Morocco

dying to fit in…

My laptop clock says 2:12am as we ease out of the train station in Marrakech. That’s what time it is back home. Here is it almost a quarter after seven in the morning and the sun is rising to our right giving the mountains out the left of our window an orange glow similar in color to the dried apricots we bought in the square last night to snack on during our seven hour trip to Fez. Occasionally I catch a glimpse of the front of our train as the track bows to the left.

Three nights was barely enough time to scratch the surface of what Marrakech had to offer. Each day we ventured a bit further into the medina’s cobblestoned alleyways where we discovered clusters of artisans practicing their trades. Wool dyers with elbow length rubber gloves dipping scarves into steaming vats of colored liquids, metal workers tap pounding, tailors in animated conversation as they push their material through sewing machines, leatherworkers lying their cut and freshly dyed hides in an open area of the street to dry and jewelers promising that this necklace is truly antique Berber.

Yesterday we had the advantage of being out in the souks early making us the initial customer for the first couple shops we stopped in. The first sale of the day is an important one since it sets the tone for the rest of the day’s commerce and the shopkeepers are especially eager to close that opening deal. Of course we have no idea what is or is not a good outlay for the items we are looking at so we settle on a simple formula. What do we think would be a fair price that would make us feel like we garnered a fair price? I decide a brass door knocker depicting a hennaed hand holding an apple would be a steal at ten dollars so I do the conversion and offer the shopkeeper seven. We haggle back and forth for a little bit but he quickly agrees to my ten buck target. The short bargaining time lets me know that I obviously could have got the item cheaper – but I am happy with the price and he is happy with the price – “Good for you, good for me!” Several hours later as we pass his place on the way back he smiles and greets us like old friends, “You need one more thing?” “Just lunch,” we answer.

I haven’t really mentioned the motorbikes yet. There are no cars within the walls of the medina so all the goods being sold at the, what I have to assume is, tens of thousands of shops are brought in by donkey or hand cart. Even the scores of outdoor restaurants – tables – massive grills – fresh food - are conveyed in each evening to the main square delivered by either man or beast. One might think that this tradition is quite quaint, almost bucolic perhaps – one would be failing to acknowledge the motorbikes. Marrakech has motorbikes, scooters, mopeds and bicycles the way those of us who live near Lake Erie have midges.

The beeping of horns and belching of two cycle exhaust is incessant. The pilots of these things slice their ways through the streets already jam packed with pedestrians like confused salmon swimming both up and downstream. Thus, it behooves of one to try and walk in as straight a line as possible allowing the riders to avoid you, or when coming face to face with an oncoming motor biker with an eight foot ladder strapped to his back just stand still and let him decide which direction to barely miss you in. I have to admit, I did not witness any accidents involving these motorized pests while we wandered the city but I’d bet two hand dyed scarves they do occur.

We find our way back to our riad to freshen up before we head out for a late lunch. I am struck with how quickly we are adapting to the pace and seeming lack of order to the convoluted streets, how easily we have adopted our little room as home. We decide to re-visit the little outdoor café near the metal worker’s souk where we had lunch the day before. A fresh sheet of newsprint is laid down in front of us at the table as a placemat and we order. The now familiar clay pot of vegetables and lamb’s meat is placed before me – this time we add a side order of spiced olives and a salad of tomatoes and purple onions, sharp and spicy. 

A day earlier when we were here an old woman, her wrinkled skin framing her eyes visible through a slit between her veil and headscarf had politely approached our table after we finished eating. I gave her a small loaf of bread that we had not eaten and she thanked me, “Merci” French being the second language of choice here. Today I notice she is giving bread to the young man who seated us and he takes it to the kitchen area. I then see her take a position a little ways away where she opens a cloth sack and begins producing loaf after loaf of bread, stacking it up in a neat pile on a small table she is seated at. I don’t know now if she is a baker’s assistant, a beggar, a person who busses tables all I can really be sure of right now is that I cannot be sure of anything in Morocco. When we leave I smile at her and her eyes crinkle and I know she is smiling back behind that veil.

