Marrakech Anarchech

This morning, over a cup of coffee, we are given a few lessons at the Hamoud school of hard knocks. Our smiling prof invites us into the Marrakechi mentality as we share our frustrations over yesterday’s house hunting. Our naiveté is certainly not relegated to Morocco, but here, given the added language and cultural barriers, we are lambs for the slaughter. Hamoud’s eyes twinkle as we tell him about the house we’d seen the previous morning with a simsar named Habib. Finally, it’s home with all of the trappings: proximity to the Place, nicely redone with a coveted, shaded lounge area on the terrace, and though a bit large for us, we figure it’s doable at the outer limit of our rental price range. Habib, after gaining our trust and good will with stories about work he’s done on films shot in Morocco with Oliver Stone and the Scott brothers (we are such pushovers!), says he’ll get a price from the two brothers who own the house later that day. Cut to five o’clock. The two owners, it turns out, like many in the real estate market in Morocco, saw Americans and saw dollar signs. They want exactly double our price limit – a fee comparable to an apartment in New York! Twinkle, twinkle go Hamoud’s eyes, as our voices rise in indignance.

He leans back in his chair, the way a portly professor might before lighting a cigar, and explains that the probable cause for the steep price is that Habib is playing both sides against the middle. He’s quoted us a price double that which he’s agreed to with the owners. Instead of just taking his standard one-month finder’s fee, he intends to pocket one half the rent each month. “He’ll probably arrange to pick up the rent money for the owners each month, too,” explains Hamoud, “so that they’re not aware of what he’s skimming off the top for himself. You see, opportunities for making money are not frequent here in Morocco, and when one presents itself, a man takes it.” Crafty bastard, we think to ourselves with equal measures fury and admiration. We have to hand it to Habib for the sheer hubris of his scheme.

“Oh, and did the owners offer to find you a maid?” plies Hamoud, who can barely suppress his enjoyment at this point. We look at each other thinking, is this guy a medium? Have we been wired? Because of course one of the owners’ parting remarks had been, “We can offer you a cleaning woman, of course.” A four-eyed serpent, is how Hamoud refers to this “plant,” that is, a spy, who will keep tabs on us and let the owners know what we’re up to. They will also, Hamoud explains, take two months of her salary for landing her this year-long gig. Oh, it’s all so tawdry!

“But Habib seemed so nice,” we whine, “and the brothers, too.”

“They talk with their teeth,” laughs Hamoud, showing a big, toothy grin. “For you it is all smiles, but they don’t see you. They see only your money. You are not a friend. You are not family. You are only business.” Hamoud is like some kind of Gordon Geiko shaman, and we can only look at him with wonder, too. We are your disciples. Keep the wisdom coming!

“Marrakech, anarchech,” he says, tapping his head with a long finger. “Anarchy is the way of business here. We have another saying as well: ‘Tangé, dangé’. In Tangé [aka Tangiers] no one and nothing is as it seems. Your valuables will be stolen, you’ll be given counterfeit money . . . These sayings are warnings for foreigners,” he continues, flashing another pearly grin.

The situation is amusing and sad at the same time. How will we ever permeate this culture if we’re regarded only as nameless transactions? And yet, we’re sympathetic to the attitude. Earlier, as we’d waited to get into the house with Habib, he explained that he himself has been looking for a home in the Medina for nearly a year, but hasn’t found anything in his price range, even with all of his connections. We asked if he’d considered the Ville Nouvelle as so many other Marrakechis seem to prefer it to the Medina, to which he replied that his father and grandfather before him had lived in the same neighborhood in the Medina, and that he would like to do so as well.

We are struck with the honesty and almost nobility of his answer, and also by the barrier that we, and other foreigners like us, represent for Habib. He may be trying to wheedle us out of a hefty sum of rent money, but what are we in turn taking from him?

Right of Passage

Begging, as we’ve mentioned before, is pretty pervasive in Morocco. It is also very polite, with an outstretched hand accompanied by a request. The request is mumbled, as the supplicant hand clearly signals intent, and as the beggar understands his Arabic to be meaningless to the listener. Occasionally, a refusal is countered by a counter-request for a demi-dihram, and something about Allah – presumably that he will bless the giver. The language barrier eliminates remarks encountered on the streets of New York or LA like, “Spare a million bucks, Mister?” or “I’m not gonna lie to you – I want a drink.” Anyway, while the poverty is widespread, it’s not scary.

