The Baraka Chronicles

Daylight Savings

2008-06-14T09:00:00.000-07:00

Who knows how long it would have taken us without the Google Alert on Morocco. That’s how we learned (a week or two beforehand) that on June first, Morocco was setting the clocks ahead an hour for daylight savings. Something so part of the fabric of life in the US. Impossible to forget, with little pictures printed in newspapers reminding everyone to turn forward or turn back the clock. And of course, so much of it is automated, with computers updating the time without being asked.

But daylight savings in Morocco is new (it was tried and scrapped back in the 70s), and while it was done to conserve energy, it was not well publicized for English speaking expats. At dinner the night before six of us debated when it began, and while everyone agreed on the date, nobody knew the hour. We weren’t alone. The rapid decision meant airlines weren’t notified. Our friend Akio arrived from Los Angeles via Frankfurt that night. And while his flight from Frankfurt left on time, he was surprised to find that he was an hour late upon arrival.

Looking on the internet, we continued to see the old time listed for days, and today a search for daylight savings in Morocco produces more sites that say it doesn’t exist than say it does. We hear that at the end of September the Government will assess the experiment and decide whether or not to continue daylight savings. Until then, it continues to be a topic of interest. Prayer times are noted relative to the sun, not the clock, so the first call is now a little before 5 am instead of a little before 4 O’clock, and the last prayer isn’t till after 10pm. People are already looking ahead to Ramadan in September. While the overall daylight won’t be changed, the end of daylight will come later according to the clock. Will this make Ramadan harder? It doesn’t make sense to us, but then we won’t be fasting.

We were surprised to find that two weeks into the new time, there are holdouts. Hamoud went to a 2 O’clock meeting with a carpenter who was going to build us a few shelves for the factory, only to be told by the man’s assistant that he wasn’t there. “He’ll be here in an hour,” the assistant offered. “But our meeting is at 2 O’clock,” Hamoud countered. The assistant wiped a little sawdust off the table and laughed. “He still keeps the old time, and by the old time 2 O’clock is in one hour.”

A Man and His Factory

2008-05-13T05:14:00.000-07:00

There are few things that equal the glee of a man in his factory, especially a factory with piles of cement and marble powder and cool pigments for mixing colors. And machines, let's not forget the machines. Big, heavy hydraulic presses that could render a hand a pancake if misused. Oh yeah, and a pool-sized water bath for curing tiles. And racks for drying tiles. And a forklift for moving tiles. And boxes and boxes for shipping tiles - not to mention fumigated pallets on which to stack the boxes.

This to announce: popham design finally has new digs. A modest spot near the airport in Marrakech where we can do some r&d (not to be confused with r&r, which doesn't get rewarded at this factory), and deliver on those orders from the States that have started to come in.

So here are a few pics of the factory and the man behind it (note his beaming mug!).

Where to Begin

2008-05-07T02:34:00.000-07:00

True, it's been awhile since we contributed anything to the Chronicles, but it's not because we've been eating bon-bons all day. In the months since our last post we've: undergone Third World surgery; started a Moroccan business (www.pophamdesign.com), actually make that two (www.habibihomes.com); been home and back (yes, back, we're going to be in Marrakech for awhile for those of you who put off an early visit); made some new friends; hosted some great old friends and family; and generally continued weaving our little thread into the fabric of life here in Marrakech. Oh yeah, we also got a car - a rather toy-like car, but a car nonetheless. Her name is Tarte Citron and she's had her seats slipcovered in a very tarty chartreuse linen with white piping.

What's past is past, though, so we'll attempt some fresh news soon. In the meantime, here are a few pics from the last 6 months; sadly, of late, our camera has been relegated to capturing cement tiles in all their glory.

Tarte Citron, isn't she lovely!

Sam experimented with a bearded look for winter . . . and impersonated Darth Vader

Mark and Dara Quinlan came to visit in December

We took in the Maison et Objets show in Paris in January

Where we also caught up with old friends Philippe and Chantal de Riberolles

Fanny and Romain made a quick trip to Marrakech on their way from LA to Buenes Aires

Easter in Los Angeles - the cousins chose spring green outfits

Mum, Marjie and me at Dar Zellij in April

Ramadan Melodies

2007-09-22T14:07:00.000-07:00

Before going offline last year, we drafted this Ramadan post. Cleaning out old files this morning, we found it and as we're just a few months away from Ramadan '08, we figured we toss this up on the blog. Might even inspire us to put up some new pictures, who knows . . .

Last year, I fear we chronicled Ramadan from an outsider's perspective ad infinitum, so we're not going to bore with the rehash. This year, however, we've been privy to a new tradition that bears mentioning. Last night, we had a dinner party and midway through the meal, as the White Stripes were blasting from the iPod and we were tucking into duck salad with a side of potato galette, the cool evening air was pierced by the sound of a live flute player. It was if he was serenading us from within our own courtyard, so loud and clear was his playing. Sam rushed to the courtyard to look around and up towards the terrace, fearing someone had scaled our walls To-Catch-a-Thief-style. No agile musician was to be seen. But the flute music continued for about a half hour, just loud enough to drown out the Amy Winhouse and U2 tracks on our playlist.

And again tonight over leftovers, Sam and I, each typing away on emails at the dinner table, were surprised to hear the flutist return at 9 p.m. sharp for an encore performance. The volume rose and fell as if our wind player were positioning himself in different windows of the mosque with each refrain. It lasted 10 minutes or so and made us realize how much we appreciate the "live" quality of our mosque, at which the prayer is called by a real person five times each day (7 times during Ramadan) instead of by a recorded muezin, as in many other Arab countries.

Live and in concert, that about describes our living arrangement, for better or worse.

Birthday Stroll

2007-09-05T08:20:00.000-07:00

After running errands all day, we took a stroll in the Cyber Park to unwind before Sam's birthday dinner. We couldn't resist this 'Gladiator' moment. The park, which is in the medina on Mohammed V, is a lovely, cool, sweet-smelling patch of green in this dusty city, and its no wonder that many Moroccan lovebirds have found it the perfect place to steal a few minutes alone on a bench.

Campaign Season

2007-08-29T03:00:00.000-07:00

The singing, drumming and clapping floats down to us through the courtyard. This isn't the singing we're accustomed to hearing. On Monday and Thursday evenings, we get two hours of chanting (recitations from the Koran) from the mosque next door. The voices are predonimantly male. Beautiful and soft, they emerge from behind closed doors. In the mornings, we often hear a chorus of small children's voices coming from the adjacent Koranic school. We imagine that it's an arabic counterpart to the ABCs song. But for the past few mornings, there's been periodic singing in the neighborhood, of the sort we occasionaly hear in the evening as we walk past a wedding feast. I venture outside and find a local political rally in progress. This one dominated by women and children.

We're in the midst of campaign season in Morocco. While the same is true in the US, the election there isn't for another 14 months. In Morocco, laws restrict campaigning to the two weeks prior to an election. This is a major election for the lower house of parliament, and it does have people on edge; it's expected that the Islamist party will dominate the election and send progressive politicians packing. The government has made moves to counter that, including one taken from the American electoral playbook: gerrymandering. Earlier this summer, the government redrew the district lines to dilute the concentration of Islamist supporters. Of course, Morocco has another political tool not available in the US: it's a monarchy. And not a European Monarchy with a ceremonial King, but a red-blooded one that wields power. It's quite likely that the Islamists will win the election; if that happens, it will be interesting to see how the King responds.

Numbered election boxes are drawn on walls throughout Morocco, and campaign posters are officially limited to these spaces. Many campaigns have iconic stencils that they spray paint on walls throughout the city - a set of scales, and on another, a rearing black stallion, whose promise is less obvious - but others clearly lack any real organization and we're surprised by how many of the boxes remain empty wherever we go.

This singing rally I've stumbled upon is interesting in that is nearly all women and children, and I remember reading that thirty seats are reserved for female politicians. Further, the sight of my camera, usually cause for modest retreat, is today greeted with smiles, drumbeats and campaign fliers.

Right now, there's a lot of excitement. On September 7th, we'll know the results.

Lulu Has Landed

2007-08-27T07:19:00.000-07:00

One of the best things about our year in Marrakech has been the schedule of visits from friends and family. And while we expected people to take advantage of our being in Morocco to come for a visit, we little hoped that a near and dear would think about a more long-term stay. After a not-too-auspicous introduction to Marrakech over the holidays (in our unheated house!), however, Lulu decided to accept an offer to teach high school history at the American School. The notion of her coming seemed impossibly sweet, though remote, in February, but by the time summer rolled around and her ticket was booked, we took to counting the days to her arrival like giddy fools. And we were almost pleased when she did get here to find that her furnished apartment was bare, necessitating a stay at our house for a few days. She took to the city like an old pro and was soon careening through the medina on a bicycle and emailing us to suggest drinks at a bars of which we'd never heard. She's got a Moroccan cell, a Skype account, a roommate and small group of new acquaintances and already knows her way around the Mellah (fruit + vegetable market) and Bab El Khemis (flea market). Talk about zero to 60 in seconds! Let's hope we can hang on for some of her adventure here, too.

No Room at the Inn

2007-08-14T09:10:00.000-07:00

Dar Noury is largely a barefoot house. Not out of any effort to keep it clean, as the pink dust of Marrakech blows in through the open courtyard layer upon layer, but more out of laziness and the pleasure of having smooth tiles underfoot. Someone else decided he liked the look of our courtyard, too, our tile stacks providing an ideal spot to sun and relax. Rearranging them this morning, the interloper was discovered, and scarily close to Samuel's fingers. Safely (for us, at least) pinched between two tiles, we were able to get off a quick shot before Hannan dealt a swift blow to him with her bubble gum pink flipflop. As with the opportunistic mice of late, we hope word gets out to the other ugly exotic insects: There's no room at Dar Noury!

Lessons

2007-08-10T13:00:00.000-07:00

Oh, it's embarrassing, our lack of Arabic. After a year, we've got a paltry 20 words . . . maybe. Outside of a taxi ride and visit to the local hanouk for water, eggs and milk, we're hopeless. But it seems our days of illiteracy and ignorance are over, thanks to Touria, our Arabic teacher. Embracing a methodology known as language acquisition, she's pushed us not only into the water, but into the deep end head first. All Arabic, all the time. After a lovely first meeting (conducted in English), talking about Touria's time spent in the States as a Fulbright Scholar and as an Arabic teacher at Marlboro College, she made the switch to Arabic and shows mirth not mercy at our bewildered looks. Twice a week for an hour-and-a-half, we delve into this language of consonants, spitting out words like you might a lemon seed that's snuck into a Pimm's Cup. But it's fun, let me tell you. The acquisition thing is good stuff. Our brains are fried midway through each lesson, but we can actually form a few sentences. Why we waited so long to embrace the tongue of our adopted city, I cannot explain. But it feels like a new world opening up, pre-empting any chance of a sophomore slump in our Morocco adventure.

Touria is a language teacher like we'd never experienced. I mean if we got them this good in school we might have become language majors. Though she wears a hijab and lives at home with her mother and sister, she is very modern and hip and terriffically positive. She likes to high five when we manage to answer one of her questions correctly and her favorite word is "mumtaz," which means "super," despite there being little about our performance that merits such praise. The other day, we learned two Marrakchi slang phrases from our web designers: "libitibitu," which means "what's good for you is good for me" and "ashaobitu," which is "what do you want." We surprised Touria with our new lingo this morning to pleased hand clapping. "You guys will be speaking Arabic better than I do," she gushed. Never has false praise felt better.

In addition to being incredibly enthusiastic about Arabic, she's also a real fan of the States and loves to talk about her time there and her appreciation for certain things, like cheese and maple syrup (which she has locked in a drawer in her desk at home). She decided not to hold back but to try everything new she came across while in the US, a philosophy which broadened her mind, but also her waist. She gained 53 pounds in one year! And when she flew back to Marrakech, her sister, who was a the airport to collect her, didn't recognize her. "She said, 'who's that fat girl that looks like my mothe?' and then she realized it was me," Touria laughed.

