Then we set off again in the Dodge Sedan and the road began to climb a little, bringing the mountains even closer.
We arrived in the ancient city of Fez at midday and the metal of the car was so hot by the time we managed to find the riad we were going to be staying in that Papa said you could fry eggs on it. I would have liked to have tried that but sadly we didn’t have any eggs to hand.
I was especially interested to see Fez for two reasons: one was that I had read that it had the oldest library in the world; the other was that we were going to be staying in the guesthouse where two of Miss Ellis’s friends lived so I was on high alert to see what might happen. Maybe there would be some more clues as to the real purpose of the trip. I was determined to be on the lookout for brown envelopes or any other suspiciously furtive exchanges.
Miss Bertha Smith and Miss Gertrude Evans were sitting in the courtyard of the riad when we arrived. ‘Welcome, welcome,’ Miss Smith said, striding towards us with her arms spread wide. In her flowing kaftan she looked a bit like a ship in full sail. ‘Dorothy has told us so much about you. We’ve been looking forward to meeting you and to showing you Fez.’
Then she told us to call her Bert and said that Miss Evans went by the name of Gert. They are two ladies who have come from a university in Cambridge, England, to study at the famous library in the Al Qarawiyyin university at Fez since it has only recently been opened up to non-Muslims. This is because you used to only be able to enter the library from the mosque so non-believers were forbidden to enter, but a new separate entrance was created just last year, which allowed it to be open to others as long as they were scholars. Women are allowed in and in fact Bert told us that the whole university was founded by a woman called Fatima Al-Fihri in the 9th century, more than 1,100 years ago! Bert told us more very fascinating facts about the university and the city as we sat and sipped cups of mint tea in the beautiful tiled courtyard with a fountain bubbling away quietly to itself in the centre. Bert and Gert are staying in the riad while they study some of the very ancient documents in the library. Maman asked them if they hadn’t thought of going back to England because of the war but they said it made it all the more important to see the documents in case the war destroyed things. Gert is one of the first female professors at Cambridge, and Bert has studied architecture so she finds the buildings of the ancient medina in Fez very interesting. I liked them both very much and thought I might like to study at an ancient university somewhere one day. In the Dorothy L. Sayers books, Lord Peter Wimsey studied at Oxford University. I asked Gert about it and she said she was biased but she thought I should go to Cambridge. There’s a college called Girton that women can go to, although when I told her we were going to be living in America she said that in that case I should apply to Vassar College, which is entirely for women and has a very good library too.
By the time we’d had lunch we all felt that Bert and Gert were firm friends. Gert said she would take us to visit the library the next morning, if she could square it with the guards, because we would find it very interesting and there was a very good view of the city from the roof. But first, Bert took us on a tour of the medina that afternoon. It was much, much bigger than the medina in Casablanca and some of the streets were so narrow you couldn’t really say they were streets at all. Sometimes Papa had to turn sideways on because otherwise his shoulders touched the walls on either side.
We looked at the arrays of stalls with their baskets of olives, dates, spices and fish, and we saw a butcher’s shop with camel meat hanging from a hook on the ceiling. There were rug sellers and leather workers too. Then Bert bought some sprigs of mint from a stall and said we should hold them to our noses because we were about to go and see the famous and very ancient traditional leather tanneries and the smell was really pretty dreadful. She was right. The tannery looks a bit like a giant honeycomb of stone vats although it certainly doesn’t smell as pleasant as a real honeycomb would. The tanners use bird droppings and urine to treat the hides while they are being dyed different colours and the stench of sulphur and ammonia makes your eyes water. The sprigs of mint helped a bit and Bert showed us how to crush them a little between our fingers to release more of their sweetness. First the hides are rubbed with salt to remove the hair and then they are put into one of the very stinky vats and men get in there with them and stamp on them until they become soft. I dread to think what their feet must smell like when they go home at the end of the day. Perhaps their wives make them wash before they come into the house. At the end of the process, the hides are rinsed with mimosa flowers to get rid of the bad smell. （Maybe that works on the men’s feet too.） It was very interesting to see how the different colours were made, using plants like indigo, poppies and saffron, but I must admit it was quite a relief to move on from the tannery and be able to breathe some fresher air at last.