Abu Zuhri Second Part Posting on Moroccan Adventures as promised to my desert city old Fez companion Sidi Jamal Morelli the part time traveller, film maker, agent provocauter, lover of sufis and awliya, music and qasidahs and freelance guide: Here it goes....as narrated by Daniel Moore my distance seeker who shared and treaded the great Darqawi Way:
.....My wife and I moved into an apartment in the annex building of the American
Language Center, in a suburb filled with newly constructed and
underconstruction villas, three-or-more story buildings, imagined, it seems, as
a kind of Moroccan Art Deco. All the buildings, old or new, are of the same
pinkish terra cotta color of every building in Marrakesh, thusly hued by law for whatever
reason: simple tradition, to blend in, or perhaps to maintain the native adobe
desert look, which is actually quite attractive. Each house had a small daring
detail of color, cobalt tiles above the main entrance for example, or a bit of
tiled frou-frou somewhere on the facade. Looking over the city from our
balcony, there is a lovely uniformity and Arab-town honeycombedness, so typical
of Muslim cities, though on the street the bedraggled, rundown look is, up
close, more acute. Here and there, dusty palm trees prong up into the sky,
roadways often running around them, out of deference to the trees� ancient role
as mothers and living beings. Occasional ones spotted lying on their sides look
truly forlorn, like dead animals, their lifetime of service having come to an
end.
We slept after our journey, visited the country house of our host, being
refurbished under the expert gaze of the director�s artist wife, Jamila, with
great snowcapped mountains of the High Atlas in the distance, and generally
sank into and acclimatized ourselves to the rhythms of Marrakesh. There�s always something amazing
about living in a place where the adhan is called five times a day, although
they begin a kind of courtesy adhan about an hour or more before the adhan for
fajr prayer, which in a state of jetlag is a little unnerving.
In Marrakesh as
well as everywhere in the Muslim world it seems, there manifests the same
disease of modern Islam: the electrified minaret loudspeaker. What is lovely
about the unaided human voice is its aching poignancy, and in cities like Marrakesh, Meknes or Fez muezzins go into
almost every minaret to call the adhan, so there would be a natural overlap of
their naked voices. Instead, every minaret is wired for sound, and the result
is a harsh metallic adhan that almost hurts rather than reminds, like children
in supermarkets screaming for attention. Where is the wafting adhan, the
evocative adhan, the adhan based not on modern human technology but on the
ancient human vocal chords and heart of the muezzin? Sheikh Hamza Yusuf
also mentions in one of his talks somewhere that with an unamplified adhan you
could guage how far away the mosque is and how quickly to walk to it in order
to arrive at the prayer on time. With amplified adhans you might walk for miles
thinking the mosque is just down the road, providing, of course, that you don�t
already know the city like the back of your hand. Granted, a possible
justification for amplification is that modern life has also gotten noisier.
Still, I�m always grateful for the adhans, the muezzins in Morocco are the most
sublime of singers, and I listened hopefully past the technology when at fajr
and maghrib especially, you can hear the various adhans looping and blending
their vocal banners across the city as the dawn comes up or the sun lowers
itself down through the completed day�s radiant clouds.
In Marrakesh is
the tomb of the author of the universally recited Dala�il al-Khayrat, Imam
al-Jazuli (d.870 ah), sheikh of the Shadhiliya-Darqawi tariqa, who is one
of the Seven Saints of Marrakesh, honored as the spiritual linchpins of the
city�s reason for being. The other six are Sidi Qadi Ayaad, Sidi al-Abbas
Sabti, Sidi Yussuf Ben Ali, Sidi Abdellaziz al-Tebbaa, Sidi Abd Allah al-Ghazwaani
-- nicknamed Moul al-Ksour -- and Imam al-Suhayli (may Allah be pleased with
all of them). During our visit there, though we had intended to visit all
seven, both my wife and I were only able to visit the tomb and zawiyya of
Sheikh Jazuli, Malika one night with other ladies, and myself with one of the
language center�s teachers who would be our guide on the journey north, Sidi
Hamza Weinman, who took me to the Jazuli zawiyya in his cuddly, banged-up
rattletrap Renault I dubbed Zahara (to which he added: el-Miskeena, �the poor
thing�), somewhere across town, not far from the Djemma el-Fna. (Note last week 26 Jun 2007, I bought a copy of Dalailul Khayrat at Pustaka Indonesia, infront of Masjid Indian at kuala lumpur city near the Gombak river bank, what a suprise find. Then, I manage to walk about 100 meter to pray 2 rakaat sunnat at the redbrick 3 storey mosque).