She also suprised us by explaining that she found it easier to practice Islam in the laissez-faire religious culture of the States, something her Moroccan friends and family did not enjoy hearing. And she confirmed that the near-constant heckling of women on the streets of Marrakech is not reserved for tourists. Touria bemoaned not even being free to sit in a park to read a book because she's hassled so ferociously. For three months upon her return, she refused to go outside her house and the first time she did, the culture shock and unwanted attention reduced her to tears.

As always, we're learning more than we'd bargained for with our Arabic lessons.

Bon Courage

2007-08-02T13:13:00.000-07:00

Bystanders cheering, "Bon courage!" with arms raised in salute is the kind of reception you expect turning into Central Park at the end of the NYC Marathon, or perhaps laboring up a steep stage in the Pyrenees during the Tour de France. It is not, however, what you expect to encounter running through the medina early in the morning on a scorching July day. Running isn't something you see much of at all in Marrakech, and certainly not in the old walled city. Which is why Samuel has become a bit of a start-of-day curiosity bordering on celebrity in the Sidi Ben Slimane neighborhood. He's in training, readying himself for the imminent arrival of his sister Lulu, a promised running partner, in a month's time. Lulu is 26 to Sam's 35 and has been running with a NY club team for more than a year. So, in addition to the usual health and fitness motivations, I suspect there's a bit of good-natured sibling rivalry encouraging these jaunts.

Anyway, Sam's got a few more weeks and his medina fans to revel in. The guys at the local hanouk (corner store), women headed to the hammam or public bakery, kids on bikes or in small groups selling candy, even the cats picking away at last night's garbage, all raise their hands (and heads, in the case of the cats) as he jogs past. Oh yeah, and I'm his trusted trainer, following on my bike (and in shorts, no less, to further the 'this is serious training' element of our outing).

After taking a left out of the house past the tomb of Sidi Ben Slimane, and weaving through the medina for about 7 minutes, we hit the road headed to Bab El Khemis, our flea market haunt. In the early-morning hours, the stretch is bustling with guys wheeling carts piled high with whatever the season's fruit - now melons and some small round cacti. Mostly young and brash, these guys yell out "bon courage" with a bit of a snicker and several have tried to tag along, impeded by their carts and a distinct shoe disadvantage - flip flop versus Nike Zooms. They give chase for a few meters and inevitable run their carts into the curb, nearly sacrificing the day's produce for a moment of chauvinistic competition.

Besides the heat, which threatens to kill us every morning, and the stares and sniggers, running in Marrakech can be a dangerous sport. The other day, as we reached the halfway mark and made our turn home at the Afriquia gas station, a glassy-eyed glue-sniffer tossed a glass bottle at the curb just as Samuel passed, shards grazing his shins and arms. Fortunately, his trainer was there to make sure no harm had come to her prize athlete. "Faster, faster," I entreated. "Picture Lulu. Hear her pounding at your heels. Feel her breath on your neck. Faster, man, faster!!"

Catch 22

2007-07-30T06:38:00.000-07:00

Last week, in a flurry to get a few boxes of tiles out to the West Coast, and somewhere between the post office and FedEx, my wallet was either lost or lifted. A frantic retracing of steps produced nothing. And the, "why don't you check back in tomorrow" offered by one of the clerks at the post office carried the sound of assured defeat.

Losing a wallet is never fun, and this mishap was compounded by the fact that just days before, our bank in the US had decided to upgrade Samuel's ATM and Visa card, and in the process cancel his existing card long before its '09 "good til" date. "But I never asked for an upgrade," he whined to the perky Wells Fargo voice on the other end of the line. "Well, I can cancel the new one for you, sir, and re-issue another," she offered. "But I don't want another," says Sam with mounting exasperation, "I want the card that I have to work!" "Oh, well that's impossible, sir, once it's de-activated, we can't turn it back on." Not a fun scenario.

At least, we figured, Lulu is headed to Marrakech in a month to take on a teaching post at the American School - high-school history (American, Moroccan and Islamic!). Our mail is already being forwarded to Rupert, so he can hand Samuel's new card over to Lulu when they meet up in Vermont before her departure. Slick. Or maybe not. With my ATM card now at-large, we are unable to draw out any money from our US account. Digging into our shallow pockets, we dredged up just 400 dirhams between us, or around $50 (damn weak dollar). We're frugal, but $50 for 3 weeks, or until we could get Sam's new card FedExed would be an uncomfortable stretch. Like two nihilists getting the bomb shelter provisioned, we headed to the grocery store for what we hoped would be enough water, coffee and wine to keep us going until the new card arrived. You see, the list of places in Marrakech that take AmEx is small, mostly just big hotels and touristy restaurants. You can't even pay to send something FedEx with a credit card!

The next morning, before I've even had a chance to cancel my credit cards, my cell phone rings. It's the guy I rent a car from ocassionally and he's just heard from someone who has found my wallet. "They went through your stuff and couldn't find a local number," he explains, "but they found my card and asked me if I had a client named Caitlin." Recovering from my incredulity, I get out a stream of "mercis" and "shokrans" and take down the number of the guy who's got my identity in his hands. Turns out he's a pharmacist in a tiny village on the route to Safi. His directions are not clear immediately, and we think he means he's just a few kilometers out of town. So, Hamoud and I hop on his motorscooter and head off to retrieve the wallet, passing a bank whose thermometer reads 52 degrees centigrade, or over 125-degrees F. "Motor scooter is better in the summer when it's hot," says Hamoud. "Perhaps," I gasp. But at a certain temperature the breeze of the scooter goes from cooling your skin as it wicks away sweat to acting like a convection oven. Fortunately, before I pass out, Hamoud has the good sense to suggest pulling over before we get too far to confirm the directions I've received to the pharmacy. Turns out the noble guy lives not a few kilometers from Marrakech on the route to Safi, but 60+ kilometers out. We turn back for the air-conditioned minivan that Hamoud is using to drive tourists around the country.

We arrive at the pharmacy after an hour-and-a-half's drive through barren countryside broken by insane stretches of development, including a completely vacant new town for 300,000 people who have yet to arrive. You've never seen so many cranes. The pharmacist greets us with a friendly smile and starts to pull out a loose items of mine - driver's license, various credit cards, the card from the car rental company. The rest, he explains, is in my wallet with the fellow who found it. He calls the guy, a young, rangey fellow with a grin that reminds me of the worker on our house who sabbotaged a drainpipe with cement, who arrives with my wallet peaking out of his shirt pocket. The two proceed to show me every card and old piece of paper in my wallet. Yes, I'm a packrat, or morbidly nostalgic, says the credit card receipt from our vet's office in LA. Oh, and there's a card for an appointment with my eye doctor. And a AAA card for roadside assistance.

Once they've shown me that everything is there, except, of course, the cash that was in it yesterday, I thank them profusely, hand over a nice tip for each, signaling to Hamoud that we can hit the road. But no, the pharmacist and young guy put up a fuss about my tip, saying it's not nearly enough for all the work they'd done finding me. While I appreciate that they made a call to find me, it hardly constitutes hard work and I've already given each a day's wage as a thank you. But I really am grateful to have my stuff back and figure it's worth a bit more, despite what I'll have to pay Hamoud for driving me all the way out here. Another 100 dirhams is handed over and still I'm getting serious head shaking and attitude. The pharmacist even gestures as if he's going to throw the money back at me, insulted. Now I'm angry. "I gave you money for your kindness," I say, "if this is business than you've already been overpaid." And I turn on my heels and march back to the car, which has been baking in the sun so that it, too, is like a convection oven. Hamoud remains behind. I wait. And I wait. And I wait some more. Finally, the gangly guy emerges and bangs on my window, saying everything is okay and wanting to shake my hand. The pharmacist emerges a few seconds later and wants to do the same. I'm still furious as Hamoud sidles into the driver's seat and we pull out onto the road.

I fuss and fume, saying for once it would be nice if someone would do something just to be nice instead of for money. I feel so taken advantage of, blah, blah, blah. Hamoud waits for my tirade to end and then explains in his ever wise way, that the only reason I have my wallet back is because they realized I was a foreigner and would pay money to get it back. They were obviously expecting a far greater windfall. "If you were Moroccan," he says, "they'd have taken the cash and thrown the wallet out. No trouble trying to find a Moroccan." As this sinks in, he asks, "You are happy to have your wallet back?" I shrug ageeement. "Well," he grins, "you are happy because you have been taken advantage of." Yes, Yoda . . . I mean Hamoud. Right again.

La Corniche

2007-07-20T07:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we drove the new highway from Marrakech to Casablanca with Hamoud for a few business meetings, a photo session at the beach (for the tiles) and to have lunch with friends. The fact that the highway is a toll road means fewer vehicles moving faster, and since you no longer need to struggle to pass overladen trucks lumbering along the old winding road, it's a lot more relaxing.

Like the last time we were here, we were thrilled to find the weather at least 25 degrees cooler than Marrakech, and this time we went straight to that tempering cause: the Atlantic.

The wide, sandy beach, which had a retro feel with its sun-bleached umbrellas, was packed with people, though it took us a while to find our way past the walls of private beach clubs to get onto it. We passed numerous soccer games as well as loads of kids braving the chilly Atlantic surf. When we set up the tiles in the wet sand and started snapping away, we created a stir, and soon there were parades of kids and teens angling their way into our shots, pretending to run for the surf just as our shutter was snapping.

Driving by the U.S. Consulate, we were happy to note that it is finally open again, having closed for six weeks for security enhancements after the April bombings in an Internet cafe in Casa. As a new precaution, the Consulate has blocked the sidewalk in front of the building with enormous dumpsters topped with flowers, a sweet attempt at making a massive security feature slightly more inviting.

And we finally got a peek at Tahir Shah's amazing home, whose restoration is recorded in his amusing novel The Caliph's House. With something like 16 bedrooms and 5 courtyards, it's too bad his renovation is complete and he's not in need of cement tiles.

Tongue Tied

2007-07-15T05:44:00.000-07:00

We realize that the statute of acceptability on our living in Morocco without speaking Arabic is coming to a rapid close. While our "shwiya, shwiya" or "little bit" elicited for many months an appreciative chuckle from the locals when they asked us if we spoke Arabic, they now ask how long we've lived in Marrakech and when they hear it's been a full year, our lack of fluency gets a dismissive cluck. "Americans are usually very good at learning Arabic," we've heard on a number of ocassions, as if we're not only letting down the Moroccans, but our homeland, too. So, as we embark on year two living in Morocco, as well as a business venture here, we've vowed to step up our efforts to learn Arabic.

That said - and please don't take this as an excuse - we know how remiss we've been; we have had some curious encounters when we've tried to acquire and use new words. Our tile factory for popham design, for example, is located in a neighborhood out by the airport called Bouqaz Junction. On our regular trips to the factory, we instruct the taxi driver to go to "Bouqaz, aafak" (please). About half the time, we get a nod of understanding and off we go. The other half, the driver cranes his neck around to look at us and ask, "Ou?" "Bouqaz, pres de l'aeroport," we reply. "Ou? Quoi?" the driver asks again. "Just head to the airport, and we'll tell you where to go from there," we finally concede after about 10 more attempts: "Bouqaz, Bouqaz, Bouqaz . . ." Invitably, when we reach the neighborhood in question, we hear from the driver's seat, "Ah, Bouqaz," as if why didn't you just say do? No kidding, Bouqaz. That's what we've been repeating. But to the Moroccan ear, what we're convinced is a pretty spot-on pronunciation of the word has become horribly mangled. Or is it that when a person speaks in an unexpected foreign tongue, the native speaker cannot process the incongruity and so fails to recognize what's being said?

