Francesca

Dear Steven, soon to be Stefano, Continuing my long love letter to food. I wanted to give you a brief intro to the wine of the South. We're now in Gaeta, another coastal town, with an immense pa.s.seggiata on Sunday night. Here the bay at dusk looks like lapis lazuli. Everyone strolls. A fabulous tower, made out of stones from all eras, looks just randomly stuck together so that you see traces of Arabs, Greeks, Romans, and latter-day Italians. I wonder how many gelatos I've had in the past three days.

You heard that the South is the "new Tuscany" for wine. That's right. Growers are changing from ma.s.s producers of indifferent-to-good everyday wine to more specialized and careful vintages. It's time. The even climate of much of the South, the sun-facing slopes of mineral-rich rocky terrain, and a new awareness-all conspire to change the philosophy of wine making.

Finding good wine is easy. This afternoon before we left Sperlonga, we went into the wine store, and the owner helped us select a half dozen of the area's best bottles to pack into our trunk. The surprise is the price. These wines are still affordable.

We reach constantly to the backseat of our book-mobile car for the yearly edition of the Gambero Rosso wine guide. Wines from every region are ranked, with tre bicchieri, three gla.s.ses, as the optimal wine. Even a one-gla.s.s rating is good; only select wines get in. Aside from all the sophisticated ranking, however, in many restaurants they're pouring Uncle's special up to the brim of the gla.s.s. Everyone makes wine, or has a cousin who does. Uncle might make the most delicious wine in town.

Within the South, I'd say Sicily is the hot spot for wine-especially reds. As the Tuscan and northern Italian wines soar toward the prices of California wines, suddenly the hearty wines of the South look more appealing. Just when I thought I had a handle on the types of grapes in Tuscany, I find that in the South it's all different. Puglia's primary grape variety is the negroamaro, meaning "black bitter." Primitivo grows all around. The American version of that is zinfandel. Grenache, so appreciated by the French, is known as cannonau in Sardinia. Zibibbo (what a fine name for a cat) grapes are muscat, good for wine and also luscious to eat. The list goes on. Perhaps the most characteristic Sicilian grape is the native nero d'avola. We can see how history is always at work in this area. The name of the prized red aglianico probably derives from Italian for "h.e.l.lenic."

As you drive around the island, order these when they appear on the wine list: Donnafugata-recognize the name from The Leopard?-whites and red, also the range of Planeta wines. Even their least expensive ones are good. We drink several Planeta wines in Tuscany. Feudo Principi di Butera makes a big cabernet. Ed is partial to Abbazia Santa Anastasia Litra and Morgante Don Antonio. Cantina Sociale di Trapani also brings out a cabernet you'll enjoy.

But you will make your own discoveries. Just buy the wine guide, and tear out pages for the areas where you travel. If they're out of the wine you ask for, whip out the page and ask for something just as good. I stress again, though, your waiter Ma.s.simo's daddy may be an unknown master winemaker. Even if the local wine is rough and ready, you get a taste of the soil and sun of a particular farm. Some names to memorize for the rest of the South: Paternostra, for their aglianico wines from Basilicata; Agricola Eubea and Cantina Fiforma Fondiaria di Venosa, also Basilicata producers. Two from Lecce: Cantele Amativo and Agricole Vallone Graticciaia. That's a start.

Villa Matilde epitomizes the zesty spirit of contemporary wines from the South. Odd that this should be so, since their vines come from stock older than the Romans. Our close friend Riccardo Bertocci (remember we had the Slow Food lardo dinner with him) represents several of the most distinctive wine producers in Italy. Villa Matilde is one of his favorites. He asked us to rendezvous for lunch at Villa Matilde to meet Maria Ida and Salvatore Avallone, the Neapolitan sister and brother who preside over the vineyards started by their father. We often stay at the Avallone family's hotel in Naples, the Parker, for Old World ambiance, the dining terrace overlooking the Bay, and their scrumptious pastry table at breakfast.