Children are the main exception to this, and we’ve found ourselves unnerved, we’re embarrassed to say, by kids as young as four. The riad where we’re staying is three short streets removed from a “major” street, and each right angle squares us deeper into a quiet residential neighborhood. Neighbors smile and greet us in French. At one intersection, groups of kids kick a small soccer ball around the dusty street, or sell candy (generally past its sell-by date). One eleven-year-old boy hollered out as we passed, “Vous etes charmants, commes the a la menthe,” and we weren’t quite sure if this was an insult as we’re both quite fond of the a la menthe.

Our efforts to be invisible – two hulking Americans with shiny Nikes – were unsuccessful, and our polite refusals to buy candy were greeted with huffy resentment. The tension grew each time we passed, and kids would occasionally tug at our arms asking for money. Returning home one afternoon (with the camera and oversized lens around my neck rather than in the camera bag), we looked even more like rich tourists than usual, and were swarmed by the kids, who aggressively grabbed at the camera. We told them “no,” and as we quickened our pace to the house, one girl and a couple little boys lay chase, pelting us with stones.



What are you meant to do in this situation? The girl was perhaps ten, the boys no more than six, but the escalation was swift, and we wondered what came after rocks. Hamoud blamed bad parenting, and told us we should hit one of the kids, whichever one was closest. Word would get around that we were tough, he reasoned, and we’d be left alone. As much as we trust Hamoud’s advice on almost all counts, it seemed pretty unlikely that we’d hit someone else’s 8-year-old and go on about our day.

Push came to quite literal shove, though, as I returned home with a box full of pastries from Patisserie des Prince for our first dinner party. When three or four boys lunged for the box trying to get at what was inside, I shoved back, sending a startled boy against the wall. The others stood there, jaws dropped, as I took the precious pastries home. Barbaric or pragmatic? We’re still not sure, but for the next three days the rapscallions leave us alone.

Scurrying home in the waning dusk yesterday, I rounded the corner to find perhaps ten of the usual suspects packed together in the middle of the street, voices raised. They saw me coming and shouted, “Monsieur, Monsier!” Fearing our détente had passed, I steeled myself to run the gauntlet, but instead of grabbing at my groceries, they thrust a piece of paper in my face.

“Le poisson d’or etait peche par the vieux.” Fingers pointed at the sentence and I found myself drawn into a debate between the most vocal girl and a wiry boy in shorts about how to reconstruct the sentence in the active rather than passive voice. A bit of end-of-year French homework, it turns out. I offered my advice, pleasing the boy and infuriating the girl, and continued down the street leaving their din in my wake.

The a la Menthe

Now this really wouldn’t be a blog about life in Morocco without a mint tea entry. It’s funny what addicts we are in the States to mint, but of a very different variety. The breathmint and mouthwash category is a billion-dollar industry of synthetic spearmint, peppermint and wintergreen flavors. Real, fresh mint is just not as commonly or prolifically consumed. Sure, we liven up summer fruit salads with sprigs of the stuff, and pulverize it with ice, lime and rum into mojitos, but these are one-offs and the herb certainly doesn’t have the resonance at home that it does here. In an early entry, we’d mentioned one of our first days in the Medina and how the literal wheelbarrow loads of mint mitigated the stench of bloody meat, donkey dung, body odor and other scents we’ve come to associate with our adopted city. An armload full of the fragrant stuff, which would cost fifteen dollars in the States, is just pennies here. They’re basically giving it away like some kind of state-mandated health supplement. And, according to locals, that’s just what it is: a panacea for a healthy, long life . . . insh’allah.

Once the heat of the afternoon had subsided, the evening’s agenda had two items: First, a stop at Mustapha Blaoui, a home accessories emporium in the Medina that we’d been hearing lots about; and second, dinner in the Place, with a probable stop at Stall #31, whose delights we’ve already chronicled. Although we’ve been taken with the Moroccan crafts since day one, it wasn’t until Mustapha’s broad, heavy, studded door swung open to reveal a warehouse of chic accessories piled from floor to ceiling that we knew a shipping container would be in our imminent future. What Mustapha has done is curated and simplified traditional designs. He uses indigenous materials, like camel bone, but instead of carving it into ticky-tacky necklaces, he fashions a dresser from polished rectangular slivers of bone. Likewise, he’s applied the camel bone to a six-inch frame on a mirror that stands 15 feet tall. Camel hides have been died in a Matisse-worthy palette of colors and are applied as facing to dressers and trunks. Look up, and from the warehouse’s ceiling hang hundreds of lanterns, enough to light Westminster for a royal wedding. You can find a perforated metal lantern at any stall in the souk, but these are real works of art, whose scale and patterning is incredibly refined. Tableware comes in beautiful, simple monochromes and leather poufs, usually big enough for a single tush, are realized in the scale of a coffee table. The store makes us giddy and we nearly skip out of the place with promises to return as soon as we have a home to furnish.