A similar thing happened just the other day with a new acquaintance. She's Moroccan, a Marrakshia born and raised, who is married to an Englishman and learned fluent English - infuriatingly - in just a few short months. Over lunch, we were talking about having gone out for eggs that morning, a Friday, only to find all of the corner shops closed. We headed to the chicken seller, figuring that where there are feathers, we should find eggs. And here Samuel throws in what we've been taught is the Moroccan Arabic word for egg, "bayda," which is pronounced like bed, but with a Sopranos-like accent. "What?" our multi-lingual guest asked. "Bayda," Sam repeated, "you know, egg." "What?" she looked at us as if we'd lapsed into Dutch. "Un oeuf," Sam explained, reverting to French, her 2nd language. "Ah, bayda," she happily replied. Exactly. Exactly what we'd been saying for the past few minutes, our attempts falling on deaf ears.

And these are just two quick anecdotes. We get these reactions daily to the handful of words that we have learned, use in correct context, and (she says with a sniffle) pronounce correctly, damnit.

So, I guess I offer a disclaimer as we throw the gaunlet down on learning Arabic this year. Will fluency even count if the native speakers we're talking to are not able to understand us? I understand even better why there is comfort in the default language of French, a second language for us and for the Moroccans, too. Neither side of the conversation comes with great expectations, or comprehension-blocking preconceptions. Moroccans expect foreigners to speak a bit of French, even if muddled, and the same goes for us of them. So, whether successful or not with Arabic, I guess we'll always have Paris . . . I mean French.

Vacationland

2007-07-03T10:00:00.000-07:00

They don't call it Vacationland for nothing! From NH, we wended our way down east to Turner and then Stoneham, Maine. We paddled slowly down the Neizinscot River in a canoe and then zipped over Upper Street on someone's new toy. Sadie taught us how to climb a doorframe and Max showed us how to cross dress with aplomb!

Reunion in NH

2007-07-01T03:07:00.000-07:00

After a frantic week running around in NY with 100+ pounds of cement tiles, it was off to the mountains of New Hampshire for a weekend reunion with college friends and their growing broods. Three "we're pregnant" announcements meant the minty mojitos were mostly virgin. We discovered that a simple broom can be the most fetching toy. And learned that ticks are partial to very private body parts!

The Other Side of the Atlantic

2007-06-29T01:43:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile. So, we're going to ease back into this blog thing, starting with some pictures from our recent trip to the East Coast to see friends and family (and to set about launching popham design, www.pophamdesign.com). Ah, you see, there's a reason for our absence from the blog-o-sphere and it comes down to cement. Cement tiles, that is. With popham design, we're applying our own modern designs to traditional handmade Moroccan cement tiles. The tiles are made right here in Marrakech by a crew of skilled artisans. We'll be launching shortly, so more news about pd soon.

In the meantime, we had to keep pinching ourselves to remind that New England in June is a far cry from New England in January, checking the temptation to up and return to the lush landscape of home. From the pink dust of Marrakech to vast expanses of green lawn and pasture, dense groves of leafy deciduous trees, and water everywhere. My, it was a treat. Not to mention getting a much, much, much-needed dose of what we most miss: family and friends. Cheers to all and thanks for an amazing taste of home.

We started off our trip in the Hamptons, celebrating the wedding of Samantha Schweitzer, Sam's friend of 21 years, and relaxing with Mike and Robert and Gabby and John at Beech House.

First Glimpse of Anger

2007-06-03T08:00:00.000-07:00

The mustache was thick and black and shiny. I was so taken by the handsomest mustache I’d even seen on a woman that I didn’t register the words coming out beneath it. We passed the soapy air coming out the door of the hamam on our way to the taxi stand and this woman fell in beside us speaking in French as broken as my own. She was animated, and she was angry and she was shooting questions at me rapid fire. Where are you from, Europe? What’s wrong with your country that you had to come here? Why don’t you go back to your country and leave Morocco for all the good Muslims? We walked on like this for nearly a minute, she yelling, and me listening and not replying, trying to avoid the racing motor scooters that were oblivious to our little drama. As the neighborhood shopkeepers saw what was going on they hastened to stop her, and all circled their fingers beside their temples in the international sign for crazy.

In a year, this is the first outwardly hostile person we’ve encountered. As we hurry to the taxi stand I glance over my shoulder. It seems like the woman is accosting another foreigner. While the support from the neighborhood shopkeepers was nice, this mustachioed woman has gotten me thinking about our place in Morocco. We certainly have no intention of becoming Muslim in a country where 97% of people are. And what really is it that made us move here? Do other locals feel as she did, but keep quiet out of fear of the tourist police or of losing a regular customer? Perhaps we're naive in thinking her a loony anomaly, but as someone still obsessing about this woman’s mustache, how much serious reflection am I really capable of?

V.I.P. Only

2007-05-18T04:19:00.000-07:00

Finally, the day of the King’s visit is upon us. The neighborhood has been scoured, ready for the arrival of Mohammed VI to pray at the mosque of Sidi Ben Slimane in celebration of the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed. We’re hoping to catch a royal peek ourselves. With the new uniform coat of paint, our slightly tattered neighborhood now looks a bit like Morocco Disneyworld. Flags fly, banners are draped. But while we’d been thinking this was a great opportunity for the King to pray with some of his subjects, that’s not really on the agenda. Instead, a nearby parking lot is taken over with several large tour buses, out of which pour hundreds of VIPs who have been shipped in to pray with the King on this holy day. They’re all wearing the finest white jellabas, as they walk from the buses to the mosque.

But the storefronts that line our street are all closed in what we’re told is part security measure and part a desire to keep the King on task. Evidently, his entourage worries that on the way to the mosque he’ll stop in at a shop and get embroiled in the woes of the shopkeeper or hand out a taxi license to a hapless fellow, as he’s been known to do. So all the proud buildup for the King’s arrival, and the neighborhood isn’t really a part of it at all.

For our part, we receive a knock on the door from a security team, asking that we limit our movement in and out of the house. So while we hear a brass band playing as the King arrives, we barely poke our heads out the door to nervously snap a blurry shot of the bottleneck of white jellabas as the pass through the metal detectors on their way into the main doors of the mosque.

Soaking up the Tuscan Rain

2007-05-14T04:27:00.000-07:00

Even when it rains, Tuscany is undeniably grand. The afternoon showers only gave us more excuse to huddle up over cappuccino and pastries (some gelato, too!) in cozy cafes. Oh, and don't even get us started on cinghiale!! More details about our trip to Civitella in Val di Chiana with Erika and Matt to come, but for now, here are some pics.

And a giant THANK YOU to Tara Grace for the amazing farmhouse!!

Of Church Mice and Karl's Cousins

2007-04-18T08:00:00.000-07:00

As construction continues in the mosque, they’ve torn out all the old rush matting, and sent the mice that lived there scurrying for new homes. If the church mouse is a fixture of English country lore, Hamoud assures us that Moroccan mosques have a similar, ah, tradition. “Take the first door on the right,” we imagine the newly homeless mice yelling to one another as they take off. And so they have, straight for our house. At first a few tell-tale signs were left on the kitchen counter next to a seriously gnawed baguette. And in a few days we were seeing mice not just at night but in broad daylight, too.

These visitors made us think of the last mouse we got close to, a rather smelly fellow named Karl. A short film I was making called for a mouse. (A man dying of cancer wanted to rid his house of mice before he died.) The scene never played well, and ended up on the editing room floor, but the mouse in question was quite real. Purchased in Los Angeles at a PetCo for $1.49, he performed his scenes admirably. After shooting, the idea was to set him free on the side of the road, but someone on the crew pointed out that he was a domesticated mouse, more used to running on his wheel than away from cats. And so Karl needed a rescue home. In Los Angeles, five minutes on the internet will bring you to a rodent rescue group, and soon Bonnie (our morally upright boom operator and animal rescuer) was driving with us to Karl’s new home. The sweetest woman imaginable opened the door to her 3-bedroom condo to reveal perhaps two hundred mice and rats in various cages large and small. She took Karl in, spent $50 or so to have him neutered so he could share a cage with Ivory, and then gave us regular emails detailing his life and companions. The last such email read, “I'm sorry to tell you that Karl passed away sometime today… I'm not sure how old he was, but too young to leave me. He had a good life. At the end he was living with 4 girls.… He was very loved!”

Six thousand miles away, Karl’s cousins have found Dar Noury a decidedly less hospitable place. Quiet as a mouse is a common expression, but not one to be applied to the noisy critters that feast at the bottom of our garbage can. Poisons, traps, and even hammers are being used to rid the place of mice, and guilt and triumph share the air whenever one is dispatched. It’s been several days since we’ve seen any signs, and we don’t know if we’ve scared them off, or if new rush matting in the mosque has made their old home a safe haven, fitting for a house of worship. As long as another mouse does not bump into my feet as I stand at the kitchen sink, I suppose I don’t really care where they’ve gone.

The King is Coming

2007-04-15T15:00:00.000-07:00

Something was different when we woke up this morning. We’d both slept well, and struggled for a minute as we gathered ourselves for breakfast to put our finger on it. It was Sunday, and we enjoyed pancakes with Vermont maple syrup my parents had brought in December, and that soon supplanted any serious investigation. At noon, it became clear. The sound of muezzin calling people to prayer echoed far off in the medina, but the muezzin at our mosque next door was silent, and he’d been silent at 5am as well. We asked Hamoud what was going on and get went off in search of answers. A short while later he returned.

“They’re working on the mosque,” he said. In two weeks time the King is coming to pray in the mosque and they’re repairing it. It will be closed until them. As the day wore on, the silence felt even more odd. Our mosque has several muezzin, and we recognize them each by voice, if not sight. We’re so close to the mosque that we can hear the electronic hum as he turns on the microphone. We can hear him clear his throat as he prepares to speak. We can hear him sniffle or stifle a sneeze when he’s got a cold. And now radio silence. We’re so focused on our own muezzin, that we now can appreciate the tapestry of sound that floats our way from around the medina. And what else will the next two weeks bring as the King’s visit is anticipated?

Olive Branch

2007-04-10T08:00:00.000-07:00

Back at Christmas, we hopped in the car with Sandra and went driving around looking for a Christmas tree. Not such a big thing in Marrakech, and they mostly had a sad Charlie Brown quality to them. Heading out of town on the road to Eureka, we stopped at a nursery, which, while it failed to deliver a Christmas tree taller than three feet, did have some beautiful olive trees. Which got us thinking. Why must we have a fir tree? Couldn’t we decorate an olive tree with lights and call it a Christmas tree?

We’d been wanting a tree for our courtyard for some time, and this seemed a good opportunity to get one. Olive trees are hardy, we’ve been told. They need virtually no water and can be ignored. Since we’re both missing green thumbs – in LA we managed to kill a cactus – this seemed a good option. We pondered an assortment of olive trees for a moment and deciding we could make a go of it, bought a large one and a terra cotta pot. (The terra cotta pot was cheaper than the ugly plastic alternative, quite the opposite of what you would find in the U.S..)
The next day the tree was delivered and installed. We found a string of Christmas lights. They’d been brought in by an American expat and were 110V instead of the local 220V, but we found that if we turned them on for short periods of time they wouldn’t blow out and it was, in its own way, Christmas-y. Put a brother and sister and some presents in front of it, play Handel’s Messiah, squint just so, and it wasn’t a white Christmas, but it was something.

But Christmas was months ago, and with time our hearty tree stopped looking so good. Where once people asked if it would bear fruit, they now asked if it was dying. We moved it from a shady corner to one with more light. Our Baraka birds took to plucking its dead leaves to line their nests. And all the while, the two of us wondered, what have we done wrong? How is this tree dying? We argued about water – after all, very little water is not the same as no water at all. We asked Hamoud, who shook his head at the tree, and brought round a tree man, who took one look at it and declared that our olive tree was sick with some kind of fatal bug. We asked if he could nurse it back to health and he shook his head. He told us that the tree had been sick when we’d bought it, and that a healthy tree would have sprouted several new branches by now.

The news was bad, the news was a blow: our tree must go. But the silver lining to the particular cloud gleamed bright. It wasn’t our fault. We hadn’t killed this tree. Hamoud’s tree man is going to find us a new tree, smaller, perhaps, a more modest thing, but he’s promised it will be disease free. We’ll see how long it lasts.

