Gingerbread City

We've come to Marrakesh to see the Djemaa el Fna at night, a dark and chaotic square alive with storytellers, snake charmers, acrobats, musicians, and dancers who compete for the attention (and dirhams) of the ever-shifting crowd. We float along with the current, collecting bits of conversation and fleeting images. A holistic healer points at an anatomy chart as a young man listens intently. A woman weilding a henna-filled syringe beckons to the ladies who happen by.

A persuasive young man guides us toward a smoky food stall and urges us to sit and eat. The white smoke is heavy with the scent of grilled meats. We've just eaten, so we let the pulsating crowd carry us away. The constant stream of faces, shadowy in twilight, and the carnival surroundings lend a medieval atmosphere. The slightly surreal feeling is reinforced when a little person with a big attitude storms through the crowd and demands coins as we weave through with our camera. We drop a few dirhams in his hat and leave a strobe of flashes in our wake.



During the day, Marrakesh is a gingerbread city with ginger-colored buildings, shops, and hotels. The high walls that surround the city look as edible as graham crackers. The witch from Hansel and Gretel must have a vacation home here.



The Djemaa el Fna square that raised our pulses the night before is quiet during the day. The food stalls and acrobats are replaced by orange juice stalls and water sellers dressed in colorful costumes with traditional leather water bags and metal cups. However, as peaceful as the square is during the day, it can't escape its dark past. In fact, "Djemaa el Fna" means "gathering of the dead" due the public executions that once took place here. In spite of its past, people still gather here to meet friends, enjoy entertainment and refreshments, and to visit the labyrinthine medina at the far edge of the square.

Deep in the Medina

We are deep in the old quarter of Fez, letting gravity pull us down toward the center of the medina. The high walls and narrow streets look very much alike. To help us find our way back through the maze, we take note of our surroundings: A shoe shop with a litter of kittens dozing on the floor, a ceramics stall displaying traditional "Fez blue" pottery and colorful tagines. A man with a white skull cap is slicing large blocks of pink nougat at a table in the street, food stalls are heaped with fish, olives, and jars of savory meats packed in fat. Over the wall a carpet is drying in the sun...



And then we pass another shoe store and then another, more food stalls heaped with fish, olives, and savory meats. Later, the kittens will be off playing, the man slicing nougat will have moved to another location, and the carpet would be dry and no longer a landmark. The Fez medina is built in a small valley, and we learn that going downhill takes you deeper into the city, while walking uphill almost always takes you out. Knowing "in" from "out" is important in a place where high walls, narrow streets, and ever-changing landmarks can be disorienting.



Suddenly, a young woman grabs Jonathan’s arm and asks, “Are you American?” The woman, Kate, is a volunteer nurse for Operation Smile. She and a team of medical professionals have successfully operated on two dozen children with facial deformities. She hasn’t seen other Americans here, so she wants to chat. After visiting Morocco, Kate and a few friends are going to Pamplona to run with the bulls. She's surprised to hear that we're also going to Pamplona for fiesta and that we have friends who live there. Eager to hear the local perspective, she suggests we all have dinner together.

That night, the six of us follow a guide through the darkened streets of the medina to a traditional Moroccan home. Passing through a nondescript door, we find ourselves in an elaborate courtyard with a table set just for us. We have a fabulous dinner of Moroccan salads, chicken tagine, kebabs, couscous, pastille pastry, and sugary mint tea. After dinner, we all caravan by taxi to our hotel to enjoy a surprisingly good Moroccan shiraz on our rooftop terrace. With the Muslim call to prayer echoing around us, we sip wine and soak in the view of the old quarter and the fort lit with floodlights on the hill above us.

Jonathan and I offer advice on running with the bulls and share fiesta highlights. Although our itineraries differ, we exchange contact information hoping to meet again in Pamplona. Jack, one member of our group, mentions that he is Russian and from Whittier, California. I say that my best friend from high school is Russian and grew up in Whittier. It turns out that Jack knows my friend very well, and I've met his sister. We look at each other with amazement, never expecting to be sitting here sipping Moroccan wine on a rooftop overlooking a thousand-year old medina, and finding someone so close to home.

Adventures in Fez

As our petite taxi turned up a steep dusty road toward the walled city of old Fez, I silently hoped (with fingers crossed) that I'd made the right decision to book a room in a traditional riad in the thousand-year-old medina rather than a room at the stylish Palace Jamai. It was romantic, yes, but was I sacrificing comfort and security?

The taxi stopped at the entrance to a narrow lane. We'd have to walk the rest of the way on foot. A man with a wooden cart appeared from nowhere and began loading our luggage. Neighborhood children stopped kicking a soccer ball and accompanied us the two short blocks to a plain wooden door. Above the door, a plaque read "Riad Maison Bleue: one of the most romantic hotels of the world." See there, I needn't have worried!