Since we were in nearby Sperlonga, exploring the coast, we settled on Wednesday and drove down to Cellole. I hope you'll go there on your trip. Despite the fireworks around wine produced in the South, there still are very few vineyards where you can visit and taste. You also can stay overnight; the old estate house now serves as a small inn. Maria Ida and Salvatore showed us around. Their father, Francesco Paolo Avallone, practices law in Naples, and the children have taken over the vineyard. They're young and hip and devoted to the wines their father developed after World War II. During his law studies he read Virgil, Horace, Pliny the Elder, Catullus, and other cla.s.sical authors-does this happen in American law schools?-where he came across references to falerno, one of the prime grapes of the Romans. The vines over time had succ.u.mbed to disease and neglect. Avallone studied the characteristics mentioned by the authors and set out to find lost stock of this grape in the original location where it had flourished, the Ma.s.sico area. He and his a.s.sociates found five falanghina vines and so secured a route back to the production of white falerno. They found five piedirosso (red feet), which with aglianico (the "h.e.l.lenic" remnant) could combine to make red falerno. Many graftings, propagations, and lullabies later, the Villa Matilde slopes again thrive with the ancient heritage grapes of the area. The Avallones still keep the precious vines their father found when he reached far back into history.

At pranzo in their restaurant, we were served pumpkin ravioli, veal roast, and a plum crostata. Salvatore would eat only a salad after the pasta. He was telling us about the remains of a Roman wine cellar just adjacent to their property, and the other hectares he and Maria Ida have acquired and planted with coda di volpe (fox tail), abbuoto, and primitivo grapes. We liked all the wines he poured, especially the Falerno del Ma.s.sico Vigna Camarato and the delicate, golden Eleusi Pa.s.sito, which arrived with the crostata. The pa.s.sito's grapes dry on the vines, concentrating the sweetness until late fall, then age in barriques. Catullus would write an ode.

You'll be singing praises, too, when you arrive in Naples for your month of roaming. Let me know exactly when you're coming. I know a place in Gallipoli where the squid caught last night hang on a clothesline outside the kitchen, waiting to be pounded and dressed in tomatoes and good oil. We could meet in Matera, strangest of cities, and eat vegetable lasagne made with big slabs of pasta, and slow-roasted lamb shanks.

Think of me as you pour a splash of Greco di Tufa in your gla.s.s, or think back to the Greeks who brought the vine, or just think of your friend across the table and the night ahead.

Get The Blue Guide to Southern Italy. Don't miss Siracusa and the cathedrals in Bitonto and Trani. You'll see many of Italy's one million vineyards, most the size of your backyard. With the olive and wheat, vines make the ancient trinity. You may see remnants of the old style of planting, with the wheat among the olive trees, and the field bordered by vines. If so, take a picture. The trinity is disappearing fast. The bread, the wine, the oil. Life is possible from those. Mark on your map all of Frederick II's castles. You'll be lost a hundred times. Endless, Italy is endless.

Ci vediamo subito,

Frances

Inside the

Color Spectrum

Fez The art of departure I may never master. A smooth departure includes time to pack and think and antic.i.p.ate. The suitcase, all shoes on the bottom, holds clothes in two basic colors with several tops in lively patterns. Everything fits neatly, and I have room to bring home a couple of souvenirs. The houseplants are watered, newspaper stopped, and two lights set on timers. Dinner will be simple, a salad and souffle. We will sleep without nightmares, wake with the excitement of the voyage pulsing in our veins, and leave the house with plenty of time. We do not confuse flight times or leave pa.s.sports behind or forget to turn off the espresso machine.

But usually I would like to be taken to the airport on a stretcher and rolled into the back of the plane where attendants will draw curtains around me, because any departure inevitably brings out the mischief in the G.o.ds. The day before you start a long-desired trip, they want you to pa.s.s certain tests.

This morning I searched the house for the tickets to Morocco, then finally Ed noticed and said he still had to pick up the tickets. Bramasole's elaborate watering system, which involves two cisterns and the old well, developed an air vacuum hitch. We spent two hours crawling around tanks and shouting "Is it coming?" and finally the water arrived in spurts and jerks. A tube detached, spraying us both. A strange rumbling noise as we took our plates outside for lunch gathered to an unmistakable crash. What a disaster-the important lateral stone wall under the linden trees tumbled down the hill. We dashed to see the last of a rock avalanche landing on the road below. Lucky we were that no one pa.s.sing by on a morning stroll or bike ride met their dismal fate in our driveway. And so we hauled stone off the road, and Ed went in search of a muratore who will repair the damage before another section falls. I canceled my much-needed haircut appointment. I did not pick up the dry cleaning.

Early today in town I said to a friend, "We're leaving tomorrow for Fez." The words seemed miraculous. Fez. I've never put my foot on the continent of Africa before. As I pull my bag from under the bed, I hear a scuffling noise-unmistakable. Un topo, a mouse. Fortunately Giusi is downstairs. She's my cooking friend who also looks after Bramasole when we are gone.

