, arcades, beyond, in greener depths, the bright blossoms of a
flower-garden. Such was our first sight of Bou-Jeloud, once the
summer-palace of the wives of Moulay Hafid.
Upstairs, from a room walled and ceiled with cedar, and decorated with
the bold rose-pink embroideries of Salé and the intricate old
needlework of Fez, I looked out over the upper city toward the mauve and
tawny mountains.
Just below the window the flat roofs of a group of little houses
descended like the steps of an irregular staircase. Between them rose a
few cypresses and a green minaret, out of the court of one house an
ancient fig-tree thrust its twisted arms. The sun had set, and one after
another bright figures appeared on the roofs. The children came first,
hung with silver amulets and amber beads, and pursued by negresses in
striped turbans, who bustled up with rugs and matting, then the mothers
followed more indolently, released from their ashy mufflings and
showing, under their light veils, long earrings from the _Mellah_[A] and
caftans of pale green or peach color.
[Footnote A: The Ghetto in African towns. All the jewellers in Morocco
are Jews.]
The houses were humble ones, such as grow up in the cracks of a wealthy
quarter, and their inhabitants doubtless small folk, but in the
enchanted African twilight the terraces blossomed like gardens, and when
the moon rose and the muezzin called from the minaret, the domestic
squabbles and the shrill cries from roof to roof became part of a story
in Bagdad, overheard a thousand years ago by that arch-detective
Haroun-al-Raschid.
