One is told that in cities like Fez and Marrakech
the Hebrew quarter conceals flowery patios and gilded
rooms with the heavy European furniture that rich
Jews delight in. Perhaps even in the Mellah
of Sefrou, among the ragged figures shuffling past
us, there were some few with bags of gold in their
walls and rich stuffs hid away in painted coffers,
but for patios and flowers and daylight there seemed
no room in the dark bolgia they inhabit.
No wonder the babies of the Moroccan ghettos are nursed
on date-brandy, and their elders doze away to death
under its consoling spell.
THE LAST GLIMPSE
It is well to bid good-by to Fez at night—a
moonlight night for choice.
Then, after dining at the Arab inn of Fez Eldjid—where
it might be inconvenient to lodge, but where it is
extremely pleasant to eat kouskous under a
grape-trellis in a tiled and fountained patio—this
pleasure over, one may set out on foot and stray down
the lanes toward Fez Elbali.
Not long ago the gates between the different quarters
of the city used to be locked every night at nine
o’clock, and the merchant who went out to dine
in another part of the town had to lodge with his host.
Now this custom has been given up, and one may roam
about untroubled through the old quarters, grown as
silent as the grave after the intense life of the
bazaars has ceased at nightfall.
Nobody is in the streets wandering from ghostly passage
to passage, one hears no step but that of the watchman
with staff and lantern. Presently there appears,
far off, a light like a low-flying firefly, as it comes
nearer, it is seen to proceed from the Mellah
lamp of open-work brass that a servant carries ahead
of two merchants on their way home from Elbali.
The merchants are grave men, they move softly and slowly
on their fat slippered feet, pausing from time to
time in confidential talk. At last they stop
before a house wall with a low blue door barred by
heavy hasps of iron. The servant lifts the lamp
and knocks. There is a long delay, then, with
infinite caution, the door is opened a few inches,
and another lifted light shines faintly on lustrous
tiled walls, and on the face of a woman slave who
quickly veils herself. Evidently the master is
a man of standing, and the house well guarded.
The two merchants touch each other on the right shoulder,
one of them passes in, and his friend goes on through
the moonlight, his servant’s lantern dancing
ahead.
But here we are in an open space looking down one
of the descents to El Attarine. A misty radiance
washes the tall houses, the garden-walls, the archways,
even the moonlight does not whiten Fez, but only turns
its gray to tarnished silver. Overhead in a tower
window a single light twinkles: women’s
voices rise and fall on the roofs. In a rich man’s
doorway slaves are sleeping, huddled on the tiles.
A cock crows from somebody’s dunghill, a skeleton
dog prowls by for garbage.