We decide to splurge on a fancy candlelight dinner that evening in a nice sit down restaurant that promises authentic Berber food and a spectacle. The spectacle is a couple musicians, one playing a mandolin type instrument and the other a knee high hand drum. The waiter catches me taking notes; perhaps he thinks I am some sort of travel reviewer. We end our meal with little honey infused pastries and glasses of mint tea. We then make one last circle of the main square buying almonds and dried apricots, thick and sweet before we head back to our room to stuff our backpacks getting ready for our next adventure.

Bee careful out there!

Every now and then it is good to do something that scares you a little bit. This is advice I have given friends in the past and like most advice it is easier to give than follow. Our second day in Marrakech begins in our riad with tasty crepes, fresh squeezed orange juice, a selection of jams along with some very robust coffee served on the ubiquitous blue and white Moroccan china. Enjoying the second mug of the high octane brew no doubt contributed to my later anxiety.

Throughout our travels around the globe we have found ourselves under the tutelage of self appointed (and technically illegal) guides, especially in northern Africa. In the little town of Esna in Egypt we met Hanna who led us around her city and helped Sara haggle over the price of a skirt. Here in Marrakech we were landed by a smiling man who was trolling for potential customers outside of the main square. The general m.o. of these characters is to strike up a friendly conversation as they guess your destination and they then begin dispensing local information as they promise whatever you may be looking for is just a little bit further along. It’s a very subtle game, the local engaging in non-stop conversation turning back to be sure we are still following as he leads us in a more and more convoluted path through the maze narrow roadways either to confuse us to the point of relying on him to get us back or to avoid the tourist police who frown on these excursions led by the unlicensed.

Of course this friendly local is in the employ of the several shops he shuttles his marks into as part of his “tour”. Our first stop is to a tile factory housed in a building about the size of a two car garage. We are shown the process for making the tiles that cover all the floors and half the walls of Moroccan architecture. There is no firing, only a process of air drying then dipping into a pool of water followed by a baking in the sun. I am intrigued by the hydraulic press which compresses the colored sand into molds creating the different designs. Over 400 kilograms of pressure per inch I am assured. For this lesson we are awarded the privilege of underwriting the four employees of the shop’s breakfast to the tune of a couple bucks.

Our next stop is to a small spice shop where the show really begins. Reminiscent of the perfumery our legally licensed guide in Cairo took us to, the proprietor here had a whole performance he was going to treat us to. Think old time door to door vacuum salesman and you’ll get the picture. Now I had wanted to pick up some spices, especially some saffron which can be had for a slice of the price in the States so we enjoyed the show. Our guy showed us concoctions and herbs that could cure any malady one could think of and we escaped spending less than fifteen dollars for condiments that would have cost at least five times the price back home.

It was around then though that my concern over not knowing where we were overcame my curiosity. I asked our guy to take us back to the main square. Just one more, one more he pleaded and tried to distract my apprehension by pointing out what a beautiful day it was and sights that he felt I had to have a photograph of. I was not enjoying my lack of control of the situation. This combined with my self administered over caffeination was making my heart race as my fight or flight instinct began swirling in my stomach.

The one more place was a carpet shop. This is the granddaddy of all retail rituals to be had in the Arab world requiring tea drinking, the ceremonial unrolling of the goods with wrist snapping flair and hours of haggling. Our guide took leave of us there and I gave him around ten dollars for his services. The shop was beautiful and the keeper seemed genuinely sincere. “It is free to look!” but I had had enough. We made one polite circle of his massive store and I asked to be pointed back to the main square which the shopkeeper obliged – the fact that we were able to convince him that there was no way we could afford a carpet no doubt prodding his helpfulness. It turned out we were not all that far from where we had begun and my anxiety may have been a bit extreme but one always hears the stories of “that one tourist” who arrives at an unpleasant outcome.

