Ramadan Bonus Round

We’d been so looking forward to the end of Ramadan. We were fine with an extra day as people debated the arrival of the new moon, and happy as the country stretched a two-day holiday into a week. But then something happened we weren’t prepared for. With the exception of the 3:30AM wake up call, all the extra calls to prayer that had been added during the Ramadan schedule were still there. And that’s how we learned about the bonus round.

It seems for those hearty few who made it through Ramadan with flying colors, there is a chance to get extra credit with Allah. If you do six days of Ramadan-like fast during the month after Ramadan, God will be pleased, and it will bring you good baraka for the remainder of the year. We learned of this when we had a late afternoon meeting with the man who’s been doing our metal work. We realized that we needed to have some protection from the cold and so were asking him if our design for sliding glass doors to shield the living room from wind and rain was feasible. To be polite we offered him a class of water, which he declined, citing Ramadan. We turned for translation to Hamoud, who explained about the extra six days. Those fasting days can be observed at any point over the month, though you must wait to begin until after the two days of feasting. It’s a matter of taste, but some people like to do the six days in a row and get them over with, others like to spread the days out over the month.

When our old neighbor, the woodworker who’s been stalling on the mirror frame (now over five weeks late), told me that he’s doing the six days, I ask him why. “Surely, Allah was impressed with your month of fasting?” “Of course,” he replies, “but six extra days is not so much to ask for God. It works for the whole year. And besides, it’s good for the health.” As yes, we’ve heard many times of the health benefits of Ramadan.

Our metal worker, who is fasting two days a week, buries his head in the measurements we’ve scribbled down, and looks over the half-dozen other projects we’ve outlined. At ten minutes till six, the muezzin begins his call, and the man turns his head toward Hamoud, and asks, “May I have that glass of water, now?” We’re happy to oblige, this is the first time we’ve been with a Moroccan as they break fast. Hamoud himself is not doing the extra credit this year, though he assures us he has in the past.

With all of the extra-credit fasting going on, I guess we can expect a few more weeks of foul tempers, work delays and additional serenades from our muezzin and his microphone. It may not be too much to ask, but is it too much to bear?

Moving Targets

Saturday morning: time for breakfast and no fruit in the house. As I make a quick trip to the corner fruit stand and see a man delivering firewood, I make a mental note that winter is approaching and we should be stocking up. All thought of wood vanishes as I arrive to find a locked fruit stand. Same thing at the next fruit stand, and the next. As I wander from Sidi Ben Slimane to Riad Larous and almost to the Moussine Fountain before turning around and looping through Bab Targhzout, I realize how far we are from stores with regular hours, and cursed myself for not buying some fruit the night before from the carts that lined the street at a nearby taxi stand. Store hours are seldom posted, and when posted they’re meant more as general guidelines than any promise to be open. When we were looking for Air conditioners (at a major, high-end store in Gueliz) we saw a sign that said it opened after lunch at 3pm. When we told our taxi driver where we were going, he looked at his watch and shook his head, “but they don’t open till 3:30.” We thanked him, but assured him they opened at 3 o’clock. He smiled and dropped us off in the beating sun, where we stood until the doors were unlocked at 3:30. In the souks, the problem (or our problem, at least) is compounded. For the most part, small shops are run by one or two people. An illness or vacation means the shop closes for days or weeks at a time, and we’re left guessing when it will reopen. Virtually no shops in the medina have phones: it takes a walk to the door to see if it is open. With time, we’ve gotten better at predicting the hours of a particular store – we know better than to shop early afternoon on a Friday, for example - but it’s far from a science.

Yesterday we bought a red ceramic vase which, while beautiful, turned out not to hold water. We returned the vase to the apologetic shop owner, who promised to have one double glazed for us. This, he assured us, would definitely hold water, but it was also going to take 3 weeks. We pressed for a guarantee of three weeks. “Well, before 2007,” he hedged. “It’s artisanal work,” he offered by way of explanation. We agreed to wait, but asked if we could have a receipt, as we’d already paid for the vase. He shook his head, mildly offended. “You’ve already paid,” he told us. “You know and I know and Allah knows. That’s it.” We’re hoping that we wander back into his store in several weeks and find a watertight vase waiting for us.

As for the fruit, I’d given up and was on my way home through a back alley, when I found a man with a small pushcart laden with grapes and bananas and a little scale. I looked around the empty street with perhaps three houses on it and wondered how his clients were meant to find him.

Hypocrisies.

We’ve avoided pointing out some of the hypocrisies we find in life in Morocco for a couple reasons. For one, it seems an ungracious thing to do in the country we’ve chosen to call home. For another, it is always easier to see the hypocrisies of another culture than of one’s own, even when one’s own is an easy target like the United States. That said, it was hard not to react to the sight of a fully veiled woman – covering herself out of modesty, mind you – breast-feeding her child (no discreet towel in sight) in the middle of a busy intersection for hundreds of Moroccans and tourists to see. At least nobody saw her nose.

PS – When we posted about “Tarte Citron” we didn’t have a picture of the girl, Shaima. Well, given the fact that she has not gone away, now we do.

Sandstorm in the City

Our faces are coated with a fine, pink dust. We can feel its grit inside our noses and eyes; it clings to our scalps and whispers in our ears. We cover our mouths with our hands as we walk, buffeted by gusts of swirling sand, thoughts of the rosy silt settling in our lungs. Our raincoats are cinched tight about our necks.

We’re nearly alone in this wild city sandstorm, making our way on foot from the medina to Gueliz for a late-afternoon lunch. We’ve been pent up in the house for a few days and the impending storm, heralded by great gusts of wind that threaten to rip our new tent from its terrace tether, has inspired a sense of adventure. The chaotic streets have an eerie calm that matches the sky’s yellow pallor; its scooters, taxis and donkey carts replaced by swirling bits of trash. The rose bushes in the garden of the Hotel de Ville bend with the wind like elegant supplicants. As we reach the edge of the medina, its arched gate, Bab Nkob, funnels the wind and dust so we are forced to wait for a lull before we can pass through.