Guest Blog #3 - Wake Up Calls

2007-04-07T14:44:00.000-07:00

Susan and Jim Dowe visited us for 10 days in March. Below is a guest blog from Susan as well as some photos from their visit.

When you walk from the taxi stand into the narrow little street approaching Cait's and Sam's house you're bombarded by sights and smells that are totally alien to anything you've ever experienced. Donkey carts, scooters, bicycles and swarms of dhallabah wearing people...a cacophony of sounds and dust.

Then you walk through their door into an oasis of light and air and beauty. An open courtyard with beautiful tiles, an olive tree with resident birds, an incredibly beautiful terrace overlooking the adjacent mosque. Lovely bedrooms with hand made lamps, rugs, and linens. The incredibly blue Moroccan sky overhead for most of the day.

At days end the cold creeps in a bit so after a late dinner we retire to our bedroom and close the wooden shutters against the night sky. We fall asleep to the sound of a pick up soccer game in the mosque alley. Teenagers are the same all over the globe!
Then...the wake up calls start...the fighting tom cats! They go on all night. And the rooster who crows continually all day and all night. The first call to prayer begins at 5am, a lovely melodic sound that for me is reminiscent of the loon's call on a Maine lake. A little spooky...kind of echoing. It becomes part of a waking dream. After a time you hear the sound of childrens' laughter as they go off to school. Lovely little brown skinned, curly headed darlings with their backpacks and their beautiful smiles.
Of all the sounds of Marrakech the wake up ones are the best.

Alternative Minimum Tax

2007-03-12T07:00:00.000-07:00

It’s getting to be tax time in the U.S. and we haven’t been thinking of it at all. The fact that all tax documents have been sent to a brother we haven’t heard from in over two months makes it easy to put our head in the sand.

Here in Marrakech, I’ve just witnessed another Alternative Minimum Tax.
Riding in a truck down to the set, we were pulled to the side of the road by a police man. The driver got out and spoke to him and then hopped back up. “What was that about,” I ask, and he rolls his eyes and tells me he’s been stopped for running a red light. A red light was most definitely not run.

In fact, the American tradition of accelerating at yellow lights does not exist here. Instead of the basic green, yellow, red, Moroccans have added a blinking green light before the yellow to further alert people that the red light is imminent. And aside from the mopeds and donkeys that scoff at all traffic lights, most people start breaking at a flashing green. My driver is no exception, and I ask the electrician who’s riding with us what’s going on. He points to the various film permits taped to the windshield and says that when people see movies, they think money. Before he can continue, the driver hops back up in the truck, grabs a hundred dirham note from his wallet, and folds it into his registration papers. “Thieves,” the electrician tells me, “all policemen are thieves.” I ask why the driver didn’t contest the ticket. “That wasn’t a ticket, it was baksheesh. For a ticket, the police give you a receipt.” But this police officer demanded that the driver give him one hundred dihrams, or his license and registration would be confiscated until his court hearing in several weeks, effectively barring the driver from employment during that time. Facing those choices, the driver didn’t think twice about forking over the hundred dihrams. “The cop is only paid 2000 dihrams a month. I guess he feels he’s got to add to his income.” Our drivers earn nearly four times that, but they’re still the lowest paid members of the film crew. When I ask naively if this is the first time this has happened, the driver and electrician both laugh at me. It might be a frequent form of alternative taxation, but to this driver at least, it's still better than his other options.

The World Bank has done studies on bribery and argues that a rise of bribery rates by one percentage point reduces the growth of the economy by three percent. It seems time to give the police a raise, and crack down severely on corruption. If the country hope to maintain it’s growth and modernization programs in the coming years, it’s a difficult problem, but one that demands attention.

Gauche

2007-03-10T09:04:00.000-08:00

The life of leisure is no more. The new year came, and along with it a call from an American film shooting here. The British accent at the other end, asked, “I know this isn’t really your area, but would you be interested in working in the set decorating department for the next two months?” Within 36 hours I’d started, and the comedy was not far behind. I’m going to assume that while I’ve not signed any confidentiality agreements, I’m meant to be discreet, so I’ll avoid using the name of the film or individual characters. But as much as we learned about life in Morocco by renovating a house here, working on a film shows another side.

Like all American films that shoot here, the top members of the crew fly into town, while the bulk of the crew is drawn from the local population. I’m hired as a Moroccan, which means that I’m paid in cash each week, and get to follow the Moroccan rules. The situation is complicated by the fact that between the American department heads and the Moroccan workers, there is a second tier of skilled crew from England, and I’ve quickly learned that there are nearly as many cultural differences between Americans and Brits as between Americans and Moroccans. I was hired in the hopes that I would speak fluent English (as many of the Moroccan crew members, even those billed as being Englsih speakers, struggle to understand and be understood). Anyway, I was pretty confident. After all, I know when these people say lorry, they mean truck, and when they say flat, they mean apartment, right? But soon, I’m asked about a pair of fire dogs, only to learn that the items in question are a pair of andirons, and realize this is not going to be easy. Angle poise lamps, anyone?

Breaking bread with the Moroccan crew, I’ve already had my first faux pas, though I’m surprised it’s taken this long. Eating a mid-morning snack of lentils and bread, I reach into the platter with my left hand. No, no, no! I’m scolded. Of course, I’ve read that the right hand is for eating and the left hand is for, ah, personal hygiene, but I’m left handed. I offer this defense (frankly, as good as I can hope for) and I’m told by one fellow that he, too, is left handed. He explains that while he uses his left hand for everything, he taught himself to eat with his right hand. I realize that after 8 months in Morocco, this is my first time eating from a communal bowl, and do my best with my clumsy right hand. There’s lots to learn.

Marrakech Film Festival

2007-03-07T10:00:00.000-08:00

This is old news, but got buried over the holidays.

The Marrakech Film Festival took over town for nine days in the beginning of December with yellow billboards throughout the city. Occupancy rates at hotels surged to 100%, and restaurants normally quiet were booked solid. The festival is of growing importance in it’s 6th year, but still doesn’t generate sales - the real mark of a festival being a leader rather than a follower on the festival circuit. We attended expecting to find a wide array of international film-goers, and found the festival dominated by the French, as though this is a long weekend party for them.

The festival celebrated classic Italian films this year, but since we don’t speak Italian, we gave the selection a miss, and also missed most of the films screened in tribute to Susan Sarandon. (“Thelma & Louise,” we should mention, holds up much better than anticipated.)

All the films in the main competition screened at the Palais des Congres, which is an enormous convention center on Boulevard Mohammed VI. For the months leading up to the festival, we’ve seen workers putting in plants and fountains down the middle of the grand boulevard. In the past weeks, the intensity increased and armies of men in jumpsuits were applying fresh coats of paint to the curbs as people were already arriving.

It was a treat to see “Babel,” which we’d skipped when it played at the Megarama. Somehow, to see a film called “Babel” (which centers on ideas of communication and miscommunication and is acted in English, Spanish, Japanese, sign language, Arabic and Berber) dubbed into French seemed to miss the point. A large chunk of the film was shot in Morocco, and the film’s director, Alejandro González Iñárritu was on hand to introduce the film, along with the Moroccan cast. The biggest applause came at a scene most Americans wouldn’t even notice. When a helicopter finally arrives to take the Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt characters to safety, Pitt offers the Moroccan guide who had helped them through the ordeal a handful of cash. The guide refuses the money in a modest, “I was just doing my duty,” gesture, the audience of 2000+ erupted in applause and cheers. In a country where many tourists see hands outstretched and hustlers looking for any chance to take advantage, the audience was more than thrilled to see a potrayal of another type of Moroccan. Before and after the screening, we saw the Moroccan actors being descended upon by autograph seeking fans.

There’s a lot of foreign film production in Morocco, but we know next to nothing, well, really nothing, about local Moroccan films. We made it a point to seek out local films and saw a pair of interesting pictures. “Wake Up, Morocco” was a soccer- (OK, football-) themed film exhorting people to seize the day and take charge of their own lives and futures. Not the most nuanced work, but an interesting piece, which gave credit and thanks to numerous members of the royal family. For a country whose unofficial motto often seems to be Inshallah, it was a welcome treat. The star-crossed lovers in “WWW. What a Wonderful World” were a hitman and a traffic cop, and while the film was slick and commercial, it showed a slice of contemporary life in Casablanca that we’re not used to seeing on screen.

We hope the organizers add some of the panels and filmmaker Q&As that help make festivals in the U.S. so much fun, and that programmers continue to search out compelling films from Morocco and throughout the Arab world.

It's a Girl

2007-03-05T01:30:00.000-08:00

Why is it that the French Consulate offers its expats concerts and art openings while the American Consulate is obsessed with dire warnings of the bird influenza? Figuring it might be nice to meet a few of the reported 69 Americans living in Marrakech, I trudged off to the “American Corner,” not more than a room in a cultural center on the edge of the medina, to hear about the flu with a friend. I read Gina Kollata’s “Flu” about the 1918 influenza that killed more than the two World Wars combined, and maybe I’ve got a bit of American germ paranoia, though I can promise anti-bacterial hand wipes have never crossed our threshold. Anyway, Elizabeth and I arrived early and waited outside in the shade of a tree for the throngs of health-crazed Americans. Thirty minutes later, a few Moroccan gardeners walked by, shooting us a curious look, but no Americans. So we waited some more. Finally, we were ushered into the American Corner, where we perused books about American quilt making and hiking in the Rockies, and waited some more. After about an hour, the Vice Consul entered and introduced herself. She also apologized for the day; evidently, the American School teachers had asked that the seminar be pushed back a few hours so that they could attend. No one thought to let the other Americans know; I guess teachers trump loafers. Anyway, we decided that the day was far too nice for waiting about and that we’d leave the viral campaign to others more capable. Wash you hands often and avoid the chicken market were the take-aways from the brochure pasted to the wall. I smiled as I thought of my imminent trip to the mellah (and the chicken market) for dinner fixings.

A few days later, we decided to sample the offerings at the French Consulate: a flute concert – Telemann, Mozart, Michel Pignolet de Monteclair - performed by two Frenchman flown in from Paris on traditional instruments, or those fashioned after old-school flutes and piccolos and such. First off, let’s just say that the French Consulate, with its elegant garden full of blossoming fruit trees and stately reception rooms lit by tiered silver candelabras, would look down its haughty nose at the scruffy American Corner. We only got in – me with a box of leftover pizza hidden in my bag beneath a silk shawl – by way of our faux-French friend. The two flutists were right out of a New Yorker cartoon: disheveled with too-long hair, slight, slouching frames and a straight man/kooky comic shtick that was all too familiar. The playing was pleasant enough, especially a piece by Japanese composer Ryohei Hirose, played on enormous wooden flutes that looked like hollowed out bamboo trees. Midway through the Montclair fugue, there was the sudden boom of a canon, followed by another, and another. Alarmed at first, a few in the audience recognized the official heralding of the arrival of the King’s second child, Princess Lalla Khadija. Between the 21 canon shots, strangers smiled at each other and whispered, “She’s arrived. The Princess has been born!” Though the musicians played on stoically amidst the booms and the twitters as if nothing special were afoot, we couldn’t help but feel that the arrival of the Princess mid-concert gave added might to the consular trumping the Americans received at the hands of the French. Lighten up, is our missive to the US staff. It’s Marrakech, after all, let’s have a bit of fun.

And fun on a grand scale is what the 33,000 or so prisoners that the King pardoned in celebration of his daughter's birth must be having.

My Funny Valentine

2007-02-21T02:01:00.000-08:00

A week or so before Valentine’s Day, Marrakech was swept up in Ashura celebrations. Ashura, which means “tenth” in Arabic, falls on the tenth day of the first month of the Islamic calendar, or Muharram, which is considered the second holiest month after Ramadan. The grandson of the prophet Mohammad was martyred on this day during the Battle of Karbala. At any rate, the martyr is honored with much musical merriment, especially drumming, by the local kids. Drums were on sale at every corner – hourglass shaped instruments with goat or fish skin stretched tightly across their tops – and the kids banged on them long into the night, for several nights, come to think of it, in a tunelesss, trancelike manner that would have been more welcome in a discoteque than our “backyard.”

