K'an bεn, Keita

Oumar Keita and Sophie Sarin photographed by the great Malick Sidibé at Hotel Djenné Djenno, 2007

Gone far too soon, but Keita lived longer than anyone ever expected since his second wife and loving partner of 10 years, our Sophie Sarin, went to the ends of the earth to find cures and stavings-off of the myeloma that gradually, with remissions, wore down his resistance. She was trying, with expensive medication from India, to the last. A French drug wrought miracles for about a year.

I trust Keita's Malian family, including his first wife by whom he has two children (update - three, Sophie tells me below, proving how much time has passed), realises all that. For one thing especially they owe Sophie eternal gratitude - that the treatment she sought out in Casablanca got Keita walking again. His mother lived to see that, and to have hope, before she died.

I wish I could find that first photo I took of Keita in his workroom at Djenné's hospital - that would have been Christmas/Tabaski of 2005. Communication wasn't always easy given my far from perfect French, but the last time we spoke, over the phone while Sophie was here for supper on her last visit, was unforgettable for his big, deep laugh at something I said. We also spent quality time together in Meknes, Morocco, when they both joined us at the Riad Lahboul for a couple of nights. Above, the two in the main square; below, in the Riad, Keita in his most splendid boubou.

I know that Keita was the rock Sophie needed, both in her life generally and during her time (ongoing, of course) in Djenné - his presence smoothed over difficulties and allowed her to be her usual outspoken self. He'd always have wise judgment to give in conflicts with staff and locals. I never knew a gentler yet more manly, natural soul.

We have yet to hear from Sophie of that no doubt harrowing but - I hazard a guess - still extraordinary week by his bedside at the hospital in Bamako (he became unconscious on Good Friday and died on Easter Saturday). Hope we can be of support to her when she returns. Meanwhile, our thoughts are with her. Echoing the last line of her latest blog entry: Rest in Peace Oumar Keita, Mandé Massa.

Meknes medina: streets, gates, fountains

It's become a point of honour on this blog, whether anyone's interested or not, that I try to do justice to any town or city I've visited and adored. So I felt that my April and May entries on Morocco's most genial civic treasure needed completing by a tour around the area in which we spent most time, unhassled and often pleasantly lost - the medina or walled old town of Meknes.


Of course it's not on the scale of glorious, once-wealthy Tunis or Fes, but it has enough authenticity and charm to make it a place to return to again and again. We took three or four trails in different directions, with an excellent French guidebook on loan from Mona and Simon at the Riah Lahboul, so forgive if the details here are relatively hazy. Mona especially recommended the rather run-down but fascinating area of the Mellah Qdim, once the old Jewish quarter - the new Mellah has a modest synagogue frequented by a small community - via Berrima, where her family still lives. You sense the change in building styles once through the arch that separates the Mellah from the Medina proper. Here there are more balconies and handsome old houses, most in a state of disrepair


and the striking scallop fountain which, like all the others, is still very much in use.


It's worth exiting the Mellah by the old Jewish cemetery (closed whenever we happened to be in the vicinity) to go out and look at the Bab el Khemis


built by the Almohades but substantially elaborated by our tyrannical Moulay Ismail - who did have one thing in his favour: religious tolerance. The inscription reads: 'I am the gate of the fifth day, open to all races whether from the east or the west'.


Back on the Sekkakine, another old arch leads to the tailors' quarter


and there are also iron and metal workers along the main street


as well as several old musical instrument shops, several inside the Bab Djedid.


Turn right here and you're in the quietest and - to me - most suggestive part of the medina, with quite a few white minarets including that of the Berrima Mosque


a fascinating glimpse of 'sky' in a ruined building


old alleys with twisting vines


and another old fountain by the Serraria Mosque. The lady washing her clothes is helpfully colour-co-ordinated.


Eventually you'll meet up with one of the main streets of tailors' shops via an alley with my favourite coloured walls


where you can either turn left and head for the Bab Berdaine, designed by Moulay Ismail as the main entrance to the Medina and almost as grand as the Bab Mansour which dominates the main square



or if you were to go right along the narrow main drag with its high booths you'd reach a pretty open area dominated by a welcome shady tree beneath which the traditional furniture-painters work.


Much silk weaving goes on around here. The threads adorn the shop booths


and the clatter of machines can be investigated, if you wander into one of the old foundouqs. Worth watching this little film for the evocative sound.



Now we're back in the heart of things, with more tourists to boot, around the Great Mosque


with its splendid doorways


and the Medersa Bou Inania nearby.


We didn't visit, but we did go inside the old vizier's palace that now houses the Dar Jamai Museum.


The courtyard is better kept than the museum. Visitors' comments in the book were way over the top - 'this is the best museum I've visited in Morocco' etc - or perhaps there's nothing in better nick, but good as the collection is, with some fabulous garments and the cedarwood painting in the old harem rooms,


it's badly in need of renovation. But it seems that, thanks to the interest of the now-beleaguered king, quite a bit of the medina has been tarted up - which, perversely, I also didn't feel quite comfortable with. But there's no pleasing a tourist randy for antique, and at least this is very much a working old town, with the relaxed attitude to furriners that comes with that.

Cinema 1938: a mural in Meknes

Say what you will about French imperialism in north Africa, but the so-called Protectorate in Morocco left a certain amount of what it found untouched. Thanks to Resident-General Hubert Lyautey's 'do not offend a single tradition, do not change a single habit', the old ways carried on alongside the new. In Meknes this means that for the flash, be-blinged 4x4-driving Moroccan nouveaux riches, the Ville Nouvelle is the place to go for cafe and nightclubbing life, while the medina on the opposite hill, separated by the valley with the Oued Boufekrane flowing (if that's the right word) through it, carries on an existence largely unchanged since the middle ages. This is the view of the medina from the newly-developed park slopes above the valley.