"I had a mouse in my armadio last year," she says, sprinting up the stairs and shutting the door of the bedroom, closing us in with the mouse. She's armed with rubber gloves and a broom. We pull out the bed. Nothing. Open the armadio, where I have hung my summer clothes. Nothing. But in the top drawer of my chest, we find droppings. The mouse has eaten a bead from an African necklace. Resolutely, Giusi opens the drawer at the bottom of the armadio and lifts up a folded yellow sweater. Three almost-new mice fall out. I swallow a shriek. Giusi dons the gloves, picks them up, and drops them in a plastic bag. They are unformed and not cute. Their pawing motions and pin-p.r.i.c.k eyes make my stomach flip. G.o.d's creatures. Under a poncho she finds three more. I hold the bag at arm's length. She pulls out the drawer all the way, and we see the mama, not so small, not a Beatrix Potterstyle mouse at all, hiding behind the foot of the armadio. The chase is on. Giusi corners her, and she runs between Giusi's legs, under the bed, then back to the armadio. I'm afraid she will bite Giusi's ankle. Giusi wields the broom, and I cower in the corner feeling inept. The mouse leaps into the fireplace and disappears up the chimney. We leave a poison dinner for her return. Giusi insists that all my folded clothes must be washed now, since mouse feet have run over them. Visions of black plague victims reel through my head.

And so I pack what I can from the hanging clothes. Late in the afternoon we drive to Rome and spend the night at the airport hotel. Our flight to Casablanca leaves early tomorrow.

We are let out of the taxi at Bab Boujeloud, an entrance into the Fez medina. Hafid El Amrani, the young manager of the house where we are staying, has rescued us in Meknes, an hour away. The car we hired to drive us from the Casablanca airport to Fez finally died outside Meknes, after sputtering and overheating for seven hours. Normally the trip takes three to four hours. The thirty-year-old Mercedes slowed on every slight hill, and when the gauge hit the top of the dial, the driver pulled over and waited for someone to stop and pour a bottle of water into the radiator. Twice the stops involved him scrambling down into a gully to fill a bottle with muddy water. We were in the backseat, temperature outside 104 degrees. The driver was an optimist; each time the radiator was filled, he thought the problem was solved. "Thermostat," Ed said repeatedly. When the car finally refused to go on, we reached a place with enough telephone signal to call Hafid in Fez. Then we had only a couple of hours to wait before he pulled up in an ancient taxi. Is this trip jinxed?

Now he loads our bags into a handcart pushed by a boy. Immediately I see that when we walk through this Blue Gate, we will enter a different world. Laden donkeys with muzzles made from plastic water bottles stand pa.s.sively under loads of barrels and stuffed sacks. The acrid odor of live wool burns the air. A few red "pet.i.te taxis" dart in and out of the square in random patterns, weaving among men in djellabas and pointy open-backed yellow shoes. In Tuscany donkeys are gone. I used to see one occasionally fifteen years ago. By now they've been replaced by the charming three-wheel miniature pickups called Ape, bees. Here the donkey reigns.

Hafid is handsome, with large eyes straight from a Roman mosaic, eyes the same true black as his hair. He's dressed in jeans, moving agilely through the gate and into the jammed lanes of the medina. Cars would be impossible. Not only are the streets narrow, but the minute kiosk-shops have goods piled outside their doors. People crouch along the edges selling CDs, socks, potatoes, lighters, and tissues. Ed points out that among the things for sale are squares of chocolate from a candy bar, single disposable diapers, and single cigarettes. Every few feet in the cobbled street holes deeper than graves impede progress. Men with picks chop around ancient water pipes in search of a leak or blockage. Odors dating back to the Romans rise from the depths. They look like an ill.u.s.tration for an engraving ent.i.tled "A Sisyphean Task." Dirt mounds around the holes must be climbed over. No one seems to have the concept of waiting to pa.s.s; everyone plunges onward from both directions-a chaotic traffic jam of people and donkeys, a melting pot with everyone melting. Somehow no one falls in. Hafid and the boy carry the handcart over their heads. Every few minutes someone calls out "Balak," which I quickly learn to translate: donkey about to thunder by.

