Rural idyll recalls a bygone age

Damien Enright on how Morocco invokes nostalgia

LAST week, as the sun set over the dusky walls of the ancient city of Fes in Morocco, the sky was full of Alpine swifts. At breakneck speed, they dashed and dived like big, spinning swallows, shrieking as they hoovered up insects in the warm evening air.

Below them, I was part of a teeming river of humanity flowing through the streets, caught up in a wedding procession bearing a bride to the house of her husband. I never saw the bride; she was carried shoulder high in a curtained sedan chair, cloistered from music and colour that accompanied her.