This is our first fall storm and the sandy gale has us giddy. It’s not the Sahara, but this is a sandstorm, a real sandstorm! We watch as clouds of pink dust skitter across the sky, covering the limpid sun. Fall’s the best season in Morocco, we’ve been told, again and again, and October its banner month. As the sandstorm gives way to bone-chilling rain, which the weather channel promises will continue for another 48 hours, we’re dubious. Where are the sparkling fall days, crisp and clear? We want sweater weather, not days that demand slickers and rubber boots (though I’ve spied some must-have white Wellies at Marjane!).

The rain and bluster continue all afternoon, and the adrenaline-induced triumph we felt breezing into Café du Livre, tempest conquerors, is replaced by a cozy nesting over burgers and coffee. Coffee, more coffee, idle chatter with the other diners. Now that we’re warm and sated, we’re reluctant to leave; a second dash through the foul weather does not hold the allure of the first. And when we finally do arrive home, the house is cold and wet (still no cover for the courtyard), and the terrace lights explode in a shower of broken glass when the cold rain touches the hot bulbs. We shuttle from room to room across the dark, soggy courtyard, wishing we’d heeded others’ warnings about the need for doors and portable heaters. Certainly we will have lost our bargaining edge with the carpenter who’s done all of our woodwork. He knows we skimped on the doors – damn summertime construction schedule – and he knows, better than us, just how cold it’s about to get. Hamoud . . . help!!!!

Groundhog Day

For the past week or so, we’ve been looking forward to the end of Ramadan. On the one hand it’s a religious holiday, and on the other hand it’s an excuse for many Moroccans to party late into the night, and put off work (including a mirror frame that we ordered, which is three weeks behind schedule). And while the call to prayer usually sounds six time a day (a convenience to give busy Muslins a choice of five out of six prayers to attend) Ramadan brings with it several additional calls, if not prayers. Each muezzin (see post Muezzin-Imobilier) acts as a sort of neighborhood alarm clock. Since the schedule of Ramadan is built around the fast during daylight, the muezzin wakes up the neighborhood with a call at 3:30AM to let people know that it’s time to get up and eat breakfast. An hour later, anticipating that some people would hit the proverbial snooze button, he calls again, as if to say, if you hurry, you’ve still got 30 minutes to scarf down a quick breakfast. At 5 o’clock, he begins the usual course of prayers (which follow at roughly12:30, 2:00, 4:30, 7:15, and 8:30, though they all change times slightly throughout the year as the days wax and wane.) During Ramadan he throws in an extra call at 3:30PM, for reasons currently unknown to us. Over the past month, the days continue to shorten and so the all-important call that the sun had fallen, which we’ve taken to calling the “Call to Table” has moved from about 6:30PM to just past six o’clock. This call is accompanied by what sound like air raid sirens: it is not to be missed.

We started asking about the exact end of Ramadan, but we got some vague answers. After some pressing, we learned that Ramadan is much like Groundhog Day in reverse: if winter can’t end if the groundhog sees his shadow, Ramadan can’t end until the imam verifies the new moon with his naked eye. Cloud cover or a weak prescription can tack a day or two to the fast.

This year, Ramadan was meant to end on Sunday, but it ended on Monday instead. Given that productivity had already slowed to a crawl, for the last day, it pulled up a footstool and sat down, splaying its feet in the street. Immediately after Ramadan is a two-day national holiday which, with families gathering to eat for two days, is much like an American Thanksgiving. I ventured out into the souks the first day and found the city full of men dressed in their crispest white djellabas. Makeshift tables were set up, and men drank coffee and smoked cigarettes in full view, happy that the fast was over. We had forgotten the extent to which Moroccans smoke, and the end of Ramadan brought a veil of tobacco smoke back to the medina.

With a two-day holiday falling on a Tuesday and Wednesday, and with the Friday holy day seldom producing more than a few hours of work, it became clear that the best plan was to throw in the towel on Thursday and take the week off. As for that promised mirror frame, the artisan first complained that his subcontractor was slow during Ramandan, then he told us he’d start as soon as Ramadan ended, but today he complained that the man had taken the week off, and would start in on Monday.

Still, with Groundhog Day, the wrong weather points to another six weeks of winter. Although we did meet a shopkeeper today who proudly told us he was doing an extra week of Ramadan fast for good measure, we’re hopeful that with fewer prayers and more activity, the days ahead will bring a return to what we’ve taken to calling normal.

Baraka Birds

We named our blog Baraka Chronicles after first learning the word for “blessing” from Hamoud. We’d been in Marrakech about a week and were taking our first tour of Dar Noury with Hamoud and his simsar friend. As we started up the stairs to our future bedroom, we heard a rush of feathers and flapping and out whooshed a small starling-like bird from its nest hidden in the stairway. “Baraka,” said Hamoud, pointing to the bird. “It is good luck to have a bird in your home.” We find that navigating a foreign place, we’re more susceptible to “signs” and this seemingly auspicious moment influenced our blog name and our choice of home.

Unfortunately, during the noisy construction on the house that followed, our feathered friend decamped for what we assumed were quieter quarters. We were sad to see her go – she’d had a few chicks during our “escrow” and they left along with her – but we empathized with the impulse. We hoped she’d return and with it the baraka she presumably lent us and the place.

Shortly before we moved in, when it was just Hamoud, a few woodworkers and painters laboring at that house, we noticed a pair of small brown birds nesting in the newly exposed rafters on the balcony. It may seem odd to have a bird take up residence in the house, but because virtually every room is open to the elements, our birds must think it akin to roosting in the branches of a tree.

As much as we enjoy, on a figural level, the return of our birds, sharing the house with them has at least one obvious drawback; the balcony’s white cement floor gets a daily dusting of bird droppings. I’ve never understood the good luck people invoke when bird droppings land on a shoulder. Lucky it didn’t hit the face, I guess. And before we’d clued into our pairs’ messy routine, they soiled a cream-colored Berber carpet that ran along the balcony – a roommate faux pas in any culture.

So, what to make of our baraka birdies. Be careful what you wish for? Too much of a good thing? Maybe they’re just telling us to look up. After all, winter’s coming and we’ve yet to devise a cover for our courtyard. Time to ready the nest, I guess.

