An Evening at Cafe Clock
Laughing with others never felt so good … especially when you don’t understand the language.
Story and photos by MJ Pramik
Café Clock — my destination with Moroccan and American travel-writing friends in Fès, Morocco (also spelled Fez; natives prefer Fès) — wasn’t just for the food. We headed to the Moroccan restaurant to hear my Faisan friend, Zakia, perform with her mentor, storyteller Mohammed Mokhlis. This evening was a big event for her, a female retelling a story in a public setting. Zakia and I had been friends for several years, and she showed the spunk to accomplish her goals in a Muslim country.
Our group didn’t want to be late. The excitement of watching the rebirth of Moroccan storytelling played a role in our effort to find this popular eatery and nightspot. Left to my own internal GPS, I’d never locate this hopping cantina at 7 Derb el Magana, Fès, Morocco. Street signs are rare in the Fès Medina. Hand-scrawled, makeshift placards or faded, nailed wooden notices are often the only directions for visitors. Most are tacked to upper walls on winding alleys.
We entered the Medina of Fès labyrinth through the Blue Gate, Grande Porte Bab Boujeloud. That’s where my brain’s usually excellent space tracker ended and my GPS fritzed. Native Faisans had directed, “Café Clock is off the Tala Khabira, the big, main road.” I would not have used the word “road.”
We wended our way over a slippery path down dark, foreboding alleys.
After many hazardous twists and turns — a final divergence through an extremely narrow passageway, and — voila! There appeared the entrance to Café Clock.
Travel guides claim the Café Clock is near the Medrasa Bou Inania, a school decorated with ecstatic mosaics, geometric cedar cupolas, and carved tiles depicting Qur’an couplets. Café Clock was also supposed to be quite close to the remains of Fès’ once-functional medieval water clock that lies now in ruin. What guidebooks don’t divulge is that one must turn left at the fishmonger’s stall (ah, now I see why the path was slippery), walk past several date sellers, then turn left again and crouch through a dark, single-person-wide, low alley to finally arrive at the eatery.
“Clock”, as some call it, churned a caldron of visitors, expatriates, and local Moroccans. The restaurant occupies several levels, each a terrace with city views, as do many buildings in the Medina. The climb to the upper floors is so steep that a waiter would require “mountain-climbing experience” on his/her resume.
Café Clock bounded from the heart of the constantly smiling Mike Richardson, who hails from Yorkshire, England. Mike fell in love with Morocco and its people, and became especially fond of Fès and the nearby sacred city of Moulay Idriss, where he now has a house.
In London, he’d served as maître d’ at The Ivy and The Wolseley restaurants, and he knew quality food. The beautiful foods and exotic ingredients he tasted in the Medina sealed his move to the North African country. While not a chef, he knew how to find good ones. An added achievement, Mike’s invention of Café Clock provided a venue for the resurgence of performances by seasoned master storytellers and the rebirth of this art form through their training of young apprentices, both male and female.
“Ya omena mule! Habed to non sanada!” Staccato, clicking sounds in a language I did not know or understand clicked in my ears. We were huddled in the packed street-level room of Café Clock, a popular destination restaurant in the UNESCO World Heritage site section of the Fès Medina. About half the audience was Moroccan and half tourists like my group. Moroccans in attendance guffawed and chortled.
I had no idea what the storyteller — black baseball cap pulled tight on his head, swaying in the center of the room — spouted to his visibly adoring audience, but I was enthralled. I was hooked as I sat in this hulka, a Moroccan storytelling circle. The aromas of Arabic spices, the ras al Hanout, caramelized onions, tagine cooked with summer vegetables and lamb, all wafted through the air. Camel burgers with taza ketchup and fries glided by, held aloft on waiters’ trays. The mint bouquet of sugared tea floated upward, reaching the colored glass ceiling.
Storyteller Mohammed Mokhlis, handsome in his close-fitting cap, mesmerized the Café Clock crowd as he sputtered an Arabic anecdote through his salt and pepper beard. His good looks, twinkling eyes, and slight smile belied his seventy years. He regaled the tourist assembly. His body gyrated through his gravely voice. Not understanding a word of what he said did not diminish the pleasure of the experience. I found myself giggling, rapt with fascination about whatever tale he was telling. The Moroccan and Arabic speakers in the room laughed as Mokhlis paused, then winked at the side tables. When the aged Moroccan storyteller completed his yarn, a young millennial apprentice who majored in English at the university stood up and retold the story in English, all the while mirroring their mentor’s body movements, pauses, laughs, and wise-look finale.
Rocking to the rhythm of Mokhlis’ words and the onlookers’ hilarity, I found myself swaying back and forth and tittering as well. Zakia Elyoubi, sitting nearby, had burst into rapturous laughter for several minutes before she could again speak.
According to Zakia, an apprentice to Mokhlis for nearly five years, the master raconteur’s account told of a man whose wife of forty years has just died. Mokhlis punctuated each sentence of the story with emphatic energy.
The wife’s family and friends carried her body to the graveyard, as is proper. The pallbearers hoisted the wife’s coffin on their shoulders, solemnly following the path to the cemetery. The husband trailed, then he began to laugh and laugh — loudly — breaking up, during the funeral procession; not the usual decorum for a Moroccan funeral. The story ended as Mokhlis said what sounded like “Deems suden molas.” Then he added (again what sounded like), “Nom shad, com ta nateedaed.” The Moroccan audience murmured, then exploded in laughter.
Zakia stood and translated the tale into English. In the story, the village people shouted, “What’s wrong with him? Why is he laughing at his wife’s funeral procession? His wife just died, and he’s laughing! Why are you laughing? Your wife just died! Are you crazy?’ The villagers asked.
The new widower then answered, “I was married to her for forty years, forty years! And today is the first time I know where she is going!” Zakia laughed and laughed, the Moroccan audience joined her. A grin swept across my face, and onto the other faces in the circle.
While sophisticated Westerners may have considered this joke corny, and definitely not a Seinfeld moment, I appreciated it as an endearing story shared in palpable joy by Mokhlis and Zakia in their telling of one of the universal truths of marriage.
The beehive that is Fès convinced me that all inhabitants are sisters and brothers in the eyes of the ancients who prescribed laughter, claiming that this was the first emotion felt by humans and other sentient animals in all of time. Stories acted to loosen the space between us. It’s was like unknotting a skein of yarn; it’s easiest when the string was loosely fondled and shaken. Not understanding the words presented no problem in comprehending the story. It didn’t stop me or the other non-Arabic speakers from joining in the merriment. Laughing together felt so good at Café Clock.
MJ Pramik has won several Solas Travel Writing awards for her travel stories. Her poetry has appeared in many anthologies and she’s completing her travel essay collection, Travel in Times of Catastrophic Change. Learn more at www.mjpramik.com.
