Fez - MOROCCO

SATURDAY 5TH DECEMBER 1998

The filthy pit toilet was not welcoming first sight this morning, but the warm shower was a pleasant relief! The noise of the street beckoned early and it wasn't long before we dared to enter its depths, although our first journey took us through the tranquil Bou Jeloud gardens, adorned with fountains, running water, and shady trees. Each seat was taken by a local, from various walks of life, both the rich and the poor sat side by side contemplating the day and their lives. Small children would often surround us smiling, laughing, and speaking in French. I wish I owned a T-shirt which said "No Dirhams on demand". The crumbling ochre-toned walls towered around us and I recall passing a number of gates and port-holes that unfortunately smelled more pungent than the rotting decay of a cesspit. Not a single public toilet can be found and in this mixed-up, jumbled mess of housing it was easy to understand why the locals would be forced to use alternatives. Unfortunately this is part of what's ruining the city and not an hour will pass without having to hold your breath.

We entered Fes el-Jdid from the gardens. It is a kind of additional medina but perhaps filled with more local shoppers rather than tourists. The main street is full of stores selling a multitude of western products, like clothes, shoes, and toiletries. The tweed-suit man jumped out of an alley and began to talk to us in that slow, condescending tone. "Remember me? Perhaps you need some help". He reminded me of one of those slimy snakes in Marrakesh, slowly flickering their tongues, awaiting their next easy prey. If you ignore them for long enough eventually they'll go away.

The markets ended abruptly and the masses of people, motorbikes and donkeys were sprawled onto the street. To the right led the road to the Ville Nouveau. Halfway down, past many shop windows selling plastic buckets, stood the guarded golden gates of the palace, surrounded by high walls and a water garden.

The new city is much the same as any other in Morocco, with wide tree-lines boulevards, glassed shop-fronts and offices, and men and women decked in western designer fashion. Whilst there we plied the streets for camera shops in the hope of fixing the old one or buying a new one. An hour later we succumbed to the plastic disposable variety, which should do the trick until we reach a tax-haven like Gibraltar or Andorra - fine hosts to mass duty-free electrical sales.

To gain a better perspective of this mixed jumble called Fez we walked around the old Kasbah and up a hill, passing a corrugated iron shanty town, off in a gully to the side, and some low-key white-washed housing. The city sprawls out below you and it's easy to make out the new town and the two medinas. There are literally thousands of intricately woven streets below and nothing is comparable to the size of Fes' medina. The guide book states that on one count the number of streets and alleys totalled just under ten thousand. It's easy to see how you can get so lost.

After such a sight the long walk back to the medina intensified all my fears and wonders about its labyrinth. We were only bothered by two false guides at the gates, who were easy to blow off.

This afternoon we were going to see it all - the stalls of meat, vegetables, spices, carpets, clothing, slippers, tourist kitsch etc, as well as a treasure trove of other monuments such as mosques and medersas. An 19th century Italian diplomat, Edmondo De Amicis summed up the essence of Fez el-Bali in a manner that I'm not able to match.

"The first impression is that of an immense city fallen into decrepitude and slowly decaying. Tall houses, which seemed formed of houses piled one upon the other, all falling to pieces, cracked from roof to base, propped up on every side, with no opening save some loophole in the shape of a cross; long stretches of street, flanked by two high bare walls like the walls of a fortress; streets running uphill and down, encumbered with stones and the ruins of fallen buildings, twisting and turning at every thirty paces; every now and then a long covered passage, dark as a cellar, where you have to feel your way; blind alleys, recesses, dens full of bones, dead animals, an heaps of putrid matter; the whole steeped in a dim and melancholy twilight. In some places the ground is so broken, the dust so thick, the smell so horrible, the flies so numerous, that we have to stop to take breath.

"In half an hour we have made so many turns that if our road could be drawn it would form an arabesque as intricate as any in the Alhambra. Here and there we hear the noise of a mill, a murmur of water, the click of a weaver's loom, a chanting of nasal voices, which we are told come from a school of children, but we see nothing... We approach the centre of the city; people become more numerous; the men stop to let us pass, and stare astonished; the women turn back, or hide themselves; the children scream and run; the larger boys growl and shake their fists at a distance... We see fountains richly ornamented with mosaics, arabesque doors, arched courts... We come to one of the principal streets, about six feet wide, and full of people who crowd about us... There are a thousand eyes upon us; we can scarcely breathe in the press and the heat, and move slowly on, stopping every moment to give passage to a Moor on horseback, or a veiled lady on a camel, or an ass with a load of bleeding sheep's heads.