On Scooters and Speed Bumps

In addition to the stack of books, Ramon brought us a container of Vermont maple syrup, something you just can’t get in Morocco. He and Bob refused to eat any while they were here, knowing it wasn’t the treat for them that it is for us. Once they were gone, however, we whipped up a batch of French toast. Given that baguettes cost about 13 cents, we tend to buy them frequently, and are often throwing out stale bread. With our new syrup, we’re happy to put some stale loaves to work, and invited our friend Craig over for a last-minute midweek brunch.

At some point the conversation turned to the idea of sending the King a letter with suggestions of ways to improve Morocco. In the States, such a conversation isn’t very satisfying given the size of the country and the structural obstacles – is that Housing and Urban Development or the Interior Department or Land Management, and does the EPA still exist? The malaise is compounded by the current inhabitant of the White House. But living in a relatively small monarchy feeds such cocktail party chatter because in a lot of areas, if the King decides to do something, it gets done.

Our list wasn’t particularly ambitious, but we had had two things that would make the lives of all Marrakech’s inhabitants a little easier. OK, fine: it would make our lives easier. The first was to force taxi drivers to use their meters, rather than haggle with them over the price. That’s how it’s done in Fez, and it removes a certain amount of anxiety every time you hop in a cab. The second idea, which Craig proposed, was to ban motorcycles and scooters from the Medina. The problem is, as we’ve noted before, that the streets within the medina are shared by pedestrians, donkey carts, bikes and scooters. As narrow and packed as the streets are, the scooters are the most dangerous element. To compound the problem, many scooter drivers feel that they should have the right of way, and blare their horns as they zip through at 30 miles an hour, mere centimeters from terrified pedestrians. The bottlenecks during the day help to mitigate this, but at night, the high-pitched whine of a scooter at full throttle is a common and hair-raising sound. We agreed with Craig’s assessment of the problem, but felt a ban impractical. People need to get to and from their houses, and generally park the scooters in their courtyards.

The very next morning, we walked out our front door, and what did we see, but a series of freshly laid cement speed bumps along our street in the medina! What a great idea. The cement was still a bit wet, but it was working. People and donkeys passed easily over them, and scooters slowed to a crawl. For financial reasons, speed bumps are even more effective in Morocco than they are in the States. The cost of repairing shocks is a burden, and so drivers of all types of vehicles routinely slow to a crawl in order to traverse bumps in the road that their American counterparts would blithely bounce across.

We went out about our day, making a mental note to check in with Craig to share the ingenious solution. It was almost as if the King had been listening in on our conversation and had came up with a practical, efficient and cheap solution. By that evening, though, our joy turned to despair. We returned home to find a handful of teenage boys (the most egregious scooter drivers) taking pick axes and sledge hammers to the speed bumps, which they told us were damaging their bikes. Well, yes, we thought: at top speed, you’ll damage your bike, and if we’re lucky, you’ll be flung off it at as well. That is the point.
The following day, the speed bumps remain down, and we wonder if the government will retaliate in a growing speed bump battle. We certainly hope so.

As we head out to snap a shot of speed bump remnants, we find the little square by the main entrance to the mosque filled with hundreds of scooters where normally there would be fewer than ten. We realize that this is the last Friday of Ramadan, or the holy day of the holy month. It’s like an Easter Sunday Mass, and any once-a-year mosque-goer is showing up today. With just a couple days left till Ramadan in over, we’re feeling an excitement in the air.

Terrace Hopping

So, I’m up on the terrace catching a few mid-morning rays, semi-reclined on a deck-chair (I’m recuperating from attack of the microbes, part III), and suddenly I hear the scramble of many feet on tiles not far from our own and then moments later, six boys, ages about 12 to 15, vault themselves over the walls of the mosque and onto the neighbor’s terrace and then on to the terrace of the next neighbor. Arcing the mosque’s walls, a few of the boys pause mid-flight to regard my astonished face and then with blink-quick smiles they are off. Terrace hopping is what I’ve witnessed and it’s something we’ve been warmed about since we moved to the medina.

Because of the way the homes are built in the medina, with shared exterior walls, it’s quite easy for athletic kids to shimmy up a lamppost to a terrace and from that vantage the labyrinth of the medina sprawls before them like a giant jungle gym. And since many medina homes have open courtyards, terrace hopping is a great way to steal a look into other people’s places. While many of these rooftop jaunts are pure fun and adventure, the ease with which one can maneuver from one terrace to another is also a security risk. Hamoud has for months been enjoining us to add a layer of broken glass around our terrace’s perimeter wall to detract would-be thieves, but penitentiary chic is not the look we’re after. Good thing Hamoud’s never heard of razor wire.

Seeing the boys gliding about the medina like low-flying storks evokes a sense of nostalgia. The pack-fed naughtiness is pure teenage fun. Recalls Halloweens spent toilet papering lawns and lobbing eggs at fellow rabble-rousers. More specifically, it reminds me (and I hope a few BC readers!) of the rooftop antics we enjoyed one summer at the Parisien’s house some twenty-odd years ago. Their place was being painted by the family’s two older brothers, on whom we had big crushes, of course, and my sister and the two Parisien girls would slither up onto the roof from a bedroom window and taunt the boys, pelting them with tar shingles from the roof (which in retrospect, I really hope was being reshingled, too). From the roof, we looked down past a rolling hay field and scrubby Maine woods out to the lake beyond, where we all took sailing lessons and whose small yacht club was our hang-out, ground zero for all the summer fun. The view pretty much encompassed our world that summer, as I imagine the rooftops of Marrakech do for the band of boys I encountered this morning.

Just when the temperature is about to drive me downstairs and into the shade, I hear the telltale pounding of feet and then see the boys, their numbers swollen a little, make their return route over the mosque wall, a graceful pack of horses clearing a jump in unison. For a second, I’m half-tempted to bolt over my own terrace wall to join them.