It wasn’t until a few days later that we heard from Hamoud about Ashura’s other significance: as one of the few, perhaps only, Islamic holidays for women, and for black magic besides. He arrived blushing one morning while Amanda and I chatted over our morning pot of tea. “I have a story,” he offered, “but it’s a very bad story, and I should not tell you.” He might as well have said he had an elixir for immortality in his pocket; we weren’t going to let him out of the house without divulging what promised to be a juicy tale.

On the night of Ashura, he explained, men must be very careful when they sleep with their wives, especially men who have mistresses. Evidently, if a woman suspects that her husband is entertained in beds other than the marital one, she will entreat him to have sex with her that night. Instead of completing the act as if to produce progeny, the woman will collect her husband’s semen and wrap it up in a tissue, which she then hides beneath her pillow. The next day, she brings the specimen to an herbalist that practices black magic and has her create spell of fidelity for her husband. “If you like your mistress,” finished Hamoud, “it’s best not to sleep with your wife on Ashura. Tell her you have a headache,” he said with a laugh.

I’ve given the précis of the story, but let me tell you, when Hamoud first recounted it, he employed many a euphemism, such that Amanda and I weren’t positive we were clear on what he was saying and had to reconfirm details and ask him to elaborate several times. It was the equivalent of having the sex talk with your parents, or like the Friday months ago when Hamoud and a bunch of his friends decided to educate Samuel and I on why men wash before going to mosque on a Friday and why women are regarded as “dirty.” His delicious mortification in the telling led to our own increased embarrassment as the text of the story dawned on us. By the end, we were all scarlet-faced and giggling.

Later, we wondered if the herbalists take advantage of the holiday like the chocolatiers and florists do Valentine’s Day. Do they advertise in their windows, reminding women that there are just three days left until Ashura? Is there price gauging on the 11th when women are lined up at the door, Kleenex in hand, like so many scorned lovers?

When we asked Hamoud if he’d ever fallen under a black magic spell, he shuddered theatrically and said, “Oh, it is powerful, the black magic. I cannot tell . . .” Kiss and tell, indeed!

Older, but not Wiser

2007-02-04T09:30:00.000-08:00

Bundling into Josh and Sandra’s car, we hit the road to Oukaimden for a skiing adventure in celebration of Josh's birthday. With skiers on both sides of our families, hell, you’d think we’d be looking forward to this. But we’ve managed to visit family in Vail for years without hitting the slopes once and the fear of getting hurt while trying to impress myself is real. As we snaked our way above the snow line, a 7-year-old Berber girl danced on the side of the road in time to the music inside our car, and others stood watching the passing stream of cars, which provide the daily entertainment on this bleak hillside.

We crept into the town’s carnival atmosphere with people clogging the streets and made our way past ugly mountain condo architecture to a rental house stocked with skis that would have been deemed old the last time we hit the slopes a decade ago. While we were resigned to skiing in old-school cotton cargo pants, we managed to sweet talk the owner into renting us a couple pairs of Gortex gloves – something we haven’t had in years – and promised to return his equipment by closing at 5pm. Of course, the Dowe-Sandes snickered to ourselves – there was no way we’d still be skiing at that point – a couple of runs and we’d be content to wile away the rest of the afternoon nursing hot chocolates in the sun.

The parking lot, as we drove from the rental shack towards the lift, was littered with aggressive kids trying to sell us cheap trinkets and bags of herbs, of the culinary variety. Josh wondered why none of them has considered a business ferrying skiers and their equipment from the lot up to the lift – a 15-minute walk, which at altitude (Oukaimden is Africa’s highest ski resort!) and in ski boots through 18 inches of dense snow, was a struggle. And on our so-called fresh legs, no less. When Josh suggested the ferrying enterprise to a man selling snacks at the bottom of the lift, he though it was “a good idea, insha’allah.”

A quick warm-up run on the rope tow reminded us that this skiing thing could be fun, but also that skiing is not like riding a bike. If we were once mediocre skiers, those were now our glory days. The spring-like conditions, while nice for a tan, made the snow a challenge. The relentless grooming we remembered from New England mountains was absent, and the deep heavy snow made it nearly impossible for us to turn: something that, as we were soon to remember, is crucial to skiing. But on the sunny, sunny bunny slope we sailed down blithely, taking in the fresh mountain air.

We got our legs warmed up in time for lunch and repaired to Juju, the local French restaurant, for some wild boar and cassoulet and a round of beers. As we basked in the sun, we turned around and saw a cloud role through the mountain dropping visibility to nil. This prompted all sort of cheerful stories about survival and death in the wilderness just as we headed back out.

Though the two of us felt we could honestly say we’d gone skiing, Josh was determined to take the lift to the top. “The view, the view,” he kept repeating. We noticed that something like 90% of the visitors to Oukaimden treat the mountain like a park: they walk, they toss snowballs, they take pictures. What they don't do is ski. In fact, most of the people waiting in the lift line intended to ride the lift to the top for the view and then turn right around and ride it on down. For Moroccan youths, the 45-minute round-trip on the chairlift provides some welcome privacy. As we made our descent, we looked down at the jagged rocks and nearly empty mountain. I would say “empty trails,” except there were none. This was free skiing, pure and simple.

Indeed, as we reached the top the view was stunning as promised and we looked out over a blanket of clouds below us. Josh and Sandra were determined to ski down - the Dowe-Sandes less so. Hadn’t they seen the terrain from the lift, we whispered to each other. “We saw the view. Now let’s take the lift down with everyone else,” I suggested. Somehow, gravity beat out sanity, and Josh lied to a local guide that we were all good skiers. And once you commit, you commit. We attempted a few hairpin turns dodging rocks, and then the mountain opened up before us, wide and steep. Groomed, or with light powder, this would have been a fun challenge. But in the hard, heavy snow, unable to turn, this was ill advised at best. By now it was 4:30, and the sun was off our side of the mountain, leaving a blue light and temperatures dropping precipitously. Each of us improvised our own way of turning, though nobody had better than a 20% success rate. Each failed turn led to a face plant in the snow, and our reactions varied from laughter to scowls. In response to a faint yelp, we turned to see Sandra half-buried in the snow clutching her knee in pain. Her skis sailed past us, gathering speed before they cart wheeled to a stop hundreds of feet below. We’d covered perhaps a twentieth of the slope, and Sandra would now be shuffling the rest of the way on her butt. This was not skiing, in any sense, but rather trying to get down the mountain in one piece, before the sun went down. Break a leg in Vail, and the world’s top orthopedic surgeons wait for you at the bottom on the mountain. Break a leg in Ouikamden, and well, good luck to you.

Would we be mentioned in next year's Darwin Awards? Slowly, and with myriad images of death-by-stupidity in our heads, we tumbled towards the chairlift's midway station, hoping for a ride down. Sandra, meanwhile, was careening down the precipice at a terrifying speed, Josh hot at her heels. With a wrenched knee and no skis, we reasoned a sled was the only way to get her to safety. After prolonged negotiations with the midway station agent, a rescue sled, which Sandra described as very Joseph Buyes, was secured and the elegant injured one dragged across the face of the mountain to the lift. Once Sandra and Caitlin were loaded onto the chairlift and headed down, and despite the last half-hour of terror, Josh suggested, without so much as a wink or a smirk, that we might finish the run.

And so, as we celebrate a birthday with a bit of mountain danger, it seems that while we keep getting older, we do not, as promised, get wiser.

Bubble Bubble Toil and Trouble

2007-02-01T06:39:00.000-08:00

“Let’s go to the hammam today,” Amanda declared over breakfast. Some readers might recall our guest blog entry a few months back from Laura Fitzgerald, describing a rather gruesome trip to a hammam in Fes. Her tale instilled a level of trepidation about venturing through the doors of the steamy local baths that I’ve been unable to overcome. The hammam has actually become a sort of mythical place in my mind where one is manhandled, naked, among staring Moroccan women, skin raked off with a sandpapery gommage glove, too hot water poured over exposed pink flesh followed by the inevitable pounding by the house masseuse. Perhaps not the ideal way to issue in a new day. But hey, this is Amanda’s vacation and we’re looking to push our comfort zones a bit, so I agreed to the excursion.

Hanan, our cleaning woman and protector, set off to the souks in search of the necessary hammam accoutrements. She returned with two plastic buckets, bubblegum pink flip-flops (how she managed to find size 10s in a country where women top out at around five feet and have shoes the length of my hand attests to her myriad skills), gommage gloves, a plastic bag filled with gooey black soap, several softer hand mitts for regular soaping, a plastic mat that might have been a yoga mat but for its lurid palm-tree print, and a pair of small plastic bowls – also pink – used for scooping water from the larger buckets. We packed up our own towels, shampoo and moisturizer and headed over to the Ben Slimane hammam, which is just around the corner from our house. One of my favorite smells on the route to and from our house is the clean, soapy smell that emanates from the hammam, along with that of the burning wood used to heat its chambers. Most days, there’s a wagon mounded with wood chips parked at its door, its mule lazily chomping on a pile of greens.

Upon entering, we paid 8 dirhams apiece and were ushered into a changing room, where we stripped to our skivvies and then modestly tied oversized white bath towels around our bodies before dropping off our bags at the “coat check” (another 20 dirhams). Modesty didn’t last long. No sooner had we entered the first steam room, where we’d been led by a rotund headscarved woman of indeterminate middle age, than she grabbed our towels and unfurled us like two reluctant flags. A small naked boy of about five looked up at us in horror. “Where have these two white aliens descended from, and mummy make them disappear,” his look said.

It’s worth noting that the temperature outside (and inside our indoor-outdoor house) is in the low 60s these days, and the nights are downright freezing. Amanda has gamely doubled up her socks and donned a djellabah – this is a girl with significant NOLS experience, e.g., she knows how to stave off hypothermia – but even so, we were both looking forward to the warmth of the hammam. Within minutes of entering the first steamy room, our body temperature had gone up at least 10 degrees, and we weren’t sure if the heat or the embarrassment had turned our skin Marrakech red.

“It’s kinda like learning how to take a bath again, isn’t it?” Amanda asked as the various hammam staffers and clients directed us to fill our buckets from the scalding tap, cop a squat on our yoga mat, and then slather our now perspiring bodies with gooey black soap. An eighteen-year-old girl with perfect skin and perky breasts of the sort that inspire both envy and nostalgia cozied up to us and offered to help with the gommage, or luffahing, that follows the black soap application. At this point, we were both sitting cross-legged on the mat in a room with about 20 other woman of all shapes and ages in various stages of bath. Steam rose from the tile floor and from the buckets of water littered about the room. For the first time in Morocco, we felt part of a community of women and instead of averting their eyes and shrinking away from us as most do on the streets, they adopted us, admittedly like two curiosities, into their inner sanctum. Stripped down to our undies, maybe we’re all just girls who relish a break from the constraints of the outside world and the chance to chat and laugh without inhibition.

After Amanda and I had done what we thought was a thorough sluffing, we started in on the shampoo, only to have a very large, doughy woman with the most enormous pillowy breasts I’ve ever seen – terrifying, to be frank – wag her finger at us and insist on continuing the gommage that we’d, in her mind, not properly finished. Furious debate over the price of said services ensued between the marshmellowy woman and our nubile friend, who was incensed about the apparent attempt to gauge the newbies. I wanted to call off the negotiations, mostly because the verbal battle seemed so incongruous in this world of steamy relaxation, but to be honest, I was so over heated I could hardly think. Up first, I succumbed to her rough ministerings. Did I mention that she was fully naked, by the way? We thought the underwear rule was sacrosanct! First she grabbed my arm, driving my hand into her tummy-breast rolls, and began raking the gommage glove down my inner arm, pausing every now and then to show me the vast quantities of skin she’d removed. Not sure whether to be further embarrassed at the condition of my skin, or impressed with her work, I responded with a simple, “oh la, la,” which seemed to please her. Next, she flipped me onto my back and I found my head resting on her inner thigh as she worked away on my stomach and sides. This, I felt, is the crucial test: fight or flight . . . or just succumb. I opted to embrace the ludicrous scenario, imagining myself melting into the soap-scented vapors, and grateful that I’d been first to go “under the glove.” “Poor Amanda,” I thought, who’d watched the proceedings in silent dismay, “you’re up next!” Her efforts at distracting our glove-wielding tormentor by scurrying to and from the tap, filling every water bucket in sight with boiling water, failed, and soon she was splayed out on the steaming tiles with the woman’s knee on her sternum. Needless to say, the No Cameras Allowed policy was a real bummer, but something tells me this experience will remained burned into our mind’s eye.

