Semana Santa

On Friday, March 25th, we flew back to Granada from Marrakesh.  Lucky for us, we landed early in the day and even luckier for us, although it was Good Friday, the grocery stores were open!  Can I get an amen?!  This is all so very lucky for us because we discovered we were locked out of our house.  We left the garage door opener in the last rental car that we returned 10 days ago and neither Michael nor I remembered to bring a key to the front door.

Plan A: Lauren, Clio and Willa try to break in with a credit card and a bobby pin while Michael calls around trying to track people down on a holiday weekend.  

(Michael leaves a lot of voice mails while I teach my kids how to break & enter, but we are still locked out so we move on to Plan B.  

Plan B: Go Shopping.

A few hours later, after filling the car with groceries, we finally hear back from Rosario, the owner of our house.  She tells us that we are, again, in luck.  Her 90 year-old father has a spare key.  We drive to his apartment and the girls are shocked, though Michael and I are not, that picking up a spare key from an elderly man in Granada takes about 45 minutes to an hour.  There are many pleasantries to exchange (and dialogue to be translated).  We have to go out on the balcony and see the view and then the piano and then meet the eleven grandchildren that are visiting from Madrid.

But finally we are back in our house, the groceries are put away, the luggage is inside, and a load of laundry has begun.  But don't even think about getting in your pajamas and calling it a day because it is Good Friday and there are parades in town and we must go see them.  For we have heard many, many things about these parades - that they are quite a spectacle, authentically Spanish, specifically Andalusian, a major tradition, and are not to be missed.  (No, we can't we just watch a YouTube video of it on our laptop, I already asked).

“Parade” is probably not an accurate translation since it will connote to my American friends and family something along the lines of big bands, big balloons, smiles and waving, beer, and tissue paper on top of flat-bed trucks.  But what if I said “Penance Procession?”  Now that sounds fun.

During Semana Santa, each church in the city has a scheduled time to parade their paso from their church to the large cathedral in the center of town.  Pasos are floats depicting either Jesus, Mary, a saint, or scenes from the gospels related to the Passion of Christ or the Sorrows of Virgin Mary, some of them are centuries old  We stare in wonder and my kids have some questions.

Clio: “Mom, how long was Jesus on the cross?”

Me: I can't remember, honey.  A few hours or maybe a couple of days or something like that.

Clio: That long?  (slight pause)  He must have been really bored.

Me: (speechless)

Clio: “Mom, at school I learned that Jesus was god.”

Me: “Ok.”

Clio: “Was he god?”

Me: (trying to figure out what to say)

Clio: "Mom?"

Me: “For the next six months, yes.”

Clio: “So if he was god, why couldn’t he just get himself off the cross?”

Me: "Clio, eat your ham."


And then there were my questions about a woman that I see depicted all over the city – in windows, on tee shirts, in posters hanging on walls and doors and cash registers, in plastic molds hanging above a bar, above a slot machine - e-v-e-r-ywhere.

Lauren: "Who is that?"

Michael: "Who is who?  The Virgin Mary?"

Lauren: "That’s the Virgin Mary?  She's so fancy.  When I was in Kindergarten I was the Virgin Mary in the Christmas play and I had to wear an old blue sheet with a rope tied around my waist.  I didn't get to wear that awesome get-up."
Michael: (trying desperately to ignore his wife)
Lauren: "I'm kind of scared to ask you this, but what is she crying about?" 
Michael: "Are you kidding me??  She’s crying over the death of her son, Jesus.  Have you heard of him?"
Lauren:  "Yes, I have heard of Jesus, but let me just say that I watch the news and that is not what a woman looks like when she has lost her child.  That’s what a woman looks like when she’s watching a Meg Ryan movie.  So you'll forgive me if I'm a little confused."

