Travels: Collected Writings, 1950-1993 Read online

  EACH MORNING the shopkeepers here bring their wares out into the alleys, where they stack, range and hang them; the passages are decorated as if for a fiesta, but the banners are all garments and household articles for sale. The bicycles slicing through the crowd at all angles, from all directions, manage finally to induce a mild chronic anguish. While I am sidestepping one coming from the front, I tangle with two coming from the sides. I step into a cul-de-sac and turn around. The top ten or twelve stories of a white office building rise into the sky above the formless jumble of nearby structures. In the crowd is an occasional Hindu; there are also surprisingly many Jews and Spaniards. The Ancienne Medina does not cover a very great area; it makes me think of a water hole, a puddle of old Morocco surrounded by concrete, inexorably drying up, becoming always smaller and shallower. Contiguous to it on the south is a spacious joteya, or flea market, where, if anything worth having in the way of Moroccan articles is still available in the region, one will find it, rather than in the bazaars run for the tourist trade. Moroccans no longer make many things worth acquiring. With the exception of rugs, there is not much point in buying objects made recently. Workmanship has deteriorated, and taste in styling, which remained intact so long as tradition was strictly adhered to, has vanished utterly. However, second-hand artifacts dating from ten or fifteen years ago can often be found for next to nothing in the joteya.

  Watch a Moroccan on a busy boulevard, completely unaffected by the traffic roaring past. He does not move along as one is supposed to do in a modem street. He always has time to lend a hand to the anonymous passer-by. He will hold the baby for a woman, help reload a donkey whose burden has slipped, rescue a child’s ball from under a truck, push a stalled car, help gather up an overturned basket of fruit, all without the expectation of being thanked, or even noticed, since it is taken for granted that anyone will do such things for anyone else.

  As a resident of Tangier I envy Casablancans two things: their public gardens and their restaurants. There are enough French still living in the city to make possible the existence of good eating places in all price categories; it is the only place left in all North Africa where there is gastronomic excellence and variety.

  I AM TOLD that the following Saturday, if I want, I can hear some interesting music in a small synagogue near the Boulevard d’Anfa. The tip, given me by a Jewish friend, includes the information that a particularly good cantor from Marrakesh will be present. There are eighty synagogues in Casablanca, of which fifty are currently in use. The Jews of Morocco, all Sephardim, while on the whole no better off financially than their Moslem compatriots, have a highly organized and culturally rich community life. Thanks to their own initiative, as well as to the aid provided by certain charitable organizations in the United States, they have improved their lot considerably. There is no such thing as a Jewish beggar or a Jewish illiterate, for instance.

  I set out early and eventually find the place. There is a courtyard where a large dog is chained beside a dry fountain. Three small boys are playing under a tree. I go over to them and ask them if they know where I can get hold of a skullcap like the ones they are wearing, so that I will be able to go into the synagogue. They confer for a moment. “Wait here,” says the biggest. “We’ll be right back.” I stand there looking at the dog, as the sound of chanting begins to issue from the building.

  After about fifteen minutes the boys return, flushed and out of breath. “You have no luck,” they tell me. “We can’t find any toques. And you can’t even buy one because it’s Saturday.” A fourth boy comes along; they consult with him and he goes inside. “His father’s the rabbi,” they explain. Immediately the boy returns and hands me a tiny black yarmulke.

  I place it on the back of my head. “It’s very small,” I say uncertainly.

  The boy, who is a complete adult in miniature, says severely: “It’s not important. Go in.” I step inside the door and sit down at the back.

  The attractive white and gold auditorium is empty save for a group of perhaps twenty men and youths sitting in two rows face to face across the central aisle. Most of them are dressed in business suits; a few of the older men have flowing white beards and wear caftans, and are straight out of a Chagall canvas. They are all leaning forward in their seats, their faces gleeful, and I have the impression that they are singing at one another. Each man holds a book in his left hand; some are continually bending forward and backward vigorously, while others merely emphasize certain cadences by raising the index finger, or tap out the rhythm with their feet. The principal singer occasionally makes spoken asides. More than anything else the scene reminds me of an old-fashioned cuadro flamenco, such as one used to see in the provinces of Spain in the days before the civil war. Furthermore, they swing. The beat is always accurate, as are the body and neck movements. From time to time, two or three men hold a low-pitched discussion under the singing.

  Presently a middle-aged man wearing glasses turns and notices me. He holds up his book expectantly, then indicates that I should come and sit beside him. When I am there seated by his side, he leans over and raises the book in front of me, whispering: “So you can follow the poetry.” There is no musical notation on the page, merely a text in Hebrew characters. I whisper back that unfortunately I am unable to read Hebrew. There is pity in his glance, but he is not deterred by my confession. Assuming that at the very least I can read the characters, he runs his forefinger slowly across the page from right to left, underlining each word for me as it is being sung. Now and then he whispers: “These are extra syllables not in the text,” and I nod. This goes on for a little more than an hour. Someone brings in a tray laden with glasses of tea. The smell of mint fills the air. I have been in synagogues in Morocco where the men have brought out hip flasks of rum and mahia, but apparently this congregation contents itself with tea.

