Thursday, December 5, 2013

The Medinas of Maroc (Morocco, Part 1)


Only a few hours after arriving in Morocco I found myself winding through the labyrinth like maze of alleys in the dark, hoping I would remember the route back to the hotel. I was walking fast, my heart was beating hard and I was glancing nervously down every narrow alley I passed. I was told that people you run into in the alleys after dark might be your friend, or might not. When I finally made it back to the safety of my room I wondered if I would ever muster the courage to venture out again. What god forgotten part of the world had I landed myself in this time?

Morocco hit me hard.

The medina is the old part of the city, narrow streets and buildings all crowded in on top of each other. Most towns here have a medina. The medina in Fes, my first stop in Morocco, has over nine thousand alleys and streets, and is the world largest car free urban area. It is enclosed by huge walls and is so infinitely complicated that most foreigners don’t stray too far from the big outer gates. Its unlike anything I’ve ever seen, and combined with the mosque minarets, the palm tree’s, and the snake charmer music and call to prayer songs, it reminded me of a the stories of Aladdin, Sinbad and Ali Baba.

 
Fes, ‘the dark star of Morocco’, is one of the world’s most important cities for Muslim history. Geographically it is northern Africa, but culturally and aesthetically, it’s as Middle Eastern as you can get.

On my second day, after separating my money between my pants and jacket pockets, and even stuffing some in my shoe, I set off to get lost. For four hours I walked, completely confused and a little concerned at a few points, but totally blown away by the strangeness and the excitement of the medina.  Alleys were overcrowded by vegetable stands, meat stalls, metalwork huts, shoe shops and cafĂ©’s, with donkeys and motorbikes and crowds of people squeezing through the narrow ways. Alternatively, the alleys could be harrowingly empty, dark and feeling like they are closing in. It’s in these streets that if someone asks for your wallet you comply without hesitation then find your way back to a busier area. (Having kissed my wallet goodbye before I landed in Taiwan, I am way overdue to be relieved of it, so I’m not going to be too traumatised or disappointed when it happens).

My time in Fez was filled with freight and awe, in equal parts. I took some pretty silly risks walking through the medina at night which I wouldn’t repeat and it might be as scared as I’ve felt all year. But the city itself was so energetic. There was so much to look at, all crowded together, it was all so basic, public urination, chicken being weighed and killed right in the open, a camels head hanging up at the butcher specialising in camel meat, the streams of people pushing past each other, the piles of fruit, the spices, the calls of touts trying to get you into their shop or restaurant or to sell you drugs (the latter being extremely common) – just the overwhelming commotion. This city is scrappy and smelly, not like the sometimes sterile cities of the developed world. It was humming with life, and I couldn’t help but nestle myself within it as deeply as possible.

(I would have taken better pictures of the bustling alleys but I was too hesitant to get my camera out.)

 
From Fes I travelled to Marrakech, having chosen the 10 hour bus which passed over Morocco’s highest mountains as opposed to the much shorted train which takes a different route. It was a great decision because we went as high to see snow, something I never expected to see in Morocco, and then came winding down from  the mountains heights through a series of small dusty towns all the way to the furthest stretches of the Sahara. It was a truly epic day of travel, from snow capped mountains to desert plains. What a world!

 
Marrakech is the cultural capital of Morocco, and for the first four days in town I rented a room of a local guy who sat around drinking coffee all day. He had a nice place and spoke English well so it was a cool base. Also renting a room from him was an old man from the UK we called Baba, meaning father in Moroccan. He was retired and was intent on spending the whole three months of his tourist visa staying in the one place and smoking hashish all day every day.  As if it couldn’t get stranger, a neighbour who came round of an evening was a former heavy metal singer from a  band called White Heat. This guy was so over the top, so caught up in the glory days that I thought he was just having me on, until I googled his band and watched a video clip from the 1980’s. A retired stoner, a washed up heavy metal singer, a lazy Moroccan, and an aussie travel; that’s stranger than fiction.

I walked from the city to the airport (which was an adventure in itself) to meet Rin. She flew all the way from Sydney to Marrakech via Dubai and Paris, and I greeted her at the airport with a fake rose I took from a hotel room and a T-Shirt I had made up that read ‘EK4NZ2014’, alluding to her year contract in Wellington. It was great to have my favourite co-star with me again to share the scenes.


Rin was as happy to see me as I was her, but she was shocked at how much weight I’d lost, how knotty and dreaded by hair had become, and how blonde it had got. She didn’t realise at the time (and neither did I) that I also had fleas.
Morocco hit Rin hard as well. Exotic tales and superficial tourism marketing of the country fail to convey how third world and chaotic it really is. As the taxi drove us back into the city, Rins eyes filled with tears as she realised she wasn’t in Kansas anymore. Rin is no stranger to the third world, having visited countries like Malaysia and Thailand and Albania within the last 18 months, but she was utterly overwhelmed. It took a few days for her to get comfortable. It didn’t help that that first night we got ripped off by the taxi driver, and then by the chef at dinner, and had maybe the most filthy accommodation we have ever shared (we had a mouse in the room one night).  There was also the warnings we’d heard about people being robbed in the alleys, and how local men are known to harass foreign women.
 
(This photo shows how a shoe shop can be pretty much on top of a butcher - its all I giant mix of life in the medina.)
 


 
 
 
 

But soon enough she was in the groove of Morocco with me and we had Marrakech to discover. Towering minarets, snake charmers with enormous cobra’s, night markets with extensive food booths selling skewers, tagines and cous cous, and an endless confusion of alleys and streets to explore.  The two of us strangers in a strange land.


Morocco is the reason I quit my job, I just didn’t know it at the time.

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