And while we are on the topic of confusing religious symbols, we have to talk about the nazarenos for a minute - the “penitents” who walk behind the pasos during the penance procession.  They carry candles or crosses, some walk barefoot, some carry shackles and chains on their feet.  Serious stuff.  Bear in mind, a single procession can last hours, not only because the procession goes slowly through the streets but then they have to walk back.  (I can't imagine some of them don't just ditch and just jump in cab).  But most notably, and disturbingly for Americans, the nazarenos wear long robes and tall, conical hats that cover their faces and hide their identities.

So now you have to imagine seeing “penitents” completely out of context, for example in a gift store as a figurine that you can buy and take home with you as a souvenir.  You will, for a very brief moment, feel like you are having a small heart attack, and you may, in fact, be dying a little inside.  Or maybe you will wonder if you are hallucinating from the all the jamon you ate the night before.

Our American friends who have visited this year see these guys on the shelf while we are souvenir shopping and then look around anxiously for me, with horror and wtf in their eyes, desperate to confirm what they are seeing.  “Um, Lauren…???”  "It's ok, it's ok," I tell them.  "Everything's going to be alright.  It’s a religious figure.  No, I'm not lying to you?  But I do find it's best not to touch them.  Should we move on?  Look, there are glittery elephants and sparkly pillowcases over here.  Hey!  Do you want to go see Cellphone Jesus??!!

Here's one last thing - our video from the evening, in all it's wobbly glory:

 

Camels, Goats, Sand

While on the African continent, we wanted to make it out to a desert.  But instead of the long drive out and back again with two kids, we decided to opt for something "close enough."  La Pause was recommended to us - 45 minutes outside of Marrakesh and it touts "no electricity!" as one of it's draws.  That's about as "roughin it" as I was willing to go and two days there was going to be my max.

La Pause, like most locations in Morocco, is designed to keep you cool.  And, more to the point, designed for you to enjoy warm-weather related activities - camel rides, horse rides, ultimate Frisbee.  Meals are served in the open air, and who really needs hot water when it's so hot out???  Well, if you happen to be guests there during the two and a half days of the year that they experience a cold-spell and a rainy-spell together, it turns out hot water would be nice.  And so would heat.  But what a great chance to play endless rounds of Rummy 500 (which became Rummy 1000 and then Rummy 1500) with your kids, chase a lot of animals, read by candlelight, and dream about the hot baths that you are not taking.

A word or two about riding a camel.  I am going to argue that about 15 minutes is all you really need.  I went past the 15 minute mark and payed for it dearly by way of two big bruises on my bum.  Toward minute 30 I had to lean heavily forward onto Clio to try to get the weight off my ass and around minute 45 I found it helped with the pain if I scrunched up my face and winced.  I was very, very close to jumping off the damn thing and walking the rest of the way back but I was six feet up in the air and I had visions of a broken ankle.  You will be relieved to hear I did not embarrass you and jump off a moving camel.  The ride mercifully ended.

We were greeted at La Pause with mint tea (as you are in most locations in Morocco).  The kids never got into it, but Michael and I loved it, especially since our days were cold and overcast and decidedly un-desert-like.  I lost track of how much mint tea we drank.

And then we decided to "explore the questions of the desert" a little bit before lunch.  Like: "Exactly how close can you get to a camel?" 

For lunch, another amazing chicken tagine meal.

After lunch, we played a few more hands of Rummy and then the kids started to fight so we went off to explore again.  This time in the opposite direction.  (Killing time until the next meal, basically).

Despite the weather, La Pause was glorious.  Morocco was glorious.  I'm thinking it might actually be one of my favorite places on Earth.   

An Evening in Marrakesh

Calls to prayer happen 5 times a day.  It's unclear to me how many people actually drop everything they are doing and pray.  But I think that is supposed to be the idea.

And below are pictures of our last evening in the medina.

Marrakesh in the Morning

On our first morning in Morocco, we get lucky with the weather and are able to eat breakfast up on the roof of the riad.  The view of this part of the medina from above is reminiscent of the view of the Albayzin that we have out our bedroom window in Granada.  And we take this opportunity to point out to the girls that there will be many similarities this week as we tour around a country in Africa that has a very long history with Spain.

