I’ve now been on the road for a whole week. Malaga. Granada. Algeciras. Tangier. Fes. A week long warm up. Landing by plane in Marrakech is like trying to run a marathon without stretching. You’re coming in cold and when you try to run, you’re going to get hurt. You’ve got to be able to see mystical journeys from an athletic perspective and be prepared to hit the ground running. The preparation is key to the success or failure of your journey because it’s there that you’re laying down all the signposts that will guide your future steps without being trapped in the oldest con in the book: forcing the story to take shape instead of letting it unfold as it should. It’s a classic tale where choice meets destiny and in the end – hopefully – it’s not a tragic love story.
I arrived late in the night because there was a fire on the train from Fes. But I never heard a thing, never saw all the passengers get out, never wondered why we had stopped in the middle of the desert. I was much too much involved in a free for a all spiraling conversation with two young Moroccans born in Belgium and two elderly Moroccans about European Islam, Jihad, Western Media, Sept 11, The Q’ran and Obama. When two young women walked into our cabin and told us the news, I had a good belly laugh.
I had planned to arrive at sunset and bathe in the primordial energy of the legendary medieval square they call Jemma el Fna - the Gathering of Annihilation – a place that in the past has stirred in me painful, uncontrollable energies. Annihilation. After all, this is where, for a thousand years, heads would roll and slaves were bought and sold, while storytellers told tales of cuckold peasants, ancient Sufi Saints and warriors. A thousand years of collective history lay beneath my feet; a continuous drama played out in nightly rituals of public performances: snake charmers, men disguised as belly dancers, knife throwers, steamed snails for sale, children acrobats, sadomasochistic clowns and yes, Gnawa musicians…The public executions may have been long gone, but other subtle forms remained hidden among the smoking grills and marinated meats, holistic healers, petty thieves, homeless shoeshine boys, veiled tattoo henna artists, blind fortune tellers… But this heightened description comes from a vision I had many many years ago, and incredibly enough does not match what I felt this time. This time, instead of being pulled in like a wild horse – I stepped back.
Here’s a taste of what I experienced ten years ago as I took my first steps in Jemma el Fna (from my 1999 journal):
I had barely stepped into Jemma el Fna, recording microphone in hand, excited beyond belief by the cacophony of exotic sounds, when a hand reached out and pulled me into a frenzied circle of street performing Gnawas. Five musicians illuminated by small kerosene lamps were sitting on flattened cardboards while five others danced clapping their metal castagnettes. It happened so fast; I didn’t have time to wonder at the sight. No time to say to myself: “Hey! Rodrigo! Here they are! This is what you traveled 7,000 miles for”. Luckily, I was in good shape. Years of playing soccer in small youth clubs in Amsterdam had given me strong legs and I was able to keep up with their acrobatic dances. We danced, we pranced, we laughed. But then I foolishly decided to get ahead of myself. I took the lead and dared the Gnawa to imitate my backwards-Russian crab move. On all fours, backwards on my back, right leg up, left arm up. It took less than five beats before I knocked down one of the kerosene lamps and the cardboard went up in flames. Total pandemonium. The musicians jumped back in unison as if bitten by a snake. They were angry, indignant. The crowd laughed and hollered. From the corner of my eye I could see someone running with a burlap bag in an attempt to put out the fire. All the while I kept on the dancing with the other Gnawas, who, in an attempt to be heard screamed in my ear that the lamp would cost 50 dirhams (5 dollars). No problem I shouted back while hopping on one leg. I reached in my pockets, pulled out a rumpled 100 and gave it to him declaring to anyone that cared to listen that the extra 50 was for the one I was going to break next. There was no time to think about the consequences of my actions; about the meaning of my transgressions. I was driven, madly driven, to participate in the footsteps of the history I was dancing on.
That was then. Tonight the darkness seems empty, the mystery appears to be gone. There are no Gnawa in Jemma el Fna – not like the ones I encountered ten years ago. These are “fake” Gnawa, crude pretenders in disguise, a byproduct of the globalization of Gnawa culture, “the opening”, as some pissed off Gnawa call it, into a commercial world where their music is now for sale beyond the context of their sacred rituals. I’m a part of that history now. My website on the Gnawa is the top hit on the Google search engine. I contributed to this opening – for better or for worse, I rode a history in the making where a whole culture transitioned in a matter of two decades from obscure sect to viable commercial representatives of a culture that once despised them a African gypsies. The “Arab” cultural hegemony of Moroccan culture is for ever broken. Paul Bowles made the first crack when he published the transliterated life story of an illiterate Berber into English, boldly bypassing the Arab/French paradigm that had defined all “official” Moroccan literature.
But now, ten years later after my first encounter with the Gnawa I can see the consequences of a history I am now part of. I’m not dancing on some abstract image of a mystical Moroccan past conjured up by a dream I had ten years ago. No. I’m dancing with the awareness that there’s been a forest fire and that the “real” Gnawa – and I hesitate to use the term – have gone underground again. Jemma el Fna is now the realm of smoke and mirrors, even the beautiful simpleton shoe shine boy, I photographed back then, who had kept his sanity in the midst of the hell that is Moroccan street life, had become a wild drunken beast, his face ravaged by alcohol and fist fights. Dark spots everywhere like a dead moonscape. The servers from my favorite restaurant told me had gotten into a fight with an orange juice presser and later that night the OJ kid had died of a heart attack. The shoe shine boy was sent to prison and when he came out – he was never the same. I’m still waiting to give him his photograph, but I wonder if it’s wise to expose him to an image of who he once was. He might see in his long lost face the possibility of redemption, or the might see the gates of hell. I’m not sure I want to be responsible for what happens. I’m thinking of tearing the photo and throwing it in the garbage.
Tonight Jemma el Fna died for me. I took a step back because I don’t want to fall into the grave. Tomorrow I will see the Gnawa priestess who opened the door for me. I hope she is still underground, hidden from view. I hope we will be able to see each other.
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