Another Fine Moment We've Gotten Us Into!

 We selected the restaurant because we’d been here on our last trip in 2014. It is just outside Bab Rcif, one of the 14 babs or gates to the Fez medina. I remember sitting on the terrace above the street three years ago and watching the scene below us: a busy square, the last stop for taxis (les petit taxi, the little red ones that are allowed to carry passengers around Fez) before the medina, which is, after all, a pedestrian, donkey, hand-cart, and annoying motor scooter zone. We sat, tranquil, while below us taxis, pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, annoying motor scooters, private cars, and the occasional giant bus came through and maneuvered around one another. It was quite a show. I still remember this is where I saw that guy in the djellaba with the yellow slippers I admired so much. (I still want to buy a pair of those, although I have no idea where I would wear them!)

The photo that started my obsession with yellow slippers. I like the djellaba, too!

The square today in a quiet moment

Today we were sitting at the table we’d sat at three years ago, and watching the same scene below. We ordered a pizza (this is a nice restaurant, but not a cheap one, and pizza fit our appetites and budget at the moment). Eventually it came, and we very much enjoyed it, until we started counting our money to pay. Uh oh, we were coming up short. We owed about US $10 for our lunch, but were missing almost a dollar. And nobody in Morocco takes credit cards. Oh well, nothing to do but explain, and beg for mercy.

Click here for video if the above link doesn't work!

Down at the cash register we did explain, as I pushed all our money, including a handful of coins, towards the cashier. They (the cashier, his helper, and our waiter) sorted through the coins, said we owed them 45Dh (US$4.50). Come back tonight and pay the rest, they said. Or tomorrow is fine, too.

The waiter handed me the rest of the coins (about US$4 worth) and said, Take this in case you want to get something on the way home. We were stunned, and ever so grateful. I gave the waiter a 10 Dh tip (when we ordered he had established that tipping and the service charge were entirely at our discretion), and we were on our way, relieved and more than a little embarrassed.

PS: We came back the next day and paid our debt. The cashier seemed neither surprised nor relieved. Entertained, I think would describe it…

The fabled Bab Boujloud, the Blue Gate

          Restaurant Row

We’re at a different restaurant this time, closer to home. It’s on what I call restaurant row, a series of eating places just around the corner from the Bab Boujloud, the famed Blue Gate. These restaurants consist of several tables in the street, and a room or two in the adjacent building for the kitchen. Touts* work the pedestrian walk, inviting in passers-by and expressing great disappointment when turned down. We’ve been here several times already, and everyone in the restaurant (touts, waiters, and the ladies who cook) recognizes us. We like to think that as repeat customers we get preferential treatment (which may actually be true, but then, everybody is treated pretty well so it’s hard to tell).

*Tout: a person soliciting custom or business, typically in an aggressive or bold manner

A busy restaurant scene, just past the Bab Boujloud

Our waiter, scanning for potential customers. He always takes good care of us!

We order – chicken skewers for me, an omelet for Paula, 40 Dh (US$4) each. Plus a bottle of water (another 10 Dh, if that matters). We are soon served our water (and olives, and a tiny bowl of incredibly flavorful lentils, or something similar). As we sip our water we see the cook arrive with a bag of eggs from the “market” (in one sense, the entire medina is a market, but eggs are sold about five minutes away). Paula comments that earlier she saw someone bringing in our bottle of water.

We wait for our lunch, and I began to think about this “just in time” inventory system. I’m sure eating places like this one have used such a system for thousands of years: the customer orders something, you send the boy out to buy the ingredients and cook them up immediately. Reduces storage space; no refrigeration needed. Humm, it seems it took modern industry a long time to catch up on that one!

As we wait and wait, I consider this some more. We joke about them killing the chicken for my skewers, and I begin to worry about the “girls” around the corner. Every day we pass through a very busy fresh produce and meat selling area of the medina, where I always stop to check on the half-dozen or so live chickens, waiting patiently on top of their cages. Will they all be there when I pass by again? I should have thought of that before I ordered chicken!

Chez Rachid, our preferred restaurant; one of about six along here.

We still wait. Slow service today. We realize it is Spring Break; many of the passers-by are young students. We’re asked to change tables: they have a party of six, all Spanish students. No problem, we move. Paula comments that even though all the tables are full (we count seven tables), the tout is still out there, extoling the virtues of his restaurant. I am reminded of Jordan Belfort, Leonard DiCaprio’s character in Wolf of Wall Street. Belfort prided himself on his ability to sell securities (many of dubious value), and every refusal was for him a personal failure. In the same way, our tout/waiter took seriously every refusal to accept his invitation to sit and eat. What exactly, I wonder, is his relationship to this restaurant? Employee, owner? The cook’s second cousin? How important to the overall success of the business is it to squeeze in one more diner? Just another indication that there is a whole world here about which we know nothing!

