Seeking the Center
“Take a step away from yourself — and behold — the Path!”— Abu Sa’id Ibn Abi’l Khayr 10th-century Sufi poet
Story and photos by Anne Sigmon
A heavy, hand-forged compass and a ruler lay on the front table. “These are the tools we use to find the center — the most important instruments of craftsmanship.”
The speaker was Hamza El Fasiki, artisan and champion for the renowned Moroccan crafts community — metal workers, wood carvers, bookbinders, tanners and dyers — that has thrived in the ancient city of Fez, Morocco, for a thousand years.
Along with ten travel mates, I’d squeezed onto a wood bench in his cramped artist studio in one of the oldest sectors of Fez. We’d come to learn more about the city’s craft traditions and the 21st-century pressures facing their community.
Through the open window, I heard the muffled sound of a radio tuned to Arabic music and the staccato tap-tap-tapping of a coppersmith at work.
Hamza’s studio walls were lined with hand-made tools — shears, saws, hammers, mallets, and hundreds of metal stamps. But I was most intrigued by six notebook pages duct-taped to the wall — geometric compass drawings of exquisite zellije tiles like the ones decorating traditional Moroccan buildings all over North Africa. The center of each page was hypnotic, like a candle drawing me to another plane.
“The geometric patterns are ancient,” Hamza said. “We see them in Roman art. Islam borrowed them and added new meaning.” Hamza talked about sacred geometry — the idea that geometric shapes and proportions can have spiritual meaning. “In all Islamic art there is a center,” he said. “The center represents tawaf — the Islamic ritual of pilgrimage.”
As Hamza talked, I focused on the drawings, both in wonder and in frustration. I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something deeper here — something I couldn’t quite grasp.
That disconnected feeling was all too familiar — like having thoughts trapped in a swirl of cotton candy. The cause was a stroke I’d suffered years before. Unfortunately, my “sticky thinking” and memory lapses had worsened over the past two years. I sometimes wondered how long I’d be able to travel to places like Fez.
When I’d passed through this medieval walled city on a one-day visit three years earlier, I’d been entranced by its authenticity. The Fez Medina — or Fes-el-Bali — is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It’s also one of the world’s most ancient living cities where some eighty thousand people roost in a gothic warren of shops, markets, houses, workshops, restaurants, mosques and guesthouses (called dars or riads). The sometimes-dilapidated buildings are jumbled along nine thousand narrow streets and passageways. It’s dense, chaotic, colorful, and alive.
I’d jumped at the chance to return to Fez with this small band of adventurers. I loved the program that brought us into contact with the medina’s artists and allowed time to explore the craft studios. Since I was new to this group, I just hoped I’d be able to hold my own.
Things did not begin well.
The heart of the Fez medina is not its center. Viewed on a map, Fes el-Bali looks a bit like an egg, about a mile west to east and a half–mile north to south. The action spots cluster near the gates at either end and along a northern corridor called the “Big Road,” Talaa Kebira. The geographic center is a desert of dusty, labyrinthine streets, keyhole doorways, and dead ends. Our group members were staying in three different guesthouses. Mine, Riad Laayoun, was near the center of the labyrinth.
It wasn’t easy for any of us to navigate back and forth to the shopping and craft districts. With my damaged cognition, I planned to stick with my friends.
After our morning with Hamza, the group scattered for a free afternoon. I returned to my lodging at Riad Laayoun to drop off my notebooks, grab a jacket, and catch up with one or two of my housemates for a walk to the market. I was dismayed to find the house deserted. The sounds of kitchen cleanup echoed down the hall. My friends must have all headed straight out after the workshop.
I climbed to my fourth-floor room where the green-and-turquoise zellije stars, so like Hamza’s drawings, invited praise to heaven. A hand-tooled lantern cast a dim, burnt-orange glow over a glass table and two wood-carved chairs. The comfy double bed hugged the walls with just enough room for a bedside table and lamp. A breeze caught the lace curtain through the open window. It would be so easy to burrow into this cozy niche for the rest of the day.
