Somewhere between the coppersmiths and the woodcarvers, I achieve my goal. Mustapha, my guide, has stepped aside to buy some sweet pastries from a stall. (“You’ve got to try the kaab el ghazal, the ‘gazelle’s horns’. They’re really special.”) But there are some Gnawa musicians, with long black tassels on their hats rotating in time to their drums, and then I cannot resist looking at large copper pots, and the handmade kettles that lead on to brass antiques. I turn. What’s up here? A doorway and the clacking of a hand loom. As-salamu alaykum! Maybe I should head back? A man with a laden donkey bellows, “Balak!” Gangway! I take another turn. Hang on, I don’t recognise any of this.
At that moment, all the colours, tastes, sounds and sights are sprinkled with a magical leavening of adrenaline and the whole lot rises up like some delicious cake in the oven. I glance at the phone in my hand and make sure that location services have failed. It tells me nothing except that I am in Fez, a city of more than a million. The labyrinth has worked. I am lost.
