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.

Marrakesh - The First 5 Hours

For Spring Break we decide to visit Morocco.  We choose the city of Marrakech (also spelled Marrakesh), but I can't quite remember why we chose it.  Easiest flight, I think.  Anyway, it's the 4th largest city in Morocco after Casablanca, Fes, and Tangier (thank you, Wikipedia) and I should have brushed up on my French before our trip but I was too busy trying to learn Spanish to remember to do that.

We land at the airport and, due to confusion about the time change, we have to wait a while for our taxi driver, arranged by the hotel, to arrive. This presents the perfect opportunity to practice my junior high/high school French while I walk around asking men with signs if they are from the Riad Dar Jaguar and also does anyone have the correct time.  Our Monsieur finally arrives and we speak our broken French to him as he drives us towards our hotel.  Well, not quite a hotel, but I'll get to that in a minute.

We have booked our first two nights in the Riad Dar Jaguar.  It is situated in the medina (the area within the old city walls) and taxis are not allowed in the medina at night so Monsieur can only take us as far as the edge of a large square (a famous one, apparently) called Jemaa el-Fnaa.  But there's really no way for Monsieur to communicate to us that this is the plan (and I didn't read my email closely) so we are a bit surprised when he stops the car in what is, effectively, the middle of traffic.   And not just any old traffic.  This is traffic filled with cars, buses, bikes, pedestrians, motor-scooters, horse-drawn carriages, donkeys, carts, and donkeys with carts, but it lacks lights, lines, crosswalks, or a sufficient number of signs.  It is, in essence, a game of Frogger when you try to cross the street in Marrakesh.  If you would like to see what I am talking about, here is a video I took one afternoon while we looked for a crosswalk.  When we saw this old man pushing a wheel chair across a busy street, followed by a father and his daughter crossing and dodging buses and horses, we figured out how to properly cross a street in Marrakech - just start walking.

  

Once we figure out that we are indeed supposed to get out of this taxi that has stopped in the middle of traffic, we grab the kids, hug the sides of the car, and hustle back towards the trunk to retrieve our luggage only to find a man loading our luggage into a wheelbarrow.

"Hola.  I mean, Bonjour.  I mean, Salaam."  The four of us (Monsieur Taxi Driver, Michael, me, and Monsieur Wheelbarrow), attempt our best international communication and determine that we will now follow Monsieur Wheelbarrow to our next destination.  Hopefully the next destination is the Riad Dar Jaguar, but we are open to another hand-off.

We are guided through the Jemaa el-Fnaa.  Monsieur walks quickly and we try to keep up as we dodge all of the activity in the square and try to focus and keep our kids focused on keeping up with this man.  We are dazzled by acrobats, snake charmers, men with monkeys, vendor carts selling spices and oranges and juice and olives, women painting henna, musicians, I could go on and on.  And then, just as we are reaching sensory overload, Marrakesh steps it up a notch.  We enter the souks, a labyrinth of narrow and winding streets with merchant stalls on both sides bursting at their seams selling everything under the sun.  Down the middle of these alleys are pedestrians, motorbikes, carts, and donkeys, all walking both ways.  I was only able to get a quick video of us walking through the square (see below) because once we hit the souks I was quite sure I was going to get hit or swallowed whole.

We arrive safely at the Riad Dar Jaguar.  A riad, we learn, is a "traditional Moroccan palace" with rooms that circle an open courtyard with a fountain.  These days, many people have bought up old riads and turned them into guest houses - small hotels, bed & breakfast-like.  A dar, on the other hand, is simply a house.  As the name would suggest, it seems we are staying in something that is a cross between a riad and a dar.  It is beautiful and cozy but our rooms are on the first level and homes in Morocco are designed to keep the first floors nice and cool during all the many hot months.  We, true to form, have booked our stay during the only cold and rainy week that Morocco will see all year.  So our rooms are beautiful but freezing and we try not to blow fuses turning space heaters up as high as they will go.

Riad Dar Jaguar has dinner waiting for us when we arrive.  It is the sweetest food we have ever tasted.  Pumpkin soup, chicken and vegetable tagine with couscous, and poached pears for dessert.  We are smitten.  And we are all exhausted and ready for bed.  Willa asks if "that freakin' fountain is going to make that noise all night." And then we crash.

Playing Catch-Up - Parto Uno

Last week we had guests and the week before that we were in Barcelona.  So lots to write about but little time to write it.  Here is the first installment of me playing catch-up.  I think I can do one or two more before we leave for Marrakech on Friday.

Clio had another basketball game last week.  I cut together her highlights, the six points she made, including the first free-throws she's ever had to make in a game and the moment when not having a bathroom available to me came into very grand focus.

Tomorrow I turn 40.  And I know it should be a big deal, but it's not a big deal and I'm kind of looking forward to it because to me it means:

1) older and hopefully a bit wiser
2) a new decade where I try something new entirely
3) being that much further away from my 20s
4) being that much further away from giving a shit

Michael and the girls took me out Saturday night for dinner.  Among my very beautiful gifts was a ladybug - see below.  The restaurant was once a monastery. (Be careful when you come to Spain, you might trip over a converted monastery).  It's nice having kids who are old enough to eat out.  As long as we can keep the dinner conversation interesting (20 questions, I-spy, dirty jokes), eat before anyone else in Spain is eating, and order a pizza as an appetizer, things will go relatively smoothly.  Inevitably the two girls will start falling over in their chairs, limbs splayed, towards the end of the meal.  *And inevitably Willa will ask a little too loudly "Jeez, how long does it take to make a scoop of ice cream??"  **But for the most part we can get through a late Spanish dinner out.

*We try to avoid eating out actually.

** I cook almost every night at home.  

And although we are abroad, the Primary election still looms large in my daily routine here.  (I think upping my anti-anxiety/anti-depressant dosage through November 8th is a good idea, and I wish Donald would take some fucking Xanax before someone get killed, for crying out loud.)  We are 5 hours ahead of NY right now, but we still tune into the news on WNYC to hear the latest.  When it all gets to be too much, I pick up my book on the Spanish civil war and read about how Franco came to power and what he did to people who opposed him.  I have to remind myself, no joke, that I am reading about history and not Donald Trump.  When that gets to be too much I sit down for a couple of hours and study Spanish.  I'm getting better at reading it, slightly better at understanding it, and not at all better at speaking it.  But more on that tomorrow.  xoxoxo