Mattress Hunting

Finding a mattress seems like such a simple task. How hard can it really be? Well, in Marrakech it’s harder than we thought. We started off looking at the big stores in Gueliz. In princess-and-the-pea style, mattresses were stacked ten feet high, and we got grudging sales people to help us lay them on the floor to try them out. They were all wrapped in dusty plastic – no floor models in sight. One thing that became clear right away is that Moroccans have different tastes in mattresses than we do; they like them hard as planks. Store after store offered the same meager selection and regardless of the price, they were all quite hard. We found one expensive full-size mattress labeled a “California,” and laughed out loud. Far from the California King, stores couldn’t give this mattress away in the Golden State. Salesmen repeatedly told us that the hard mattresses were good for the back, and that we’d never wake up with back pain as people did in softer beds.
We spoke with Hamoud about the problem, and his solution was simple. Have a mattress made. He shook his head at the seemingly foolish idea of having a mattress with coiled springs, and then mimed the agony of being tortured by springs breaking through the surface of the mattress and piercing his back in the night. We asked about Moroccan mattresses, and he told us that mattress makers will come to your house with various combinations of foam, cotton and synthetic stuffing and make a mattress on site. We tried one out but it, too, was quite hard.



We discussed our problem with fellow expats, but nobody had a good answer. It seems that the high-end hotels import their mattresses from Europe regardless of the cost, and most other people make do. We spoke with one couple that was getting ready to sell their too-soft mattress (imported from France) to get a firmer one. We were excited at the prospect of buying this used mattress until they went out shopping for its replacement. Of course, they found out how hard it is to find a decent mattress, and the offer to sell was quickly rescinded.

We finally found a specialized mattress store, and dared to hope. The prices were expensive, but as mattress salesmen love to remind you, you spend a third of your life in bed. Even there, though, all the mattresses were hard. They told us they could special order a softer mattress, but we would have to pay in advance and they didn’t have a sample for us to try before the purchase.




With more house guests arriving soon, we were running out of options. We spoke with a mattress maker friend of Hamoud, who promised that they could make a softer than normal mattress for us. While we were thinking about it, Hamoud pointed out that the door to that particular bedroom was less than five feet tall, and we couldn’t really get a store bought mattress in the room. That simplified our “decision,” and we called the mattress man. Three days later he arrived with the canvas skin of the mattress mostly sewn, and assembled the stuffing in place. The result is softer than others we’ve tried, if perhaps not as soft as we’d like. We now have mattresses for two of our three bedrooms and are trying to decide what to do for the final bed. So far, we've had friends from home lug over books, sheets and maple syrup. Is a nice Serta pillow-top too much to ask? We thought so.

Ramon + Bob

An old college friend, Ramon Vinluan, decided to tack a visit to Marrakech onto his trip to a business school function in Italy. This is the second time our relative proximity to Italy has brought guests to our doorstep, so I don’t care how crooked their soccer league is, Viva Italia!

Ramon and his partner, Bob, arrived at the airport to be met by Hamoud, and whisked to our house. Unfortunately, we weren’t there, as our day had been consumed with helping someone from the film shoot in Tangier do a day of haggling in Marrakech’s souks. When we get the call that our guests are waiting patiently for their rude hosts to arrive, we scramble across town and enjoy a late afternoon beer in the fading light of the courtyard. The call to prayer from our neighbor the mosque provides local color, and we head off to cross the medina and for dinner at a restaurant on the Place. We’re eager for stories from the States, and Bob and Ramon are most obliging. They also came bearing gifts from the States: books from family (we’ve already bemoaned the difficulty of finding books here) and one eagerly anticipated container of maple syrup.

Sunday we get to make a whirlwind tour of Marrakech, spending most of our time in the souks. It’s fun shopping for leather bags and wooden boxes, and exerting a little local price control on the tourist prices that were first offered up to Ramon and Bob. We also get to share some nice food with a pair of foodies, who enjoy lunch at Patisserie des Prince and dinner at Café Arabe. The in-flight magazine had given them tips on the culinary specialties associated with Ramadan. As most of the time we’re busy ignoring Ramadan, it was fun to go hunting for the special foods, most of which turned out to be honey drenched sweets. Of course, we all were a bit amused that the month of fasting comes with a set of decadent treats to indulge in each night. We’ve heard rumors that the nightly feasting after sundown causes many Moroccans to actually gain weight during the Holiday, but then we’re not the types of people to pass on such idle speculation, are we.



After dinner we continue to wander the souks and Ramon finds the dates he’s been craving. The dates have only recently been harvested, and he’s faced with a wide variety before choosing the premium “Royal Date,” which is priced accordingly.

Before six o’clock the next morning, Hamoud is buzzing at the door to shuttle them off to the airport, and in a cloud of exuberant energy and new leather luggage, they’re gone.

Tangier, Time Will Tell

Yesterday we celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary and it seemed fitting to do so by the sea, and even the Atlantic, the same ocean along whose shores (albeit Maine shores 3000 miles away) we were wed. Of course, unlike the coast of Maine, Tangier is a place where you have the incredible experience of standing in one continent (Africa) looking out at another (Europe), so close you could imagine a quick paddle across the Straits of Gibraltar to touch it. It’s where an ocean and a sea – the Atlantic and Mediterranean – share a coast and commingle. It’s a place where the exhausting light of Africa is softened to a warm brilliance. And for a girl from Maine, the sad call of the seagulls at sunset is a welcome sound indeed.



Apart from our desire to see Tangier, our trip was motivated by an opportunity for Samuel to visit the set of the new Bourne movie for a day, which has been shooting in Tangier for several weeks. When we arrived, the film’s presence in Tangier was everywhere: Equipment trucks lined the Grand Socco. Men on headsets with laminated “Crew” badges numbered more than veiled women in the streets. And strung like Christmas lights from the rooftops of the Rue d’Italie, which becomes, as it mounts a San Francisco-style incline, the Rue Kasbah, were cables connected to an enormous crane along which a camera would trail Bourne in a harrowing, rooftop chase scene. The location was ideal, affording a view of the iconic laundry-draped rooftops of Morocco, the glistening Atlantic, and a street bustling with schoolchildren, vegetable and date stands and people out shopping.

