Travels: Collected Writings, 1950-1993 Read online

  I invented. “Two thousand francs.”

  He waited for the next red light. “I’ll give you one thousand.”

  I laughed. We drove on. Presently he said: “Or tomorrow I’ll drive you to Ain Diab and wait while you swim. That’s worth more than a thousand francs.”

  “I don’t want to go to Ain Diab tomorrow.”

  He said no more until I got out and paid him. Then he looked reproachfully at me. “I thought you were a friendly man,” he said sadly.

  There is a meter on every cab, but the drivers do not bother to use them, preferring to make an arbitrary price at the end of the ride. One day I determined to attempt to get one of them to set the meter going. As I got into the cab I said:

  “How does it happen that you taxi chauffeurs never turn on your meters?”

  “The meters don’t work,” he said.

  “You mean all the meters are broken?”

  “They don’t work fast enough. Besides, everybody knows how much it costs to go from one place to another. If you put the meter on, people get mixed up and don’t know how much to pay.”

  “They’d pay what the meter reads, wouldn’t they?”

  He seemed briefly scandalized; then he laughed. “That wouldn’t be any good. Everything’s too expensive these days for that.” He began to recite a list of food items, giving their recent and their present prices. I interrupted him.

  “How much are you going to charge me?”

  “Oh, everybody knows the price is two hundred and fifty francs,” he answered airily, and went on with his food market quotations until we arrived. Then he stopped, turned in his seat, and said: “That will be three hundred francs.”

  “You just told me two hundred and fifty.”

  “Yes, monsieur,” he agreed. “The price is two hundred and fifty. But that’s the thing about prices.” Now he pretended to laugh uproariously, his eyes watching me very closely from the middle of the grimace. “You never know when they’re going up.”

  It is true that the constant rise in the cost of living is felt more intensely in Casablanca than in the small towns and rural areas. The working class here is first of all displaced, therefore deculturized; it is an island, cut off from the mainland of the mother culture. Semi-literate and oriented toward Europe, its members literally do not know how to function in the manner of their forebears, or even like the provincial Moroccans of today. The food suffers; the girls grow up without knowing how to prepare the customary dishes made with native grown staples. They are thus obliged to fall back upon packaged and semi-processed foods, which they flavor with prepared sauces and wash down with Coca-Cola and Orange Crush. It is precisely these manufactured products, often imported, thus highly taxed, that cost the most, and their regular consumption is ruinous to the average worker’s budget.

  The city has not yet recovered from the economic blow dealt it by the establishment of Moroccan independence, when it was severed from France. The resulting exodus of European capital and personnel created a state of depression and unemployment that has not been alleviated during the intervening years by any initiative on the part of Moroccan businessmen. In the past five years even the population has decreased. (The Guide Bleu, published in Paris in 1952, confidently predicted a population of a million and a half for the city in 1960. If the compilers had been politically more astute they would have refrained from making such a rash forecast, since the misunderstanding had already arisen between the French and the sultan which led the following year to the lat-ter’s exile, and thence directly to independence.) The total 1965 population, 947,000, of whom 817,000 are Moslems, 76,000 are Europeans and 54,000 are Moroccan Jews, is literally smaller now than it was in 1960; the drop in the last two categories is not compensated for by the increase in the first.

  In keeping with the present fashion of minimizing European guilt in the country’s economic difficulties, there is a tendency on the part of Moroccan businessmen to blame their own lack of initiative. Yet for things to have been otherwise, history would have had to be totally different. Under French rule the area left for exploitation by Moroccans was extremely limited, consisting solely of textiles, sugar, tea and real estate, none of which necessitated a departure from the traditional business methods. It is hard to see how blame can be attached to such a group, which by its very nature was one to resist evolution and remain mili-tantly unequipped to function in twentieth-century terms. “In spite of appearances,” says M. Driss Charaf, one of Casablanca’s younger, more analytical economic observers, “the Moroccan businessman has remained an ordinary shopkeeper. He is still ignorant of long-term investments, of the spirit of enterprise and the sense of calculated risk. In a word, he lacks basic economic education.”

