The Square of the Absent (Jemaa El Fna) never sleeps. It listens with a child’s eagerness to every story created there: tales of enchanted princesses, cunning viziers, wise and foolish sultans, merchants and their extraordinary adventures. It is a Mecca for souls hungry for knowledge. Ancient physicians believed that the auditory nerve had several branches. One of them served the soul, enabling it to listen to the warnings and lessons conveyed by stories, so that it could learn and grow during its earthly sojourn.
In Africa, the tradition of oral storytelling is still alive. After sunset, listeners gather in the square to form a tight circle around the master storyteller. They prepare to hear an extraordinary tale, and the soul’s hearing grows sharper. Neither television nor the Internet can replace oral transmission. The soul can be nourished only by living human words.
The storytellers who come here every night to recount the adventures of heroes and ordinary people gesture, act out scenes, experience every thread of the story they tell, and take their listeners into another dimension, into the world of imagination.
Such a performance is called “halqa” in Arabic. The tradition of this spectacle probably derives from ancient religious celebrations in honor of the Phoenician goddess of fertility, Tanit. The Berbers adopted this cult and organized dances and mimed performances in her honor. After some time, the Phoenician goddess was replaced by the virgin Celestis of Rome. St. Augustine took part in rites in her honor and described the spectacle as a ridiculous and blasphemous show featuring mimes, a form of sacrifice offered to the goddess.
Quintilian described performers in mime shows as follows: “They speak, ask, call out and send away, threaten and plead. They express fear and terror, joy, sadness, hesitation, consent, remorse, extravagance; they indicate number, measure and time. Is it not within their power to excite and calm, plead, permit, admire and display shame?”
When today we stand in the circle surrounding a contemporary bard and observe his facial expressions, the gestures of his hands depicting every obstacle encountered by the hero, and the movement and dance of his body, we have no doubt that the cult of fertile, virginal goddesses is still present in Morocco.
One of contemporary Morocco’s most famous narrators is Mohamed Bariz. During his performances, he could hold his listeners’ interest for several months, recounting each episode of a long story he had created with such passion.
Bariz was born in Marrakesh. As a young boy, he loved listening to stories told by his parents. He experienced his moment of revelation at the age of seven. His mother took him to the souk. In the large square, Mohamed noticed a circle of people. They stood as if hypnotized, listening intently and gazing at the storyteller. It was the extraordinarily popular and revered Moulay Mohamed El Jabri. As Bariz recalls, the wealth of plots and splendor of the characters his master described quickly took hold of him and did not allow him to escape the overwhelming need to listen and later tell his own stories. At the age of ten, he left his family home in Marrakesh to embark on his first journey as an apprentice of halqa.
The mastery of his storytelling rests on a simple device: setting two characters against each other—adults and children, women and men, kings, peasants or merchants. The protagonists are not only people. Bariz tells stories about animals, plants, minerals and supernatural phenomena. He describes Love, Wealth and Death. He takes his listeners on a magical journey. He creates places, cities, kingdoms, mountains, seas and oceans. His characters encounter jinn and monsters, make choices, love and hate.
Mohamed Bariz was abducted by stories and is their faithful slave. For several years, he has no longer told stories in Jemaa El Fna. He travels around Europe. He has performed in Paris at the Arab Institute, as well as in Toulouse and Marseille, and traveled to Portugal. Today, he works with various major literary texts and adapts them into halqa. His repertoire includes, among other works, a biography of Averroes. He also participates in international storytelling festivals, representing North Africa.
Jemaa El Fna also has its own story. According to it, the Absent come to their square to listen to human stories. The spirits of the victims of a gunpowder magazine explosion visit it. According to legend, a mosque stood on the site of today’s Square of the Absent. When a gunpowder magazine exploded nearby, all the worshippers gathered inside were killed. Legends also speak of the ghosts of victims of sultans who fought rebellious tribesmen from the High Atlas. The leaders of the rebellion were beheaded, so their heads could be impaled and put on public display in the city’s main square.
In one tight circle, to the glory of Allah and ancient goddesses, surrounded by people and spirits, the masters of halqa weave their tales. Mohamed Bariz confessed: “I did not choose the stories; they chose me.” He passes through Jemaa El Fna unnoticed. His face is not recognized; Mohamed is not a television star. His magic begins to work when he speaks the first sentence of his story, making a gesture with his hand and pointing beyond real time, beyond the boundaries of imagination.
Grażyna Hanaf