Eventually we got our lunch; as usual it was quite good, and not expensive. On the way back home we pass the chicken seller. I am relieved to see that “my” six (do we call that a “cluck” of chickens?) are all still there. But maybe next time I’ll order the omelet, too.

Oh, good!"The girls" are still all here! Paula buys fresh produce.

       New this time around: a travel map! It's interactive, poke around. See where we've been, and where we will be going.
I've been working on this for quite a while, but only now figured out how to link to it (I really wanted to embed it in this blog but my lifetime is finite and some things just don't seem worth spending too much of it on).


                  See if clicking here will take you to the map...

A House With No Windows

           

 It’s a bit strange, living in a house with no windows. It’s our own little world, very cut off from whatever is going on out in the street. (Although we do hear kids playing, and the occasional donkey honking or horse trotting.) And that, I think, is the intention, to be cut off and secure inside, safe from the outside world.

In this riad (traditional home) in the ancient Medina of Fez, we have a 12 by 12 foot hole in the roof – 20 feet above our heads – to provide light and air. Aside from that, this place is a fortress, with thick stone walls and only a heavy, tiny door leading to the street. We’re told it is 400 years old, which means it was built at a time when the world was a dangerous place, and no one ventured out after dark. Safety was paramount. And anyway, all the adjacent buildings press close upon one another, so there is little outside wall space left for windows.

And what happens when it rains, with that big hole in the roof? Well, it doesn’t, much (rain, that is). This is a house designed for and built in a hot, dry climate. Four hundred years ago, when the house was new, rain would have fallen into the interior courtyard and drained off, as designed. But riads today have covers on the roof; ours, made of transparent plastic, keeps out the rain yet slides back for ventilation. We haven’t had any really hot days yet this year, since it’s only March, but on a very warm day last week we noted that the upstairs getting warmer while the ground level was still very cool. In mid-summer temps in Fez can hit 40-45°C (105-115°F). Thick stone walls and narrow, shaded alleyways make sense then.

Paula reads on the terrace; no rain, so we're open to the air and sky.

We do have a lovely roof-top terrace, though, above the noise and dust. It has great views of the city, which drops away from us; and the hills, which rise above. In the near distance we see hides from the tanneries laid out to dry: white, blue, red, the patterns changing as workers bring them every morning and collect them in the evening. A lovely place to spend the afternoon, or watch the full moon rise.

Panoramic view from the roof - remains of the ancient wall on the left, newer suburbs on the right

Hides from the tanneries spread out to dry: red and blue (left mid), and yellow (hard to see on the right). The original Medina walls are just above the hides.

We have a modern kitchen, new fridge, gas range, double sink. And another skylight. Passageways (what we would call a hallway in another kind of house) are narrow and dark; the stairs are likewise narrow and dark, with every step a different height (nice touch, that!).

Nice kitchen! Skylight above sink lets in plenty of light in this very sunny country.

Narrow stairs give access to the upper floors and the roof terrace

We'd love to eat on the terrace, but those 29 irregular steps mean we mostly have our meals here.

I sit in the living room, looking at the opening 6.6 meters (22 feet) above me, contemplating the custom-made iron screens that protect the openings in the surrounding rooms; the hand-painted ceiling beams; the intricately carved beam ends; the massive wood doors to close off adjoining rooms – a hallmark of the riad; and the fountain, tiny hand-cut tiles forming traditional patterns in blue and green and white. What to make of this, living in another culture, in another time?

View from upstairs. Solid 11-foot doors close off the side room.

Looking out from the office.

The entryway, and the magnificent 16th-Century fountain

I don’t know what to make of it all. Maybe it will become clear when we get home. (Really!) I do know that we both feel particularly good when we walk down the narrow side street, past the ancient buildings – some ruined, most still useful – and to our front door. Unlocking it is a procedure, with three locks that each require four turns. But we feel satisfies – smug, perhaps – that we live here, in this traditional house, an integral part of an ancient city.

Thr fountain, seen through the screen in the bedroom.

Sounds from the Roof

We sit on the roof-top terrace, reading, contemplating, studying the view. I close my eyes and listen: birds chirping. A donkey brays. A snatch of conversation drifts by. Sporadic jazz piano from a nearby riad. A motorcycle on the distant road. Cocks crowing. Kids shouting in the street as they kick a ball. Then it starts: the call to prayer.

It starts quietly, as one muezzin begins. Soon the air is filled with their various songs, from the minarets of the hundred mosques in Fez the call sounds, calling the faithful to prayer and reminding them that God is great. It soon reaches a cacophony, some voices clear, then fading out as others strengthen. In a few minutes the sacred moment is over, the last voice fades. Birds fly over chirping. A donkey brays. The world returns to normal, until the next call...