  I have been glancing surreptitiously every few minutes in the direction of the balcony. A large blond woman is sitting in the front row, following the music apparently with intense interest, even though she has not once stopped eating something out of a bag in her lap. While the tea is being drunk the music goes on. Tea continues to arrive; I drink three glasses and eat a large cupcake. The fourth glass I decline. I look up at the balcony: the woman has been given a glass of tea.

  For an hour and a half the music has remained in a stolid four-four meter; suddenly it goes into an increasingly rapid three-eight. “It is becoming more animated,” says my mentor.

  “Yes, I noticed that.”

  “You have a musical ear,” he remarks. Then he adds: “All these poems are in preparation for Purim.”

  “Aren’t they what you call pyotim?” I whisper.

  “That’s correct.” He looks pleased. “You know the story of Esther, of course?”

  “Yes,” I lie.

  “Mordecai, Mordecai” – he stabs the page with his finger, so that I will begin again to follow the text “. . . and my faith in God is like a fine girdle about my waist.” He translates freely, between strophes of singing.

  “You are not from here?” he suggests softly, after a few minutes.

  “No, from New York.”

  This appears to interest him. After a moment he says: “You are free to come and live at my house.”

  I thank him profusely and explain that I am staying in a hotel. He asks if I am satisfied with it, and I say I am. “Good. Then tomorrow you will come to lunch with me. Is that all right? Be in the street outside the synagogue at two. Sansfaute.” I agree. Presently I get up, bow and go out.

  THE NEXT DAY I arrive in the forlorn little street at the appointed time. As I am paying my cab driver a chic, very attractive girl steps up to me and says: “I am Madame Castiel. Monsieur Castiel has gone to look for you in a café on the boulevard. Here he comes now!”

  We greet one another and get into a car parked at the curb. My hosts sit in front and apologetically indicate a place on the back seat in among piles of vegetables, fruit and canned goods. “We’ve been
to market,” Monsieur Castiel explains. “I am a schoolteacher. On Sundays we have nothing to do, so we spend the morning buying food.”

  The Castiels live alone, but there are constant arrivals and departures of members of the family. They are all warm, friendly and intelligent. Monsieur Castiel plays Andalusian records on the phonograph; a Moslem servant girl brings six kinds of sweet wine. I have a pleasant and unreasoning conviction that if a frustration or the beginning of a neurosis arises in one of these people, it will be gently and effectively dispelled by the group; it is as if they were all interconnected by invisible wires.

  When at last everyone is gone, my two hosts and I sit down to lunch. “We are very strict in my family, from a religious point of view. It is the only way to live,” Monsieur Castiel tells me. I remark that in America it is not like that, that most Jews there do not adhere to orthodoxy, and that many people who are partly Jewish are not at all interested in Judaism, and indeed tend to want to forget the whole subject. Monsieur Castiel looks pained.

  The meal is complicated and lengthy; the maid keeps appearing with more dishes from the kitchen. “You must come to Casablanca and let me teach you Hebrew,” says Monsieur Castiel. “I am a good teacher, I can teach you very quickly. It is a beautiful language. You ought to know it.”

  “It is very kind of you. I shall consider it seriously when I return from America,” I tell him.

  “Perhaps at that time, too,” he adds drily, referring to an earlier conversation, “I shall be able to persuade you that Judaism is superior to atheist existentialism.”

  I say that it is erroneous to imagine that anyone is at liberty to believe what he wishes to believe.

  “That is just the pride of the intellect speaking,” he says sadly. I look at him, marveling a bit: it is so difficult to identify this man sitting at the head of the table with the tentative, slightly gauche individual of yesterday. Before I leave, I tell the Castiels that I had not realized it was possible for the city of Casablanca to provide three such delightful hours. “We hope there will be many more,” they say. Then Monsieur Castiel insists on driving me back to the hotel, and before I go inside we sit in the car for another hour discussing religion.

  A FEW DAYS LATER I decide to pay a visit to the cathedral, a very large concrete structure near the Pare Lyautey. As I am about to go through the entrance door, several Moslems lying under a tree nearby spring up and come running toward me, crying: “Wait! We work here! We’ll show you the inside!” The onslaught so disgusts me that I quickly turn around and walk away through the garden; their cries follow me for a moment. I am a bit disappointed not to have seen whether the interior is as hideous as the outside. The French are responsible for some excellent modern buildings in Casablanca, but these are grouped around the Place Lyautey and the Palais du Sultan in the Nouvelle Medina, and are neo-Mauresque, a generally successful adaptation of the Portuguese Moorish style that characterizes the architecture of the Atlantic coast from Rabat to Essaouira. The cathedral looks like something invented by a clever child using a set of expensive German building blocks; it has no style whatever.

  Two idiotic little scenes remain in my mind with suspicious clarity. A country youth in tattered clothing lies asleep in the sun on one of the benches in the garden near the Palais de Justice. Along comes a group of modern young Moslem men and girls, dressed in their European best. They have seen scores of such derelicts every day of their lives, but at the moment they feel the need of amusing themselves. The men begin to shout: “Get up! Come on! Up!” The girls bend double with shrieks of merriment. Luckily, the rustic goes on sleeping. Still shaken by spasms of laughter, the strollers continue on their way. I watch them disappear, too astonished to do anything more than stare after them. There is something grotesque in the whole-heartedness with which they display their ugliness of spirit; it is an unsavory and dangerous thing, the unthinking laughter of the secure.