"To the right and left are crowded bazaars; inn courtyards encumbered with merchandise; doors of mosques through which we catch a glimpse of arcades and figures prostrate in prayer... The air is impregnated with an acute and mingled odour of aloes, spices, incense and kif; we seem to be walking in an immense drug-shop... We cross, jostled by the crowd, the cloth bazaar, that of slippers, that of earthenware, that of metal ornaments, which altogether form a labyrinth of alleys roofed with canes and branches of trees..."

Remarkably not much has changed over the last century except that the streets are somewhat cleaner, the buildings are slowly undergoing repairs, and now the children run towards, rather than away from you.

Each of Morocco's imperial cities have a staggering amount of individuality considering that their layouts are so alike. Fez is so special because its medina and bazaar stretch a good two kilometres and additionally it encloses a treasure-trove of monuments. These include the mosques and medersas which you come across by sheer chance, whilst losing yourself in the labyrinth of the town's narrow and twisting streets. Although what Fez lacks is the magnificent draw-card of a square. It is Marrakesh's square that adds dimension and interest to it's souq. A plethora of events occur on the square, nothing is comparable, and it's this vibrant centre that gives Marrakesh a special kind of atmosphere.

The monuments we visited included the medersa Bou Inania, considered to be the finest of theological colleges built by the Merenids. It's central square is adorned with beautiful Arabic plasterwork, tiles, and intricately carved woodwork. As you stroll around its confines on one side passed a branch of the river Fes, a kind of barrier from the world of Islam. On its opposite bank stands a magnificent prayer hall where the Muslims would pray towards Mecca after washing themselves by the fountain. A string of open arches ran across the wall, allowing you a vision into the Muslim world. The silence in the medersa is amazing and as soon as we exited its heavy wooden doorway we were thrown back to the lions waiting in the narrow and bustling alleys outside.

Although the most wondrous structure of all is the Kairaouine mosque and university. This massive piece of architecture lies right in the heart of the medina, framed by a Pandora's box of narrow and twisting streets. As we followed its walls to catch a glimpse of its magical glistening interior we were thrown into a dark and covered alleyway whose darkness was so blinding that we almost had to feel our way out. Once we emerged into the light a tiled arch entrance allowed us a quick glimpse of the mosque full of hundreds in prayer. Apparently its capacity is twenty thousand and it's hard to believe that it's really here as from the outside it's so boxed in by crumbling rows of housing and stalls. The university is a marvel in itself, being one of the oldest in the world, and housing the world's second most highly regarded centres of Muslim religious studies. This area is home to carts of nougat traders and I highly recommend a tasting.

Another highlight included passing through the brass-ware stalls and seeing the brass-makers at work in their tiny dens, where often a shining gold teapot would glisten in the light from the fire. With the glints of shining gold came the press of watchful beady eyes and then the feeling of being on a never-ending stage, constantly entertaining an audience of peasants and the struggling lower classes of society.

Darkness fell slowly across the medina. The rier we were trying to find was hidden by a crumbling high-walled bridge, strewn with the litter of one hundred years and the pungent smell of urine. A horrible old man emerged from a dark corner and use a hole in the wall as a local toilet. God help us if we bathe in the filthy waters from the river.

Indeed every step and new twisting corner offers a vibrant vision of the lives of the populous from the young children begging in the streets to the horrible old and scabby women, men, and donkeys that often press you against the walls as they pass. After a few minutes rest in the haven of our hotel room we emerged into the theme park and began our search for open and clean restaurants. Like Sundays in Britain, the Muslim world declares itself closed at 9pm and hardly another soul can be found in the depths of the medina, except for stall owners closing for the evening and the odd group of youngsters playing football in the narrow alleyways. We allowed a tout outside the hotel to show us to his "so called" family restaurant, which was an intricately tiled mosque turned restaurant. The menu was pretty pricey, not a soul was there, and the little grease-ball kept hounding us to "sit down" or to find out "exactly how much we wanted to spend". After nearly two weeks of being pushed across a line Dave burst out in his loudest voice "Stop badgering me! We do not want to eat here!", which echoed through the dome high above. After a speedy exit we returned to out hotel and one of the seedy street restaurants next door. even a group of hungry and mangy cats descended on the tables around, all meowing to their hearts content for that small morsel of food. Yet again we ran into a group of Americans who we had seen twice today in the medina. You know you are one of few tourists when you run into people twice in the Fes medina! The tagine from the restaurant turned out to be a tasty meal, which thankfully didn't repeat on either of us.