a small sieve, the bottom of which is made of linen or silk spun in Fez.
Gdra: the lower part of the pot for couscous in which the meat and vegetables are cooked, made of earthenware or copper.
Gdra del trid: a pot with a curved bottom, and a large paunch-like opening, which, when placed on the brazier, sends the heat to the inner sides and bottom of the pot, where the sheets of dough for trid are cooked.
Genbura: a glazed earthenware pot, very broad relative to its height, used for keeping water.
Ghorbal: a sieve, its bottom made of perforated leather, used for gauging the semolina.
Gsaa: a large, round unglazed baked clay dish made in Fez. The gsaa is made of oak, olive or walnut wood in certain districts, or from palms in the oases. Used for making bread and couscous and kneading pastry, the gsaa is also employed for washing.
Ied ettas: an often charmingly shaped ewer with a long slender spout in brass or embossed silver plate, used for pouring water over the fingers before and after a meal. When not in use it is placed on a pan called a tass.
Kanoun: a charcoal pan made of iron or copper, but more often of sun-baked clay.
Khabia: an earthenware jar, glazed inside, high and not very wide, found in different sizes and used for preserving meat and storing dried vegetables, flour and corn.
Kskas: that part of the pot, perforated at the bottom and inserted in the gdra, used for cooking the couscous grains.
Mghorfa: a large spoon carved out of a block of wood.
Mida: in Fez they call a round dish with an odd pointed hat in which cakes are served a mida, a wooden tray with a high rim and a conical lid is also called a mida, and finally the round table on which meals are served is the mida.
Midouna: A flat and flexible plaited basket woven from the fibres of esparto grass or doum.
Mqla: flat-bottomed copper pan with a straight edge and two handles.
Nafekh: an earthenware brazier.
Qa tagine: the deep copper dish in which the tagine slaoui is inserted and which serves to protect the table.
Qettara: an alembic used for distilling roses and orange-blossom.
Siniya: a tray made of embossed or plain copper, brass or silver plate. Those on which the utensils for making tea are placed have legs a few inches high.
Tagine slaoui: a round dish of glazed earthenware covered with a pointed lid which fits the dish exactly and can be used for cooking, keeping the dish hot or serving the tagine. Slaoui is used as a diminutive.
Tanjir: a large cooking pot.
Taoua: a basin designed to receive dirty water. These are made of copper or embossed silver plate and covered with a slab of the same metal in the middle of which the ewer is placed. It is over this basin that hands are washed before and after meals.
Tbiqa: a stiff round basket with a pointed lid made of esparto grass or doum decorated with coloured leather. Manufactured in or round about Marrakesh. Bread is placed in the tbiqa to protect it from the dust.
Tbla or mida: a round cedarwood dining-table, just over a foot high; the diameter varies according to the number of guests. Those made in Fez are plain or painted; those from Mogador are of inlaid woods encrusted with mother-of-pearl and much sought after.
Tboq: a sort of midouna made of finer basket-work.
Tila: a sieve made of rush or wire used for separating the bran from the crushed corn.
Tobsil dettiab: a large copper-plated tray with a small straight edge, used for glazing the bistilla.
Tobsil dial Iouarqa: a tray of the same sort, but it is the outside, which is copper-plated, on which sheets of pastry for bistilla are cooked.
With these utensils washing up is quickly done; the guests gone, the serving women will wash the earthenware dishes in the small pond in the middle of the patio, rubbing them with fine sand brought by some poor woman in a sack on her back from the local quarries and sold at the door for a few pence.
It is polishing them with that same sand, a lemon and a half-ripe tomato that will make the copper and brass in the kitchen glow with such power and brilliance.
POTTERY
From the hill of Dar-Mahres to the south of Fez comes the clay which makes the potters’ fortune.
Near Sidi-Frej, the city’s old lunatic asylum, there used to be a little place of which nothing now remains. Smelling of bitumen, it was filled with small shops, all displaying their stocks of unglazed pottery. Disdainful of the tourists’ curiosity, the mallem or craftsman decorated the pottery with tar with the tip of his agile forefinger. For a few francs one could carry away bowls, jars, water-pots and large deep dishes. You can find these shops again today, scattered through the town. The potters are survivors of that corner of Fez which no longer exists.
Between Attarine, Fez’s spice market, and the Moulay Idriss sanctuary there is an entire street, long and narrow, on each side of which the shops display Fez pottery from floor to ceiling: bowls, vases, water-pots, dishes hung on string. Facing us, deep round dishes, deep conical-shaped dishes for couscous, soup tureens with high lids, decorated with geometric or floral designs both naïve and skillful, plain, coloured or with polychrome designs with blue the dominating colour. That blue of Fez, sometimes a deep sea blue, sometimes shining and light, and the plain deep green of the bottles of oil: colours obtained from minerals found around Fez.
Unevenly glazed, but producing designs full of charm … flaws you certainly find in this pottery, but sometimes too the joyous discovery of a rare piece where the spontaneity of design is allied to a fine finish.
The street is still there, the merchants sitting in their shops. One or two remain faithful to the supply of goods from the potters, the others, with an eye to the main chance, have abandoned this primitive ware for more practical European ironmongery.
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Pottery from Kelaa des Sless, buttress of the Rif, is decorated with yellow ochre and brown geometric designs. Shapes of great purity. Etruscan, African or Latin American art? Material hardened and oiled so it looks like polished wood.
Water-pots, jars, pots hanging from a cord, used by the fellah for the melted butter which he will sell in the town. Rancid odours? Yes, but also beauty of form and material, polished, hard and shining.
SPICES
Eyes filled with the harmonious green of the Chrabline minaret,