You know the story about the frog, who, when put in a pot of tepid water that is then heated to boiling, will remain in the pot unable to move until he has been poached? Well, somewhere between the last scrape of the gommage glove and the dousing with a bucket of hot water that followed, Amanda’s and my eyes locked and we knew it was time to get out of the steam room or we risked boiling ourselves. We rushed to the outer changing room, where it was an easy 40 degrees cooler and lay back against the benches, huffing and puffing as if we’d just run a 10K. A number of the women who moments earlier were laughing with us in the baths, were now getting dressed and reaffixing headscarves, their body language indicating that we’d re-crossed the line and our old roles resumed.

Cold Mountain

2007-01-28T05:06:00.000-08:00

I grew up in Maine. I know from snow. I know to look out for black ice on the roads in winter. And I know how to handle a car in storm conditions: to turn the wheel into a spin; to flip the transmission into neutral if you feel yourself loosing control . . . or so I thought.

Driving home from our desert adventure, Amanda and I took a two hundred kilometer detour to see the red rock formations of the Dades Gorge before heading back to Marrakech. She shot off a couple of rolls of 120-milimeter film amidst the Mars-like outcroppings and we hit the road. Big deal, we figured, as long as we had Marrakech in our sights by dark, we’d be in fine shape to return the rental car on time. We might even, if we drove fast enough, miss the Friday night traffic heading into the city.

Unfortunately, speed turned out to be an issue as we entered the opening twists of the Tizi-n-Tichka pass. I’d just passed an ancient, black smoke-belching Honda truck (along with four other cars, mind you), when I was waved down by a police roadblock. I’m ashamed to say it was my second of the journey; I’d blown by a stop sign near Tamegroute two days earlier and had gotten off with a stern warning. Though a speed gun was not in evidence and I wondered why it was that the two cars before me had been blithely waved on by the gendarmes, I grudgingly pulled onto the gravely shoulder. The officer approached our car with the universal police swagger and demanded my papers. My driver’s license, it turns out, had expired a few months ago, something we discovered when we rented the car, so Amanda, ever quick on her feet, handed me hers, which I passed off as my own. I can’t deny a certain amusement in playing on the ethnic stereotyping that I normally find so frustrating, e.g., that every Westerner looks the same to Moroccans. Despite Amanda’s blue eyes and long blond hair, the officer didn’t bat an eye at my fake ID. He was too intent on turning a profit. “Vitesse excessive,” admonished the cop, demanding a 400-dirham fine, though we weren’t presented with any ticket. Not only did he want money, he was keen on knowing what I do for work in Marrakech. “Nothing,” I reasoned, might come off as a bit cheeky, not to mention embarrassingly banal, so after much pressing, I told him I was a writer. “Oh,” he said, as if I might name a book title that shared space on his bookshelf at home with the Koran. “But I’m not published, and nothing I write is any good,” I explained. Never has the sad truth served me so well. The fellow, his face awash in pity, actually returned 300 of the 400 dirhams. I think he muttered something about getting myself a few classes, but I can’t be sure.

Amanda and I were so excited that the license ruse had worked and that we’d been returned three-quarters of our fine, we raced up the pass on an adrenaline high. I ought to have clued into potential problems when Sam, who’d phoned earlier in the day from Marrakech, said that it was rainy and cold in the city. But no, it wasn’t until we rounded a bend and noticed a spectacular rainbow peeking out from dark clouds that had descended over the top of the pass like a shroud. Snowflakes soon followed, and then the flakes turned into a flurry, which swept itself into a full-blown blizzard. Visibility shrank to 20 feet as we ticked off kilometers (80 left on the pass!) in hushed, worried voices. At least we had company. The road was clogged with 4x4s returning from real desert adventures, as well as the ubiquitous Honda trucks laden with people and a few old Renaults that looked as if the traversing the pass would present a challenge even in the best of conditions. At a certain point, my nerves just couldn’t take it any more. Even though we could no longer see the precipitous drops on either side of the road, I knew they were there and couldn’t fight the image of us careening off the side and into the void. I don’t want to do a Thelma and Louise, I thought. No, I wanted desperately to click my ruby heels together and get outa Oz.

Amanda, sensing my distress and probably fearing for her own life, decided it was time to switch drivers. We pulled into a café at the top of the pass and hurriedly switched seats, but not before we were each covered in sleet. As we were pulling out, several policemen in a Land Cruiser (with chains on its wheels!) pulled up beside us. “Do you think we’ll make it down in this car?” we asked. “Practically,” was their discomforting reply. “Practically,” we repeated, looking at each other in terror. But our options were continue on down the side of the mountain, or turn around and face the same descent on the opposite side. We forged ahead. And the policemen allowed just a few cars to follow us before closing the pass.

With the car in second, we slunk down the route at first 30 and then 20 and finally 10 kilometers per hour. In an effort to keep our nerves under control, Amanda chatted and I took pictures, lots and lots of pictures. There were moments of glee, like when a flock of seagulls burst in front of the car as if they’d been blown in from the Atlantic with the storm. Their whiteness was difficult to discern amidst the snow until their wings were nearly dusting our car. And moments of panic. After clearing the snowline, we drove for several kilometers on a clean road, marveling at the red of the valley set off by evergreens, only to notice seconds later that the road twisted back up into another series of hairpin turns above the snowline. Our reprieve would be brief.

An hour and a half later, we’d made it over the second snow-covered pass, Amanda’s legs and arms tight from pumping the brakes and clutching the wheel. As we once again hit bare road, we felt an enormous surge of exhilaration. Nature, when she gets herself worked up, can be magnificent and it was glorious (in retrospect) to be overcome with a fear, a joyful powerless panic, and a measure of awe.

Palm Heaven

2007-01-27T05:19:00.000-08:00

Driving around Morocco we’ve come upon palm trees sprouting in the middle of the road on many occasions. Out in the countryside, we tend to think nothing of it, though in the middle of Marrakech, when our taxi driver swerves - horn blaring - into oncoming traffic to avoid a palm tree protected by an enormous brick planter, it’s a bit unnerving.

It turns out, that it is against the law to cut down a palm tree in Morocco, and that only the King can make exceptions (the US Embassy was allowed to cut down two palms, but only because they were male trees, and did not produce seeds.) The trees provide food and shade, and the fronds are used extensively in construction. Their beauty is considered part of the heritage of the country, so for one person to cut what belongs to all Moroccans is prohibited.

In fact, large tracts of land surrounding Marrakech, which seem ideal for building, remain vacant in the midst of a construction boom, and the culprit seems to be an abundance of palm trees. Palms ringing the perimeter of a piece of land effectively guard it from development, and too many palms dotting a plot make it difficult to design a building that can avoid the trees.

In the meantime, in a bustling city, the exhilaration of sharing the road with pedestrians, cyclists, mopeds, donkey carts, horse carriages, taxis, buses and more is made even more extreme, as all of the above must remain alert to finding a palm in the path.

Lots a Sand

2007-01-25T13:36:00.000-08:00

Former college roommate Amanda is visiting from New York and on her Morocco hit list for the two-week visit were desert and mountains. We’ve found it’s good to jump into the activities because two weeks can evaporate quickly and since Morocco is quite vast, you have to factor in significant travel time for certain sights. So, yesterday we set off on a three-day trek to rub noses with the sands of the Sahara. We took the same twisty Tizi-n-Tichka route south over the High Atlas to Ouarzazate that Sam and I had traveled several weeks ago, and then tacked on another 200 kilometers south to Zagora. The repeat trek was less harrowing for me than the first time we negotiated the pass. We wound through more fabulous rock formations in the Valee du Draa, narrowly avoiding the kids selling dates and gemstones that rushed the car as we tried to maneuver the switch-back curves. Amanda captured (though she told me photographers take umbrage with the word “capture” when referring to shots) the dramatic gorges with her new medium-format camera, which is very cool. So cool, in fact, that a middle-aged, fat and toothless French tourist (didn’t know the French ever came that way!) stopped her van and waddled over to us to ask about the camera. She explained that she has one like it and that she and her husband had recently bought a place in Ouarzazate. Go figure.

When we arrived in Zagora, we drove through the city’s main drag to the vast palmerie, or palm grove, where our small maison d’hotes is situated. No sooner had I put the car in park than we found ourselves swarmed by bedraggled boys needling us for pens or candy. I know I won’t win any points with this one, but kids can be scary and manipulative and these boys had a predatory air that creeped us out. Their desperation was palpable, like hungry hyenas circling a bloody carcass. Again, Morocco has made us examine the conflicting emotions of being defensive and rude to threatening youths and feeling like we’d like to reach out and help them however we might be able. Even though we’d been warned that tourists are often “accosted” in Zagora, it’s still discouraging to feel that we’ll never be more than a possible swindle to these kids. But we are just tourists passing through town and I guess we’re naïve to think any kind of meaningful, genuine interaction is possible. Fortunately, the inns portly bellman shuffled out in his slippers and shooed the boys away as he grabbed our bags and whisked us inside. Mint tea and cookies in the on the inn’s balcony, overlooking a quiet garden with palms, olive trees and a small pool, relieved some of our road fatigue.

We opted for dinner at the inn and had a brief nap before settling down to our table in the living room beside a cheery fire. A tagine of carrots and olives, the carrots almost caramelized in a buttery sauce, accompanied a tagine made of kefta meatballs in a tomato sauce. We’d skipped lunch and hungrily devoured both tagines to the bellman’s pleasure. Afterwards, up in our second-floor room, with windows overlooking the palmerie and a private balcony, we watched two episodes of Gray’s Anatomy on the laptop before falling asleep. There’s something absurd, yet comforting, about tuning into an American TV show when you’re in Morocco, miles from anywhere on the edge of the Sahara.

When we made it to the dunes, or rather THE dune at Tinfou, we were a bit underwhelmed. From a distance, the dune looked like a silly Disney-esque installation on the edge of a seemingly endless flat road. Beyond, a steep plateau stretched in a crescent across the horizon, as if just beyond its south face the Sahara might spread majestically before us. It also appeared as if the plateau was acting as a natural barrier, keeping the sands at bay. So how, we wondered, did the Tinfou dune come to be?

Well, on closer inspection the dune was quite giant, at least 300 feet high, and after refusing all of the pesky camel drivers, we hiked to the top and enjoyed a nice squat with a view of the dune’s sensual undulations. Were we hoping for a sea of curvaceous dunes? Sure. But with some clever photography and the right attitudes, we figured we could tell of a real Sahara sighting. It turns out that Merzuga and the massive Erg Chebbi dunes (where films like Lawrence of Arabia were shot) are 400 kilometers from Ouarzazate; since our trip already involves around 1200 kilometers, we made the emotional decision atop Tinfou to save Chebbi for another time. We’ll always have Tinfou.

Oh la, la

2007-01-20T09:50:00.000-08:00

A last-minute trip to France, which involved me tagging along on a trip with my mother and her best friend since childhood, proved a much-needed restorative. France is like that, and so is family, for that matter. I had the chance to reconnect with my mother’s friend’s daughter, a girl I hadn’t seen in 14 years, but with whom I’d spent many summer holidays and even an ill-fated winter expedition to Quebec which resulted in ear infections. Within the space of just hours, we had the lucky fate of falling in like sisters, as if hardly a day had passed since our last visit. Despite husbands and kids and new cities, the things we think change us so much, we seemed quite familiar to one another, grown into the skins we were already wearing as kids. Young skin may look taut and fresh, but most of the time it has hidden wrinkles and pouches that need plumping with age.