We walked down a winding alley and went into the very humble mosque, first
going into the tomb to greet the sheikh. A lovely tomb, ornately decorated,
which I obtained permission from one of the regulars, or the guardian, to
photograph, only to have my digital camera jam as soon as I took the picture! I
regretted the glitch, though, and wish I had been able to take a picture or two
inside the zawiyya of the two lines of mostly old men in djallabas, reciting
the Dala�il al-Khayrat, a collection of all the formulae of blessings upon the
Prophet, God�s peace be upon him, starting with those mentioned in the sunnah,
those composed by the Sahaba, by the Taabi�in, and by countless salihin, in
that unmistakable Moroccan fashion, rhythmically fast and musically intense,
page after page with very little variation in the phrases and invocatory
formulae, page after page, most of the grizzled and very indigent looking men
reciting it entirely by heart! The sweet joy of their faces! Their
concentration and light! I was happy to see some young men among them as well,
but most of them were well into their elder benignity, no less vigorous
however, obviously mentally as sharp as sword-blades, and especially energized
in reciting these glorious and lengthy invocations. But my camera was jammed,
try as I might, and I had to give it up and let the recitation soak into me,
following it where I could in the yellowed booklets of the text one of the men
handed us. Afterwards, the leader and some of the others greeted us, and we
left the zawiyya back into the darkened alleyway, back to Zahara, with the
haunting sing song of the dhikr echoing in our hearts and brains.
The puppet play went well, in the Center�s courtyard, though most of the
children really couldn�t follow the words. As it turns out, I had written it
about five or six years above their heads. They sat in their chairs, row after
row, with perfect attentiveness, many never having seen anything like a puppet
play live. The two appearances I made, in masks and costumes exactly like two
of the small puppets, created a kind of cathartic shiver up their young spines.
The poetry reading two days later, however, was, for me at least, amazingly
gratifying, with the audience commenting and questioning some of the poems and
their meanings, which I welcome and always find fascinating, discovering how
some people perceive them. The sea of excited and interested Moroccan faces as
I read these poems (written usually at the side of my bed in the middle of an
American night) was overwhelming to me. They caught the meanings, and their
love of poetry was palpable.
The students and staff of the school had been studying one of the poems
earlier, The Piece of Coal, but I was really surprised when, after just one
recitation of the poem, many in the audience in unison were able to supply the
final words of each stanza when I repeated them:
Piece of Coal
The piece of coal that wanted to be diamond
said to the earth: Press me.
The succulent grape that wanted to be wine
said to the feet: Crush me.
The cloud that wanted to be thunder and rain
said to a facing cloud: Collide with me.
The mountain that wanted to be level valley
said to the elements: Erode me.
The oyster that wanted to produce a pearl
said to a sand-grain: Irritate me.
The heart that wanted to be filled with light
said to the world: Break me.
DJEMAA EL-FNA
The famous square in the old city of Marrakesh, crossroads of camel-drivers
and charlatans, snake-charmers and magicians, the wilder Gnaowa �Sufis� of the
deeper south, dancers and singers and musicians deep into the night, Djemaa
el-Fna, famous everywhere. Before visiting the place, I wrote a short poem
imagining the mesmerizing atmosphere that might prevail there.
FIRE-EATER OF
MARRAKESH
When the fire-eater put the firebrand in his mouth
the whole night sky I swear burst into flame
And when he took it out of his mouth extinguished
the night sky blackened and pulled itself tight
around us again
Except for this fantasy, I came very close to not visiting the square at all,
but after the poetry reading given at the Language Center I pre-vailed on Hamza
to just �pop over and have a look around.� We got into Zahara and she galumphed
her way to the nearest side street, around 10 p.m., and we wandered into Djemaa
el-Fna. It was dark except for glowing points of light shimmering up from
huddled groups of people dotted here and there, and the night sounds of
drumming and singing from the various circles.
