Kasbah
Rissani, Morocco late 1990’s
Children run from my camera in one of Rissani’s kasbahs.
Kasbahs are a kind of apartment house where a certain tribe lives…sometimes Berbers, sometimes Arabized Berbers. Life is primitive. There is no electricity except a rare hall light bulb hanging from a rat’s nest of electrical wires. Light enters from shafts open to the sky or doors to the outside. There is a well in the Kasbah courtyard where women draw water in buckets made of goatskin. There is no heat in winter. The people wear all of their clothing and huddle under heavy blankets on cold nights.
Once I was offered some peanuts when I visited a Kasbah family. The nuts had an unusual scent. The woman had sprinkled them with rosewater. I thought to myself, “Here is a woman with ideas.”