In Fez, the Cats Are Free

WHERE TO BEGIN IN FEZ, RAMADAN 2025 the rains relentless washing the Moroccan narrow streets – the day before flying from JFK, newly minted with ominous MAGA overtones, bookstands promoting Melania’s best seller “Melania” the cover stark B+W minimal sinister poignantly next to a JFK biography cover only his eyes smiling like thru a Burka not far from Trump’s tangerine smirk on candy bars across from an oversized statue of Uncle Sam dipped in Stars and Stripes mid stride dark blue expressionless vapid except for a tip o’ hat and arm thrusting spear-like staff forward accelerating Capitalism at warp speed, reborn from the new Christian sect espousing power, domination and greed – the wealthy closer to god, an eye for an eye revenge politics, all for me and none for you, underwritten by America’s craving for cheaper cereal and cars, unwittingly unleashing the world’s richest man chainsaw killing children, simultaneously crypto meme coins like the $trump netting the Savior hundreds of millions instantaneously, 21st century hyper-capitalism spawning a new world order that would make Orwell blush.

A peculiarly stark contrast with our destination across the Atlantic, a Fez Riad, sitting in the garden during a morning rain, the birds and turtles calm amongst fallen oranges and Sufi smiles. Outside, the Medina a city overseen by cats, the offspring of Muhammad’s beloved Muezza, populated by artisans, focussed, flow state immersed in an urban tapestry of polychrome pentagonal patterns of blue yellow green – Islamic Kufic epigraphy alongside symmetrical rosettes – filigree floral – painted with pigments of pomegranate paprika henna and turmeric amongst the water fountains each telling a story with stars strategically shining towards God’s salvation amongst the ancient chaos of the souks.

This civilization prehistoric embedded with saffron, amber and musk, layered over the centuries with conquest and conflict settled by Phoenicians, Romans, Berber, Andalusians, and Islam – Fez the Athens of Africa, gateway to Timbuktu gold once the largest city in the world now the largest city without cars, the oldest Madrasas advancing astronomy and mathematics – Islam’s religious sciences practiced in monk like chambers – what has this city learned, what can it tell us? Where foreigners seek serenity, a respite from compulsive digital dopamine distractions, feeling the pull to Fezian water–clock timelessness, a wisdom born from millennia of strife and salvation, what words are there for adolescent America, what guidance as it turns toward narcissism and greed – what would Rumi say?

And now the US giving birth to the new MAGA Christian Sect conceived by devout Apostolic disciples of 21st century Prosperity Theology – promoted by the saviour’s personal pastor Paula White, televangelist extraordinaire and the 4 stooges of the Neo-Apocalypse: the original court jester Steven Bannon no longer nursing his bourbon, gaining strength from St. Ignatius Spiritual Exercises and the daily examen, to the banished messianic Musk leading his 4 year old son X Æ A-Xii to cabinet meetings smiling cryptic answers to non-sequitur questions, to melancholy Melania protectorate of the hearth fanning the flames of somatic narcissism, and finally Laura Loomer the Donald whisperer, lurking in the shadows, enforcer of the loyalty covenant, silent executioner crippling those who doubt the Savior’s immaculate mind.

The MAGA body politic – a mosaic of disparate end-time Evangelicals, New World Order Baptists, white supremacists, bored millennials, Latino strongmen/women, confederate civil war apologists, Neo-crusaders, Holocaust deniers, international Jewish conspiracy promoters, QAnon apostles, anti-globalists, lone-wolf terrorists, ultranationalist demagogues, New World Order congregants, Alex Jones yay-sayers, apocalyptic millennial Christian eschatologists, money mongers, aberrant techno doomsayers and libertarians to name a few – all beautifully co-opted by the Savior’s master weave, the exalted 6 time bankrupt con artist from Queens son of a KKK sympathizer, enraged by Manhattan classism, vitriolic, incensed – leader of the MAGA second coming of White House loiterers part II seizing absolute power poised to create a new world order that even they do not know what will be except for the destruction of what has come before, a Golden Age of the unknown.

The rain falls quietly in Fez, the riad garden green and calm as the US falls not so quietly, the end of American exceptionalism, like all empires come to pass. Fez what wisdom do you have for us? Why are your streets quiet in the rain? Why do you ignore adolescent America? Are you asleep? When will you rise again?

In Fez, the cats are free – the souk proprietors will give them to you but you can’t buy them, they aren’t for sale, they are cats and they are free.