The other result is that the tourists ignore the Ville Nouvelle other to eat and drink there. Sadly the Moroccans have rather neglected it, too, which is a pity, because it's a treasure-trove of 1930s architecture falling into disrepair. In any other city where this was the only asset, it would be assiduously preserved and guided tours would be taken around its gems (think of Tel Aviv, or wonderful Asmara, capital of Eritrea, where the experimental architectural projects under Mussolini are a major draw). But at least it's still here, and very much the centre of attraction off the central roundabout is the 1930s Cine Camera, still a working picturehouse.


Had it not been for an excellent illustrated French guide to the town loaned us by Mouna and Simon of the Riad Lahboul, we might have missed one of the great artistic treasures of Meknes, one Marcel Couderc's 1938 fresco in the foyer, for neither the Rough nor the Blue Guides mentions it. The eye is drawn up to the central panel of opera singers, pianist, string players (love the double-bassist) and jazz band.


The details are no less charming on a close inspection. There are selective glimpses of Paris


and New York


sport and sailors


the movies


and fashion - dig the chap in his plus fours.


Upstairs


even the wall above the projection room is duly adorned.


There's been a fine book produced on the 1930s architecture of Asmara, but I couldn't find much on this - it all needs documenting by an enthusiast of the era. And I'm told Tangier and Casablanca have just as much to offer.

Morocco's Versailles

He may have been less than half a sun-king, but God knows the Alouite tyrant Moulay Ismail Ibn Sharif (reigned 1672–1727) went flat-out in emulation. Playing, as so many of those bastards did, on lineage traceable back to Mohammed always helps. Overloaded with 25 kilometres of threefold walls and gates enclosing palaces, gardens and water-features, the small town of Meknes looked set under Moulay Ismail to overtake the splendours of Fes. Which it did, for a while, but now - despite royal interest and investment - it's returned to slightly sleepy provincial status. The Lisbon earthquake didn't help; after it the centres of power shifted to Marrakesh and back to Fes.


There was a low-level buzz when we were in Meknes because Mohammed VI - still popular, I'm told, partly because he claims descent, like Moulay Ismail (pictured above), from the Prophet - was about to arrive to preside over an international agricultural fair. Walls were whitewashed, flowerbeds watered and lines painted in the roads - I thought of Lewis Carroll's hapless card-courtiers painting the white roses red for the Queen of Hearts - but you knew it would all go back to what it was once he departed (with rather more on his plate, as it turned out due to the Marrakesh bombing, than anyone could have imagined).


Moulay Ismail did in fact have dealings with Louis XIV, but through an ambassador. Picture his indignation at the outcome: 'I asked for one of his daughters' hand in marriage and all I got were four lousy longcase clocks'. They stand in the corners of his surprisingly unimpressive mausoleum. You're only supposed to be able to see two, but the others can be glimpsed through a grille - here's one.


More impressive are the antechamber and the path to it through a splendid doorway



and several austere courtyards.



I especially like the sundial in the last.


Exactly how much of the work is the result of Mohammed V's 1959 restoration I don't know, but it's only thanks to him that we farafins can get to glimpse the shrine at all. It's only one of three holy places open to non-Muslims - all this thanks to a misreading of the Islamic decree that foreigners should not be allowed inside mosques et al on Fridays. But every day is non-viewing day for the infidel in Morocco, unlike many other countries we've visited. One good reason for not going to Fes; I do so want to see inside the Karouine Mosque there. Anyway, here's splendour enough, if not on a par with Istanbul or Isfahan:


The pillars are not, like the ones which support the Bab Mansour, plundered from Roman Volubilis, but obviously fashioned afresh - from Italian marble, it turns out, exchanged for sugar on an ounce for ounce basis (I love the tales of salt-for-gold swaps, carried out in the highest secrecy in the middle of the Sahara).



Other than this, there is size but not much splendour to be seen in the Imperial City. The mind boggles at all the statistics, no doubt exaggerated by legend: 10,000 enemy heads hung on the walls; 25, 000 slaves used (and mostly disposed of) in the construction - which makes the accidental deaths of Louis XIV's Versailles projects seem like childsplay; 859 kids, for which Moulay Ismail holds some sort of record; 30,000 killed in the campaigns which gave Morocco a greater degree of independence. I shouldn't forget the 150,000 members of the Black Guard, a sort of Moroccan oprichnik or iron ring. They hung out in the stables and granaries. There is, it's true, something impressive about the ruins of the stables with their 23 naves (room, forgive another statistic, for 12,000 horses).


It was here that my dear companion had a familiar fit of touristic ennui, thunderously opining that even Doctor Johnson's celebrated 'worth seeing but not worth going to see' wasn't applicable to this not even very ancient pile of rubble. Equanimity returned just beyond the crumbling walls by the Aguedal Basin, a nice place of repose for the Meknesi, or whatever you call them.



You can take a horse and carriage to get this far, but we preferred a half-hour walk. I'll be boring you with more gates in another entry, so let's get some of these out of the way. I've no longer got the detailed French guide, but these are all in the north-east quarter of the imperial city




and, passing the nesting storks on all that's left of the old imperial palace,


you walk (or ride) through the Bab el Rih


to get some idea of the grim monumentality of it all.


Give me the human touch of the medina or the ruined charm and location of Roman Volubilis any time. But those are for another day.