We would need Ariadne's thread through the labyrinth to find our way out of the medina. Hafid darts and branches down dozens of streets, often, it seems, doubling back. I would like to see a topographical map. "The streets are like those rubber insides of golf b.a.l.l.s," I say to Ed.

"More like the intestinal tract of Muhammad. It's visceral."

"Time made a detour around Fez."

"Yes, cross through that gate, and you've stepped into the twilight zone."

Balak, balak.

We arrive at a scruffy door and climb dark, cramped stairs, stumble at a landing where six small children are hovering outside their own door. Hafid opens the door of the ma.s.seria, the restored guesthouse we'll call home for a few days.

After the squalor of the streets, the threadbare, sad donkeys, the odors of their manure, the heaped garbage, the mess, we step into a serene and poetic small house with intricately carved four-hundred-year-old plaster walls, delicately colored, with bands of Kufic calligraphy, an arranged marriage of art and geometry. High windows, far above our heads, let in panels of blond light. A few Berber rugs, a shower with seats and copper pails for washing in the style of the hammam, a tiled fountain, and low banquette sofas covered in rough hand-woven cloth-everything feels seamless. The roof terrace overlooks the entire medina, a vast warren of sand-colored cubes, all crowned with satellite dishes. The buildings are rough as barnacles. I'm unprepared for the size of the Fez medina. The medina is old Fez. The other two areas of the city are completely separated, three distinct towns. In the distance Hafid points out castles and a tomb on the hill, all the same earth color. Inside, peace seems to emanate from the walls. We are in a secret house in the heart of a mysterious medieval enclave.

When we emerge after quick showers, dark has invaded the medina. Donkeys have been herded inside stables or have headed home to the hills. Although the streets are still crowded, I at least don't fear being shoved into the fetid ditches. I lose count of the turns we make. If we dropped stones or bread to find our way back, we'd never spot them again. Hafid guides us to a small restaurant with dining on a roof terrace and leaves us. Little plates of roasted peppers, carrots seasoned with c.u.min and vinegar, a version of eggplant caponata, and olives with preserved lemons precede a traditional couscous with seven vegetables. I have loved Moroccan food ever since I went to a cooking demonstration by Paula Wolfert thirty years ago, then cooked my way through her Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco. I always keep jars of preserved lemons in my fridge. "How can carrots taste so good?" Ed reaches again for the tomato and cuc.u.mber salad, a twin to the California salsa we make at home. Couscous offers the same opportunities that pasta and tortillas offer Italians and Mexicans. You can improvise. Unlike the instant couscous I often resort to when I'm in a hurry, freshly prepared couscous is fluffy and tender, never glumpy. Tonight the seven vegetables are eggplant, kidney beans, tomatoes, onions, carrots, pumpkin, and cabbage-who would imagine the combination? These are added to the steamed couscous, along with potatoes and khlii, a beef confit that is a staple in every kitchen.

"The guidebook said not to eat unpeeled vegetables," I remember. We overlook the Blue Gate where we entered earlier, and without the commerce the scene has turned to slow motion-strollers and beggars, and shop people heading back to the new town. In the medina restaurants do not serve wine because of the many mosques, so cup after cup of mint tea arrives after a meal. Hafid returns for us. Like children, we're led home.

When mysterious gifts come your way, they must be accepted and understood. As we planned this trip, I looked on the Internet for a place to rent. Rather than making quick stops in several towns, I decided to concentrate on one city. Fez is quintessential Morocco, "the most complete Islamic medieval city in the world," according to my Cadogan guidebook. I'd read so much about Marrakech that Fez seemed more of an adventure. I wanted to see Fez from the inside, not from the vantage of a hotel. Searching for a house, I located a site with an appealing description. The photographs showed the kinds of details that made me smile-a section of ceiling, a doorway. I could tell this was a loving restoration of an authentic old house. I filled in the availability questionnaire and sent an e-mail.

The next morning a long letter awaited me. Lori, the owner of the Fez house, told me that she once met Ed briefly when he was judging a poetry contest that she was administering. He'd shown her and the other poet some photographs of Bramasole as a ruin, just as we embarked on the restoration. The letter said that Ed's photographs and description galvanized her to quit her job and go to Fez to study Arabic. Remembering Bramasole, she bought the medina house. Along the way, she'd read my books, which also, she said, bolstered her project. She married Hafid's best friend. Her life completely changed. And so, she wrote, she wanted us to stay as her guests. As I read her e-mail, I felt the looping of long strands and read it over and over, marveling at how the motions of give and take remain mysterious, how one never can grasp causality. We accepted. We began a flurry of correspondence. We invited her and her husband to Bramasole.

