IN MOROCCO

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 May 1936, Page 9

IN MOROCCO

THE OLD AND THE NEW. All the world will no doubt flock here next winter, for the head waiter of the chief hotel tells me that Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Winston Churchill, and Lord Rothermere (a little ominous, the combination) severally promised him on leaving that they woqld not only spread the fame of the remarkable interests and beauties of the place but return there themselves, writes Professor C. H. Reilly from Marrakech to the “Manchester Guardian.” Indeed, one can well imagine that Marrakech in essentials untouched for a thousand years till the French arrived, will soon become a fashionable resort. L Twenty years ago it was only visited by an occasional explorer, well equipped with Arabic, and only lived in, apart from missionaries, by Europeans like the late Maclean Pasha, who were personal friends of the Sultan. Now it has its European quarter of luxurious hotels and shops, wisely placed by the French on its outskirts. They arc buildings of similar colour and of curiously allied shape, owing to their modern simplicity of external design, to the native buildings; nevertheless, they make, for those who see their interiors, a far too vivid contrast with the houses of the two hundred thousand Arabs and Berbers, negroes and Indians packed within the city walls and occupying on the map an area about equal to that of the new European quarter for a thousand Frenchmen. Nevertheless, after a few days’ stay, and especially if one has visited India, ono gains an immense admiration for what the French have accomplished in material ways in less than twenty years. Indeed, we in India seem to have done less in nearly two hundred. French engineers have made effective use of the torrents of the great Atlas range, fine wall of white that this makes to the purple plain on which Marraketch stands. All the big Moroccan towns are connected by electrified railways as well as by good roads for motor-car or omnibus. Indeed, the train journey to Marrakech from Tangier or Casablanca —this latter a fine exhibition piece of French town planning and modern architecture —compares favourably with that across Spain and even across France itself. English people, however, will probably come by sea to Gibraltar and stay a night or two at the famous Algeciras Hotel, that little piece of Bournemouth for ever England. They will consequently reach, from the depth of their English comforts, this strange and exciting Arab and Berber world with only a short sea crossing and a 12-hour journey in a clean electric train.

UNUSUAL FEATURES. Probably there is no town outside China whose* city walls, still intact, contain not only about a quarter of a million closely-packed inhabitants but largo areas of park and garden filled with palms, olive and orange trees, as well as ground for manoeuvring troops, relics of the days not so long ago when Sultans lived in Marrakech and war and palace fetes were alternate occupations of the great. The result is that when one sees the city from any vantage-point the orange and ochre rectangles of the flat-roofed houses, all much of the same height, are broken not only by the towers of the mosques but by masses of green and by the fingers of the palms outlined against the sky. At sunset, when the shadows are horizontal and each building has its glowing and its darker side, with the sharpness of outline each object then possesses in the perfectly clear air, the scene is one to delight the hard heart of the modern artist.

For the ordinary, more sentimental, persons this hour of sunset is intensified by the call to prayer from twenty or more towers like the Giralda, in Seville, all copied from the biggest, that of the Koutubia Mosque, built in the twelfth century by the same Sultan Yacoub el Mansour. On each of these 'towers, simple, massive, and without the Renaissance finery of the Giralda, appears at this moment in the glow and reflection of the sunset a single white electric light, a modern addition to the scene, but a most effective one. The sky then gradually changes from pale green to deep indigo, and the white wall of the Grand Atlas gradually recedes until it disappears, only to return ghostly and grander than ever under the moon. All the while, from ten in the morning—1 cannot swear tt> anything earlier —till sunset, in the great square which, unlike other Arab towns, Marrakech possesses, there is going on continuously, to the endless accompaniment of drums and tambourines, ring after ring of entertainments, acrobats, snake-charmers, fire-eaters, dancers, comedians, storytellers, with an everchanging but never, save for a few minutes, diminishing audience.

THE VENDERS. On the edges are the venders of bread, milk, oranges, hashish, and the other simple necessities of life, either seated on the ground or, like the Biblical water-seller with his goatskin, wandering round the crowd. The colours are chiefly browns, blacks, and whites, with flecks of every other. It is a singularly quiet and happy crowd, with the men ready to smile at any stranger and to make way for him. and the women, too, if one may judge from the glowing eyes, which are all

cue can see through their swathings of white. Occasionally there is a round; of clapping, and occasionally a comedian will even imitate a European in the audience, to the great delight of everyone, redoubled if the victim has the sense to enjoy it too. The same gentle courtliness is to be seen everywhere in the closely-packed streets and bazaars, “souks” as the latter are called, where crafts are carried on rather than mere selling. These narrow, winding ways, some roofed in,’ some only with branches across them through which the sun happily sparkles on the moving crowd, form a perfect maze in which one can gently meander for hours with never a sign of ill-humour from man or ass as they delicately tread their way. Without a guide, however, one is likely to remain in them indefinitely. The scene is completely medieval. One secs all the things required for a normal, happy life made before one’s eyes in little open cupboard rooms, the man doing the work, but children helping as they stretch and cross the tailor s threads for him or blow the blacksmith’s bellows. Every now and then in one of the cupboards is a little school, where the children sit against the walls chanting Koran as they learn it by heart. Few can read; hence the happy absence of advertisements and the less happy omission of the names of the streets, if they have any. Apparently it is a life of gentle, smiling happiness, which has gone on unchanged for centuries. No doubt under the surface there is, as in all human institutions, cruelty.