We first passed a very obsequious man in djellaba and turban holding a kind of
large banjo (a guinbri) sitting in the glow of a Coleman lantern, on a large
cloth, surrounded by chickens pecking at grain on the ground. He was chatting
to some onlookers. Next to him was a brightly painted naif portrait of himself
playing the guinbri we saw him with. We wandered away to other groups, a very
thin bare-chested man pacing back and forth and shouting in a guttural derajah
to the great amusement of the men in the circles -- there were no women here at
this hour -- and I suggested to Hamza who, in spite of his passable derajah,
couldn�t really follow what he was saying, that he might be a kind of
Marrakeshi standup (or pacing) comedian, his monologue probably full of subtle
asides and lurid references. We then went to another group where some serious
oud playing and drumming was taking place, and lingered for a little while, my
hands on my wallet pocket, my camera held close to my body, until the allure
wore off. The allure for the Djemaa el-Fna actually wore off rather quickly (I
told Hamza that a little of the Djemaa el-Fna goes a long way), and after
visually visiting some of the food stalls, where amazing pyramids of fruit and
food, including goats� heads sitting on their necks, were piled up, we tumbled
back into Zahara and made our way home.
THE FLOATING LOTUS MAGIC PUPPET THEATER CIRCUS VAN
With the wooden
collapsible stage wrapped in canvas and lashed to the roof, and the hired van
and driver setting off early in the morning, with a vanful of fuqara who
traveled north with us to attend the great Meknes Moussem -- who would
be returning to Marrakesh by bus, as the driver, Sidi Hamza, my wife and I, and
the suitcase of puppets, continued north -- we took to the open road. The
countryside, even rainswept and cloudy, is everywhere majestic and rich, as we
drove past sheepherders with small and huge herds, a little shack angling to
the earth in the middle of a field, great cascades and gorges appearing around a
bend, and glorious green fields with swathes of stunning bright red poppies
seemingly strewn across them, or shockingly electric yellow mustard flowers in
great wavy bands of color.
MEKNES
Meknes is the city of my soul, perhaps, in the way that Oakland, California
is the city of my body. It�s a hilly city, the old city within a great wall
around it built by the ruthless Moulay Ismail, who�s buried in a giant, fully
tiled and chilly tomb at one of the gates. There�s a secret here too, though.
If you go into the vast and echoes hall and ask the muqaddem for the tomb of
Abdur Rahman al-Madjdoub, perhaps he�ll take you to a far wall and open a
low door with his set of keys. You�ll go into a dark and small chamber,
low-ceilinged, somewhat dusty and cobwebby, and in the middle is the simple
tomb of one of the great saintly shuyukh of Morocco, a wali poet, whose lines
of poetry and aphorisms are often used to impart immediate folk wisdom, and I�m
told, to diffuse disputes. On this journey to Meknes, though we weren�t able to
visit his tomb, sadly, I was told that he has two collections, or diwans, of
poetry, both written in the Moroccan dialect: one more �streetwise� and
pungent, the other more seriously Gnostic and sublime. As there never seems to
have been a translation of these works into English, I can only guess at their
possible magnificence.
I spent many months in Meknes in the 70s, at
gatherings of dhikr during and after the lifetime of our sheikh, and passing
through once on my way to the town of Rissani,
in the Tafilalt. I can�t even remember clearly how long I stayed or exactly
when, but the zawiyya, tucked away in an alleyway labyrinth just up from the
long wild gardens that run along the old city�s lower wall and the new city, is
a place of such deep nostalgia, I can�t explain. Coming into the city by bus
from Tangier my heart would always leap with expectation of seeing our sheikh,
or being in the company of his disciples. The city itself would be welcoming,
it seemed, with its amazing bustle, its great gates, the smells of cedar wood
from the marketplace, the stillness and coolness of its mosques, the Jama
Zaytuna mosque, just around the corner from our zawiyya. Even this visit, where
we stayed in a luxurious hotel in the modern city, and could look out across
the bridge to the old city and see the minaret from the Jama Zaytuna rising out
of the rooftops, we felt an exhilaration at just being in Meknes. But of course
the Path continues very strongly here, with the old zawiyya and tomb with its
barebones simplicity and huge and palpable blessing, and one of our sheikh�s
strongest followers, Moulay Hashim ( a faqir of SMH) , and the exalted
nights of dhikr at his house which is also a zawiyya, inside a nondescript door
not far from one of the main fortress gates of Meknes.
The mornings of Fajr in the old zawiyya thirty years ago, when the men would
come together in their woolen djallabas and turbans after the prayer and sit in
a circle as the light slowly filtered in through the high small window as the
sun rose, reciting the Qur�an and the Wird of our Sheikh, then sometimes
going back to sleep with their hoods pulled over their heads along the sides on
the thin cushions until breakfast time. Then a low round wooden table would be
brought in, and perhaps last night�s couscous would have been reheated and
served, with milky coffee. The fuqara might eat in silence, except for some
grunted jokes and kidding that might ensue between them, incomprehensible to me
in their words but obvious in their intimate affection for each other. I often
thought this must have been how the Companions of the Prophet, peace be upon
him, behaved, courteously but familiarly as well, knowing each other�s inner
states enough to respect their hearts but prodding their nafs with a little gentle
taunting to get a reaction. A breakfast among human beings. The last grainy
gulps of coffee, cahua hlib, as the mosque room flooded with morning light.