Samuel had been assigned to the second-unit team for the day, which was shooting the chase scene with Bourne. Second-unit typically handles the action sequences and the director, a former stunt man, is one of the best in the business. Over the course of the day, his team got off an impressive 25 “set-ups,” yet he still had time to answer Samuel’s battery of questions, letting him stand beside him at the monitor so that he could witness the shots unfold. For Samuel, it was bliss and he furtively scribbled notes as the director shared tips about what makes an action sequence, paramount in a thriller like Bourne, compelling.



Meanwhile, I had the day to wander Tangier and deal with some logistics: our return train tickets and transport for the five lanterns that we’d bought at a local foundouk the day before. Samuel picked out three more star-shaped lanterns, which in my opinion signals the end of the celestial décor theme with which we’ve paid tribute to Dar Noury’s name. Wandering Tangier is like spending the day on a stairmaster. After a few hours of hiking up hills so steep they are bordered by cobbled staircases, your legs and lungs are burning. In need of a break, I stopped off at the hotel Minzah, a Tangier landmark, ostensibly for a cup of mint tea, but no waiter came to take my order as I sat in a quiet, sunny courtyard reading my book. This no-rush approach to service is something we’ve encountered all over Morocco and while exasperating at times, it’s nice to linger over coffee and dessert after dinner without feeling like the staff is anxious to flip your table.

At about 1:30, Samuel and I met up for lunch at a little restaurant just down the road from the Minzah, one of the few places we found open. The terrace is filled with foreigners, puffing away on cigarettes and sipping at Cokes. We’ve been fish and seafood starved in Marrakech and had vowed to eat as much from the sea as possible while in Tangier. Ordering our simple lunch of grilled shrimp and sole, however, turned out to be a comedy of errors. First one waiter came without menus and told us we could have beef brochettes. “But we want fish,” we said. Forty-five minutes later, with Samuel antsy to get back on set, a second waiter delivered two pots of mint tea, which we hadn’t ordered and when we asked after our fish and shrimp, he claimed ignorant of our order. In the end, we did enjoy a delicious lunch, our dishes flavored with piquant seasoning and a subtle smokiness. Our surly waiter blamed the problems on Ramadan, absolving him of any responsibility and hinting that we were foolish to try to eat during it.

After lunch, I continued my tour of the medina, although it being a Friday during Ramadan most everything was closed. The terrace at Dar Nour offered a perfect late-afternoon perch for reading and looking over the Kasbah to the ocean.

Since our train wasn’t to depart until 9:30 that night and because the local restaurant pickings were scare, we ordered dinner at Dar Nour, which Abdullatif will cook for guests of the hotel if requested in the morning. The dinner is served in Dar Nour’s intimate dining room with one long, communal table, Philippe’s collection of gorgeous Uzbekistani suzanis (colorful, hand-embroidered tapestries) on the walls and flickering candlelight. Abdullatif is a whiz in the kitchen and the meal, an inventive interpretation of a few Moroccan classics turned to be one of the best we’ve had. First came zucchini, julienned and sautéed with sun-dried pancetta. A tagine of chicken with cured lemon and green olives followed. Dessert was house-made pear ice cream and delicate almond cookies. Simple and divine. Throughout dinner, Samuel recounted his day on set, with eyes sparkling like a sixteen-year-old who’s somehow scored the keys to a Porsche. This boy needs to get behind a camera again soon!



And we hope to find ourselves in Tangier again soon, too. We know there lurks a Bowlesian underbelly to this place, but our first visit offered only much-missed Atlantic light and air.

Tangier

Last night we took the night train to Tangier, or Tanger, or Tangiers, depending on how you like to spell it. The cabins sleep four, and we share ours with a quiet pair of Australians. We weren’t sure how we’d sleep on the train, but then we hadn’t taken into consideration the fact that we wouldn’t be woken up with the call to prayer at 3:30 and 5AM. We slept beautifully and woke as we rolled in to Tangier’s train station around 7:30.

Tangier gets a bad rap. It’s a 35-minute ferry ride across the straights of Gibraltar to Spain, and is a real border town. For many backpackers crossing Europe, Taniger is a day trip to Africa, and as a result, the town is full of hustlers happy to sell you some useless trinket or pick your pockets if you’re not buying.

We judiciously avoided the port area and didn’t see any of the Tangier underbelly. By noon, in fact, we were joking that perhaps we’d sell our house in Marrakech and move to Tangier. The city is beautiful, combining many of the best attributes of other Moroccan cities: it has the rolling hills of Fez, which give most houses stunning views; it has the blue and white color palate of Essaouira, in addition to the Ocean and Sea; and it has a small but interesting medina. In addition, it has a much more varied architecture, with a variety of European influences.

We spent the morning wandering the medina and visiting the American Legation. Morocco was the first country to recognize America’s independence from England, and this building was the first embassy established by George Washington. Beautiful calligraphic correspondence on yellowed paper between GW and the Sultan of Morocco can be viewed in a glass case, as well as a funny letter from a later Consul to Washington, D.C. complaining that despite policy and his insistent refusals, the Sultan was gifting the US consulate in Tangier with a prized lion and lioness. What to do? he lamented. Send them to a zoo and risk offending the Sultan? Have them let loose in the neighborhood to assured maulings? Unfortunately, Washington’s response is not on display.

On the recommendation of friends in Marrakech, we checked into a lovely maison d’hotes – the fact that its name, Dar Nour, echoed our own Dar Noury was a pleasant coincidence. Perched on top of the Kasbah section of the medina, we had views of the ocean and the medina around us, and the French owner Phillipe, was full of tips on his adopted city.

After a lunch of grilled shrimp and fish soup close to the water –we’d pledged to only eat seafood for the duration of our trip – we managed to find a fabric fondouk that had been recommended to us. A traditional fondouk was a sort of combination showroom and hotel for traveling merchants. Caravans of camels from across the country would enter through one large door and the camels and merchandise would be housed on the ground floor while upstairs small rooms gave merchants a place to sleep. At night, the large door would be locked to thwart thieves, both outside and inside the fondouk. Since merchants no longer travel in camel trains, the fondouks have adapted, but most remain focused on a single enterprise. In this fondouk, the downstairs has become a sprawling market of shops selling cheap plastic wares imported from around the world, but the small rooms upstairs have all been outfitted with looms, and dozens of textile workers produce a beautiful array of fabrics in wool, cotton, linen and a local favorite, vegetable silk, made from cactus plants. The fact that it’s all made on the premises means, of course, that the prices are about half what they’d be in stores elsewhere in the city or in Marrakech.