As we walk along a familiar route through the souks to the Place for dinner, a jovial-faced man taps us on the shoulder and greets us with a warm Bonjour. He owns a small stall and we’d had a brief chat with him a few weeks ago while waiting outside a real estate office. He remembers us and invites us to sit with him and share a cup of mint tea. So far, we’ve only had tea in restaurants and a hurried glass that Hamoud prepared one morning at breakfast. This ceremonial pour is an entirely different thing.

Our host pulls up cushions for us to sit on and then he and his two children, a girl of 5 and a boy of about 7 join us, along with a loquacious young guy, who we assume helps out with the store. A curtain is pulled across the entry to provide some privacy, and then the ritual and conversation begins. Water is set to boil atop a Bunsen-type gas tank and green tea is measured into a teapot. Once the water is ready, it’s poured over the tea and allowed to steep for about a minute, at which point about half is poured off – a green-brown liquid – and retained while the remainder – a muddier, darker brew – is discarded. More boiling water is added to the tea leaves and the process of keeping and discarding is repeated several more times. Our host – and by the way, it’s always the top-ranking member of the family who prepares the tea – explains that he’s kept the l’ame, or “spirit” of the tea. Next, he folds a large handful of mint sprigs into thirds and folds into the l’ame du the, which has been poured back into the teapot. An alarmingly large chunk of sugar follows. When we exclaim at the quantity of sugar, Moulay laughs, saying Moroccan sugar is not as sweet as that of Europe and the US, which seems to hold true and must be due to it being less refined.

Finally, twenty-minutes since we our invitation for a “quick tea,” and with a practiced flourish, Moulay pours the steamy tea into traditional wee glass cups. He hands them around our group, saying bishmallah, to each of us – the equivalent of “to your health.” Sweet, redolent of the fresh herb, this mint tea is divine. “Moulay, he never rushes tea,” explains his chatty employee. “And I never drink alone,” adds Moulay. “Tea is too important. It must be savored and enjoyed with others.”

Throughout our initiation into Moroccan mint tea drinking, we’ve had a nice chat with Moulay about our time in Morocco and our house hunting. Of course, he’s got a friend who can show us a few places tomorrow. The motive beind the invitation to tea? Probably, but the whole experience was so pleasant, we’re happy to traipse around with his simsar friend tomorrow.

Oh, and it’s the final pour of the tea that’s the sweetest, and the only one Moulay’s soccer-crazed son Zachiarah will drink. “My wife and my kids just don’t like tea like I do,” Moulay says, shaking his head with a rueful smile.

Housing Reality Check

We start the day fresh and excited to find a rental house in Marrakech. With the weight of buying a house in Fes lifted from our shoulders for all of twelve hours, life is good. A wonderfully crusty baguette starts the day, and for a time, it seems like all is well.

That wonderful, optimistic time lasts until Hamoud takes us to see the first house on today’s list. It happens to be a stone’s throw from one of the city’s most celebrated restaurants, Dar Yacout, kinda the Le Bernadin of Marrakech. Hamoud is eager to show the house to us as he’s already scouted it and thinks we’ll like it.

To put it bluntly, we don’t.

The reality is, it’s not easy to find what we’re looking for. In most American cities, there’s a wide range of rental properties in ever rising price ranges. In New York, people who wouldn’t dream of living in the East Village can find their safe little spot on York Avenue and people who would rather live in New Jersey than on York, take places in Alphabet City. Elevators versus walk-ups, doormen or not, there really is something for everyone.



In Marrakech though, there seem to be two main options. The first is to live in a large, clean, modern apartment in Gueliz, the new part of the city - which would be very practical. As far as we’re concerned, this pretty much defeats the purpose of living in Morocco. The second option, which we obviously prefer, is to live within the Medina. Fixed within the medieval walls, there is no new construction and not much of a rental market. As demand (and prices) continue to mount, Westerners have bought up the prime houses, turning many into maison d’hotes, and every family in the medina is trying to cash out in order to buy a modern place in Gueliz. As we’d seen already with Hamoud, there’s plenty for sale if the price is right.




The price to house equation here is pretty simply one of size, not charm. We look at places with five or six bedrooms that we don’t need, but can’t find a nicer house with three bedrooms. The Holy Grail for us is an authentic old house with a courtyard, balcony, and some original tile-work, updated only with a modern kitchen and bathroom. So far as we’ve seen, these things don’t exist together. If someone has gone to the trouble of replacing a Turkish toilet with a modern one, they’ve also stripped out all the beautiful original tiles, and replaced them with something like this that even Home Depot can’t give away. And the reverse also, of course, holds true. While the expense of replacing such things as a Turkish toilet and ancient plumbing and wiring is to be expected when purchasing an old riad, its another thing when required in a rental, i.e., kiss those home-improvement dirhams goodbye!

