| The Journey to Qalbiyya | | Print | |
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Page 3 of 3 MOULAY IDRISS Winding through hills and valleys, loopy roads wide enough for two daredevil drivers to pass uncomfortably, our little van scuttling along between sheep herds and gorges, we arrived at Moulay Idriss in the early noon in a drizzle to visit the great patron saint of Morocco and have a kebab or two. The town’s sewer pipes seemed to be under construction, a great ditch threading precariously along the market fronts to the mosque entrance, which we navigated through slightly muddy terrain, the gray sky boding more merciful downpour to come. The Mosque and tomb of Moulay Idriss, though, is worth the slog for sure. It was time for the noon prayer, which we’d just missed, so Malika and Hamza did it on rush matting in a side courtyard, while I caught the eye of a muqaddem and he let me in the just-vacated mosque before closing it up until ‘Asr. I had it all to myself, and walked across the matting past pillars and pillars to the mihrab at the front, and did the Dhuhr prayer in silent privacy. The walls are stellar in their geometric tile work, and being in the vastness of space you get a little dizzy from all the almost spinning patterns which are of such pure brilliance and clarity. We visited the tomb of Moulay Idriss and browsed for a while in its baraka, contributed to by the reverence given him by all the people who have visited the tomb over the centuries. While it may not have the incredible warm and buttery atmosphere of the tomb and mosque of Moulay Idriss II in Fez, the building complex with its mosque halls and courtyards we had to cross in our bare feet, open to the sky -- so we often were wading through water -- is a very sweet expanse to let one’s heart and mind flow into. CHECHAOUEN Or just Chaouen, is a glowingly spiritual town nestled in the high Rif mountains with a rushing river crashing through one end of it whose vistas are truly alpine, especially in the chilly time we were there. The peaks visible from almost everywhere were topped with snow. And the winding alleyways are made vivid by the ice-blue lime whitewash they paint along the lower halves of many of the buildings, so that the impression is being in an almost blinding Antarctica of color, glacial in its high-pitched blueness. One mosque we entered was up some rickety steps next to a weaving shop where woven blankets and sweaters were sold. We got in out of the rain, and found ourselves in a very intimate mosque where the men who remained after the Maghrib prayer were reciting Qur’an, some looking through thick smudgy glasses, their djallaba hoods over their heads, leaning against the side walls. We performed the prayer, nodded our greeting and left. Later, for ‘Isha, we entered a larger mosque off a large square, one with actual pillars and a more serious mihrab. There may have been about five or six prayer lines. Leaving, I noticed men doing their sunna prayers behind the various pillars. We met a man who sings for all the tariqa gatherings, who has a sheikh from the ‘Ajibiyya tariqa of ibn ‘Ajiba, but who is welcomed at all the tariqa gatherings because of his voice and fathomless repertoire of qasa’id a miraculous gift especially honored among these people. We went to his house for dinner, and his diabetic, blind mother, sitting in a corner, whispering continuous remembrance of Allah, made a very long and special prayer for us, even singing a song herself, she being, Muhammad told us, the source of his expertise: melodic wisdom from his mother’s milk. The meal was sparse but nourishing, begun with a very tasty lentil-like soup, specialty of Chaouen, for these people were obviously poor, their house bare of furniture except for some sofas and a table, but their hospitality ranking with those of royal spirit, something we find here over and over. TETOUAN, TANGIER AND MEKNES AGAIN We performed the puppet play in the upper corridor of the American Language Center in Tetouan, the Moroccan children chattering and restless during the performance, asking each other what was happening, though when I came out as Majnun in sackcloth and mask identical to the puppet some hair shot straight up and some audible gasps were gasped. Later, after the puppet play, with a few hours in between, I read poetry in the poetry presentation, one of the teenage students reading the prepared Arabic translation sight-unseen, maneuvering adeptly around all the classical words, some without diacritical marks, actually leaning into the poems with passion and conviction, his hands gesturing for emphasis, though he was reading them for the first time. Before the performance, after the stage was set up, we took a fifteen minute ride to see the Mediterranean, to walk on the beach and even wade in up to our calves (I say “we” though it was only the director of the Tetouan Center and our stalwart guide, young Sidi Hamza, who rolled up their cuffs and walked into the soft blue gentility of the sea). Bracing and balmy, it was a short, sweet visit to the other side of the continent. From Tetouan we journeyed to Tangier, staying in a fine hotel around the corner from the American Language Center there, and the direc-tor, an old American Tangier hand who had been living in Tangier since his Peace Corps days for over twenty years, took