This visit thirty years later began with a giant mawlid at our beloved Moulay
Hashim�s house, with men coming from all over Morocco and perhaps farther, to
celebrate the Prophet Muhammad, peace of Allah be upon him, and the shuyukh,
the tariqas, the Path, and to thank God for every breath we take. The air
itself was shaking with ecstasy, and the singing had a way of keeping the
atmosphere aloft for hours on end, one coil of singing rounding into the
beginning of another, spiraling up, really, to the stars. There�s something so
vital, earthy, human and true about this form of worship, the recitation of
Qur�an in unison, the songs of the teaching guides, and the many circles of
standing dhikr that took place, the hadras, invoking the Presence of the
Divine. What a pleasant relief from the stern fundamentalist view, the pure
expression of joy of being Muslim, this vigorous, sweet gratitude to Allah! I
often think that without this joy I would hardly have been attracted to Islam!
Rather than the dour Puritanism alone, the strict observances of dos and don�ts
alone, there�s this full flowering of the human heart�s wish to connect with
the Creator in an energetic and blissful way.
The fundamentalist radicals who label this form of dhikr haram have in many
ways effectively removed the humanity and reality of our beloved Prophet
Muhammad, peace be upon him, from Islam, forgetting his mercy, his lightness of
being, as well as the depth of his love for Allah and all His creatures, human
and otherwise, to say nothing of large swathes of Qur�an, hadith and hadith
qudsi that praise dhikr of Allah in many forms, �standing, sitting and on our
sides.� They have even pried away many of the attributes of Beauty and
Forbearance of Allah ta�ala, as if God were only a Wrathful, Magnificent,
All-Powerful and punishing God, rather than the Kind and Subtle, the Inwardly
Hidden and Outwardly Manifest Merciful Lord. If more Muslims understood the
spirituality of Islam in this way, perhaps we would not only have less damaging
encroachment from so-called �outside� forces, cultural and materialist
invasions from alien sources, but also a more balanced Umma that roots out
murderous terrorism from within, and resists injustice from both inside and
out. I saw in the faces and behavior of these men in these circles of
celebration only ecstatic awe and hope in Allah�s Presence and Grace. The hadra
is the natural rising to one�s feet in sudden inspiration and yearning, either
leading up to or resulting from that state. My wife, who sat above us that
night at one of the windows overlooking the courtyard, was afraid her copious
tears of recognition would dampen the men�s djallaba collars below. The Mawlid
continued far into the night, and its echoes continued in our hearts throughout
our journey north and back again, even to Philadelphia,
and alhamdulillah, even to this very moment.
The morning after the Mawlid my wife and I visited the tomb of Sheikh ibn
al-Habib, may Allah be pleased with him, in the corner of his zawiyya. It
is a place of peace and light just up from the gardens running along the bottom
of the old city, the Habibiyya zawiyya with its haunting echoes of voices down
the alleyway leading to it, the call the prayer here in its mosque from the
human throat, and the circle of dhikr after the adhan of the shahada sung three
times at highest intensity followed by the greeting all the men offer to each
other who sang it by kissing their hands in the circle. I was grateful to be
able to revisit these earliest days of my Islam, those first years so poignant
for those of us not born Muslim who are later blessed with its embrace.
There was also a marvelously happy encounter there, on my Journey to Qalbiyya,
that somehow completed the journey�s circle. I encountered a man in front of
the tomb of Sayyidina Sheikh with a group of fuqara from Laghouat, Algeria.
This is the very town six of us traveled to in the late 70s, where we met the
extraordinary blind wali who had been a French professor and faqir of our
sheikh, and who gave me the name Ameen. When I mentioned Hajj �Issa of
Laghouat to him and asked if he knew him, he said, �Yes; that was my
father!� And when I told him I have a photograph of all of us standing with him
in his garden, he said, �Yes, I took that picture.� Then I recognized him as
the wali�s grown-up son after thirty years, who was still a teenager when I saw
him last. Amazed, we fell into each other�s arms.....
Next posting Part 3 will be :
Visit To MOULAY IDRISS
TOMB...insya Allah
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