Now I lie in her bed, happy to hear that birds sing in the medina. That ivory silk djellaba hanging on an iron rack belongs to the life Lori made for herself here.

Hafid appears with breakfast. Dense semolina cakes, a fried crepe, coffee made in a Moka pot, and fresh orange juice. We have slept away the obstacle course we traversed to get to this roof open to the white sky.

Hafid takes us to see a five-hundred-year-old house that has been partially restored. Architecture speaks a clear language, translatable by all. This medina house says: privacy is paramount. Doors and windows face the inner courtyard, not the street. Inside the house you are not to be seen. The three-story interior lavishes ideas of coolness, tranquillity, and meditation on anyone who steps inside the one door. The intact carved plaster panels look like enormous lace handkerchiefs. The courtyard gives a view-look up-of the outside and lights the rooms, though you can always step back into an alcove of shadows. Desert people must always love shadows as much as the sound of running water. I would like to see the house when rain instead of sunlight falls to the blue-and-white-tile ground floor. Within the house, I feel a flow and a sense of connection. Back stairs and twisted pa.s.sageways lead to catwalks around the courtyard. Off the catwalk are fiercely decorated rooms often opening to smaller tiled alcove rooms. I'm surprised to see the exact patterns and colors that I saw on floors and walls in Andalucia. Moors and Jews exiled from Spain settled in Fez, bringing back skills and crafts with them. Hafid says, "You should buy a house in Fez medina. Very cheap for Americans."

"How much?" I ask, looking at the graceful arabesques of verses from the Koran carved above diamond-patterned tile.

"Twenty thousand, thirty thousand at most."

"Then you must restore."

"Yes," he shrugs, "but I am here for that."

His friend Rachid meets us. A man of about forty, Rachid was born in the medina and grew up here. He will be our guide. We drink mint tea on the roof and tell him we'd like to see all the important sites, but also the medina he knows. He would like to discuss William Faulkner and Saul Bellow. He has a degree in literature and loves the modern American writers. We set out on a walk. He has no set speeches, fortunately. We simply walk, taking in the scents and scenes. The crafts practiced are mostly for local use. One souk, or district devoted to a particular function, specializes in marriage thrones, enormous shiny metal-faced chairs of hammered designs for the bride and groom. They look like props from The Wizard of Oz. In the carpenter's souk, they're making all kinds of carved tables and also coffins. One is ready for a child. One worker displays washboards. I haven't seen a washboard since I was a child in Georgia and my mother dropped off our laundry at Rosa's in colored town, where she scrubbed our clothes on a washboard, then boiled them in a black iron pot.

We pause at carved cedar arches and doors with hinges shaped like the hand of Fatima to protect the house from the evil eye. Rachid takes us to several madrasahs, the elaborate medieval theology schools where students lived in cubicles above the courtyards and studied philosophy and astronomy downstairs. Someone must have studied advanced geometry because the mosaic and tile patterns, the layers of borders, and the tooled cedar ceilings inspire investigation into how such a panoply synchronizes into pleasing and harmonious s.p.a.ces.

Months from now when I think of Fez, I will think of mint. I love seeing the mint sellers. They hold out big bouquets or special baskets packed with mint. Tables are heaped with mint. No little handfuls are available; mint is not a garnish, and mint tea is not served with a sprig, as in a mint julep or southern iced tea. Boiling green tea is poured into a gla.s.s stuffed with mint, and you take the hot gla.s.s to your mouth with your thumb and forefinger at the top and bottom. Everyone drinks mint tea constantly. Rachid takes us upstairs to a teahouse where men sit on rough stools talking. The owner's equipment consists of a table holding a small hotplate for boiling water, a few metal teapots, a bucket for rinsing the gla.s.ses (uh-oh), and a mountain of mint. I am the only woman, and no one acknowledges us at all. Rachid says, "The mint from Meknes is the best in Morocco." I don't even like mint tea, but I am drinking it with pleasure. The quant.i.ty of mint gives the tea a robust dimension. It tastes curative, it tastes of summer in a desert tent, it tastes like time.

