File:In Morocco (1920) (14595726727).jpg

Identifier: inmorocco00wharuoft (find matches)
Title: In Morocco
Year: 1920 (1920s)
Authors: Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937
Subjects: Morocco -- Description and travel
Publisher: New York Scribner
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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ears or centuries with these visions of frail splen-dor seen through cypresses and roses? The Cadisin their multiple muslins, who received us in se-cret doorways and led us by many passages intothe sudden wonder of gardens and fountains;the bright-earringed negresses peering down frompainted balconies; the pilgrims and clients dozingin the sun against hot walls; the deserted halls withplaster lace-work and gold pendentives in tiledniches; the Venetian chandeliers and tawdry rococobeds; the terraces from which pigeons whirled up ina white cloud while we walked on a carpet of theirfeathers—were all these the ghosts of vanishedstate, or the actual setting of the life of some richmerchant with business connections in Liverpooland Lyons, or some government official at thatvery moment speeding to Meknez or Casablancain his sixty h. p. motor ? We visited old palaces and new, inhabited andabandoned, and over all lay the same fine dust ofoblivion, like the silvery mould on an overripe ( 84 )
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FEZ fruit. Overripeness is indeed the characteristic ofthis rich and stagnant civiHzation. Buildings, peo-ple, customs, seem all about to crumble and fall oftheir own weight: the present is a perpetually pro-longed past. To touch the past with ones handsis realized only in dreams; and in Morocco thedream-feeling envelopes one at every step. Onetrembles continually lest the Person from Porlock*should step in. He is undoubtedly on the way; but Fez had notheard of him when w^e rode out that morning. FezEldjid, the New Fez of palaces and governmentbuildings, was founded in the fourteenth centuryby the Merinid princes, and probably looks muchas it did then. The palaces in their overgrown gar-dens, with pale-green trellises dividing the rose-beds from the blue-and-white tiled paths, andfountains in fluted basins of Italian marble, all hadthe same drowsy charm; yet the oldest were builtnot more than a century or two ago, others withinthe last fifty years; and at Marrakech, later in ourjourne

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