Paris, and Versailles, where my new-old friend lives a literal stone’s throw from the Chateau, greeted us with customary gray, misty skies, which we gamely called “quite nice,” and “not too cold.” That’s to say, we weren’t going to let a little winter weather spoil our fun. Frantic to arrive with my Third World wardrobe clean at the very least, I’d washed all of my trousers the night before leaving Marrakech only to find that some midnight bandits had scaled our terrace and snitched them from the clothesline. Besides the comic image of a Moroccan teen wearing my low-cut Chip and Pepper jeans beneath his djellabah, I was peeved. But in the damp chill, my last pair of jeans, faded Converse sneakers and wool pea coat proved a winning outfit for our first foray into Paris. We took the RER from Versailles with my friend’s two kids in tow; her children possess rare patience and manners, and we put them to the test with miles of window shopping and sight-seeing. Armed with steaming nutella crepes and cafés au lait, and at my Mum’s insistence, we piled onto a bateau mouche and rode the choppy, gray waters of the Seine past the Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Musee d’Orsay, Notre Dame and a host of must-sees. It was touristy and fun and perfect with kids. From there we trotted from Les Invalides through the arrondisements of the Rive Gauche to St. Michel, popping in for a lunch of hearty lentils and sausage. Afterwards, we shopped for used paperbacks at a small English-language bookstore called San Francisco near the much-touted Comptoir restaurant; serendipitously, I’d made the chef’s chestnut-celery root soup from a recipe in Food & Wine magazine just a few days before coming to France.

The next day, Mum and I set out alone for a marathon tour of Paris, complete with nostalgic peeks at an apartment I’d once rented on the Rue Visconti and favorite haunts from the time I’d spent in the city during college and thereafter – the marche on the Rue de Seine, the Madeleine church and chic design stores of the St. Germains des Pres. Why is it that everything in Paris, whether a simple brioche in a pastry store window or a settee covered in Pierre Frey fabric, is so damn chic?

When lunchtime rolled around, I was incapable of making a decision about where to eat, examining the menu and ambience of a dozen bistros before we settled on what I hoped would be the perfect neighborhood spot. It was to be our only day together in Paris and for some reason, I felt that much was riding on our lunch venue. As if conversation would be wittier, more intimate and memorable if we were nestled into just the right banquette. Thankfully, the wee restaurant was perfect, and after a rich slice of rabbit terrine, chicken breast in a cream-mustard sauce and berry crumble, we were ready to hit the streets again. We took in Monet’s water lillies at the Orangerie, which has just reopened after a near-decade renovation. Displayed just four to a room, the massive canvases floated on the oval walls beneath an elegant skylight. Even for one who doesn’t love Monet, the effect was commanding – serene and energized at the same time. Downstairs, where the private collection of XX is hung, Mum spotted one of her favorite paintings, a Georges La Tour image of a girl holding a candle up to an old man’s face, the light from the candle spilling magically from between her fingers. The image sated and fortified us like the perfect pain au chocolat we’d consumed that morning for breakfast. We returned to Versailles with throbbing feet, but feeling quite alive.

Friday is market day in Versailles and I attacked the cheese vendors with terrifying zeal. One contingency of the trip was the promise of mounds of stinky, gooey unpasteurized cheese for Sam, who had to remain behind in Marrakech for work. “Just bring me some cheese, Cait, lots and lots of cheese,” he’d pleaded. Determined to induce glee, if perhaps a twinge of lactose intolerance, I had the poor cheese vendor sweating as she raced from one end of the stall to the other, her arms laden with my purchases. Five kilos (yes, that’s over 10 pounds!) later, I had two grocery bags stuffed with all manner of goat, sheep and cow goodness, including Camembert, Vieux Comte, Morbier, Bleu d’Auvergne, aged Gouda, Brillat-Savarin, and on and on. Arteries be damned!

Post market madness, we retired to the near-deserted gardens of Versailles, where the shrouded statues looked like eerie apparitions amidst the military precision of the evergreen shrubbery. My friend’s children skipped along the canals, visiting their favorite statues (the lions, of course!) like the old pros that they are. I’m sure Marie would have been pleased with the care they took to scratch the ears of her goats and throw bread to the ducks in the pond at the Hameau. I don’t care how many times you wander in the footsteps of Louis and Marie through these manicured gardens, the place is just spectacular and to be jaded would be to be dead.

At the risk of boring with the blow by blow of the trip, I’m leaving it at that. Suffice it to say that I could not have dreamed up a more satisfying voyage and visit for my first one outside of Morocco in eight months. Mum, Betsy, Jill, Shea and Finn, merci, merci, merci beaucoup!

Gorge-ous

2007-01-08T15:25:00.000-08:00

Three hundred miles of driving is enough to wear you out, but when you’re in Morocco, it’s also enough to see some gorgeous, varied countryside.

The Atlas Mountains are dry on their sunny south side, but on the cool north side, snow clings to the ground. We expected our entire drive to be like the beautiful bleak of the American West, and were surprised over and over as we drove through thick forests of fir. The roads were empty save one thing; every few miles we passed people selling gems from the local terrain. Sometimes an actual store had been erected, but more often it was a solitary roadside table piled high with gems and fossils or a young man frantically waving his lone geode in the sunlight, hoping to slow a passing tourist. Amethyst, quartz, indigo, peridot. It was remarkable to see such profusions of color coming from dusty brown hills.

We made our way across small streams where women squatted washing their clothes and drying them on the banks, and saw birch trees for the first time in Morocco. As we wove up into the Dades Gorge where wood smoke clung to the sides of the hills, we passed men plowing small fields with pairs of mules and plows that looked like something from Little House on the Prairie.

The Dades Gorge twisted back and forth taking us through narrow canyon walls of a deep brick red. Having seen the Ait Ben Haddou Kasbah in its glory, it was interesting to pass several smaller and more run-down kasbahs on the route. Because these dwellings are made of local earth, we passed by many without noticing them, camouflaged as they were.

As red as the drive up the Dades is, the drive up the Todra is green, perched in the treetops of a 35-kilometer ribbon of palmerie. At the end of the road in Todra (beyond which you can continue in a 4x4 but not in our miniature Hyundai) we stopped for lunch at Les Roches, a small hotel owned by a friend of a friend. It sits just above the riverbed, with 350-meter high rocks rising on each side. We comment on the beauty to the owner, and while he agrees, he explains how difficult life here is. When it rains, many surrounding mountains drain into the gorge, and the water lever can rise 10-15 feet in five hours. Though the government has installed culverts and solid concrete and rebar roads, the water proves too strong - again and again washing them away, and sometimes taking pieces of the hotel as well.

We’ve heard that this part of Morocco is predominantly Berber, and we see some Berber graffiti on the walls of the gorge as well as a road sign written in both Arabic and Berber.

We paused in Tineghir. where we toured through communal farming plots, past a derelict Kasbah, used mainly for its well, and stopped in the old Jewish cemetery. While Morocco was once home to a large and robust Jewish population, beginning in the late 1950s over 300,000 emigrated (mainly to Israel and Canada) and the sad, untended cemetery here is surrounded by encroaching industrial buildings. Because of a Moroccan law allowing people to build on top of cemeteries if there have been no interments in three generations, it seems that the fate of the small grave stones here and the remains they mark is sealed.

Rock the Kasbah

2007-01-07T08:30:00.000-08:00

It's hard for us to hear the word kasbah without thinking of The Clash's song, though any rockin’ going on with or without Shareef's approval is of the fully acoustic variety, as electricity has not yet arrived.

Thirty kilometers north of Ouarzazate, past the camel crossing signs, sits the impressive Kasbah Ait Ben Haddou. The countryside of Morocco is dotted with kasbahs, a word which seems to help multiple definitions, but which, south of the Atlas Mountains, means a fortified feudal village of several dozen house built around a castle and made of pisé, a mixture of mud and straw. This mixture, while beautiful, is not exactly durable and requires constant upkeep. This makes it hard to date buildings and something that appears a thousand years old in style might be less than a hundred years old, but left ravaged by weather. We’ve heard than warring tribes would attack each other’s kasbahs not with fire, but with water; if you could divert enough water, you could simply wash away your enemy’s fortifications.

Ait Ben Haddou, situated on the bank of a small river, is considered one of the better examples of a remaining kasbah, though the village has turned from agriculture and trade to tourism, supplementing from time to time by renting itself as a set for movies like Lawrence of Arabia and Gladiator.

We hired a guide, who’s main job seemed to be keeping other guides at bay, and directing the route we climbed, rather than explaining much about the kasbah. He points out the “streets” – formerly dirt, but now paved with stones – which UNESCO renovated several yeas ago. He notes with a bit of disdain that they brought in 200 workers to fix the streets, while all around houses are crumbing to the ground.

Who knows what we might have learned with a better guide or more time perusing the guidebooks, but on a crisp January afternoon, it was a sight to behold. Quiet and serene with views extending miles in all directions, all thoghts of rockin' vanished as we headed back down the hill for lunch.

Two for the Road

2007-01-05T09:30:00.000-08:00

This weekend, we drove nearly 1000 kilometers in a zippy little Hyundai over the High Atlas Mountains to Ouarzazate, the Dades Canyon and then on to the Todra Gorge in southeastern Morocco. The route was a bit harrowing. About 50 kilometers out of Marrakech, the road starts to twist and turn into the mountains, stomach-turning switchbacks that continue long after the adrenaline rush subsides. “Make it stop, make it stop,” we chanted. We were divided on what was scarier: the guardrail-less hairpins with vertigo-inspiring vertical drops, or the yahoo cab and bus drivers that take the turns at seemingly impossible speeds. Why is it impossible to capture that sense of vertigo in a photo?

At one point, feeling confident, we careened around a curve with the wheels screeching, only to find ourselves being passed simultaneously by both a car and a small pickup truck filled with men blithely holding onto the cage. Speed: 80 kilometers/hour. Distance between hairpins: 50 meters. Why torture ourselves in this way? The extreme beauty of the route is the only answer. In a matter of hours, we passed through canyons and toppled over mountains that reminded us of the Rockies, Lake Tahoe, the red rock of Moab and the unrelenting vastness of Utah. Morocco is grand. Morocco is gorgeous.

On the Town

2007-01-03T03:50:00.000-08:00

To say that we are not night people is, well, to indulge in gross understatement. While Marrakech may be likened to Ibiza in terms of its burgeoning all-night club scene, we’d be hard pressed to tell you the names of three, okay maybe two, venues for music and dancing. Our idea of a nice night out is a movie and dinner at CdL, or maybe a small dinner party. Even the vernissages, or art openings, end by 9 p.m., promising that we’re home in bed with a book or movie by 10 p.m.

Last week, though, with our new acquaintance Andy as our chaperone, we dispensed with bedtime and tasted the Marrakech scene. Andy’s nocturnal escapades in Marrakech had preceded our introduction to him by several months. This is a guy who splits his time between New York and sub-Saharan Africa, but Marrakech is where he comes to “go out.” Andy’s command of its sleazy bar scene seemed near-epic as too his stamina and penchant for female company. Needless to say, we found ourselves both in awe and in slight fear of this mythic being. The real thing, let me tell you, did not disappoint.

Our first introduction to Andy was at a quiet dinner party, but even then, the gauntlet had been thrown. A night out on the town was inevitable. We steeled ourselves and called Andy a few days after Christmas, inviting him to meet up with us at a rather forlorn English-style pub called The Chesterfield, located on the second floor of a hotel on Avenue Mohammed V. The Chesterfield serves beer on tap, which is a treat, and its horrible wood paneling and claustrophobically low, smoke-stained ceilings, we hoped, would give us some seedy cred with Andy.