After we watched the sun set from the terrace of Dar Nour, we grabbed a taxi to take us to La Montagne, for a drink at the Villa Josephine. With its wood paneled walls and floral print sofas, the former estate turned hotel felt very South Hampton, and the prices matched. But the place was serene, and situated on lovely grounds with views of the water, and the bartenders knew exactly what they were doing. Our taxi driver pointed out that the King’s local palace was just around the corner, and drove us to another seafood restaurant for dinner. The first three recommendations we called were closed for Ramadan, something we haven’t run into in Marrakech. It seems that Tangier does not have the tourist traffic that keeps all the restaurants in Marrakech going full steam, and it was interesting to see how much more of an impact the holiday has on Tangier.

It’s Not All Hot-Air Balloon Rides

There is one in our camp of two that feels the blog stories should keep on a coming, even if we’ve nothing monumental to report. I guess the point is to avoid becoming jaded about the nuances and daily idiosyncrasies of our life in Morocco. As we inevitably settle into a routine here, however, I wonder about the distinction between comfort and boring. I like that certain paths through the medina have become second nature; allows me to see a lot more now that I’m not in a panic about my direction, that’s for sure. I like that I know where to go for paint and electrical tape and great mesclun – that’s right, mesclun. I like that the neighborhood kids know who we are; okay, that assertion comes with a few exceptions (see Tarte Citron entry). This familiarity is comforting. So how to keep comfort from straying into boredom?

When we first moved to Los Angeles from New York, we promised to pinch one another if we ever became jaded about the palm trees; if their silly flamboyance and gawky, too-tall stature ever became something we no longer noticed, like the yellow lines down a highway, then we knew it was time to recalibrate. Anyway, in an effort to celebrate the every day, and to keep our eyes and minds open to the marvels around us, here are a few Moroccan “pinch-me-ifs”. More to follow, we hope.

It’s Ramadan, and we’ve discovered a chocolate store, Jeff de Bruges, with imported Belgian chocolates, that makes our mouths water every time we mention it. The chocolates are sold by the quarter kilo and they come in a lovely, chic blue-and-brown box, delicious truffles, dark chocolate-dipped orange peel and creamy nougat. We sneak furtively into the refrigerated air of the shop, which is laid out like a jewelry boutique, all glistening glass and marble, make our selections and then tuck the tell-tale box into our bag so as not to offend any fast-keepers we might pass on the way home. The box remains in our own fridge for a few days as we nibble away at the treasure. Even with plaster-dust in our hair and oil paint staining our fingernails from a day of manual labor at the house, we delight in the luxury of a perfect, sophisticated chocolate at the end of the day, symbol we’ve not yet become utter barbarians.

In keeping with the food theme, I don’t want to leave out another savory discovery: harira. This vegetable soup, typically a tomato broth with chickpeas, bits of pasta and lentils, is the soup that Muslims eat to break the fast around 6:20 p.m. each evening. Even before Ramadan, we’d become big fans of the stuff. Like the kefta, snail and orange juice stalls that litter the Place, there is also a line of harira stalls at the northern end of Djemaa el Fna. Anxious to find ourselves at the best of them, we consulted Hamoud, who directed us to the “ladel-man with the moustache,” a description akin to saying the butcher with the bloody apron. Moustaches seem to be a de rigeur in the food stall arena. Despite the less than standout description, we did find the mustachioed soup seller and partake weekly of his velvety harira. A bowl, which costs just 2 dirhams and 50 centimes (that’s about 30 cents), is one of the best bargains around and can be accompanied by a plate of dates or finished off with a taste of Morocco’s version of baklava, fried dough saturated with honey.

Personal service is another thing we’ve come to enjoy in Marrakech. There’s an old-world feel to dealing with people face to face, be it a bank teller instead of an ATM machine or a city clerk instead of an automated voice at the other end of the telephone. Part of this has to do with the fact that home phones are rare, cell phone use is expensive and computers are usually only found at Internet cafes. Therefore, appointments are made in person. Instead of calling the upholstery guy to see if our chairs are done, we hike over to his shop to check on the work ourselves. Granted, it’s a bit more time consuming to conduct life and business this way, but how much better for the body and soul to be walking around the city and navigating personal interactions with locals.

The Mellah

THE MELLAH

Back on our very first day in Morocco we wandered around the city under the guiding principal of “don’t slow down and people will think you know where you’re going.” Of course, fifteen minutes in we had men offering to guide us. Utterly lost, we told them we knew where we were going and instead did circles through the Mellah, or Jewish quarter of Marrakech.

Four months later, we’ve found ourselves back in the Mellah, and while we’re no longer quite as lost, we still find it interesting. Morocco seems to have an uneasy relationship with its Jewish population. While there was a thriving Jewish community for centuries, it vanished rapidly in the 1950s as Jews emigrated to Israel. One acquaintance feels that Jews have never been treated well in Morocco, and calls the Mellah a ghetto. It seems that by forcing Jews to live in the Mellah, Sultans were better able to collect taxes from a highly productive segment of the population. Our acquaintance argues that in the Berber south, Jews were welcomed more fully into Moroccan communities – something that will take us a little longer to investigate.

The architecture of Marrakech’s Mellah is distinctive. Traditional Moroccan architecture puts a premium on privacy with walled houses looking inward to private courtyards. In the Mellah, buildings feature outward-facing windows and even balconies. The Mellah has also proven a culinary bounty. We’ve found an incredible market with fish – what a relief! – and butchers who’ll skin and clean a rabbit for you, so that even the squeamish can eat well. Beyond the meat stalls, cut flowers and a remarkably wide array of vegetables – 15 varieties of lettuce! – are on offer. We’ve found that a lot of the supplies we needed for our house are best found in the Mellah, and we’ve made trips for paint and hardware, glass and mirrors, among other things.

We have to keep ourselves from chuckling as a yarmulke-wearing shopkeeper in the Mellah promises that the mirror we’ve ordered “will be ready next Tuesday, Inshallah.” While he might pray at a synagogue, it’s clear that he is fully Moroccan in his invocation of the Allah excuse.

