“How to fool around with another man’s wife?” he asked. “Send for an old woman who will deliver your message. If the lady is agreeable she tells the old woman what she wishes to receive as a gift. You meet on the day of the souq, which provides an excuse for the lady to leave her house. The old woman helps facilitate the outing. If anyone notices your gift later, be it a dress, a scarf, a bracelet or a pair of babouches, she says it is a present from her mother.”

“Between Fez and Taounate the countryside was swaying with wheat and the silvery leaves of olive trees. We were puzzled by a house standing a little apart and finer than the others, with a cement roof and a compound full of flowers. It was the only house with flowers for their own sake, a rare sight. The women in the compound too were different: instead of the usual dresses and shawls they were wearing djellabahs, like city women.

“Then a young man came out of the house and told us he had a zawia in Tissa, a small place with a souq, an admininistrative centre; it wasn’t really a town. There he waited in his zawia, and people came to pray with him. He might indulge in a little magic, or act as advisor to people with problems. People brought him food as a form of payment for his services.

“This explained the house, the women in djellabahs, and above all, the flowers.”

High on a mountain is a village called Bab el Habs. This means “The Gate of the Prison.” The village is located beside two big rocks with a passage between them. In the time of the French Protectorate this pass was the border gate between Spanish and French zones. Often those who passed from one zone to the other went to prison.

Bab el Habs has some herds of goats, almond trees that are white with flowers in February, and trees heavy with figs in September. There are a few small gardens. Life is far from easy, but people have found ways around hunger. When winter is really bad they eat acorns, and dried figs, which they also feed to the animals. Sometimes the figs have fermented and both people and animals get a little tipsy, for want of anything else to eat. In the past, the villagers used to travel 50 or 60 kilometres by donkey down to the plain during harvest time. They would pass among the harvesters, taking advantage of the tradition which says a man will have luck if he shares his harvest with all those who pass.

Omar never enters the territory of the neighbouring tribe. His grandfather was killed by them, and Omar lives in mortal dread of the same thing happening to him.