And Now We Are in Fez

And my head is spinning! We’ll hear more about why later, but let’s run back a few days, where we find our intrepid travelers once more walking down the street dragging their wheelie luggage, with backpacks and laptops slung across their shoulders. This time, though, the street is smooth, no cobblestones! Oh, and it’s dark…

It’s about an hour before sunrise, and we are heading to the bus station in Essaouira, a five-minute walk (10, with luggage). The bus leaves for Marrakech at 6:45, and we have reserved what we expect to be the primo seats on the bus, right behind the driver with a fine view out that giant windshield. Right on time (which is to say, no more than 10 minutes late), the bus pulls out and we are soon climbing out of the coastal plain into the surrounding forest.

And finding our primo seat is not so great after all. The solid wall between us and the driver means we have no place to put our feet (the people in the seat behind us can stick their feet under our seat); the windshield – and all the windows in the bus, for that matter –is fogged up, and the defroster is blasting cold air on us. Then, the driver turns on the radio. Top Forty, in Arabic! Although I don’t understand a word, the format, the tones of voice, musical interludes – all very familiar. So we move through the foggy dawn, cramped, cold, and blasted by carefully scripted careless banter between the co-hosts of the morning show, punctuated with pointless laughter (just like American AM radio).

After about an hour we arrive at the scheduled rest stop, get our coffee and toilet visit, and are soon back on the bus, only in different seats. By now the fog has lifted, the driver has turned on the heat, our feet are happily extended, and we are not so close to the blasting radio. Ah!

We arrive in Marrakesh with no further incidents, and make our way to the train station (conveniently located adjacent to the Supratours bus station), where we are soon settled in our train compartment, and on our way north to Casablanca.

Seats for eight in Second Class

A plush First Class ride for six

           These photos courtesy of The Man in Seat 61, a great site for train travel anywhere in the world:       http://www.seat61.com/Morocco.htm#Watch_the_video

The countryside is rather arid, and not particularly interesting, so I check out the train. This is NOT the “Marrakech Express;” it is a fully modern train. We are riding First Class, which differs from Second Class only in the number of seats in each compartment:  Second Class has eight, two rows of four facing each other. We have only six, so each person gets a couple of extra inches of seat space. (And, it should be pointed out, First is less popular than Second Class; there were never more than four people in our compartment the whole day, whereas most Second compartments are full.) The bathrooms, at the ends of each car, are decidedly Third Class all around. Some don’t have water in the sink; some don’t have water to flush. Probably the less said about it the better. It is a reminder, however, that in the US we have very high standards for plumbing.

Flat and arid...

After Casablanca the train follows the coast to Rabat, then turns inland towards Meknes and Fez. Now we pass green fields, orchards, rolling hills. Meknes, an hour from Fez, looked particularly interesting in the fading daylight, with its steep hills and modern buildings. 

Cactus. And a house.

Green fields and a village

During the latter half of our train journey a man sat next to me and engaged us in conversation in his excellent English, explaining that he ran a service in Fez and would be taking people to the desert the next day. I was a bit interested, since we were considering a similar trip. During the conversation Paula made it clear we would be staying in a house in Fez, and were being met at the train station. After a bit, the man pulled out his cell phone and left the compartment to make a call. And never returned.

Paula nodded to me, and pointed out he was one of the guys we’d read about in a guide book: personable, pleasant, good English, happy to offer his services, just happens to know an excellent guest house / guide service / fine restaurant. No! I said, not him! Yes, she said. Him. Oh…

The next fellow was younger, and spoke effusively about his upcoming internship with Goldman-Sacks in San Francisco. He, too, left for a phone call. And never returned.

Soon enough another new arrival took the seat next to me, and explained he was a quality-control expert for a leather tannery. Ah, tanneries in Morocco are a real hot-spot, and there seems to be many tales of tourist scams surrounding them. Before long, he too left. Paula looked at me and said, Well, that makes three.

Fez train Station, By Davide Cesare Veniani
Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1598516

By the time we arrived in Fes it was after sunset and fully dark; appropriate, since we’d started the journey before dawn. There had been no further new arrivals in our compartment; we left the train and hurried along the platform with about a zillion other people. We exited the station, looking for the driver, Youssef, we had engaged to take us to the riad* (traditional Moroccan house) where we would be staying. We asked the first fellow who came up to us, Are you Youssef? To which he replied, Yes! (naturally). His buddy was quick to add, We are all Youssef! We veered off to the right to avoid this pointlessness, thus missing the real Youssef. After a few minutes of wandering around, and a phone call, we were settled in “our” taxi (with “our” Youssef!) and on the way to the medina, where we were met by the house manager (His name was NOT Youssef!). He led us down the main street, with its confusion and bustle, and to the front door of our new home.

