The rain is falling more heavily and young women exit the Kasbah with care to prevent the mud from splattering their smart costumes. A dignified and neat appearance is at all times retained as family and friends embrace before breaking their fast as tradition demands. An atmosphere of wellbeing is once more settling upon the city of Fez as its inhabitants dine on spicy bean soup and egg. Afterwards, there are sweets and dates. At this time of the day and year, hospitality becomes an obligatory virtue. Several families invite me into their homes to eat simple but tasty meals. A friend of Mustapha learns of my interest in football and informs me of a game scheduled for tomorrow.
Not being a fan, Mustapha isn’t pleased about attending a football match. I don’t force him to watch but he feels obliged to keep me company, concerned by the possibility of other guides encroaching upon his territory — me. Palm trees encircle the stadium, which is by no means full, but there is a good atmosphere. We take our seats next to men who wear tasselled hats. Music starts and the tassels are swirled about. The business of fasting is taken seriously, even sportsmen are not exempt. (Reassuringly, airline pilots do not observe the fast.) Despite the fast both teams play with energetic abandon. Mas, the home side, perform with admirable skill and determination. Their win against RAJA, one of Casablanca’s top clubs, is made sweeter still by it ensuring the club’s survival in the top flight. The home supporters celebrate by dancing jigs of victory.
The medina of Fez is believed to be the world’s largest car-free urban area. The market inside is a treasure hunter’s labyrinth of leather goods, carpets, brass work, silver, gold and the world’s finest hashish, so Mustapha claims. We venture deeper into the medina. Mustapha says we should visit a Riad, a traditional Moroccan house. In a lane adjacent to the main thoroughfare of Fez’s medieval quarter, the door is already open. Mustapha nods to a young man slouched outside. We step inside. The house is built on several levels around an interior garden that boasts a solitary orange tree. The ground floor appears sparsely furnished and there is a simple kitchen. We ascend a few stairs and Mustapha can’t resist showing me the bathroom that is covered floor-to-ceiling in zellij mosaic tiles. I already have enough photographs of them. And Mustapha gestures that he has brought me here for other reasons. A little further up the stairs we come to more rooms on the first and second floors. He shows off the cedar ceilings, windows and doors, and the carved tadelakt plasterwork. I have read that these houses were inwardly focused to allow for family privacy and protection from the weather. But where is the family? Away, Mustapha simply says. And then he takes me into a room that is magnificently furnished with books. ‘You buy,’ explains Mustapha. ‘I sell for professor friend.’ The books are mostly in French and Arabic. I spot some Flaubert and I recognise some that are translations of Paul Bowles’ novels. Un thé au Sahara is a French edition of The Sheltering Sky, which I have in my hotel room. Gore Vidal cites the book as one of his favourites. Think, he says, about what Bowles means by the ‘sheltering sky’ — that the ‘sky’ is a fiction, protecting us from our very insignificance. Mustapha is haphazardly picking out books for inspection; stories written by ‘les ecrivains anglo-saxons’. Thrilled by finding a book in English — an Edward Heath autobiography — he can’t understand why I don’t share in his excitement. But suddenly I am intrigued by an old looking edition of Les Fleurs du Mal. It has an 1861 publication date, which means that it was issued in Baudelaire’s lifetime. (The second edition contains thirty-five additional poems but lacks six poems that appeared in the first edition. These were banned and stayed so until 1947.)
This book might be worth thousands of francs. How much does the owner want for it? Mustapha unhesitatingly says 5000 dirhams. That’s about £400. I start to feel uncomfortable. It dawns on me that we may be trespassing. The price drops to 40 dirhams. The book’s wildly fluctuating price confirms my fears. I hurriedly make my way down the stairs and exit the house. On the street outside, Mustapha is aggrieved. My hasty departure has been misinterpreted as an underhand negotiating ploy.
Montpellier Football Club Car Park, 1993
Traders buy and sell. Book dealers are no different. Books are bought and sold. Simply that. Open air markets appeal; their ancient and overt purpose of bringing buyer and seller together. Their ‘openness’ extends, somehow, beyond that of the physical selling arena. Not that I wish to romanticise; people can just as easily be ripped off here — openly or otherwise — as in other environments.
On Sunday mornings the car park adjacent to the city’s football club comes to life as hundreds of car booters and professional traders join together to form a huge flea market known in French as Les Puces.
Such is Les Puces popularity with buyers and sellers alike, we arrive pre-dawn in order to guarantee a place in which to sell our wares — livres en anglais. Pulling up behind a Peugeot 807 fully packed with Indian jewellery and trinkets, we are struggling to come to terms with the early hour. The plan had been to snooze awhile but our growing anticipation, together with the activity of others outside, makes relaxation impossible. A hoard of bargain hunters shine torches into the back windows of the van but we make it clear that we’re not yet open for business. We heed a friend’s advice not to set up too soon. Jemal teaches geography in a local secondary school and supplements his salary by selling Moroccan pottery he transports from his home village in the long summer break. He warns that certain traders/hustlers will pounce, like the proverbial early bird, on the items brought to the market by unwary families, which are then brazenly sold on later that same morning from their own stalls.
We grab coffee, experience the early morning chill. We then take a tour as the rising sun reveals the sheer variety of goods on offer. Plenty of clothes and bric-a-brac along with an eclectic mix of junk and antiques. The place is lent an exotic flavour by the rugs from North Africa, Rai music blaring out. All classes of society will soon be caught up in the age-old customs of surveying and scrutinising. In catching the mood of the market, we adopt an easy stroll while casting a keen eye. By observing some of the early transactions I ascertain that haggling is very much de rigour.
In spite of the variety of stalls and merchandise about, it is still with a slightly embarrassed air that we set up, unfolding the pasting table upon which the books, mostly paperbacks, are laid out. To my relief, nobody bats an eyelid. The books are casually surveyed. A few people linger to take in the titles and only one elderly gentleman chooses to express surprise over their language. In opening a shop one year later, I am met with considerably more scepticism from passers by. One guy even insinuates that the shop must be some kind of front for ill-gotten gains. I try to look affronted but take perverse pleasure from the thought.
Our spirits receive an early boost when a man, with dishevelled hair that gives him a somewhat professorial air, snaps up our entire collection of Sotheby’s Art Auction catalogues. Great. We’re in profit.