Travels: Collected Writings, 1950-1993 Read online

  SEPTEMBER 10

  MOHAMMED LARBI is still fairly ill as a result of his experience in Alhucemas; his liver is not functioning properly, and he is trying to remedy it by doubling the amount of kif he smokes. The device is not working. It does, however, have one advantage: the stink of urine in the corridor is somewhat tempered by the overpowering but cleaner smell of burning kif, particularly if he leaves his door open, a habit I am trying to encourage. He lies in his room all day on the bed in an intense stupor, somewhere above the stratosphere, with the radio tuned constantly into either Cairo or Damascus. We cook breakfast and supper in my room, which gradually has come to look like a stall in any Moroccan joteya, with the most diverse objects covering every square foot of floor space. The only way I can get out of bed is to climb over the footboard and land in front of the lavabo. Each day several of the bright-eyed Riffian proprietresses come and look in happily, saying: “We don’t have to make up the room today, either?” The bed has never yet been made, and the floor never swept; I don’t want anyone in the room.

  This morning Mohammed Larbi’s sickness put him in mind of the time his stepmother tried to poison him. This is a favorite story of his which he recounts often and graphically. It seems to have been a traumatic experience for him, and this is scarcely surprising. As a result of it he walked out the door of his home and remained in hiding from his family for more than five years. It is merely incidental that during that time he married two former prostitutes; they were the only girls he knew personally. All others were potential poisoners. To him they still are; his fulmi-nations against human females are hair-raising.

  It appears that his mother left his father when the latter took a fourth wife, because although she had put up with the other two, she did not want to live in the house with the latest addition. So she packed up and went back to Tcharhanem where she had a little mud hut with nothing in it but a straw pallet and some earthenware pots. Mohammed Larbi stayed on with his father and the other wives. The new one, being the youngest, tried to get him into bed with her while his father was away from the house, and being a normally moral young man he indignantly refused. The girl was then overcome by fear that he might talk, and so she decided to get rid of him. Soon after, she pretended that something had gone wrong with the lunch, and that she would have to cook it again. It was half past four in the afternoon before she appeared with Mohammed Larbi’s food. She was counting, and correctly, on his being more than ordinarily hungry. However, while he was wolfing his meal he caught sight of a bit of thread sticking out of the meat in the middle of the tajine. He pulled on it to no avail, and finally bit into the meat. It was only then that it occurred to him what the string might mean, and he ripped open the meat with his fingers, to find that a small inner pocket of meat enclosing various powders and other things had been sewn into the larger piece. He also discovered that he had eaten a certain amount of that pocket and its contents. He said nothing, scrambled up off the floor and ran out of the house, and to this day he has never been back there, although subsequently he did manage to persuade his father to get rid of that particular wife.

  The “other things” in the food, in addition to the assorted drugs, were, by his reluctant admission, powdered fingernails and finely cut hair – pubic hair, he maintains – along with bits of excrement from various small creatures. “Like what?” I wanted to know. “Like bats, mice, lizards, owls . . . how should I know what women find to feed to men?” he cried aggrievedly. At the end of a month his skin began to slough off, and one arm turned bluish purple. That is usual; I have seen it on occasion. It is also considered a good sign; it means that the poison is “coming out.” The consensus of opinion is that if it stays in, there is not much that anyone can do in the way of finding an antidote. The poisons are provided by professionals; Larache is said to be a good place to go if you are interested in working magic on somebody. You are certain to come back with something efficacious.

  Every Moroccan male has a horror of tseuheur. Many of them, like Mohammed Larbi, will not eat any food to which a Moslem woman has had access beforehand, unless it be his mother or sister, or, if he really trusts her, his wife. But too often it is the wife of whom he must be the most careful. She uses tseuheur to make him malleable and suggestible. It may take many months, or even several years, but the drugs are reliable. Often it is the central nervous system which is attacked. Blindness, paralysis, imbecility or dementia may occur, although by that time the wife probably has gone off to another part of the country. If the husband dies, there is no investigation. His hour has come, nothing more. Even though the practice of magic is a punishable offense, in the unlikely event that it can be proven, hundreds of thousands of men live in daily dread of it. Fortunately Mohammed Larbi is sure of his present wife; he beats her up regularly and she is terrified of him. “She’ll never try to give me tseuheur,” he boasts. “I’d kill her before she had it half made.” This story is always essentially the same, but at each telling I gather a few more descriptive details.

  “That’s why I can’t drink any more,” he laments. “It’s the tseuheur still in there somewhere, and it turns the drink to poison.”

  “It’s the kif,” I tell him.

  SEPTEMBER 13

  THE COUGH that began at Ketama is still with me. The dry air at Alhucemas helped to keep it somewhat in abeyance; the conditions here in the Hotel Mokhtar seem to aggravate it. But now it’s too late. We’ve stayed too long and I feel feverish.

