Written by: Idris Alwaghish
I had to scatter all the papers at once and go back to the third beginnings. I set out to visit the city of adolescence, in the footsteps of Bachelard, without prior notice, Taza, in which I lived with others the dreams of adolescence. And without prior arrangement, I found myself as a child, as soon as I paced the steps to escape from the chaos of the city in Fez and its desolate time, at least temporarily, chasing what eluded me of the memories of the beautiful time, asking the times and places, if they still remember the features of my face, and the hair of my head and mustache turned white over it? Or did she forget my name when she fell in love with names?
When I arrived in the city shortly after midday, I found the strong eastern winds wreaking havoc in the streets of the city, and the heat did not tempt roaming in its streets, yet I insisted on completing the journey. I started my tour by standing for a moment contemplating the entrance in front of the “Ali Bin Berri” qualifying high school, conjuring up numbers, flags and nostalgia, extrapolating semiotics, and doing what I could to interrogate some indications and symbols, some of which were fixed as they were, as I left them more than thirty years ago, and others replaced by the logic of time and mentality The drug mafia, and blondes replace the color of their hair and noses in Dubai and the beauty capitals of the world. I was trying to eliminate the boundaries separating the self, the self, and times, in a moment of weakness in front of the flood of memories that quickly passed through my mind. I found some places where green was replaced by dark white. The areas of eucalyptus forests and olive trees were absent from the city’s scene, and instead of them grew forests of reinforced concrete. I was trying Getting rid of temporal and spatial inevitability at a particular moment, and dealing with time as a joyous memorial content in a realistic present that does not call for that, was I contradictory while I was wondering in silence and confusion about the comrades and comrades who – who crossed this old wooden gate with me? I remembered Mahmoud Darwish’s saying: “If they give you back the old coffee shops, who will give you back the comrades?
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In this ancient institution, which was what interested me in the first place during my visit to the city, the first generation began to come into contact with the study of real literature and its branches, and therefore its image did not leave my mind despite all the defining events that I knew in my life, and my separation from it that lasted for more than three decades. For this reason, my memory kept preserving its secrets and the number of its corners, exits and entrances, as it is known by its new students who frequent it today, and because its history is also full of giving, from which judges and lawyers, teachers and creators graduated, artists in music, composition, cinema and theater, protectors of the borders of the homeland in adversity from soldiers and senior officers Non-commissioned officers and men who excelled in the art of politics, and marked the Moroccan political scene for many years, before they left the scene under compulsion or voluntarily and left their own mark. It suffices to mention among them the minister and politician Muhammad al-Kahs, the minister and politician al-Tuhamy al-Khayari, the journalist Abdul Karim Lamrani, and others. I, too, had passed through here like them, and it happened by chance that I was similar to them, and one of them was the end of the eighties of the last century, although I had not set foot in one of the ministries, as the others did.
Ali Bin Berri High School has a special imprint that will not be forgotten in my professional and creative path. In it, I got to know the comrades and companions of yesterday, and I learned what it means to be a leftist fighter and rebel with Abdel Karim. Sincerely, we praised the black feathers and the blue and black eyes, as we suffered in it from the howling of the pocket and the abandonment of the beloved, deprivation and loneliness. We satirized the paths and alleys and many bad mornings and boring evenings. It so happened that today, while I was visiting the city after a long absence, I passed some deserted balconies in the city’s neighborhoods: Warida neighborhood, Bain al-Jaradi, Beit Ghulam, Bab Zaitouneh, the market’s dome in the old city and other lanes. deep.
My visit to Taza was not to show off in front of deaf walls. I used to walk alongside it on a humiliated foot, or I would get high at the meeting. I remember how often I used to repeat the same walk in the morning, as I used to do the same thing in the same evening. And because I was born in a village called “Ayla” that was teeming with birds, streams, rivers, and trees until recently, it was not possible to stay in Taza with its bottom, “Lower Taza,” nor with its upper, “Upper Taza,” any more than I stayed in a hot weather that did not welcome visitors and did not tempt to stay, and therefore I left it hastily to its heights towards the heights of Tazca. The road was a piece of hell, despite its repair and pavement, but the successive turns did not leave the passerby to catch a breath, but what was easing the burden of the road, seeing a beautiful nature that draws the eye to it and enchants it, and the higher you rise, the more beautiful it is.
Taza is a small city that does not differ from its counterparts from the “lower cities”, but it is beautiful as well as “relaxed”. It has tourism potentials that allow it to rise degrees above the clouds, because the city and its environs are full of hidden beauty and exceptional wealth, the flow of fresh and permanent water in the resort « Ras Alma, chronic greenery on the top of the parks scattered on the road in the direction of the high “Tazka”, many resorts scattered on the road towards the village of “Bab Boudir”, sheltered by young men and women of different nationalities, in which there is calm and stillness that is unparalleled, and the freshness of the air that you will only find in The heights of the Middle Atlas Mountains in its east and west, and in addition to all that, it is rich in a fascinating plant and animal wealth: monkeys, deer, diverse vegetation and rare birds, purity of air that can only be breathed in “Bab Boudir” and its environs, and we, on our part as Moroccans, have only to look for We discover this beauty, because we are really poor in something called mountain tourism.
And because getting the beautiful thing is tiring, the curves remain there, beginning in order not to end, requiring patience and acumen from the driver, and great intelligence and caution in driving. Boudris, Boushafaa, Al-Zararda, Dam Bab Louta, Al-Samia and other places. An extension of a wonderful natural ecological mountain tourism orbit, vast and ramified, starting from the heights of Taza and its environs, up and down among the forest trees closest in greenery to the vegetation of the tropical climate, “tropical forests” that you find as you pass through many parks on your way, although the region belongs geographically to the Mediterranean climate . Each of these areas has its own character, dark blue in the waters of the “Bab Sahel Lot” dam, which is reflected in the shades of the color of the trees deep in green. Or south towards “Ain Sebu”, the outskirts of the house, where the Sebu River emerges from its source or sinks underground like a mythical snake in a strange phenomenon that baffled scientists. The forests of apple trees spread out in front of you in the Rabat al-Khair (Hermomo), the peaks of Mount Pueblan appear to you as bright white to the beholders, and they are close to you like a mirage within a short distance from the eye (à vol d’oiseau)) despite their distance from you, and you finally end up with red eyes The sun, in the arms of coolness in front of the waterfalls coming from the western Middle Atlas. Your mobile phone technology will not help you in such a journey, between the coming of the Internet and its interruption, the compass of directions is lost from under your feet, and you become helpless in front of the chaos of the Global Positioning System, and you are in front of strict monitoring of the GPS satellites, then only the steering wheel of your car and the cooperation of good people will benefit you. With you, you feel safe and secure with them when you ask them about your destination, and you are a lost and weak tourist. Oh God, how kind and peaceful they are, and you ask them about your required destination in apparent weakness, and all directions are lost from your compass between twists and mountain protrusions that ascend you at one time and fall with you at others. And between this and that, when you are on the outskirts of the lights of the street lamps of Fez, you will have traveled nearly 500 km between going and coming, ups and downs, and spent nearly seven and a half hours of non-stop driving…!!