Rachid says, "There are nine thousand streets in the medina. One thousand have no exit." For lunch he leads us into a mobbed small s.p.a.ce presided over by a magical-looking man I wish I could understand. He's fey and strange and light on his feet like a dancer. Rachid says he used to be a storyteller in Marrakech. He still weaves a spell. He grabs Ed and takes him through the kitchen, giving him spoonfuls of spicy ground meat, lamb tajines, cauliflower, and a layered cheese and pastry dish just out of the oven. Ed selects too many dishes, and Rachid is perhaps embarra.s.sed. But he eats. The kefta, the ground meat, he says, is camel. The joke he tells us involves tourists who refuse to eat camel and are tricked constantly. Regular customers go in and out of the kitchen, serving themselves. The barbecued turkey on skewers may be the best thing that's happened to turkey. We clean the plates, except for the ground mystery meat.

Surely the tannery souk is not long for the world. Every tourist is taken there, followed by detours into leather shops. Before you arrive, the traffic of donkeys loaded with fresh animal skins stiff as cracker bread announces where you are. The hides are soaked in pigeon excrement as part of the curing process. A man stands up to his knees dunking skins. Vats the size of hot tubs contain bright colors. Where is the industrial revolution? We're not exactly rushing toward it here at the vats; this work goes back to roots of industry.

Rachid says, "The yellow is from saffron or mimosa, the red from poppies, the green from mint." I don't believe that; the colors are lurid. His shop-owner friend hands customers a sprig of mint to hold to their noses. I buy a pair of the yellow slippers everyone wears. Rachid says, "Everything goes with yellow." Later I leave them on the roof under the sun to dispel the smell. Couldn't they give the leather a dip in rose water as well? Bins of pink rosebuds are my favorite sight in the food stalls.

Bundles on the street are often incredibly tiny women beggars, their faces the color and texture of walnut sh.e.l.ls, their hands like paws.

Rachid says, "A good Muslim gives alms to the poor."

Ed, only a fallen-away Catholic, reaches into his pocket. "How much?"

"One cent."

Late in the day we return to the ma.s.seria to meet Fatima, a cousin of Hafid, who has come to prepare a home-cooked dinner for us. She sets up a round clay habachi-sized charcoal cooker and wipes off her tajine, the conical glazed terra-cotta dish that gives its name to the famous Moroccan one-dish meal of infinite variety. Fatima, who must be sweltering in her heavy pink djellaba, is a substantial woman with her hair covered. Her eyes are not downcast, however, and she smiles as she unloads her sack of groceries and starts to prepare vegetables for the tajine. She improvises a kitchen on the roof, drawing a bucket of water from the faucet for rinsing, and spreading an oilcloth tablecloth for her work surface.

She minces more parsley than I would have thought, then cuts up a parsnip, potatoes, zucchini, onions, and tomato. How easily she starts the charcoal going. As soon as the coals glow, she pours oil in the tajine and sets it on the fire. Then she lays the beef-I hope it's not from one of the fly-specked piles I've seen for sale-in the oil, then places onions on top of the beef. She makes sure we understand that the vegetables go on the meat, not in the oil. She sprinkles on some salt, lots of black and white pepper, paprika, and cinnamon, then covers the tajine and finishes cutting the vegetables. I've never seen anyone hollow carrots before, and Hafid says she always cuts away the center. They don't look woody. After the meat has cooked for about twenty minutes, she layers the other vegetables on top of the onions and adds half a teacup of water and several more pinches of seasoning. The roof is hot, even late in the day, and I'm shocked when Fatima peels off her djellaba and continues to cook in her long cotton knit undergarment. Under that I see that she has on another layer of something. I'm warm in a short-sleeved linen shirt. The fire burns slowly now, and the tajine cooks on gentle heat for another hour.

We drink mineral water and look out over the medina at sunset. Ed asks, "Are you going to get on the plane carrying one of those tajines on your lap?"

"Yes."

"Why does it have that carnival-hat top?"

"Steam collects on the inside of the cone and drips down on the meat and vegetables, a self-basting process." I make that up, but it might be true.

"Fatima's tajine looks like beef stew, only layered."

"Basically, yes-but with a liberal use of spices."

"A stew with att.i.tude. Wish we had some wine."

"We're in the medina. Lightning would strike us. Or a donkey mow us down."

Fatima pulls some jars out of her bag and serves eggplant spread and a tomato and cuc.u.mber salad with small round loaves of bread. All over the medina I've seen children running, holding aloft boards covered with cloth. Rachid says everyone still makes their own bread dough, then sends it to the bakery. Peering inside one, I saw the children's boards on tables, stacked with warm bread, ready to be picked up. Every tiny quarter of the vast medina has its own ovens. The face-size flat loaves are perfect for the salads, spreads, and juices of the tajines.