Looking at the geometric tiles in my room, I thought again about Hamza’s class and wondered: What does it mean to find the center? Does the center represent the perfection to which we aspire? The struggle to be our best selves? Does the center hold our deepest truth? Our fears?
I didn’t have any answers. But I knew that hiding out in my room was not my style. I would venture out and find my own way from the riad to the markets near the Blue Gate.
Two blocks from the front door I was befuddled. Was it left at the wall painting of the pomegranate? Or right? I squinted helplessly at my too-small map. A young man approached. He was about thirty, well but casually dressed, his hair in shoulder-length braids. “Good day. May I help you find something? Are you looking for the Big Road?”
“Thanks but I’m OK, I can find it myself.” I smiled and turned right. He followed.
“Here, you need to go the other way. I’ll show you. I’m not looking for money. No charge.”
I started to wave him off, an automatic response. Then something shifted inside. I wasn’t sure I believed him about the money. But I liked him. And I was lost.
He extended his hand. “I am Ahmed. My family is Berber. We’ve lived here for many generations.”
“Nice to meet you, Ahmed. I’m Anne.”
We climbed uphill, crisscrossing a baffling cluster of passageways. As we walked, the streets seemed to come alive. Two little girls played ball with a calico kitten. An old man in a long gray djellaba pushed a cart piled high with oranges as big as softballs. A yogurt and pie stall sat next to a shop selling women’s ripped jeans in camo patterns. A leather vendor sold handcrafted pouf ottomans the color of Sahara sand.
Around a corner, Ahmed led me to a recessed white, stone space — a community oven. In a pit a half-story below the street, a muscular, sweating man in a heavy leather apron and a white knit kufi (skullcap) swung a wooden dowel, hoisting pans from a fiery oven.
“Here, come closer.” When I hesitated, Ahmed laughed. “It’s OK. He’s my cousin.” The baker grinned and held out a metal pan of fresh roasted peanuts. “Go on, try some,” Ahmed urged. The warm, salty crunch was heavenly.
As we left the bakery, Ahmed set the hook. “My family’s carpet store is just down the block. Would you like to visit?”
No! I thought. This is where he makes his money. I don’t want to be hoodwinked. I breathed, then felt another shift as a second thought winged in. I don’t really mind carpet shops — as my over-rugged house could testify. I grinned. “Sure, we can go — but just to look.”
The small shop was like Aladdin’s lair, piled floor to ceiling with room-sized carpets, small rugs, and tapestries. Mountain brown, sunset orange, indigo and sky blue…cotton, wool, even camel hair…some woven with geometric forms, others with tribal designs. Ahmed’s other “cousin,” Hakim, the shop owner, was my guide. Two younger assistants kept the carpets flying. I kept things real by insisting on small rugs only. In the course of half an hour, we flipped through a dozen or so.
But nothing wowed me until one of the boys tossed down a bright red carpet, about 28 x 44 inches — the size of a small prayer rug. It was heavy, tightly woven, embroidered with Berber symbols.
Hakim read my expression. “That’s an old one. Maybe fifty years. It’s camel hair, and natural dye of the mountain poppy. He pulled the rug up onto the bench where we sat. I felt the dense weave and fingered the design. He explained the symbols — the line of life, mountains, protection from the evil eye.
It felt like more than a rug — it felt like a magic carpet to some place I might need to go. Even the price seemed fair.
The next morning at Riyad Laayoun, I awoke to the muezzin’s call to prayer, a rooster’s crow, footfalls on zellije tiles. It occurred to me that my days of finding my own way might be coming to a close. I took a breath to let that sink in. Was Fez a test? By surrendering to Fez on its own terms, by accepting the help that was offered, by paying the price — camel hair carpet and all — perhaps I’d touched my own center.
As to the rest of my journey, I have a magic red carpet to help me find the way.
“Seeking the Center” was published in Deep Travel: Souvenirs From the Inner Journey, 2019, an anthology of travel stories from Nepal, Mexico, Spain, and Morocco. The book is available from Book Passage, Corte Madera, CA; from Independent bookstores at Bookshop.org; and online.
