There are two cities of Fez. One is the city of the narrow, crowded streets, where the cry, "Balak! Balak!"[1] resounds all day. Streets, one terms them, since they are the main thoroughfares through which all the merchandise of Morocco passes out to the four quarters of the compass; but they are no wider than the alley-ways of an English village, and in many places a man may stand in the centre and touch the wall on either side. These streets are paved with big cobblestones, but the stones are broken and displaced by the tramp of centuries. If mended at all, they are mended with a millstone or any chance slab of rock; but for the most part they are left unmended altogether. For that is the fashion in Morocco. There they build and make, and they do both things beautifully and well. But they seldom finish; in a house, dainty with fountains and arabesques and coloured tiles, you will still find a corner uncompleted, a pillar which lacks the delicate fluting of the other pillars, an embrasure for a clock half ornamented with gold filagree, and half left plain. And if they seldom finish, they never by any chance repair. The mansion is built and decorated within; artists fit the tiles together in a mosaic of cool colours, and carve, and gild, and paint the little pieces of cedar-wood, and glue them into the light and pointed arches; the rich curtains are hung, and the master enters into his possession. There follows the procession of the generations. The tiles crack, the woodwork of the arches splits and falls, and the walls break and crumble. The householder sits indifferent, and the whole house corrodes. So, in the narrow streets, holes gape, and the water wears a channel where it wills, and the mud lies thick and slippery on the rounded stones; the streets ran steeply up and down the hills, wind abruptly round corners, dive into tunnels. Yet men gallop about them on their sure-footed horses, stumbling, slipping, but seldom falling. "Balak!" they cry. "Balak!" and the man on foot is flung against the wall or jostled out of the way. No one protests or resents. --------------------- [Footnote 1: "Take care!"] --------------------- A file of donkeys, laden with wood or with grain, so fixed upon their backs that the load grazes each street wall, blocks the way. "Balak!" shouts the donkey-driver. And perhaps some nobleman of Fez, soft and fat and indolent, in his blue cloak, who comes pacing on a mule no less fat, preceded by his servants, must turn or huddle himself into an embrasure. There are no social distinctions in the alley-ways of Fez. It may be that one of those donkeys will fall then and there beneath his load, and refuse to rise. His load will be taken from his back, and if he still refuse, he will be left just where he fell, to die. His owner walks on. It is no one's business to remove the animal. There he lies in the middle of the street, and to him "Balak" will be called in vain.