The rest of our day included lunch in an outdoor café surrounded by the pounding hammers of metalworking artisans as cats scooted all about sprinting from table to table looking for scraps. I had a lamb stew called a tagine, served in the conical clay pot that we see everywhere for sale in the souks. Sara had some chicken couscous. The savory food and carbonated cola settled my stomach and my earlier concerns eased away until all that was bothering me were the bees buzzing around my lunch as the sun warmed the day.

Marrakech day one…

Waking up in Marrakech in our riad (pronounced ree- awd) surrounded by the call to prayers 5:30 am or so as the melody echoes around the medina from the dozens of mosques inside the walled city. A riad is the Moroccan version of a bed and breakfast. The house is situated with a large central courtyard two stories tall with a rooftop balcony, the rooms surround this courtyard, the first floor housing the kitchen a sitting room and our room dubbed the Sultana. There are four more rooms upstairs which open up onto a balcony that overlooks the courtyard. The courtyard itself is open roofed save for a canvas stretched across to keep rain from coming in.

According to our caretaker Bajr, the singer of the call to prayer’s title is Muezzin. While chatting with Bajr I learn that he has just recently taken on his duties here, his prior employment having something to do with the circus and the high trapeze – (I’m going to find out more about this.) The flowing chants waft outside our house then dipping in from above skirting beneath the canvas and into the center of the riad. The scores of Muezzins, not quite synched with their compatriots, form a sort of round and this undercurrent bathes the still dark morning hour. One by one the call finishes and the morning is still again except for the sporadic crowing of a nearby rooster. And so begins day two in Marrakech.

Our four hour train ride down from Rabat started with a twenty five minute delay on a rain slickened platform. Once we began clacking down the tracks, the city quickly gave way to farmland and small herds of goats, sheep and cattle all attended by a shepherd or herder as the ruminants grazed sans fencing. Two hours into our trip the terrain switched from predominantly flatland to rolling hills with outcroppings of craggy rock and cultivated fields framed by prickly pear looking cacti, date and olive trees. My ears popped with the change of elevation. Closer to our destination snow covered mountains assumed control of the distant horizon the vista somewhat reminiscent of the southwest in the United States or the agave plantations I biked through in Oaxaca Mexico.

Pulling into the station we are greeted by a Frenchman Manu, who with his mother, own and operate our riad. We climb into his vehicle and make the ten minute ride to the medina. The medina is the old part of the city, the medieval walled city within the city, as the labyrinth of narrow roadways markets restaurants and open squares trafficked by pedestrians, donkey carts and agile motorbike pilots many of whom are female with flowing tunics and headscarves. Without Manu there would have been no way possible for us to have found where we are staying the winding streets and alleys are as convoluted and enmeshed as the intricate ironworks that cover many of the windows here.

We settled into our room and then we ventured into the maze of the medina, noting landmarks as we passed hoping to find our way back – a black and white checked door, a barber, a square full of carpet vendors, that café where we drank cardamom spiced coffee and ate kafta sandwiches all cataloged to be questioned later – “Okay, right or left here – was it this black and white door?...”

Eventually we begin to get our bearings and even pick up a few Arabic phrases that help us along. We have dinner in the large open square surrounded by street musicians, fruit vendors and supposedly snake charmers (who we are yet to see.) We deposit our souvenir loot from the day back at our room, splash our faces with water and head out to the main square again where the musicians and storytellers now perform for crowds circled around kerosene lamps. We avoid the man with monkey who is looking to perch his little charge on our shoulder for a picture and of course a bit of remuneration for the privilege.

We corkscrew our way back around 11pm. Not bad for our first day. I’m looking forward to see what happens next. Okay, no sooner had I written the preceding line than a bird has decided to poop onto my laptop – everybody is a critic – could have been worse, at least it wasn’t in my coffee.