us to the docks for a succulent fish cookup lunch the like of which I’d never seen nor tasted. The fish came fried on top of each other in a giant platter, and it was a kind of icthioarcheological repast, eating down past the shrimps and squid to the actual fish below. The afternoon fishermen were mending their nets which were spread out along the docks like an art instillation by Christo, the strings all dyed a bright cobalt blue in order to become invisible in the water. Something sweet about Tangier, nestled in its hills and looking out at the Atlantic ocean! Something gentle in the city, arranged like colored boxes up and down the hills leading to the shore. The nighttime lights out from the port twinkle like golden lanterns in the dark, and the nighttime sky comes down in pastel swatches. In the evening I wrote this poem on the little terrace outside our room at the hotel: On a terrace in Tangier overlooking the beehive city right above a Moroccan McDonalds with radio blaring bus-screech motor scooter-burble cockcrow ship-horn blast tire-squeak and Mercedes motor-rumble (that particularly throaty motor sound associated with North Africa) the setting sun hitting the left sides of buildings like yellow paint up and down the hills in this fresh Straits of Gibraltar breeze Spain completely obscured by 6PM mist and the light at the left in the sky a glaring white I think of love lost and won and the wonders of it and its inexhaustible supply over all how it floods each person one way or another walking along or sitting forlorn in their houses or celebrating in ecstatic circles under stained glass domes every moment somewhere on earth each of us a turning facet in the single crystal each of us an occasional winged landing and a taking off again to unknown territories having left a fluttering shadow for a moment on the open page our original names alone surviving us RETURN AND FAREWELL TO MARRAKESH While we were in the market in Marrakesh before we took off on the Floating Lotus journey, Sidi Hamza took us to a little square where the woodworkers ply their trade, because I had said I would like someone to make a Darqawi tasbih, one of those tasbihs very rarely seen anymore, with flat disk counters instead of round beads. We walked into the square and up to a man sitting on the ground on a stool, with a lathe in front of him and his foot doing all the work. The lathe is run by a bow, like a violin bow, with the thick twine bowstring wound around the lathe mount that the woodworker pulls back and forth at whatever speed he desires to make the wooden piece he’s going to cut from turn. He clutches a square, sharp blade between his bare toes and so cuts and shapes and tapers the wood piece he wants, then cuts it off the end to make either a kohl bottle with a lovely base and tall neck (many of them were on display by his side on a little table for sale) or in my case, a tasbih bead. He tried out a few, some too small or too big, until we got one that was perfect as the model for all the ninety-nine, and I left him a deposit to pick up the tasbih in a week or so, before we left Morocco. While we were up north on our junket, Hamza’s wife collected the tasbih and it was waiting for me at their apartment when we returned to Marrakesh. It’s a treasure. Dark wood, each thin disk has three edged ridges running around its edge, weighty but not heavy, and a deep pleasure for doing the Wird of Sheikh ibn al-Habib or counting the Divine Names after the prayer. It’s more than a memento of Morocco, it’s a remembrance machine, a dhikr in itself, a jewel plucked from the blessing of Sheikh Darqawi, quintessential Moroccan sheikh, a pearl plucked from the entire oyster of our time there, remembering His Grace in the deep-hearted people we met everywhere, and especially the director and staff of the American Language Center in Marrakesh, and the branches that we visited, the glowing tasbih in my room now in Philadelphia, clicking through my fingers to thank Allah for all His Bounty, and prayers that it continue for all of us, in this world in a state of peace and endless gratitude, and into the sweet Garden pathways of the next. At the end of the puppet play, Ameen’s Journey to Qalbiyya, I come out from behind the stage wearing the mask of an old man with long beard and hair (a life size version of one of the hand-puppet characters in the play), carrying a rod with a red bird on top of it with flapping wings that make it look as if it’s flying, and he says (again, adapted from the Greater Ode of Sheikh ibn al-Habib, may Allah bless his secret): Remember Allah all of the time, it erases faults and makes you sublime. Serve the Best of creation and imitate him, Prophet Muhammad, peace upon him. Everywhere see the Creator’s Light, He makes everything turn out right. Everything in this world comes as a sign—– Follow Allah and His Prophet—–you’ll shine. Beware of evil, beware of you! What you believe is what you do! [About the Author] Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore is an award-winning American Muslim poet, author, and playright. His most recent books are The Ramadan Sonnets (Kitab Books and City Lights), and The Blind Bee-keeper (Kitab Books and Syracuse University Press) Further Information: Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore Poetry: http://www.danielmoorepoetry.com/ |