Fez: A Medieval Maize

On the bus from Chefchaouen to Fez I meet two Americans (Bill and Laura) and we decide to share a room once we get to Fez. We arrive at Fez in the middle of the night and check into a dusty little hostel in the heart of Fez-el-Bali (the medina). I shower and attempt to fall asleep on a rickety bed with no pillows. Bill is saying something about how Fez is famous for tanneries and how the adarga (leather battle shields) originated in Fez. In my semi-conscious state of half-sleep I think about my own leather shields -- layers over layers built from life in the gilded cage of big Indian and American cities. I think about how strange it is to share sleep (an incredibly private activity) with a group of complete strangers and conclude that herein lies the goal of travel: to discard the many layers until the shield is wholly removed. Only then will one experience the world as it is and be able to enjoy the raw intimacy of sleep with strangers.

Fez is an assault on all five senses all at once. I step out of my hostel room and am engulfed in a swirl of noises, smells, faces. There are over 9,000 zigzagging streets in this 1,200 year old medieval city and one has no choice but to get lost many times over. I walk into a berber pharmacy and am made to smell musk, amber, saffron (“the red god, come smell, the king of spices”) and argon. The portly man at the counter tells me to sniff one spice which is a concoction of 42 spices. He calls it The Elixir because it cures “asthma, snoring, lower back pain, mental problems” and is also an aphrodisiac! When I look at him incredulously he points to a small tortoise in the room and says “ see how health he look, he take all 42 spices and live over 100 years.”

I walk away in a dizzy spell and stumble into a 14th century mederesa (religious college) and strike up a conversation with a wisp-bearded, djellaba-robed member of the clergy who enlightens me on the significance of the number 5. There are five pillars of Islam, people pray five times a day, the city has five concentric rings (religious center, souks, residential areas, walls and gardens) and there are five societal institutions (mosque, school, public fountain, communal oven, hammam). Black smoke billows from a ceramic shop in the distance as I walk into a tannery, the air rancid with the smell of pigeon excrement emanating from ancient vats. I follow a scrofulous cavalcade of donkeys (the only method of transportation in the walled city) and am invited by an old berber lady who calls me into her house for lunch. To my surprise I see Bill and Laura and a couple of other tourists inside a cavernous little room eating from a large bowl of couscous. I am invited to join and partake in an age-old tradition of ritualistic, communal eating.

The evening is spent in the frenzied maze of many little streets. I see a water clock and try to figure out how it works and learn that in late 07, Fez celebrates the 800 th birthday of Rumi at its annual world music festival.

There are few spaces in the world that remain untouched by the march of modernity. The medina of Fez is one such space. It is in this city that I felt my frenzied DC life begin to fade away and it is here that I began to remove my leather shield making it easier to throw myself into new travel experiences without restraint.