            *Strictly speaking, a dar is a traditional house; a riad is a dar with a fruit tree in the central courtyard. With no fruit tree, our house is technically a dar. Just to set the record straight...

            The House

Before I get started on our house in the medina, the original part of this ancient city, I want to quote someone who has been here much longer than we have, someone who says it much better than I can. This is from the introduction to a cook book of food served at the Clock Café, a meeting place and multi-cultural center here in Fez (of which we shall be hearing more).

From Clock Book: recipes from a modern Moroccan kitchen by Tara Stevens:

“Arriving in the old medina of Fez for the first time is much like stepping back in time. By about 1000 years. Once you cross the threshold of the Bab Boujloud a whole new universe unfolds. Live chickens cluck from behind the doors of their wire cages before a customer looking for the contents of a tangine seals their fate. Next door a man skins rabbits, and offers hedgehogs as a key ingredient for a fabled soup to cure head colds. Farmers down from the middle Atlas sell plump white mulberries once a week, and arbuces – a soft red berry fruit the color of garnets – the next; baskets of spiky wild artichokes and rose petals from the Dades Valley jostle up against barrows filled with eggs and heaps of hand-rolled couscous. Modern supermarkets suddenly seem very far away. And all this takes place to a daily theater of folk dressed in djellabas and Gnawa musicians spinning their heads and rattling tin krakab (a forerunner to the Spanish Castanet), all woven between the ancient and mysterious sounding calls to prayer of the muezzin. Here is a place where people still believe in magic and that, inshallah, whatever happens will happen because that is the way it is meant to be. So when people tell you that in Morocco you don’t find a house, it finds you, it rings completely true.”

And that’s pretty much what happened: a house found us. Oh, Paula put in the work, of course (you always have to do the work!), but what are the chances that a riad in the Fez medina would be available for the same two months we would be here? Whatever, here we are…

The place where we are staying is a 400-year old traditional Moroccan house, built around a courtyard open to the sky (although these days riads have some kind of cover to keep the rain out; ours can be rolled back to let the sun and air in). The main room is around 16 feet on a side (5x5 meters), with other rooms opening off it. The main side room can be closed off with massive wooden doors, 3.3 meters (nearly 11 feet) high (although I’d be afraid to close them; the hinges are likewise massive, but 400 years old). There are two upstairs bedrooms, both with windows onto the main room on the ground floor, all of it topped by a comfortable terrace that occupies the roof.

Panoramic view from the rooftop terrace

Unlike some riads we’ve seen, this one does not have intricately carved plaster with geometric forms and verses of the Koran, or extensive hand-made wooden screens. It does, however, have a fountain done in the traditional fashion, with hand-cut tiles. Hand-made heavy iron screens divide the rooms; the ceiling – 20 feet above our heads – is hand painted in original patterns;  and every beam end is carved and decorated. It is exquisite! All in all, living here is like being transported back to the middle ages, an impression that is only enhanced when we step out the door.

The main room with fountain

The modern kitchen. Not many right angles in this house...

We are not quite on the main street, but rather on a narrow lane (and here we’re talking narrow for foot traffic; the only wheeled vehicles we see in the medina are hand carts, and the occasional motor scooter being pushed by a teenager). There is a main shopping street about a two-minute walk away, and it is here we find the bustle and press of the ancient city. Here the narrow street is lined with an incredible variety of tiny shops, wares spilling into the passage way: jewelry, housewares (both practical and decorative), robes, slippers, leather bags, brassware, modern luggage. Further up the street things get even more compressed, with the bird market selling chickens and turkeys, both live and recently deceased (with the occasional goat’s head), and fresh produce, oranges and fresh juice, meats of all kinds* both fried and served on bread or ready to be sliced off the carcass.

             *OK, but never pork in this Muslim country

One thing we don’t see too many of are tourists. Yes, hard to believe but as we meander through the medina, 10 or 15 minutes can go by, in the throng and press of people, without seeing anybody who doesn’t appear to live here, either selling, shopping for daily needs, or hurrying about their business. Sooner or later someone with a high-priced camera will appear, looking stunned and bemused, but for the most part these shops, this street, is for the people who live here. Visitors such as ourselves are not rare, just vastly outnumbered by the residents.

OK, we're just getting stated here, I'm still figuring out how to take a photo in the medina that will be anywhere near effective! We'll have more photos of the house and the city later, but we'll end with this self portrait  taken at the Clock Cafe.

       

        up next: probably something about Fez...