  This is doubtless true, but to provide the necessary training is a long-term venture, and the situation demands quick action. Étatisation (an acceptable euphemism for socialization) is the solution. Thus, as a penalty for not having taken their business affairs into their own hands while they had the opportunity, Moroccan citizens may shortly lose the possibility of ever doing so.

  What with the passage of time and the worsened economic situation, a temporary truce seems to have been reached between Moroccans and Europeans. There are no visible signs of unfriendliness on either side. During the city’s most recent riots, in March, 1965, as a result of which there were many deaths and much damage to property, the astonishing detail emerged that not one European was even injured, and not one European- owned shop was touched. The really nasty French, the hard-core, racist-minded colonials, are gone, and have been replaced by fellow Moslems to serve as the target of popular dissatisfaction.

  Normally the Moroccan, even if he is wearing only one ancient tattered garment, retains an air of indestructible self-sufficiency, even of nobility. It does not occur to one to attribute a financial status to him, nor does the word poverty suggest itself in connection with his life. Simplicity, austerity, even stoicism, but not poverty. These days, however, in Casablanca, to look Moroccan means to look poor. It is not surprising that the great majority of the inhabitants do not come into the center of the city at all, preferring to remain outside in the vast sordid quarters reserved for the poor. To wander out there is a little like being in India: there are the same endless crowds of disparate and ill-clad people passing constantly through the long sad streets. At night the destitute do not hesitate to invade the center; not being allowed to sleep in the parks, they lie in doorways and passages along the main thoroughfares. All one can say is that there are fewer of them than in the days of the French occupation. Where are the others? Dead, or in jail.

  The poverty, for all its impressiveness, is nevertheless only the second topic of conversation aboard a cruise ship the night the tourists come back aboard after a day’s liberty in Casablanca. First place is accorded to the convoluted financial adventures everyone has had while ashore. Each tourist has a small picaresque novel to relate; tales range from outright and dramatic defeat to imagined victory. (I say imagined because I suspect that no one ever brought off a truly victorious coup in dealing with Casablanca bazaar keepers; however, I may have an exaggerated respect for the business acumen and powers of salesmanship of the latter.)

  But it is not only tourists buying rugs and hassocks and trays who meet with difficulties; it can be anyone buying anything at all. Two entirely ordinary examples, dating from yesterday and this morning, indicate the kind of complications inherent in any transaction.

  I go into a small stationery shop that sells second-hand books, and begin compulsively to look through the titles on the shelf. To my astonishment I find a volume by Borges that has been out of print for several years, its pages still uncut. As with all the books, the price is marked on the end papers. I hand the volume to the shopkeeper with 500 francs, only to be told that there is a 1,000-franc deposit to be made in addition to the price marked, which he insists is really only the rental price. “Some books are for sale and others for rent,” he explains.

>   “But how can I tell which are which?” I want to know.

  “Only I can tell you that,” he says. So I go out, buying nothing.

  Today, on the way back to the hotel, I stop in a large self-service grocery store. The Dubonnet is marked 1,050 francs and the Vichy Celestins 125 francs. I take a bottle of Dubonnet and three bottles of Vichy. The bill is for 1,625 francs; I discover that they have charged me 1,250 for the Dubonnet. We argue about that and I show them the shelf where the price is exhibited. They make out a new bill, adding a thirty-five franc deposit for the Dubonnet bottle – an on-the-spot invention – and changing the price of the Vichy to 130. Unable to put through Operation 200 Francs, they have contented themselves with a quickly devised fifty franc supplement. I pay, smiling conspiratorially at the bill and then at them. This troubles them; I am not supposed to know what they have done. Christians like me are not expected to itemize a bill; they are assumed to be perpetually unaware of both value and price. And since I have made it clear that I am conscious of their overcharging, my being willing to pay makes me into an unfriendly and suspicious character. They glare at me and mutter as I go out.