We head out to walk through the medina with a guide, Abdul.  We do not yet realize that hiring a guide is not all that necessary (unless you scare easily) but we do think it will be nice to see Marrakesh through the eyes of a local.  As we walk through his neighborhood, Abdul points out that every few blocks there is a mosque, a community bread oven, a large water fountain, and a hammam (public bath).  Ingeniously, hammams are often next to the bread ovens so they can share a heat source.  There is a call to prayer five times a day and Friday is their holy day when everything is closed which means they can't bake their bread on Friday so that is the day for couscous.  Water was not brought into homes until sometime in the 1950s after their independence from France.  And though we are out early this morning and it is relatively calm, Abdul forgets to point out that if one stops to take too many pictures of these things, one is likely to get run over by a scooter or a donkey, or, at the very least, get spooked by one.  So one really should put one's camera down, though one has a very hard time doing that.

Then Abdul takes us into the Ben Youssef Madrassa, the largest of Morocco’s historic Koranic schools.  The interior detailing reminds us all of the Alhambra back in Granada.  Look familiar?

And he teaches us how to find the name 'Allah' spelled out in the carvings on the walls.  Read right to left, “A” is your pinky, the two “l”s are your ring and middle fingers, and “h” is the curve created with your pointer finger and thumb.  See it?

Onto the souks to do a little shopping.  We see a man carving wood using a tool that he manipulates with his feet.  Intriguing.  We stop to watch and marvel.  He makes a little charm for each kid and gives it to them, step number one in reeling in their parents.  He’s working on wooden handles for skewers, which he shows us.  Then he asks Willa to slide the top off a little box.  A wooden snake pops out and “bites” her finger.  Then he hands us another box, beautifully crafted and finished, and says “Open it.  You have one minute!”  We have no idea what to do.  He shows us how to slide a piece down to access a tiny key stored inside.  Slide another piece down in order to allow a third piece to slide across and the lock is revealed.  Cool.  He picks up another pretty box and twists the bottom and the top in opposite directions and four smaller boxes swing out from the middle.  Super cool.  We don’t need magic boxes or skewers or snakes that jump out and bite fingers, but we are pretty much hooked by his antics.

We have read in the guide books that bargaining is part of the process when shopping in the souks.  The gist is that the seller will start very high, you should start very low, and at some point, after a few minutes of haggling back and forth, you will come to an agreement.  For us, it goes a little something like this:

Michael: “Ok, how much for all of this?”

Moroccan: “For you, my friend, 3000 Dirhams ($300).”

Michael: “Oomf, that’s so expensive.  How about 800?”

Moroccan: “Come on!  All hand-made my friend, look at this!  Look at this!  But ok, ok, for you 2600, no problem.  Ok?”

Michael: “Ok.  Let’s say 1000.”

Moroccan: “Oh no, no my friend, no profit, no profit.  But ok, for you, ok, I can go 2000, no problem, no problem.”  He starts to grab plastic bags and newspapers to wrap up the goods as though the deal is done.

Michael: “Hmm.  No.  Still too expensive.”

Moroccan: “Look! I throw in camel for only 100!”

Michael: “Well…”

Moroccan:  “Ok, because you are good family I do 1500 but that is it, my friend.”

Michael: “1200.”

Moroccan: “Ok, 1200.”

We leave with the skewers, the hidden key box, the twisty top box, and a small carved camel for Grandma Lani because whenever anyone sees a camel they can’t not buy it for Grandma Lani.  And Abdul gets his commission later, I’m sure.

This conversation repeats itself a few times because Abdul still wants to take us to the dyers souk (where they die silk and sell scarves, and where it does actually smell like something has died), the slipper (babouche) souk, the Argan oil souk, and the rug souk, where Michael really almost nearly but doesn't completely lose his shit.  And where we do not, I'm proud to say, get conned into buying a rug, but where we do spend a good 40 minutes which is 35 minutes too many.

We also see lots of alley cats - the population here rivals that of our neighborhood back in Granada.

And then we feast.  More tagine.

And another stray cat.