After the bleak reality of seeing five houses several steps below squalid, we head for a pick-me-up at Patisserie des Princes.

Mutual Epiphany

Jamal is a friend of Nathalie’s. He’s a young, handsome Moroccan with a university degree in French Literature. He works as a chauffeur for an architect and his wife. It’s the only job he could get, and he’s lucky to have it. One thing Morocco makes clear to us every day is that employment is a rare gift.

On the ride to Essaouira for the gnaoua festival, we’d passed numerous police roadblocks. We’re lazily waved through the first few, but when Nathalie takes over the wheel from Jamal, we get pulled over and asked for papers. Just like in the States, we’re nervous and have a sense of guilt, though we’ve committed no infraction. The police, however, don’t buy that Nathalie and Jamal are just friends and that she’s driving to give him a rest. They are concerned that Jamal is a false guide and is conspiring against us, the foursome of foreigners. Nathalie won’t be cowed, and she argues, with more than a hint of derision in her voice, that she and Jamal work together and that, despite the gendarmes’ quick and flawed assumptions, they are friends.

Once we’ve been allowed to pass, Nathalie tsk-tsks their rude behavior and articulates how “bureaucratic” it is for them to assume the worst of Jamal. Her intentions are good, but the mere necessity of her repeating the psychology of the incident makes us all painfully aware of the divide in our cultures.

After a weekend of beach and music and enormous crowds, we crush into the car an exhausted heap for the trip home. Jamal drives fast, rocking his head and tapping his hand on the steering wheel to the gnawa beat. I’m glad for the relative safety of the back seat, and as we careen around curves, I push away images of the car tumbling through the air and then less gracefully cartwheeling into the desolate farmland flanking the route. Who’d be witness to our calamity but a goat herder and his flock? Surely a helicopter airlifts to the nearest trauma center is not an option.



Conversation is minimal and we mostly zone out, enjoying the landscape whizzing past bathed in the wistful light of a Sunday summer afternoon. The car casts a long shadow as we fly past wheat fields, Monet-like stacks of hay, lonely herds and vast expanses of nothing. It’s a pensive ride and we’re all lost in thought.

Suddenly, the car screeches to a halt and we find ourselves in an enormous traffic jam in a small town on the outskirts of Marrakech. To call it a town is to aggrandize this tiny, washed-out strip of humanity. Along the sides of the road, men sell watermelons from laden donkey carts, others mill around junked cars. Inside the car, we are all instantly alert. We are surrounded by a large group of angry, shouting men. It seems there’s a fight in the middle of the road and everyone clamors around to watch. The air is electric. As we crane to see what’s happening, the crowd swells around the car and fists hit our doors, bodies are smashed against the windows. We grab for the door handles, sure that the mob will try to drag us out into the fray. “Unfortunate timing” replaces “reckless speed” in my mind’s obituary. A police officer in a beret and a pale olive top-to-toe uniform pushes the crowd back from the car, and soon we are moving past the scene. As the bodies clear away from the middle of the road, we see a boy hauling his mauled bicycle, its rear wheel a lifeless, dangling limb, from the road where it’s been freshly trammeled. We realize that we’d seen him pedaling alongside the road moments before we’d come upon the fight, dressed in a soccer uniform as if just returning home from a later-afternoon practice. A car ahead of us must have hit him when the fight spilled into the road. How different the outcome of his and our end-of-weekend ride home.

Oh, and the epiphany. Sometime during the drive, independent of one another, we each decide we don’t want to leave for Fes in the morning as we’d been planning. We aren’t ready to buy a home and commence what would surely be an all-consuming year-long restoration project. Jamal, Nathalie and Remi drop us off by the movie theater in Gueliz, and we negotiate our bags across the busy street towards a restaurant. It’s our first moment alone together all day. “Let’s give Hamoud a call to cancel the car for tomorrow,” I say. “And maybe he can help us look for a place to rent in Marrakech, instead,” comes the reply. We smile and jump out of the way of some oncoming taxis and scooters. Hungry and tired, but with an enormous sense of relief born of decision, we duck inside the restaurant for dinner.

Festival Gnaoua

Faced with the decision of whether to stay in Marrakech or move to Fez, we make the obvious choice; we jump in a car with Nathalie, her boyfriend Remy and friend Jamal, and drive to Essaouira for the weekend to see the annual Festival de Gnaoua.

The festival, now in its 9th year, attracts over 200,000 people and is one of the major cultural events in the country. While Morocco has lots of interesting music, it’s not an easy place to see performances. It seems Moroccans don’t have a big tradition of paying to see live music, and so the major musical events are all free festivals.





