The Lion of Fez

by David Rozgonyi

Fes el-Bali. The fabled heart of Morocco, where nothing had changed in one-thousand years, and nothing would for another thousand or more. Fez the Ancient, where time was irrelevant. Wet stones, broken ground, cracked walls married by impossible angles. Niggardly strips of blue sky so far removed from life in this warren that they felt like forgeries, just more bait for the soul.

There was a traveler alone in Fes el-Bali. But not for long.

The boy looked all of eight, but his age probably was closer to thirteen—the traveler knew that a lack of good food and an abundance of cigarettes did amazing things for growing bodies. His clean skin was surprising, as were his brand new sneakers, although they seemed a little loose on his small feet. The traveler, a tall, craggy 44-year-old who knew well, and preferred, the solitary road, towered over the boy, but the boy stared him down, his sharp little face softened by a cheeky grin.

            The traveler was unsurprised when the boy addressed him in English.

“You need a guide here, mister! You are now in Fez medina! Fez medina is very dangerous for you, very big and you get lost quick.” His rapid-fire speech was startling in its clarity, but the man gave no hint that he had understood. Sometimes it was best to play dumb, he knew, so he replied in broken Arabic, refusing to divulge his identity for the moment. He told the boy he came from Poland, which was true enough by heritage, if not by birth, then unleashed a few quick sentences in that language to buttress his story. Every tout the traveler had ever met in the world knew that Eastern Europeans were one step above the Russians in terms of financial liquidity, and that wasn’t saying much at all.

            The boy regarded the man with suspicion as he spoke again, in English. “You are not American?” He rubbed the hollow above his little belly absently as he pondered this. “I think you are American.”

            The man sighed. Feigning a language for six weeks had left him distanced, even from himself. It was an emotional buffer that bothered him. Besides, the boy looked too small to be harmful—tiny fingers wrapped tightly around a bent cigarette—although the potential to be annoying lurked within the amused suspicion of his sun-dried face. “You win, little man. I’m American as Joe DiMaggio. But I don’t need a guide. Thanks anyway.”

The man began walking again.

            “Ten dirhams for one hour!” he called from somewhere behind.

            Less than a dollar. “You’re no guide. I know better than that.”

            His little steps quickened until he had drawn beside the man, whose giant stride was cramped by the narrow alleys, and then the boy was in front, walking backward, talking and deftly avoiding the veiled shapes that squeezed through the narrow passageway. “I am a faux guide!” he declared proudly, thumping his sunken chest with his hand.