The King is making efforts to get Moroccan Jews to return to the Kingdom, and Hamoud tells us there’s a royal offer of financial incentives to lure them. For now it’s a distinctive and vibrant community that has become a crucial resource for us.

NEW AND IMPROVED?


Marrakech is illuminated at night by fairly industrial streetlamps common the world over. Within the past two months, we’ve seen a new set of street lights going in. Are the new lights really an improvement? A well-intentioned change to be sure, but with their gold paint they look like something built for a high school play. And more often than not, the old light remains in place even after the colonial-style new one is operational. And sadly, the new lights are being installed in a few places that were clearly better off before.

Small Deeds

More thoughts on hot air ballooning, which made an impression on us. Our trip to the balloon base camp began well before dawn. As we walked the streets before 5AM we passed dozens of men walking toward the mosque next door. As we kept our bleary eyes on the cobblestones in front of us, we were surprised to hear someone call out, “Bonjour, Caitlin et Samuel!” We looked up to see Mustapha, our plumber, on his way to pray. We exchanged greetings and walked on in search or a taxi. As we waited for a cab, we couldn’t help but notice that we hadn’t seen a single woman making the trek to the mosque at 5AM, and made a mental note to inquire why.



We pull to a stop in front of a flattened building and learn that this pile of brick and wood was the village schoolhouse until mid-July when a freak summer tornado raised it. Situated in the middle of nowhere between the three small villages that shared the facility, the pile of rubble is rather startling. Off to the side, a stone structure is intact, minus a roof, and we suspect that shoddy construction was partly responsible for the tornadoes damage. For a fundraiser for a literacy charity, it seems quite an unlikely coincidence that we’re to take flight a few meters from the school’s rubble.


While Room to Read is an impressively organized charity based in San Francisco and run by a former Microsoft bigshot, we learned (while waiting to see if the winds will allow us to take off) that Room to Read doesn’t actually exist yet in Morocco. [Of course, as we learned this we felt we were living inside that Seinfeld episode about George’s bogus charity: “The people in accounting looked into it, and it turns out there’s no such thing as the Human Fund.” “But there could be.” But there’s not.”] Without actual charity status, board, meetings or other formal trappings, it’s the ambition of several expats we’ve met to bring the literacy program to Morocco. A series of small events, with all proceeds going to the charity, have been organized over the past year, and the year ahead will show if the group is able to attract the parent organization it’s been courting, or if it sets its sights on a series of worthwhile but modest projects which are identified through the experiences of individual group members.


The ballooners present all see the destroyed schoolhouse as a perfect project for the local Room to Read. Certainly, three villages worth of children who are currently without a school would agree. We hope that the good intentions of those involved (ourselves included) can translate into action.

As the black scorpion we saw (as we pause to refill the balloons gas tanks after the trip) shows, the obstacles are many and varied.

Up, Up and Away

For the first time, we were grateful this morning for the strident blare of the 5 a.m. call to prayer. It’s been awhile since we’ve caught a sunrise and we didn’t want to miss our chance to do so from the charming wicker basket of a hot-air balloon sweeping the sky over the plains outside Marrakech at 700-plus feet. The ballooning trip was organized as a fundraiser for an international education charity called Room to Read, which partners with local communities to establish schools, libraries and educational infrastructure in developing countries. A devoted group here is trying to set up a Room to Read NGO in Marrakech, and the balloon trip is one in a series of fundraising events that the local team has put on. If education makes you see the world differently, the view from a graceful hot-air balloon at dawn is an apt metaphor. That we almost had to scrap our lift-off, saved only by the perseverance and adventurous spirit of a few, might be the stronger allegory for the ever-challenging charity world, especially for an NGO devoted to reading in a country with a dismal 50% illiteracy rate.

Maurice, our French pilot and the owner of the hot-air balloon company, Ciel d’Afrique, is the only registered balloon operator in all of Morocco. His company also does ballooning in the south of France, Mali, Ethiopia and soon Mexico. How he came by the exclusive permit is a long story, but he’s a savvy businessman and has established a symbiotic relationship with the local village from where he launches the balloons. Upon landing, he takes his clients for mint tea at the home of one of the villagers; there’s a set rotation with the homes so all of the villagers enjoy a financial benefit from the arrangement.




After we trek 25 kilometers in 4x4s, the last 10 of which cross rough, rock-strewn terrain, we arrive at the village and collect a trailer with the basket, balloon and gas canisters as well as some local helpers who have worked with Maurice for the past seven years. The morning air is still and crisp and each of us is craving an extra layer of fleece to stave off the shivers. Fortunately, Sandra, the proprietress of Café du Livre, has brought hot coffee and croissants and we huddle around her make-shift table like numb zombies as Maurice and his crew get busy attaching cables and unfurling the balloon. To give a sense of the scale of the apparatus, the balloon itself is 7,000 cubic meters and the fabric alone costs $60,000. In Morocco’s severe, sun-drenched air, the life of a balloon is about 250 flight hours; in his less sunny European operation, a balloon will last twice that. The wicker basket trimmed in rawhide measures about 4 x 3 meters and comfortably fits twelve in five compartments. There are rope pulls inside the compartments, which come in handy on bumpy take-offs and landings.



Just before inflating the balloon, Maurice walks towards us and his body language tells us the news isn’t good. “Too much wind this morning,” he explains, worried about our eventual landing. Since a hot-air balloon doesn’t have brakes, a high-wind landing can mean that the basket gets dragged along the ground and perhaps even overturned. Hey, if the expert, the guy that’s been doing this for almost 30 years thinks it’s too breezy, the Dowe-Sandes are happy to take a rain-check and head back to town for some scrambled eggs, more coffee and then a cozy bed. Others in the group did not take the news as sanguinely. “Oh, no, I didn’t get up at 4:30 a.m. to watch the salmon-colored dawn from the backseat of a 4x4,” say their expressions. “Wind? I don’t think there’s much wind,” seconds another, lifting a wet finger to the sky as if seasoned at gauging knots. As newbies to the group, we don’t want to come across as unadventurous, even as my mind races with images of the wrenching balloon accident in Ian McEwan’s “Enduring Love.” “Well, it sure would be a blow to Marrakech society if we crashed,” someone jokes.



