If you’re looking for English Language books in Fez, there are really only a few options. First you can go to the upscale bookstores in the Ville Nouvelle where you can find a small selection of English language books for about double what you would pay for them in Europe or North America. The selection tends to be light with a heavy focus on the classics, guidebooks, books about Fez or Morocco, and language books.
But what if you are looking for a good old pulp novel, or like me, you simply enjoy browsing through the stacks of a used bookstore, hoping to find a treasure, a good read, or just something to pass the time while you wait for a grand taxi to fill up?
In that case, you need to go to an unlikely place. Situated under the Lido bridge, close to Atlas, under a ramshackle collection of tin rooves in what looks like it could be among the poorest of shantytowns is what I like to call the book souq.
From the street, it’s hard to tell that there is anything there, but as you descend the steps you find the used book Mecca of Fez. Dozens of stalls sit with towering stacks of books piled so thickly that if you pull a select title, you are likely to be buried under a mountain of the printed word.
Now, to be sure, most of the books are not in English. The vast majority are in either French or Arabic, but if you search or ask, most of the vendors have a box or section tucked away that contains much thumbed, tattered, and gloriously useless novels, pulp fiction, and even some bizarre selections of English language tombs.
It sounds perfect, but the sad truth is that you won’t be picking these books up for less than a dollar each unless you are a far better haggler than I. The merchants know that they have something special that can’t be found just anywhere and so the prices tend to be higher than they would be at similar shops in countries where English is more common. The guy with the largest selection always asks for more than I am willing to pay for the books I want, and he won’t bargain, which is probably why he has the highest selection. On my last visit, I found a photocopied and bound book called Moroccan Dialogues which consists of a number of anthropological studies in al-Maghreb and when I offered him 10 dirham for it he said he wanted 40 or roughly $6 for a used, photocopy of a book. It’s notable that he refuses to speak Derrija or Arabic with me and instead will only tell me the price in French. I offered him 20 and finally 30, but his stubborn harsh voice always came back with ‘quarant dirham’ and so I chose to leave it behind.
Other venders tend to be more reasonable and often have surprising offerings. On my last foray I ended up spending about 90 dirham and walked away with two books from the Center for Moroccan Cultural Studies, a Philip K. Dick novel about a pot vending doctor in space, a thick fantasy novel, a novel about Afghanistan, and a novel about the Byzantine Empire. These were all paperbacks, none of them in perfect shape, and ranged in price from 10 to 25 dirham. It was more than I wanted to pay for the books, but the truth is that I’m a true bibliophile and having books around makes me happy.
I would guess that there are somewhere around a couple thousand English language books in the Souq. If you read French or Arabic, you’ll probably find around 100,000 if all the stalls are open and the prices to be considerably less.
With all that being said, if you happen to have a bunch of English language books that you no longer want, feel free to drop me an email and maybe I can take them off your hands, as long as the price is right!
Vago Damitio lives in Sefrou and blogs at http://www.vagobond.com
The book souq under lido bridge/atlas