We identified ourselves through a speaker and were buzzed into a garden courtyard filled with fruit trees, comfortable couches with deep cushions, and a tranquil plunge pool. Security and comfort all sorted out. We snacked on almond stuffed dates and listened to the chattiest birds ever to grace a riad as the staff brought us orange-blossom scented milk...

Riad Maison Bleue




Up a narrow, winding flight of steps and through a low doorway, a skeleton key (that took me our entire stay to get used to) opened the door to a beautiful room with a canopied bed, colored-glass windows, and a Moroccan salon complete with another comfortable couch with deep cushions. The floors, walls, and ceiling were decorated with intricate Zellij tile patterns and lacy plaster carvings.




Just outside our door, the rooftop garden overlooked the medina, a sea of peeling gray and white cubes that receded toward the Rif Mountains, all flat-roofed buildings similar to ours. The nearby Mosque's minaret announced the afternoon call to prayer, and a neighbor woman several rooftops away leaned over big mounds of sheep's wool, gathering them up in her arms. Except for the overwhelming number of satellite dishes, I felt as if we'd stepped into a Bible story. In fact, the medina has changed very little in over a thousand years. Donkeys still transport goods. As they make their way through the narrow streets, people shout "Baleek! Baleek!" to warn each other, and Jonathan and I learned very quickly to hug the walls along with the others.

Our Rooftop View



Inside the Medina



Baleek!



A few blocks away near the river, the tanneries look like a child's giant paintbox with rows of colorful vats. The tanners dunk prepared sheep skins in brightly colored dyes and hang them to dry. To the left of the dye vats, large vats filled with pigeon droppings are used to separate the fat from the animals' skin. Curious tourists, with fresh mint sprigs crammed to their nostrils to mask the overwhelming smell, watch from a second-story balcony as the less fortunate tanners work knee-deep in the milky vats.

Jonathan and I resisted the mint sprigs and were rewarded for it. A tannery guide invited us down to the dye vats for a closer view. We were encouraged to step out onto the vats and walk from one dye to the next, balancing on the thin lip in between. We sighed with relief that the pigeon vats remained safely off in the distance. After our tour was nearly over, a tanner came to us with a hefty-looking bag. He opened it for our inspection. "Pigeon shit!" he explained as white dust wafted our way. Backing slowly away, we nodded politely and held our breath. Pigeon shit indeed!

Stepping gingerly through the muck, we headed back upstairs to the mint-bearing tourists. "Is it good?" our tannery guide wanted to know. "The best!" we assured him, hopeful that someday we would be able to exorcise the smell of pigeon shit from our nostrils and our memories.

Fez Tannery




UNESCO has designated the Fez medina in its entirety as a World Heritage Site.

Postcards From Rabat

We arrived in Rabat by taxi, a four-hour drive through scenic farmland and never-ending speed traps with emphatic Arabic shouted into a mobile phone as our soundtrack. Our speed altered alarmingly, slowing for an incoming call as often as for the highway police. As our driver's voice rose to near hysteria, our car slowed a crawl. Each call finished with a courteous "goodbye," and we were off like a shot, back in the fast lane.

Rabat has an old-world charm as well as new-world sophistication. The white stucco and brick buildings in Ville Nouvelle (New Town) have a style and grandeur befitting a capital city. And the contemporary brown and red Parliament building decorated with flags of the world took our breath away. We saw as many people dressed in jeans and polo shirts walking along the palm-fringed Avenue Mohammed V as we saw in djellabahs.

A few blocks away, the medina suggests an intimacy of another era. We seemed to be the only tourists as we wandered by open-air fruit and spice stands, past children pedaling home carrying freshly made bread, a small barbershop where a man reclined for an afternoon shave, and tea houses where elderly men swapped stories over sweet mint tea.

Walking farther, past the sprawling cemetery where thousands of white gravestones lined in tidy rows face Mecca, we came to the centuries-old Kasbah des Oudaia perched on the cliffs overlooking the Bou Regreg River. After climbing steep steps, we reached a doorway that opened to a maze of narrow alleyways painted a vibrant blue and white. Under the praying hands of Fatima, the Prophet Mohammed's daughter, I realized I was lost. Perhaps with Fatima's help, my muffled call was immediately answered through thick walls, and minutes later Jonathan and I were reunited.

Later that night, we had dinner at a fairytale restaurant in the medina. A tall broad-shouldered man in Aladdin-style clothing led us with a lantern through a maze of dark alleys to an indescript door. Inside was a garden oasis, the courtyard of a traditional Moroccan riad (or stately home), where we dined beneath the stars as musicians played gently behind us.

(Happy birthday, Kerry!)

Avenue Mohammed V in Ville Nouvelle



Avenue Mohammed V in the Medina



The Rabat Cemetery



A Kasbah Alley and a Kasbah Kitty



Self Portrait in Kasbah des Oudaia



The Beautiful Hotel Villa Mandarine





Decorative Doors



Dinner!