  The police are courteous and charming, and would like to be helpful. If you ask for directions, they are willing to give you a good deal of their time and attention, but it is unlikely that they will be able to produce the information you want. Their connection with the city around them seems very tenuous; one would say they were busy leading intense inner lives. An English resident of Tangier was stopped in a Casablanca street and told to pull over to the curb. “Your lights are not in order, monsieur,” said the young officer, sauntering up. Since it was broad daylight, the Englishman was astonished. “They have white glass,” the young man informed him, “and they should have yellow glass. You’ll have to get new headlights.”

  “Can you give me one good reason why I should go to the expense and trouble of ordering new headlights?

  The policeman shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s the fashion.”

  Saturday is sad in the center of town, with the shops all shut and the long, arcaded streets deserted. Weekdays there are echoes of Paris in the working-class restaurants near the central market; it is a pre-war Paris, with sawdust on the floor, big sheets of paper that cover the tables, the drone of conversation in the smoky air, and the patronne watching everything from her little box in the corner, forsaking her knitting from time to time in order to prepare a café espresso or to hand a waiter a bottle of wine. These are good places to sit during the middle of the day, but alas, on Saturday and Sunday they are shut. Thus I get the idea of going out to Ain Diab and eating by the sea. While I am waiting for a taxi I smell the moist breath of the ocean coming up the boulevard from the port, and I recall the familiar complaint about Casablanca’s eternal humidity. In winter the wind that blows through the city is wet; in summer it is only damp, and the weather is not unduly hot. But the moss on the ground under the palms in the Pare Lyautey remains bright green the year around.

  THE COAST ON the way to Ain Diab alternates between sand and rocks; there is a rough sea, and a misty white spray blows inland across the flat earth dotted with vast new housing projects. A certain number of people seem to have had the same idea as I: some of the restaurants are full. I choose one whose terrace is empty, which probably means that the food is indifferent, and sit down. The wind keeps flipping the tablecloth over the carafe of water. The waiter brings the menu. I study it a moment, and begin to laugh. It is a folded card, typewritten in French on the left and in English on the right. The first item, Pâté Maison, is presented to English-speaking guests as House Faste. I am sure then that the food is going to be terrible. However, aided by a bottle of Gris de Boulaouane, Morocco’s good vin rosé, the meal turns out to be adequate if not exactly tasty, and I sit for a long time over it, watching the people go past.

  When I am almost finished, a large Moroccan group arrives in two cars and deploys on the terrace near me; its members are engaged in playing the well-known game of the new upper class, which consists in uttering the louder sentences and phrases in French, all the while continuing the conversation sotto voce in Arabic. I say “in French” because that is what it is meant to be, though in reality it is only an unsuccessful attempt to reproduce the accent of the former Corsican and Marseillais colonials, who spoke a lamentable French at best. The vowel sounds are unrecognizable, and the vocal inflection distorted, with syllabic emphasis displaced and consonants given Arabic equivalents. The greater the fluency of the speaker, the further metamorphosed are the sounds of his French. One of the men cries excitedly: “Chpépalvoikhkh, chpépalvoikhkh!” and I know this means: “I can’t stand him!” (“Je ne peux pas le voir.”) But would I know this if I hadn’t lived here for years? I doubt it. This neo-French is another language.

  Alter a quarter of an hour or so they settle down into their own tongue, and I decide to see what Hachette’s Guide Bleu du Maroc has to say about the history of Casablanca. A guidebook is like a telephone book: to be consulted rather than read. But sometimes in the welter of factual material one can pick out and bring to the fore some hitherto unnoticed pattern that justifies taking the trouble. In this case, however, all that happens is that I read the text, took out at the traffic and at the big waves breaking down the coast, and mentally shrug.