Gnaoua is a form of music that comes from African slaves mixed through Arab and Berber traditions in North Africa. The heavily rhythmic form is meant to bring both performers and audience into a therapeutic trance through which evil spirits are exorcised. The snippets of chanting and drumming we’ve heard in Marrakech are quite compelling, though gnaoua seems to attract a certain sort of searching Westerner that we don’t necessarily need to spend the weekend with.




Given our preconceptions, we’re a little dubious about attending, but we’ve been excited about seeing some local music, and if we’ve going to look down our noses at something, better to have a little first-hand experience. Let me say that if you are a white guy with dread locks, you simply can’t afford to miss this festival.





For the rest of us, my recommendations are more qualified. There are eight stages with music playing from mid afternoon till late into the night. The programming is pretty diverse from very traditional gnaoua to jazz-fusion acts and gnaoua-infused raggae.



The festival is attended by tout le monde. There are groups of slightly menacing teens and young men everywhere who regularly start fights with one another for no apparent reason - just minutes after joyfully dancing in a circle together. There are couples of all ages, tourists of every ilk, though leaning towards the hippy, and perhaps most surprisingly families.



During the day there are lots of kids, as what kid doesn’t like a photo-op on a dressed-up pony, though we were surprised to see kids as young as four taking in the concerts at 12:30 at night. Throughout Morocco, we’ve noticed that parents seem much less preoccupied with bedtimes than their American counterparts.



There are also a huge number of elderly women fully veiled. I don’t know what the American version of a 70-year-old veiled woman is, but I doubt she’s taking in Phish concerts with her granddaughter.





As for the music, we took in parts of five shows, and really preferred the more traditional shows to their electric-fusions counterparts. The raw plaintive singing coupled with propulsive rhythms of drums and castanets is indeed powerful. Still, the variety was a little overwhelming; we both wished we had a musical curator with us to guide us through the shows. We kept feeling there was something great on another stage that we were missing.



Will we come back to the festival? Probably not – though I am curious to find a best-of-gnaoua CD to learn a bit more about the form.

And finally, the morning after….

Ladies (and Gents) Who Lunch

“What are your plans this afternoon?”

“We don’t really have any, you?”

“I don’t know, it’s so hot I thought I’d go home and read for awhile.”

“Yeah, it’s quite a treat to curl up with a book during siesta.”

“Well, perhaps not curl up, given the heat, more like sprawl out.”

“Indeed.”

I don’t remember a lunch as deliciously relaxed as the one we had today with Simone, an American girl who is spending her summer living alone in Morocco and working for a non-profit. Quick note: Simone is a girl to watch. She’s not even finished college yet, but she’s mature and worldly and able to process experiences with humor and independence of thought. It’s incredible to think that we’re 13 or 14 years older than she is. The only chink in her infuriating armor of self-possession is her interest in Marrakech’s sceney hot-spots; and there’s debate in our camp about whether this even qualifies as a chink.

Simone is dog-sitting at the riad in which she’s living – a small price for free board – and she has us laughing about the arc of her relationship with Daisy, the unlikely chow.

“First I was a little grossed out about having to pick up after her. I mean, I grew up on a farm, so it’s not like I’m not used to that stuff, it’s just weird in a city. And what’s the etiquette in the medina? I mean you see donkey droppings everywhere, so I figure nobody’s gonna be bothered by a little dog shit, right? Daisy’s cooped up all day in the house, and finally I got to feeling sorry for her, so I’ve started taking her for walks early in the morning. I get a lot of funny looks, but I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m walking an Arctic dog who got lost on her way to Siberia, so stop staring’.”

We meet at a café, whose shady balcony overlooks the Djemaa El Fna. Over harira, couscous and brochettes, we tell stories about our experiences in Morocco so far. Simone describes Marrakech as “Morocco light” and the place she feels most at ease as a single girl. We laugh at the pervasive use of inshallah, or God willing, as the ultimate catch-phrase for, “Sure, I might get to fixing your toilet, but if God doesn’t will it this week, you’ll just have to make do.” Kinda frustrating, but who are we to try to argue Allah’s will with a devout Muslim.

As lunch wraps up, we decide to order coffees, and there is such a sense of giddiness about this addendum to the outing. It sounds silly, but the moment is a real epiphany. No, we don’t need to race back to an office or off to another appointment. The cell phone isn’t ringing. And we don’t have anything, anything at all to get done before the end of the day. We can sit in this little café all afternoon if we please. It’s a real Rodeo Drive / Madison Avenue moment, let me tell you. Never will I scoff at those Ladies Who Lunch again, because man, they are onto something good.