“Okay, we give it a try,” acquiesces Maurice. Twenty minutes later, his giant fan has inflated the red and green striped balloon and he calls us to attention for take-off. Or rather, he hollers, “Run, get in, and hold fast to the ropes,” as we tumble into the basket. Unlike in an airplane, which takes time to gain altitude, the balloon floats up to 700 feet within seconds. And the ascent is so smooth. Because we’re traveling with the wind, we glide upwards like a hot breath and can only tell we’re moving by looking over the edge at the receding ground. At 700 feet, the Atlas Mountains form a hazy, purple crown around the plain. We can make out individual farms and even small herds of sheep and goats. We wave down at a small boy who stares from the door to his mud-brick house, a toddler sibling in his arms.

Between bursts from the hot-air valves, which Maurice controls with gloved hands, we enjoy the luxurious sound of big space, a welcome relief from the cramped cacophony of the Medina. We can hear the far-off bleating of some sheep and the distant buzz of one of Morocco’s Air Force acrobatic planes doing dawn maneuvers. (Maurice is impressed with the stunt team, which he claims is the only one in the world to fly to plains joined by a rope.) The land beneath us is parched brown with dry riverbeds that wind for miles and only occasionally a patch of green – an olive grove or small vegetable farm. We’re aloft, serene and peaceful for about an hour and a half before Maurice announces our descent.



“I’m going to land us in the balloon’s shadow,” he says, “to show you that I am the best ballooner in Morocco.” We don’t remind him that he’s the only ballooner in the country, too. “It might be a bit rough,” he adds, and after a pause, “the wind’s picked up.” This is cause for a rush of adrenaline from our roller coaster-loving basket mates and sweaty palms and heart palpitations from others. The way we’re situated in the basket, the Dowe-Sandes are set to have our corner touch down first, which means if we tip, the three from the compartment behind will land on top of us. As the ground comes rushing up, we’re set to secure ourselves in an early crouch deep inside the basket when Maurice hands me a line and says, “When I tell you, throw this over the side.” What?! I don’t want any responsibility in this maneuver. I’m not a qualified assistant, peon, private, whatever. This is madness.



As you can see in the photos, we’re all wearing our roller coaster faces as we touch down and make three small hops – less jostling than a JetBlue landing at JFK – and that’s it. Ride over. The balloon swoons into a slack pile and our merry crew clamors out of the basket flushed and beaming. I guess no one will buy that the morning constituted charity work, but it sure was fun. Here’s to improving literacy and to ushering in a new day with a killer fresh viewpoint.

Tarte Citron

Oh, to be as cocksure as the sassy 10-year-old tart that’s become our neighborhood escort. For the past few days, this leggy girl with the pro-baseball swagger is everywhere we turn. She lives in our neighborhood, Sidi Ben Slimane, and attends the local school. We’ve seen her in her blue school smock, toting a notebook, looking like a cross between Audrey Hepburn and Lolita. Whether we’re stepping out for groceries or off on an errand to buy electrical tape, she inevitably turns up at our side with a charming, “Ca va?” delivered with a lopsided smile and a shake of her ponytail. She’s quite irresistible and knows it. A few dirhams is what she’s after, but she plays the gamine game to a tee and we’ve come to enjoy her routine.

Last night, late and hungry, we were on a search for fresh cream to cut our tomato sauce. Cream is not an easy thing to find in the Medina, especially at 9 p.m. when everyone is reveling in a post-fast feeding frenzy. Tarte Citron, as we’ve taken to referring to her, caught us trolling the local bogedas and asked what we were after. Any time a kid dispenses helpful directions, a tip is expected, something we’ve been warned against by Hamoud and have, for the most part, been judicious in avoiding. “Show us some cream and we’ll give you five dirhams,” we tease TC. “No problem,” she responds and grabs our hand, leading us on a windy route to a shop a few minutes from our house. When we arrive, however, the store, like all the others, has no idea what cream even is. Our “it’s between milk and butter,” gets us nowhere. Failure doesn’t faze Tarte Citron, though, and she shrugs her shoulders and skips off to join her friends. We trudge home to pasta with red, not pink, sauce.

This evening, Tarte Citron is more brazen than ever. Catching us on our way home, she greets us and then leads us to OUR door, where she proceeds to beg entry. “No, no, no,” I say, to little effect as she muscles past me. “But it’s not finished,” I cry as she cases the place, scrambling upstairs to our bedroom and then plunking herself beside Samuel on the dining room banquette. “Not bad, the riad,” she says, popping an olive into her mouth and stretching comfortably back in her chair. Arms looped behind her head, legs outstretched, ankles crossed. I expect her to ask for a Scotch and soda and change the music to HER favorite Duke Ellington tune. The kid is too much.

Not ten minutes after ushering her out, our doorbell rings. It’s Tarte Citron come to offer us some of her mother’s harira. The offer of food is an important gesture in Moroccan society, and we’re loath to insult the girl or her mother. We take the soup and promise to return the tureen shortly. Tarte Citron grabs my face in her small, rough hands and plants a cool kiss on both of my cheeks before sauntering off. Not ten minutes later, the buzzer rings again. “Tell her I’m on the phone,” I plead. Am I really afraid of this girl? Has she gotten under my skin to the extent that I can’t muster a “buzz off”?

The problem, as any parent or grade-school teacher will tell you, is we were taken with the little vixen and I made the fatal mistake of giving her a few dirhams the other day for an ice cream. It was bloody hot and she’d been at school all day like a good girl and the ice cream man was right there with a nice selection of popsicles. I was feeling buoyant about some small success at the house and was enjoying her blithe chatter. Guard down. Small change easily accessible in pocket. Forced error by defendant. Goal for pre-teen antagonist. The worst part was that I was caught in the act by Hint, Hamoud’s wife, who was motoring by on her scooter just as I was reaching into my jeans for the dirhams. She beeped her horn and then turned in her seat to wag an admonishing finger at me. “When will you ever wise up, American,” read the bubble above her head.