We dine under the moon. The tajine retains the separate tastes of each vegetable, and the meat is tender. We dip all the bread into the bottom, soaking up every drop of the sauce. The medina turns oddly quiet at night. Considering the density, I find it odd that no TV blares, no one on an adjacent roof plays rap music, and no voices shout, sing, or squabble. The people fold themselves into their houses the way they fold themselves away in their clothing.

Fatima dismantles her makeshift kitchen, dons her djellaba, and gives me, not Ed, a big hug. She solemnly shakes Ed's hand, not looking at him, and goes home to her husband and three children.

Three hours later Ed becomes violently ill. I am alarmed at his fever and clammy skin. He spends the night in the bathroom throwing up. His stomach feels ripped and turned inside out. After six hours of this he calms but still feels on fire with pain. He's vacant; his eyes swim; he's so weak he cannot lift his arm. I'm on the phone calling our doctor in Italy, who says this probably is simple food poisoning, not salmonella, since the heaving has stopped after only a few hours. I write names of medicines he recommends, hoping Hafid can help at the pharmacy. I remember the rag Fatima wrung out in the bucket, remember the ground meat at lunch. But I feel fine, in fact unusually energetic. "Did you brush your teeth with the faucet water?" He doesn't answer. Hafid arrives and says Ed ate too much, it often happens when guests come to Fez because the food is so good. Maybe.

By midmorning Hafid has found various pharmaceuticals, and Ed is sleeping as if in a coma. I try not to think of the man who dies in Paul Bowles's The Sheltering Sky, leaving his neurotic wife to become a harem prisoner. The lure of the exotic for innocents or rootless people always seems to end badly.

So the G.o.ds have conspired again on this trip. For the next three days Ed does not emerge from the ma.s.seria. I go out for the day with Rachid, and we bring him food he does not eat and bottle after bottle of water, which he forces himself to drink. His state seems beyond the illness, as though he has fallen into a trance. I would like for the ministering angel I was promised at the start of my travels to step forward now.

Without Ed, I find a different dynamic with the place and with Rachid. I follow behind him, and distracted by a pile of hooves or iron lanterns for sale, I often miss his turns and suddenly stand in the swarm of people where streets cross, having no idea where he is. But he doubles back. I wonder how odd this must be for him-out all day with an infidel woman who constantly pauses to see the man who sells forks, bracelets, and combs fashioned from horn, his ten items spread on a table the size of a platter, and the real estate agent in his cubicle, with twenty iron keys to his listings hanging on nails behind him, and the tomb carvers chiseling epitaphs on marble headstones. "Anyone has to taste death," they write. Rachid says, "A good Muslim visits his dead every Friday."

Brilliantly tiled public fountains for water are everywhere. Surely someone has published a book of photographs of these long basins surrounded by exciting patterns and colors, some of which date from medieval times. They still draw women with buckets and children holding out plastic bottles. Rachid says, "They have water at home, but this way they do not have to pay for it."

He explains the difference between a caftan (no hood) and a djellaba (with a hood handy for protection against rain or dust or heat) for men and women. The clothing begins to make sense. At first it seemed that everyone was in their bathrobes. Quickly, when my dust allergy awakened and when the wind felt like a hair dryer aimed at my face, I began to wish for one of those mysterious veils. The sun and dust are formidable. The loose, light robes look elegant, certainly comfortable, while protecting the wearer from the elements. I follow Rashid's tan djellaba and almost imagine that I am wearing one myself instead of black pants and black shirt. The women flow in the impossible narrow lanes, a river of color: saffron, burgundy, sage, pistachio, peac.o.c.k blue threading the crowds, Nile greens and mustard parting, rust, magenta, emerald merging, tomato red, ochre and all the earth colors, the occasional white worn by a woman in mourning. Some are secluded, occluded behind black veils, some wear modest scarves, and some neither. I see them look at me then quickly away.