As if lunch wasn’t enough of a world-rocker, we proceed afterwards to a pastry shop that Simone recommends around the corner. “It’s amazing,” she explains, “they hand you a plate and you just pile it up with whatever you want, they weigh it, and voila.” Voila indeed. Patisserie des Princes garners an immediate spot on the top 10 list of reasons to live in Marrakech. We got out of there with two boxes (petites boites, to be sure) of insanely tasty treats – tarte citron, gateau au chocolat, galettes, or cookies, made of almond and hazelnut paste and dusted with powered sugar, and macaroons that are swoon-worthy. These are the sort of refined goodies that you’d be likely to get at Fauchon or Dean & Deluca, which in Paris or NY is expected, but here in the dusty Red City, the experience is transportive. The gleaming shelves piled with delicate confections, the slightly too-chilly air, and the stiff proficiency of the white-aproned ladies who fill our boxes – it’s all too perfect. Later, we may be forced to think that some things – leisurely lunches and divine pastry shops – are better left undiscovered, but for now, we are tres, tres contents!

Two Conversations

Dinner with an Iraqi.

We mentioned in an earlier post the gorgeous Dar Seffarine, owned by Iraqi architect, Allah, and his Norwegian wife, Kate. Before moving to Fez and undertaking the Dar Seffarine restoration (we’d show you photos, but our camera battery died), Allah had lived and worked in Norway for 25 years. He’s a handsome, cosmopolitan man, who gives us a proud but self-effacing tour of his splendid home and is quick with hugs and kisses for the neighbor’s brood of children, whom he allows to play in the courtyard of the dar. Allah makes us feel welcome immediately, announcing that we are at home (i.e., our home), not a hotel. He has an easy, stylish grace.

During our first night at Dar Sefffarine, Allah graciously invites us to dinner along with two American friends we’d just met the day before. He tells us of his large family; he is one of 10 children. Then, he explains that his younger brother was shot dead on a street in Baghdad earlier in the week. It’s impossible to know what to say in the situation other than to offer what we fear sounds like very hollow condolences. He notes that terrorists killed 573 Iraqis that week alone, and that while his brother is the closest, he’s had other family members killed. He is sad and circumspect, but not angry. Since he knows he’ll be unable to travel to Iraq for the funeral, he half wishes that his family had not even told him about the murder. He strongly supports the effort to topple Saddam Hussein, whom he despises, and notes with sadness the mounting death toll in the American military, and the loss their largely poor, uneducated families must feel.

Granted, we are two Americans paying to stay in his maison d’hotes, but his lack of resentment towards us and balanced reaction to the situation is clearly genuine. This is a man who has experienced the world beyond his country’s borders and understands, as the international microcosm of Fez illustrates, how linked and dependent we are upon one another.


A cab ride home.

Our driver, a Marrakshi as the locals of Marrakech call themselves, asks us if we’re English, and then he guesses Australian before we reveal that we’re from the States. We’re always a bit trepidatious about mentioning that we’re Americans, especially given our relations with the Arab world, but tonight’s admission is greeted with what can only be called glee. Our driver wants to know where we’re from and our thoughts on East Coast versus West Coast living. He’s seen a lot of LA in movies and on TV. It turns out he has some family in Florida, and though he’s never been to the States, he lived abroad in Switzerland for a few years, playing professional soccer, among other things. Clearly the guy is anxious to talk and the cab’s speed decreases to a molasses crawl as his story heats up. A few minutes into the ride, he gets a call on his cell from his girlfriend; though they’re speaking in Arabic, it’s clear he’s told her he’s got a couple of Americans in the car and that he’ll call her back later because he wants to talk to us. The fellow, who is 42, has been unlucky both in love and in work. His former wife took off with his life savings of about $30K and he’s had a few failed entrepreneurial ventures since. Now, this multi-lingual, educated, former soccer pro is driving a cab to his dismay. He hates the heat and the traffic and the fact, ironically, that his life is going nowhere as he circles Marrakech. Recently though, he’s found love, in a 37-year-old pastry chef. She’s been asked by American clients to move to Florida and work for them there. She wants to marry our cabbie and bring him along. And the guy, who we’ve only known for 10 minutes, is intent on knowing our thoughts about this life-changing decision. Should he go? Would he have prospects in the US? Would he be able to find work and save enough money to return to Morocco one day and live a better life than he is presently? Once we reach our stop, Riad Larous, he swiftly turns off the car’s engine and swings his hefty body around to look at us as we contemplate the offer he has on the table. The combination of humility, despair and hope is overwhelming and we both emerge from the cab at bit shell-shocked. “I really want to know the verite (or ‘truth’),” he kept repeating. A plea not so much for our opinion – “Yes, go, take the risk! Do it for love. Do it for your future!” – but for the answer to a question far beyond the scope of our experience for us to offer a response.