  The other vignette strikes me as more mysterious, but equally significant. It is the end of the lunch hour, and several hundred Moslem girls are waiting in the street to go back into the school building. At least, that is my impression when I arrive at the intersection where they are all gathered. But then I see that they are standing in a huge unmoving circle, staring impassively down at the pavement. In the center is an overturned motorcycle, with a great pool of congealing blood beside it. Nothing happens, no one arrives, no one speaks. They clutch their books and gape, unable to raise their eyes from the big red spot shining there in the sunlight.

  It is hard enough to know what Casablanca is like now, while one is looking at it, without trying to imagine what it will be like in five, ten or twenty years. So much of what one sees is tragic, but it is at the same time ludicrous; there is undirected hostility in the air, but to offset it there is also a seemingly inexhaustible store of patience. The present inert quality of the populace is bound to change, but regardless of the means through which the change comes about, the country will still have to reckon with a powerful popular philosophy whose credo holds that destiny is stronger than causation. How can anyone make predictions about a city in ebullition? He might as well hold up a baby and announce what it is going to look like when (and if) it grows into a man.

  Kif – Prologue and Compendium of Terms

  The Book of Grass, 1967

  ONE OF THE GREAT phenomena of the century is the unquestioning world-wide acceptance of the accessories of Judeo-Christian civilization, regardless of whether or not these trappings have any relevance to the peoples adopting them. The United Nations, like a philanthropical society devoted to reclaiming and educating young delinquents, points the way grandly for the little nations just recruited, assuring them that they too one day may be important and respected members of world society. Political schisms do not really exist. Whether the new ones study Marx or Jefferson, the destructive impact on the original culture is identical. It would seem that the important task is to get them into the parade, now that they have been convinced that there is only the one direction in which they can go. Once they are marching too, they will appreciate more fully how far ahead of them we are. These are faits accomplis; in the future it will be fascinating to watch the annihilation of the entire structure of Judeo-Christian culture by these ‘underprivileged’ groups which, having had only the most superficial contacts with that culture, nevertheless will have learned enough thereby to do a thorough job of destroying it.

  If you are going to sit at table with the grown-ups, you have to be willing to give up certain childish habits that the grownups don’t like: cannibalism, magic, and all the other facets of ‘irrational’ religious observances. You must eat, drink, relax and make love the way the grown-ups do, otherwise your heart won’t really be in it; you won’t truly be disciplining yourself to become like them. One of the first things you must accept when you join the grown-ups’ club is the fact that the Judeo-Christians approve of only one out of all the substances capable of effecting a quick psychic change in the human organism – and that one is alcohol. The liquid is sacred in the ceremonies of both branches of the Judeo-Christian religion. Therefore all other such substances are taboo. But since you are forsaking your own culture in any case, you won’t mind giving up the traditional prescriptions for relaxation it provided for you; enthusiastically you will accept alcohol along with democratic (or communist) ideology and the gadgets that go with it, since the sooner you learn to use these things, the sooner you can expect to be patted on the head, granted special privileges, and told that you are growing up – fulfilling your destiny, I think they sometimes call it. This news, presumably, you find particularly exciting.

  And so the last strongholds fashioned around the use of substances other than alcohol are being flushed out, to make everything clean and in readiness for the great alcoholic future. In Africa particularly, the dagga, the ganja, the bangui, the kif, as well as the dawamesk, the sammit, the majoun and the hashish, are all on their way to the bonfires of progressivism. They just don�
�t go with pretending to be European. The young fanatics of the four corners of the continent are furiously aware of that. They are, incidentally, also aware that a population of satisfied smokers or eaters offers no foothold to an ambitious demagogue. The crowd pleasantly heated by alcohol behaves in a classical and foreseeable fashion, but you can’t even get together a crowd of smokers: each man is alone and happy to stay that way. (Then, too, there is the fact to be considered that once one gets power, one can regulate the revenue on alcohol, and sit back to count one’s take. The other substances don’t lend themselves so easily to efficient governmental racketeering.)

  Cannabis, the only serious world-wide rival to alcohol, reckoned in millions of users, is always described in alcoholic countries as a ‘social menace’. And the grown-ups mean just that. They don’t infer that it’s detrimental to the health or welfare of the individual who uses it, since for them the individual separated from his social context is an irregularity to be remedied, in any case. No, they mean that the user of cannabis is all too likely to see the truth where it exists, and to fail to see it where it does not. Obviously few things are potentially more dangerous to those interested in prolonging the status quo of organized society. If people refuse to play the game of society at all, of what use are they? How can they be enticed or threatened, save by the ultimately unsatisfactory device of brute force? No, no, there are no two ways about it: society has got to go on being played (and quietly directed); alcohol is the only safe substance to allow human beings, and everything else must go.