  THE ORIGINAL SITE of the city is a low hill beside the ocean, about a mile from the restaurant where I am sitting, and it was called Anfa. It is still called Anfa, and there are a lot of expensive houses there. But nobody knows whether it was the Phoenicians, the Romans or the Berbers themselves who first built the town. There is no uncertainty, however, about the activities of the Arabs after they arrived from the Middle East and took the place in hand. They made it the home of a well-organized band of pirates whose habit it was to sail up to Portugal and lie in wait at the mouth of the Tagus for ships going in or out. When the Portuguese had had enough of this, they followed the marauders back to Anfa and sacked the place. Later, in the sixteenth century, they occupied the site and rebuilt it, calling it Casa Branca. It took two hundred years for the Moroccans to get back into their town, and by this time everyone was so used to hearing the place spoken of as White House that the name was not changed, but merely translated, to Dar el Beida, which is what it is called today by the entire Arab-speaking world.

  I suppose the ancient history of Casablanca is dull because the place itself had no importance until the French arrived. They planned their blow meticulously, having taken care beforehand to create a condition that could serve as a pretext for attack. (Europeans need to have a moral justification for doing evil.) They sent General Drude down with a force of 3,000 men. There is an evocative inscription in the garden of Place Lyautey; it begins with these words:

  IT WAS ON THIS SPOT, THE SEVENTH OF AUGUST NINETEEN HUNDRED SEVEN, THE OCCASION OF THE FIRST FRENCH LANDING ON MOROCCAN TERRITORY, THAT GENERAL DRUDE ESTABLISHED HIS POST OF COMMAND, PLANTED HIS FLAG, AND SET UP HIS TENT.

  I pour out the last half glass of Gris de Boulaouane and think of the general standing there that night under the wide sky of the new land, listening to the barking of the dogs, and noting perhaps, as did Camus, that the sound carries ten times as far in North Africa as in Europe. Did it occur to him that the place would never again be as it had been, now that he had arrived? No, I decide. He was worrying about his liver, and wondering fretfully if enough cases of Vittel and Vichy had been brought along.

  I turn to a folding map of the region, idly glance at it, and all at once am astonished. The coast at Casablanca runs due east and west, and I had always thought of it as going from southwest to north-east. I have learned something from the Guide Bleu after all. Then I study the map of the city and discover that its plan looks something like the plan of a theater, with the port like a curved proscenium and the principal avenues leading upward from it like aisles.

  Someone clicks on a transistor radio; I pay the bill and leave, directing my steps downward to t
he park that lies halfway between the boulevard above and the beach below. The air is damp and the park is deserted. No – there is one man in a gray business suit, who could be either European or Moroccan, pacing about restlessly. I have the impression that he is looking for something. Suddenly he steps over a low fence that borders the path, and walks a short distance across the turf toward a palm tree. A second later he is kissing the grass, beginning his ritual obeisance, his tie blowing in the wind. Why is there an element of the absurd here where there should be none? I have seen Moslems praying in the streets for the better part of my life. If the place looked like Morocco, if the man wore even one piece of clothing that could identify him as a Moslem, everything would be different. It is simply that the gestures of Moslem life are at variance with the commonplace European décor of Casablanca, and are thus unexpected and very noticeable. There is a permanent contradiction between the way the city looks and what goes on in its streets.

  I take a cab back to the Place de France, the heart of the city, where the two civilizations confront each other across the big sun-flooded square; on one side the tall banks and life insurance buildings with their vault-like cafés at street level where men sit in rows watching television, and on the other side, like the façade of a shabby small-town fair, the crowded and untidy portals of the Ancienne Medina. A few small streets near the entrance are devoted exclusively to restaurants. I wander about here for a while, sniffing the cinnamon and the cumin. The plat du jour is the same in several of the larger establishments: calf’s-foot-and-artichoke stew. Then I go back into the main alley and let the mob push me through the maze. It is supposed to be a bad place for a European to go alone, but no one has ever paid me the slightest attention there. Sartorial anarchy is the norm. Tablecloths, blue jeans, djellabas, business suits, pajamas, strips of plastic oilcloth, sheets, sports jackets, burnouses, towels, haiks and bedspreads are all called into service to cover the human form.