Since we don’t have photos from either of the above-mentioned exchanges, we leave you with this man in the Marrakech Medina making masharabia. The turned wood was originally used to make screens through which devout Muslim women could look out at the world without being observed themselves. Now, it is used to make assortment of decorative things, and watching the man work with both hands, a foot and a blade is mesmerizing. It’s hard to imagine western power tools adding anything to the equation.

Turned on by Klimt

Back in Marrakech, we’re continuing our quick comparison of Fez and Marrakech, and it’s funny to do so with so little data. We’re not even sure what criteria we should be using. Here’s the view from the terrace in Marrakech.

Below is another view from a terrace in Fez.



If the goal is a place to enjoy a mojito on a hot summer’s night, I think Fez wins this contest, but is that any way to choose a place to live?

Marrakech has been loudly touted as a design capital of the country. This might be true, but the primary thing that is designed here is the riad. Therefore, unless you’re invited into the private homes of the Moroccan elite and expats, you’re not likely to see much more of this design than you can reading Elle Decor. Chic restaurants like Café du Livre and Kechmara exist, but they’re hardly ubiquitous.

In each city, we’ve taken petit taxis, which are generally Renaults. Here in Marrakech you see the petit taxi parked next to a grand taxi, which is always a 30 year-old Mercedes. It’s normal to take a petit taxi within town and a grand taxi between cities. When I commented to someone that a petit taxi would be fine for the two of us as they’re newer and more reliably air-conditioned, I was told that it is actually the law that you take a grand taxi between towns, as it guarantees greater employment for the drivers. The taxis in Fez all use their meters, which eliminates the small stress of bargaining each time you get in a cab in Marrakech.



We’re leaning towards a move to Fez (though probably more for financial reasons than any other) and we’re both nervous about telling Hamoud. Hamoud has been lobbying for us to stay here in Marrakech, and he’s certainly made life here easier.

For example, yesterday we went to open a bank account. He called a friend of a friend, so that when we arrived, we were whisked right past the long line of people opening accounts to meet with the banker right away. To open a join account requires a government stamp. No, you can’t simply sign something at the bank saying you want a joint account; you need to go to a government agency and have them notarize a form saying that you want a joint account. Hamoud was able to take us there quickly, again circumventing lines, and convinced the bureaucrat to fill out the form on the spot even thought it was 4:00, the office closed at 4:30 and the form would take four minutes to fill out. Left to our own devices, we would never have known how to convince the guy to do his job when he felt like stopping a half hour early. Without Hamoud by our side, we could easily have spent a day and a half opening a bank account.


Instead, we had plenty of time for a café au lait and the Herald Tribune overlooking the Place. Watching the world go by from that vantage point involves a steady stream of generally polite beggars, and packs of slightly less polite boys hawking trinkets. Today’s paper had a large article about Gustav Klimt. In addition to the news that the piece (stolen by the Nazis 70-odd years ago and recently repatriated) sold at auction for $135 million, there was a story about a large retrospective of his work in Madrid. The piece featured a photo of one of his drawings of a nude, and a boy trying to sell us wooden snakes was quite interested in it. He returned a few minutes later with two other boys to show them. While it was certainly amusing to see these boys so titillated, it made us wonder what art – or lack thereof - these kids are being exposed to.

House-Hunting Help

David Amster, we’ll call him the house whisperer of Fes, meets us at Dar Seffarine at breakfast for a day of house hunting. Having David along, given his decade in Fes and innumerable restoration projects in the medina itself, is like touring the Metropolitan with Thomas Hoving. We meet up with Aziz, David’s recommended simsar, or real estate agent, and proceed to wend our way through the medina and six houses in a matter of hours. Under David’s tutelage, we begin to train our eyes to distinguish between old (16th -18th century) and new (20th century) wood, tile and plaster work. We get a feel for what it might cost to repair a sagging ceiling as compared to replastering a wall. We learn not to be too expressive about what we might like and don’t, at least not in front of owners and Aziz. We learn the unwritten etiquette of improving a view from one’s terrace, i.e., get permission from the neighbors before cutting a hole in a wall. David is undeniably a restoration master, but his take is never too dogmatic; he realizes that for foreigners to continue to restore the medina, the homes must be livable as well as beautiful. That’s to say, he doesn’t bristle at talk of installing Western bathrooms and kitchens.