  SEPTEMBER 15

  TWO DAYS LATER. Still in bed but much better. Christopher is disgusted with the situation and Mohammed Larbi is in a state of advanced disintegration. The idea of going back to Midar does not bother me so much as knowing that after that we shall have to return here to Nador once again. The pail of dark water provided for us by the women, out of which I have been filling empty wine bottles and adding Halazone tablets to them so we could have some kind of water to drink, proved to have a large, indescribably filthy cleaning rag buried in the silt at the bottom. I discovered it only this morning when all the water had been drunk. At that moment I wanted more than anything merely to escape from here. During lunch I said tentatively, “What do you think of going east, soon?” Christopher thought well of the idea, and so did Mohammed Larbi. I have renounced Temsaman, the Beni Touzine and the Ait Ulixxek.

  OUJDA, SEPTEMBER 17

  EVEN THE WEATHER seemed brighter when we had left Nador behind and were hurrying toward the Algerian border. We crossed the chastened, dry-weather Oued Moulouya and the flat rich farmlands north of the Zegzel country where the Beni Snassen live. It was getting dark as we went through Berkane, new and resplendent. The town was full of people, palms and fluorescent lights. After Nador it looked like Hong Kong; but we decided not to stop, because we wanted to get to Oujda in time to have dinner at the hotel – that is, if the hotel was still functioning.

  About seven o’clock we saw the lights of Martimprey spread out ahead, perhaps twenty miles away, slightly below us. While we were still looking out across the plain, three flares exploded overhead and sailed slowly earthward. Very strong searchlight beams began to revolve, projected from behind the mountains in Algeria. There was a turn-off before Martimprey; we got onto the Saidia road just south of the town. That avoided possible difficulties with the authorities, for Martimprey is literally on the frontier, and is little more than a military headquarters these days. On this road there was a certain small amount of traffic. About every ten minutes we met a car coming toward us. Ahead there was a nervous driver who steadfastly refused to let us pass him. But when Christopher slowed down, in order to let him get well ahead of us, he slowed down too; there was no way of not being directly behind him. In exasperation Christopher finally drew up beside the road and stopped, saying, “I want to see a little of this war, anyway. Let’s watch awhile.” The red flares illumined the mountainsides to the east, and the sharp beams of blue light intersected each other at varying angles. It was completely silent; there were not ev
en any crickets. But the other car had stopped too, perhaps five hundred feet ahead of us, and soon we saw a figure approaching. Mohammed Larbi whispered: “If he asks questions, just answer them. He has a pistol.” “How do you know?” I countered, but he did not reply. Christopher had turned off the headlights and the road was very dark, so we were not able to see the man’s face until he had come right up to us.

  “Vous êtes en panne?” he inquired, looking in through the front window like a customs inspector. In the reflection from the dashboard light I could see that he was young and well-dressed. He made a swift examination of the interior by turning his head slowly from one side to the other. The searchlights continued to move across the sky. We said we were only watching, as though we were in a shop where we didn’t want to buy anything. “I see,” he said presently. “I thought maybe you were in trouble.” We thanked him. “Not at all,” he said lightly, and he went back into the darkness. A minute or two later we heard the door of his car shut, but the motor did not start up. We waited another ten minutes or so; then Christopher turned on the headlights and the motor. The other car did likewise, started up and kept ahead of us all the way to Oujda. Before we got to the center it turned down a side street and disappeared.

  I had been afraid that with the Algerian border closed, the raison d’être of the Hotel Terminus would be gone, and it might no longer exist. It is open as usual, but its prices are much higher and the food has deteriorated. What the food now lacks in quality the service compensates for in pretentiousness. Dinner was served outdoors under the palms, around a large circular basin of water. The popping of corks punctuated the sequences of French conversation. Suddenly there was a very loud explosion; the ground under my feet shuddered a little with the force of it. No one seemed to have noticed; the relaxed monotone of words and laughter continued as before. Within the minute there was another boom, somewhat less strong but still powerful. When the waiter came up I questioned him.

  “It’s the bombardments in the Tlemcen sector,” he said. “Un engagement. It’s been going on for the past two nights. Sometimes it’s quiet for a week or so, sometimes it’s very active.” During dessert there was a long string of machine-gun fire not more than half a mile distant – in Oujda itself. “What’s that?” I demanded. The waiter’s face did not change. “I didn’t hear anything,” he said. All kinds of things happen in Oujda nowadays, and no one asks any questions.

  This was the night De Gaulle was to make his long-awaited “peace” offer to the F.L.N. via the radio. Out of idle curiosity, we went immediately upstairs after eating to listen to it. While the General intoned his pious-sounding syllables the deep-toned explosions continued outside, sometimes like nearby thunder and sometimes quite recognizably bombs. Mohammed Larbi sat quietly, filling empty cigarette papers with kif and tamping them down before closing the ends. Now and then he demanded: “What’s he saying?” (for he has never learned French), and each time he made the query I quickly said: “Reh.” (Wind.) Christopher was annoyed with both of us. He has never been violently partisan in the Algerian dispute, because he is willing to credit the French with a modicum of good will. In order not to disturb his listening, I went to stand on the balcony, where I could hear the bombs instead of the words. There was no hypocrisy in their sound, no difference between what they meant and what they said, which was: death to Algerians.

