PARTISAN REVIEW
445
Aladdin's dream. A young girl, in Marrakesh, her breasts poking
through a white jersey, about fourteen, shows me her grandfather's
synagogue, a large granite room just beyond the family kitchen. She
speaks a bit of English, laughs and smiles, dancing on her toes as I
draw her out and I dream that night in my hotel, still feverish from the
heat, of carrying her off to America.
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From Fez I went down to Ksar es Souk by bus. A moment of
pathos in Fez, when I visited the apartment of the balding young man.
He showed me a tiny stuffy room with one bed in it, the hallway was
his kitchen. I realized that it was his own bed he was prepared to share
with me and a wave of sadness and horror came up in my throat,
something noble and desperate in this hospitality. It was absolute,
overwhelming and I fled it. Again and again, I met it in ·Morocco,
people ready to share their whole life with you. On the bus from Fez to
Ksar es Souk which was really my first penetration of the interior, the
train being a civilized half polite means of travel, now I began my
journey into a hidden Morocco; half the bus feverish, squatting by its
batlered side to shit, women bringing their olive breasts out to feed the
babies. I struck up a conversation with four Arab students, some of
them spoke English, the boy next to me, marvelously handsome, al–
most girlish spoke only French but in broken phrases we discussed the
countryside and became enamoured of each other's curiosity. He
wanted me to come along with him and his schoolmates on their vaca–
tion, go back and stay with his family in Fez next week, such a sudden
outpouring of good feeling. We embraced when he got up to leave the
bus in the first mountain village, Ifrane, where he and the other stu–
dents were debarking for a week of fun. There was an immediate
friendship possible with these students, their fascination for every–
thing was absolute. They wanted to learn so badly.
Ksar es Souk isat the center of a red clay desert. The heat is un–
bearable although I was to find it got worse as I went further south. My
hotel, a hole, no ventilation, so stifling that I kept getting up at night
to douse myself with water from the shower (unaccountably cold) and
lie evaporating in the sheets. I hardly slept. The first night on my way
to the hotel I thought I would disappear around a corner and never be
heard of again. The place was more desolate and frightening than Rio–
hacha, Marquez's pirate town at the end of the Columbian coast. At a
