SAÏD BEN SAÏD SITS in a pool of sunlight at the front of his shop and waits for the rush of customers, a rush that never comes.
In the darkness behind him is a treasure hoard worthy of Ali Baba. Stacked up on shelves and piled high in orderly heaps, lies an assortment of antique wares – brown Bakelite radios the size of suitcases, gramophone players and gilt clocks, graceful bronze statuettes, espresso machines, vintage posters and chamber pots. What makes the collection unusual is that it comes, almost in entirety, from the Art Deco glory days of Casablanca. The city, created as a showcase of French Imperial style and might, boomed from the ’twenties until the ’forties, when began its gradual and ignominious decline.
The little junk shop owned by Saïd ben Saïd sits at the far end of a labyrinthine flea-market in the working class quarter of Hay Hasseni, on the western edge of Casablanca. With almost no tourists attracted to the city, and few Moroccans interested in anything second hand, Ben Saïd is glum.
His passion for Art Deco tends to be met with scorn from his peers, and has certainly not made him rich.
‘Everyone here has the same dream,’ he says, wiping a hand over three days’ of grey stubble, ‘they dream of living in a new house, filled with brand new things. They look at the treasures I have collected, and they laugh!’
Soon after moving to a ramshackle mansion in Casablanca, I discovered the junk yards in nearby Hay Hasseni, and found myself drawn into a dream world of bargains. A shameless hoarder, I snapped up what others considered to be worthless junk – aspidistra stands, tea caddies and porcelain urns, all decorated with zigzag lines, silver sets of cutlery, posters, cocktail shakers, ice buckets, and tin-plate toys.
But the objets d’art are only the start.
One morning I was bemoaning the low quality of new washbasins to Saïd ben Saïd. He shook his head in despair.
‘The stuff you find downtown in the fancy shops is all rubbish,’ he said. ‘You’d better go out back behind the flea market.’ I followed his advice and came across a place with a striking resemble to the end of the world. There were heaps of twisted scrap metal fifty feet high, mountains of third-hand bricks, mahogany doors and battered window frames, and an ocean of what we might call ‘architectural salvage’.
In the middle of it all I found a lovely roll-top bath, cast iron with ball and claw feet. Inside it was a huddle of newborn puppies. Nearby there were more than a dozen enormous Art Deco washbasins, ripped out from a villa in the nick of time, before the building was torn down the week before.
As the months passed, I sniffed out Casablanca’s other affordable antique shops. There must be a dozen or so, scattered across the city, most of them hidden down back streets, awaiting the intrepid. It’s true that the arrival of a fresh-faced foreigner tends to nudge the prices up. But, in time-honoured Moroccan tradition, a little hard bargaining or feigned disinterest, can have a magical effect.
Corrosion from the Atlantic breeze, and cowboy repair jobs has taken a toll on some of the more fragile pieces. But I am constantly surprised at what has survived, and the general good condition of it all. There’s plenty of less than perfect bric-à-brac, as well as toe-cringing reproductions of Louis XIV but, for all of that, there are museum-quality gems.
Tucked away in the textile market of Derb Omar is a new and rather well-heeled gallery named Memo-Arts. The showroom has a few exquisite pieces, including a rosewood writing desk with ormolu legs, a davenport, and a pair of Art Nouveau bronze nymphs. In the middle of the room sits a magnificent grand piano from about 1925, crafted in by the celebrated Parisian house of Erard.
In the last two or three years a few high-end antique galleries have sprung up. Like Memo-Arts, or the impressive Galerie Moulay Youssef, they cater to the richest Moroccan clientele. You tend to get the feeling that people buy from them in a perverse show of wealth, rather than for their fondness of antiques. The same can be said for the two or three new auction houses, established for the local market, where the rich delight in publicly flashing their cash.
Most visitors find Casablanca bewildering in its size and scope, and few bother to spend any time there, except to change trains or to visit the great Mosque of Hassan II. On the surface, the city can seem overly European, after all it was built largely by the French. But just under the surface, there’s Morocco’s ubiquitous blend of vibrant colour, rich aromas and sounds – donkeys braying, dogs barking, and the clamour of water-sellers pushing through the traffic.
And there is of course the allure of the Bogart and Bergman, and their Casablanca. Rick’s Café does exist, having opened recently for tourists not far from the Port. But the real flavour of that time is kept alive in the flea-markets, the junk yards and antique shops in town. Tracking them down is a way of seeing the city, and exploring hidden corners to which tourists rarely venture.
Back in the labyrinth at Hay Hasseni, Saïd ben Saïd is asleep with a newspaper over his face. He stirs at the sound of footsteps, the prospect of a customer. When asked if he can acquire a grand piano at flea-market prices, he shrugs.
‘I have a friend with a warehouse full of grand pianos,’ he says absently. ‘You can find them in any size. When the French ran away from Morocco, they left them behind in their hundreds. But who would ever want one?’
‘I would,’ I said.
The shopkeeper scratched a thumbnail to his neck, and glanced back into his Aladdin’s den.
‘Well you are wise,’ he said. ‘If there were others like you, I would be a far richer man with a far happier wife.’