  I wondered how many millions of Moslems in North Africa were hearing the radio words at that instant, and imagined the epithets of contempt and hatred coming from their lips as they listened. “Zbil!” “JiffaV “Kharra!” “Ouild d’l qhaba!” “Inaal dinou!” “El khannez!” When the General had finished his monologue, Christopher said sadly: “I only hope they believe him.” I didn’t think there was much danger of that, so I said nothing. The noise from the front kept going until a little after midnight. I felt feverish again, and I had to hunt for my clinical thermometer. It registered a little over 39 degrees. “Multiply by one point eight and add thirty-two. A hundred and two point two. My God! I’m sick.”

  “I’ve got to go to bed,” I announced.

  SEPTEMBER 18

  I STAYED IN BED yesterday morning. About three in the afternoon I got up long enough to drive to the governor’s office. He too was in Meknès with the Sultan, and his katib was politely uncooperative. His jurisdiction extended to the Beni Snassen, he agreed, but the truth was that the Beni Snassen had absolutely no music; in fact, he declared, they hire their musicians from the Beni Uriaghel when they need music. Nothing. And Figuig? I suggested. “There is no music in Figuig,” he said flatly. “You can go. But you will get no music. I guarantee you that.” I understood that he meant he would see to it that we got none. The anger was beginning to boil up inside me, and I thought it more prudent to get out of his office quickly. I thanked him and went back to bed.

  He is not an unusual type, the partially educated young Moroccan for whom material progress has become such an important symbol that he would be willing to sacrifice the religion, culture, happiness, and even the lives of his compatriots in order to achieve even a modicum of it. Few of them are as frank about their convictions as the official in Fez who told me, “I detest all folk music, and particularly ours here in Morocco. It sounds like the noises made by savages. Why should I help you to export a thing which we are trying to destroy? You are looking for tribal music. There are no more tribes. We have dissolved them. So the word means nothing. And there never was any tribal music anyway -only noise. Non, monsieur, I am not in accord with your project.” In reality, the present government’s policy is far less extreme than this man’s opinion. The music itself has not been much tampered with – only the lyrics, which are now indoctrinated with patriotic sentiments. Practically all large official celebrations are attended by groups of folk musicians from all over the country; their travel and living expenses are paid by the government, and they perform before large audiences. As a result the performing style is becoming slick, and the extended forms are disappearing in favor of truncated versions which are devoid of musical sense.

  QUJDA, SEPTEMBER 20

  I HAVE LAIN in bed for the past three days, feverish and depressed, having lost the Beni Snassen as well as the others. Now all that remains open to me in the way of Riffian music is that of the Gzennaia. They live in the Province of Taza, and it will probably be difficult to get to them because of the roads.

  During the day there seems to be no sound from the front, but at night the bombardments begin, shortly after dark, and continue for three or four hours. Mohammed Larbi refuses to go out of the hotel; he claims Oujda is a dangerous place these days. According to him, there are ambushes and executions daily. I suspect that most of the explosions we hear during the day are fireworks celebrating the beginning of Mouloud, but I agree that some of the sounds are hard to explain away in that manner. In any case, the city is too close to the border to be restful. All I want is to be well enough to leave for Taza.

  TAZA, SEPTEMBER 22

  YESTERDAY MORNING I had no fever at all, so in spite of feeling a little shaky, I got up and packed, and we set out on the road once more. It was a cool, sunny morning when we left. As we got into the desert beyond El Ayoun, however, the heat waves began to dance on the horizon. We ate in a wheatfield outside Taourirt. Passers-by stopped under the tamarisk trees and sat down to watch us. When we got back into the car there was a struggle going on among several of them for possession of the empty tins and bottles we had left.

  By the time we arrived in Taza it was nearly sunset, and I was ready again for bed. But since the government buildings had not yet shut for the night I decided to try and see the governor while I was still up and walking around. I had a feeling that the fever had returned. I went straight to the hotel from there to get into bed, and I have not yet got out of it, so it is just as well that I stayed up an extra hour and saw the katib. The governor, not surprisingly, was in Meknès with the Sultan.

  This katib was a young intellectual with thick-le
nsed glasses. He made it clear that he thought my project an absurdity, but he did not openly express disapproval. He even went through the motions of telephoning all the way to Aknoul to a subordinate up there in the mountains.

  “I see, I see,” he said presently. “He died last year. Ah, yes. Too bad. And Tizi Ouzli?” he added, as I gestured and stage-whispered to him. “Nothing there, either. I see.” He listened awhile, commenting in monosyllables from time to time, then finally thanked his informant and hung up.

  “The last chikh in Aknoul died last summer. He was an old man. There is no music in the region. In Tizi Ouzli the people won’t come out. When the Sultan went through, the women refused to leave their houses to sing for him. So you see” – he smiled, spreading his hands out, palms up – “it will not be possible with the Gzennaia.”

  I sat looking at him while he spoke, already aware of what he was going to report, letting fragments of thoughts flit through my tired head. How they mistrust and fear the Riffians! But how naive this one is to admit openly that the alienation is so great! Were the women punished? And I remembered a remark a Riffian had once made to me, “You have your Negroes in America, and Morocco has us.”