The concatenation of colors repeats and rings in the food stalls: mulberries, figs, dusty capers, leafy coriander, mint, burlap sacks of golden turmeric, dates, b.l.o.o.d.y haunches of camels, and stacks of sheep and goats' heads. Rachid says, "First you singe off the hair, then thoroughly clean out the maggots. c.u.min and hot pepper-very good for breakfast when it's hot and spicy." I will be skipping that cooking tip. The whole pale palate of lentils, c.u.min, couscous, dried fava beans, semolina, coriander, chickpeas, and sesame recalls the colors of the desert. The food stalls reflect the abundance of the table, the love of bold tastes, the agricultural richness of the slopes of the Atlas Mountains. A donkey lumbers by carrying a load of spiny artichokes the size of dates. I stop to photograph the goat cheeses on palm leaves. Rachid says, "Everyone eats camel meat once or twice a week." But Hafid has told me he never has tasted camel. Scrawny cats and new kittens are everywhere. There must be no marauding rats in the medina, I point out, but Rachid says, "The cats in the medina are afraid of the rats."

Rachid shows me a spring where a man is filling a jug and points to where a river used to flow before it was routed underground. We see jacaranda trees outside the Blue Gate. Rachid says, "They send out their musk at night." A few figs protrude from walls, and in the copper and bra.s.s souk a large tree startles the eye. Great cauldrons that could hold whole goats and sheep are for sale under the tree. Rachid says, "We rent those for weddings."

"Are weddings in the mosques?"

"No, you ask someone who has a nice house. Mosques are only for prayers."

Not being a Muslim, I am not allowed inside a mosque and only can peer into the courtyards with fountains for the faithful to cleanse themselves. We happen to be outside a huge mosque when Friday services end. A stampede of men feeling holy and righteous thunders out and into the street. We have our backs to a wall to let them pa.s.s when a trotting donkey sc.r.a.pes us and Rachid slips into a pyramid of eggs, knocking several to the ground. No one called balak, balak.

On our walks we weave by the house several times a day to check on Ed. Rachid says, "The mailman must be born in the medina, otherwise no one ever would receive mail." Rachid thinks Ed should sit up. I'm giving the doctor in Italy an update. Ed says, "Maybe tomorrow." He has turned a few pages of a book, has showered. He seems cool and peaceful.

I'm not mentioning the slow-roasted lamb with c.u.min sauce, the pastilla (or bastela, pigeon in flaky layers of pastry, dusted with confectioner's sugar), or the chicken couscous with melted onions and honey. Rachid and I go by taxi to the new town to buy buns from a French pastry shop and bland cheese and bread for Ed. He takes me to a bookstore with books by Mark Twain and Sherwood Anderson. I find a Moroccan cookbook in English and wish I could make for Ed the chicken stuffed with couscous, cinnamon, and orange flower water, or the lamb with apricots, raisins, and nutmeg. I see much more use of spices than of herbs. And the range of ingredients must be inspiring-quince, pumpkin, feggous (a rough, skinny cuc.u.mber), Jerusalem artichoke, cardoon, barley semolina. The uses of pomegranate syrup, orange flower oil, almond milk, and rose oil intrigue me. Too bad Ed never wants to eat again. The new town's broad avenue shaded with trees and lined with cafes seems like another world. Many women and young girls here have abandoned the traditional dress altogether, though some still cover their heads even though they're in low jeans. Rachid says, "I like for my wife to dress modestly." And, "I like for my wife to stay at home with our son."

I tease him. "Do you want a second wife?" I know men are allowed to have four.

"One is enough. And who can afford two women?"

"Why would any woman put up with her husband bringing another wife into the house?" The first edged question I have asked him.

"Maybe the first wife cannot have children. There's a law," he says proudly, "that you cannot just throw away the wife."

"What if I wanted two husbands, or four?"

He smiles in Arabic.

On the hottest day so far, I tell Rachid I would like to look at fabric. We visit workshops where men sit on rugs sewing djellabas and embroidering the necklines. In the street, they card the thread, extending it and pulling it onto rolls. I resist ordering one of these splendid garments because it would hang in my closet until doomsday. I would like to find silk for table draperies or curtains. But most everything is precut to three meters, enough to make the djellaba. I find one square of antique ivory silk embroidered with apricot flowers. Rachid steps back when bargaining begins. Nothing ever seems to have a price, and I'm pressed to offer one. I offer so little that the seller appears to be shocked. Rachid puts his hand to his mouth to hide a smile. "What will you pay, madame?" I offer slightly more, then the seller says he must have at least four hundred euros. That is so far from what I would pay that I thank him, compliment him on the silk, and walk away. He's dumbfounded that the American has escaped, having bought only a small silver hand of Fatima.