Financial Times
John Gimlette
Tanneries in Fes, where hides are processed in vats of pigeon dung and urine before being dyed.
Newcomers would be unwise to tackle Fes without a Hamood. Although you would probably come to no harm getting lost (it might even be fun), you’d almost certainly miss your dinner, most of the sights and perhaps your flight home. Compacted within the medina walls, there are said to be more than 9,000 alleyways and passages. From the hills above, Fes el Bali (Old Fes) is a mass of pinkish-grey vesicles, like some giant medieval brain.
That’s why restaurants employ boys like Hamood to collect their guests and guide them in. Forget taxis; this is one of the largest car-free urban areas in the world. “Foreigners are always getting lost,” said Hamood, “even with GPS.” But to a 10-year-old such as my daughter Lucy, Hamood was more than a human satnav; he was part of the adventure. In the darkness, it felt as if we were following Aladdin through the pages of One Thousand and One Nights.
Everyone seemed to be hurrying around in dressing-gown and slippers — or djellabas and babouches — and we came across a caravan of donkeys delivering the gas. The buildings had no windows giving out on to the street, and some houses had thick studded doors no higher than one’s waist. Everything looked uniformly ancient — patched, shored-up and slathered in centuries of lime — and every now and then fierce games of football broke out in spaces the size of a bathroom. In the end, even Hamood got lost and we were rescued by a passing cobbler.
To outsiders the city has probably always felt like this, outlandish and complex. Until recently, it hasn’t even been particularly easy to get to. Only eight airlines use its little airport and the flights have often been infrequent and relatively costly. Many, too, have involved stopovers — for us that meant changing aircraft in Casablanca, then arriving at midnight. All this has tended to sap the appetite for Fes and perhaps that’s why the city has never had Marrakech’s branded, glamorous and global appeal. Last year, tourists spent a total of 823,000 nights in Fes, compared with 6.28m in Marrakech.
But all this may be about to change. In June 2015 a new terminal is due to open at Fes-Saïss airport. It has cost £34m to build and will significantly increase capacity. Last year 110,000 tourists arrived at Fes airport but, according to Morocco’s Ministry of Infrastructure, the new terminal will be able to process 2m passengers a year. Already, new airlines are taking an interest: in May 2015 Transavia will begin a direct service from Paris (from €65 each way).
For some this will come as great news. Others, however, may worry that this remarkable ancient city will soon start to become more like Marrakech, with the camel heads hanging in the souk replaced by Manchester United shirts and a profusion of five-star hotels on the outskirts.
At the very least, the prospect of potential change gives an excuse to take a weekend break in Fes this winter. Though the truth is that this city seems to have been successfully resisting modernity for centuries. On our first day we were taken to the Medersa Bouanania, an Islamic college exquisitely carved from cedar and marble. Although completed in 1356, it’s an upstart compared with the Kairaouine university, founded in 859, which may be the oldest university in the world (alumni include Pope Sylvester II, who introduced Arabic numerals to Europe).
The souk is still the place to buy a cow-horn comb, a saucepan of newly beaten copper or a chicken — live, indignant and straight off the vendor’s back (‘Balak! Look out!’ he cried as he passed through the crowd, birds clucking behind him). But it’s the tanneries that seem most defiantly medieval. Like some enormous paintbox sprawling up the hill, even the stink is ancient. Before being dyed in poppy juice, indigo or mint, the hides have to be “cleaned” in enormous vats of pigeon dung and urine.
After explorations in the medina, we grazed happily at the cheap cafés around Bab Boujeloud or “the Blue Gate”. At places such as Chez Thami the chicken was lemony and rich and served in clay pots. For a slightly more porcelain experience, there was Restaurant Asmae, deep in the souk, where we ate pigeon pie dusted in sugar. Best of all was a refurbished riad called Dar Roumana. Here, Morocco’s traditional ingredients are reassembled with a lighter touch, although — with a family dinner costing the same as a donkey (£75) — it’s not a place locals gather.
One day we went beyond the ancient walls and headed out into the country. Some 30 miles west are the ruins of the Roman town Volubilis, which once had two miles of walls, 40 watchtowers, 58 olive presses and three public baths. These days the ruins are scattered through the grass, and storks roost on the columns in huge shaggy nests. Mosaic after mosaic depicts a life of frivolity, games, parties and love.
On our last evening back in Fes we climbed a hill opposite the medina. On the way we stopped at the Borj Nord, an old fortress stuffed with cannons and confiscated muskets, built by Portuguese captives. Even in the 1580s they must have been impressed by the antiquity of the evening rituals unfolding below. First, tanners appeared, gathering up the hides drying in the sun. Next came the song of the muezzins — perhaps hundreds of voices — creating a polyphonic aura that rose up out of the city and hung in the hills.
Change may be on its way but will this spoil Fes? I doubt it. The city is so deeply embedded in its past it’s hard to imagine a few more tourists — many of them lost — upsetting the rhythm. Families will still be up here on the hill watching the sunset for years to come. And, like us, they’ll see this astonishing medina do what it has done for centuries as it sinks — flickering and smoking — into a beautiful silence.
John Gimlette was a guest of Audley Travel (audleytravel.com) which offers tailor-made trips to Fes and the rest of Morocco. 10-night private tour of Fes, Chefchaouen, Tangiers and Rabat, Asilah and Casablanca, costs from £1,850 per person. The Fes Festival of Sacred Music runs from May 22-30, see fesfestival.com
Photograph: John Gimlette