Even though he and Aziz have worked together a lot – and we met several friends of David’s who’ve bought houses (some multiple homes) with Aziz – David is quiet in his appreciation of a few of the day’s best offerings. He winks and “ooohhhs” under his breath in a charming, conspiratorial way, making us frankly even more excited about the prospect of finding a real gem. Of course, gem must be qualified because these homes all need significant attention. David, through careful questioning, seems to have a good idea of the project we’d be up to. This year is not meant to be only about plaster dust, after all.




As much of a treat as the pre-lunch prospecting was, the real pleasure comes in touring three of David’s 5-6 current projects as well as seeing a riad that two Australian journalists are renovating, and just in walking the medina with David, who is stopped every twenty paces by someone who knows him and has a question or a quick sallam m’allekam greeting. He truly is like the medina’s mayor, clucking at work that’s being done in a slip shod manner and proudly pointing out neighborhood improvements that he and his crew are undertaking for the betterment of all: a small fountain repair here, a new carved wooden screen for the Koranic school there, a wall finished in traditional malik (?), rather than cheap cement.

After the day, which ends in a jolly dinner with David and his friend Helen, a semi-retired English teacher from Cape Town, who teaches at the American Center and who recently bought a home in the medina, too, we feel much more informed (daunted and excited) about what owning in Fes might entail. In just a few days, David has introduced us to a number of people from all over the world – from Boston to Brisbane – who are undertaking these projects and despite the challenges (procuring a carte de sejour, negotiating sales with multiple owners, finding skilled workers, etc.) it seems like a very welcoming, helpful community of creative people laboring to save and enjoy some great old houses.

Two quick asides. First, we enjoy hearing about Moroccan teenagers from Helen, who says they have many of the external trappings of American teens (baggy jeans, baseball caps, gel-spiked hair, iPods and cell phones), but that they are painfully unaware of the world beyond Fes. They are myopic, have no sense of world politics or culture and are very afraid prejudice against Muslims in the West. She did say they know who Tom Cruise is and love Celine Dion and Cat Stevens.

Second, it’s clear our naive house hunting has become the source of much amusement at Dar Seffarine. Each morning we’re teased about not having bought a house yet and everyone asks after the days’ marathon searches. I secretly think there might be some money riding on whether we throw in the towel or actually make a go of it.

Slice of Fez

We’re off! OK, not quite. First we switch maison d’hotes. Opting to try something new, we move to Dar Seffarine, run by a Norwegian woman and her Iraqi husband. It’s beautiful and understated, and, after we get lost in three taxis finding our way there, great to arrive. The Dar is in the exact center of the medina and has a terrace with unrivalled views.

David had recommended a realtor, but as the man is a devout Muslim, he won’t work on Friday; we have learned that Moroccans work a six-day week, however. He’s not the only one. Remember the photo of the iron pots used for wedding feasts? Yesterday, that street was packed with people. Here it is at mid-day on Friday; despite that one pesky tourist in the background, my point is pretty clear.



In a pinch, we find an American realtor who’s been in business about a year, and race off to see 5 houses by lunchtime. What fun!

OK, here are a few shots of some of the places. Do any of them look remotely interesting? One of the first things anyone who buys a house from a Moroccan is going to want to do is change out the Turkish-style toilets and kitchen. This might be a cultural difference at its most petty, but the diamond pattern on the foot rests is not enough to make this American comfortable about squatting over a hole in the floor. These toilets are in every house we see, from one costing about $16,000 to one at $100,000.



House hunting, we’ve decided, is a great way to get a peek at real Moroccan life. In an otherwise closed place like a medina, it’s the only way – at least at this early stage of our time here – to get inside and see the homes and lifestyles of everyday Moroccans. There are so many incredible gems behind the most unassuming doors. We have a couple of very interesting – heated even – discussions with Moroccans as we tour their homes, discussing everything from politics to economics to language. The overall sentiment is that as much as we want into the medina, many of these people want desperately to be out and situated in a clean, modern apartment in the Ville Nouvelle. Because many can’t afford to maintain their large and elaborate homes, they are living in conditions that are uncomfortable and depressing. We’ve also come face to face with the unemployment faced by many educated, seemingly willing young Moroccans. They feel without prospects here and do not have the money to venture abroad for work either.







Tonight, on the spur of the moment, we’re asked to join Allah and Kate, Dar Seffarine’s owners, for dinner along with an American couple that we’ve just met, who were also staying at Riad Luna, and a few friends of Kate and Allah’s, including a British photographer and an Irish fellow who’s just commencing a renovation project in Fes. Peter and Emily have two weeks remaining of their year-long trek around the world, from Cuba to Beijing. It’s been great hearing their stories and comparing notes from the two ends of our travel spectrum.