After a few rounds, we moved on to a club called the Montecristo, where, sure enough, Samuel was able to order a fat cigar that he puffed on the rest of the night. Here we listened to a few loud bands, crooning away in Arabic, and were pleased to have Andy confirm our suspicion that Lulu and I were the only women in the house not charging for their company. We’ve seen countless kaftan and djellabah shops, but where, I wondered, does one buy a rubber dress in Marrakech? The Marrakech dress code we witnessed here, after dark, is certainly a far cry from the traditional look in the Medina. And Lulu was the first to notice that Paris Hilton videos were playing on a large screen behind the band; the tabloid tart’s reaches have extended, it seems, if not to the world, than at least to the great metropolises of North Africa.

Next up was a disco called Teatro, attached to a hotel and casino in the Hivernage neighborhood. As Samuel and I waited for Lulu and Andy to arrive in their cab, we observed legions of emaciated, scantily clad French girls, as well as slick, jet-set Moroccans, waiting in line for the club. As our experience at the film festival taught us, if you look determined enough, you can breeze through any line. And so we did. When Lulu and Andy arrived, we muscled our way through the crowd and two bouncers as if Amy Sacco were a personal friend and we’d just arrived at the door to Bungalow 8. The disco’s cover charge was 150 dirhams, which is 50% more than it costs to go to see the National Symphony; imagine what the cost ratio would be in London or New York. For the average Moroccan, whose salary is about 2000 dirhams per month, this is a lot of cash. So who are these kids? Do they spend a night on the town, stumbling into their local mosques for the 6 a.m. prayer? With Eid around the corner, we wondered if these kids are as excited about the ram sacrifice as the Moroccans we see in our neighborhood during the day.

The expected techno music inside was absolutely deafening – no exaggeration as Samuel spent the next 24 hours yelling “What?” every time someone spoke to him. Despite the chill outside, we were immediately sweating as bodies crushed around us. Okay, our wool sweaters and jackets (attire more appropriate for a dog-sledding adventure than a night of clubbing) didn’t help. Several hours and innumerable embarrassing dance moves later, Samuel and I finally had to call it quits. My watch showed an impressive 3:15 a.m. as we stumbled into a cab.

The next morning, we learned that Andy and Lulu had gone on to one or two additional spots and hadn’t cried “uncle” until a rather impressive 7 a.m. Each of them was full and pulsing with 20-something Moroccans. Damn the stamina of youth! Though later, Andy did concede that he’d spent the entire day in bed recovering. Even the immortals need a day of rest now and again.

Eid el Kabir

2006-12-31T10:30:00.000-08:00

First off, we’re back. After a three-week hiatus from the blog, we’re online again with a few new stories. The Sandes clan has departed, and Dar Noury, which echoed for two weeks with Lulu’s new Damien Rice CDs and chatter from all the bedrooms, seems cold and quiet and a bit lonely. A new acquaintance recently asked if we’d moved to Marrakech to escape for a while. In some ways, the answer is yes, at least to escape from our comfortable daily routine. What the holiday visit from Samuel’s family has taught us, however, is that you really can’t escape most things. “Wherever you go, there you are,” is an adage as true as it is damning. You can’t escape yourself.

But I digress.

Eid El Kebir, or “the big fete,” which was celebrated here in Marrakech on December 31st is another story of escape. Eid commemorates the New Year and the story of Abraham and his son, which is featured in both the Koran and the Bible. In it, Abraham is asked by God to show his love by sacrificing his son: Isaac in the Bible, Ismail in the Koran. We won’t dwell on the obvious question: What God would ever ask for such a sacrifice? Well, instead of killing his son, Abraham slaughters a sheep. Smart man. To celebrate Eid, every Muslim family buys and slaughters a ram. Several days of feasting and revelry follow.

Today’s story is one of logistics. Like I said, every Muslim family (or those with the means to buy a ram which costs about around $400, which represents several months’ wages for most Moroccans) partakes in this high-holiday tradition. Leading up to the day, the Medina has been teeming with just-purchased rams being taken to homes by every means imaginable – piled into donkey carts, draped over the shoulders’ of men, tethered to bicycles, and my personal favorite, “driven,” as if a wheelbarrow, with hind quarters held aloft by the proud, smiling owner. There are ram auctions at all of the supermarkets where the horned beasts are priced by the kilogram (usually between 38 and 45 dirhams/kilo). Along with the rams themselves are all of the necessary accoutrements. There are make-shift vendors selling onions, parsley and charcoal, which will be used to grill the rams’ heads on the first day of the fete. There are knife sharpening stations with enormous stone wheels grinding away at giant blades, the instrument used to slice the rams’ necks on Eid. Rubber boots and heavy plastic aprons are also on offer. Let’s not forget the realities of this endeavor; some might even remember an earlier post in which we described our plumber’s great pride in our drains. “When you slaughter your ram,” he explained, “these drains won’t clog [with blood] – guaranteed!” The easy extrapolation is that others, unfortunately, do. While the general tenor around Eid is excitement and pride, not to mention a great show of Muslim concern for those with fewer means since it is customary to share your ram with the homeless and those less fortunate, I cannot help but feel a small pang as we walk past groups of boys selling mounds of hay and oats in small plastic bags. The last supper for the limpid-eyed, wooly moutons.

Eid begins with the King, who is head of both the Kingdom and the country’s 30-million-or-so Muslims, slaughtering his ram on national TV. This happens at about 9 a.m., though we can’t vouch for this as we don’t have a TV and were, at the appointed hour, in a minivan headed to the airport with Samuel’s parents. Hamoud, when he arrived to collect us, shared the sad news that one family’s ram had expired the night before and had been left beside the fountain in Hamoud’s neighborhood for the garbage man to collect. Sidebar: From a friend who lived in Morocco in the 70s, we learned that many government workers are given a ram stipend, kinda like a year-end bonus, to purchase a ram for Eid. He told us that one year, just days before Eid, his secretary came to him to say that the office was taking up a collection for Omar, a fellow employee, to buy a ram. “But didn’t Omar get the stipend?” he asked. “Yes,” she replied, “but Omar lives in a fourth-floor apartment and his ram jumped over the edge, committing suicide.” Driving through the near-empty streets in the gray, early-morning light to the airport, we saw metal bed frames laid over coal fires on the sidewalks – the communal grill stations that are set up throughout the Medina.

A second sidebar: When we asked Hamoud what he thought about Saddam being hung on Eid, he shook his head and said that while he understood that the execution needed to happen, he was sorry that the timing made it appear as if Saddam were being sacrificed like a ram. It minimizes Saddam’s atrocities and also sheds a palor on the Muslim celebration. “It is time to start a new book,” he said, which we take to mean a new chapter. Hear, hear!

That afternoon, as we relaxed with Samuel’s siblings in front of an impressive array of Christmas-present DVDs, we got the occasional whiff of burning fires and grilled meat. When we went up to the terrace that night for our own New Year’s celebration – pizza, beer and some rousing rounds of Celebrity – a fine black ash had settled on the upholstery and the orange glow of dwindling coal fires created a patchwork of light in the inky night.

We didn’t hear the sheeps’ cries as they were killed that morning, nor did the Medina streets subsequently run with blood as we’d been warned. For sheltered Americans used to buying meat in sealed plastic from a grocery store cooler, though, the day was a sobering reminder of the life that precedes a plate of osso buco.

(Bad shot of a man treating his ram to a shoulder ride.)

Prickly

2006-12-18T04:51:00.000-08:00

It's no secret that Samuel has a certain design streak. Admittedly, many of his ideas get a raised eyebrow at first, but often, once installed, or built, or painted, the effect is room defining, in the best way. A month or so ago, we found a few round mirrors at the flea market and Samuel announced that he was going to transform their ho-hum wooden frames by lining them with porcupine quills, like a crown of thorns, only these, with their black and white striations, much lovelier than Christ’s bothersome thistles.

Hamoud assured us that porcupines are native to Morocco, and suggested that we visit the “Berber pharmacies,” or herbalists, ubiquitous in the souks. Their shops are filled with all sorts of exotic treats, some reputed for white and even black magic. We have a friend at one, a sweet Moroccan in his early twenties who speaks fairly good English and claims to have a girlfriend from Florida who is a teacher at the American School. Anyway, Zacharia doesn’t have any when we pay him a visit with our odd request, but promises to procure the quills from his sources in the countryside. In the meantime, Samuel locates some at another herbalist and purchases 200 at 2 dirhams apiece. Based on our fuzzy math, it seems we’ll need about 600 quills to encircle one mirror.

After a week or so, we check back in with Zach and he proudly races to the back of his shop, returning with a porcupine pelt with its quills attached. “Ah,” we say, “but we only need the quills.” “No problem,” says Zach, “just soak the hide in hot water and the quills should pull free.” It’s one of those moments like when you swear off beef after reading about slaughterhouse conditions. The idea of soaking the pelt in hot water until the skin and flesh decide to give up the quills is, well, a bit disgusting. Not only that, but it’s impossible to tell how many quills are on the hide. Samuel makes a quick calculation – a guess, really – and he and Zach reach a price. “If I’m right, we just got a good bargain,” says Sam, “but if not, we just paid too much for the quills, plus I’ve got to do all this work.” You said it, buster, not me.

The next day, Sam gamely does set to work, filling a plastic bucket with hot water and lowering the vile pelt into it. After an hour, he reaches in and pulls the steaming hide from the water and begins the delicate, and immensely painful, extrication of quills. After a minute, Sam begs me to look around for some rubber gloves; I think the task even has him a tad grossed out. And his hands are already red with welts from the prickly quills. I remember my mother tenderly disengaging quills from the mouth of our Labrador retriever, but that was in Maine, where she’d come by them honestly, out protecting our property from rodent intruders. Sam’s welts are self-inflicted and I wonder if his high-concept mirror design merits the pain.

Oh, and not only did the quill extraction take days, each quill, once pulled out, then needed to be cleaned of the flesh that clung to one end and polished with cooking oil. Another ghastly chore for our fearless decorator. Afterwards, Samuel arranged all of the quills, totaling nearly 600, by size and color in glass jars, which have become a fixture on our desk. For days, I’ve asked Sam: “Should we affix the quills to the mirror today – get that thing hung in our bathroom?” “Hmm, maybe,” he replies, distractedly. I’m worried the porcupine quill mirror, like other creative projects involving a fair bit of effort and grit, might remain unfinished, the hard part’s over, after all. Maybe the mirror will be left to be discovered in a dusty closet years from now like a great unfinished masterpiece. “Oh, yeah, that was during his Moroccan period,” some descendant might say when the jars of quills are unearthed.

Two Brothers

2006-12-06T10:26:00.000-08:00

Every few weeks, we make a trip to the flea market at Bab El Khemis to check out what’s new at our favorite stalls. Two of our preferred haunts are stalls manned by two brothers, Abdelselik and M’hamoud. One is on a very seedy side alley, where you literally pick your way around piles of old doors, mounds of twisted rebar, broken appliances and quasi-shelters that function much like a homeless tent village. M’hamoud runs this shop and he specializes in 60s and 70s lighting with some other oddball stuff thrown in – ice buckets, vases, picture frames, bad paintings, and the like.

Abdelselik’s stall is on one of the main routes that radiate from the market’s central T. I always know we’re close when we reach a fellow who sells old porcelain bathtubs, sinks and toilets. Here, we’ve found derelict club chairs with Deco-style bentwood arms, more mid-Century lighting, Saarinen tulip chairs, and a wolf skin rug.

Both brothers are in their early twenties and greet us by name and with broad smiles. Samuel has even graduated to a double-cheek kiss from both. Abdelselik has longish wavy hair held under a baseball cap, baggy jeans, and is usually lounging in the sun half-asleep when we come by his booth. M’hamoud, on the other hand, wears a djellabah, round wire-rim glasses and has a neatly trimmed beard. He’s slight and serious whereas Abdelselik is long-limbed and has the heavy eyelids and laid-back manner of someone who smokes a bit of kif from time to time. If he spoke English, I’m sure hiis speach would be peppered with the word “dude”.

Although Abdelselik grabs me by he hand in greeting, and upon last visit bestowed a quick kiss on either cheek, M’hamoud refuses even to shake my hand. It’s not that he isn’t friendly, on the contrary, he’s chatty and always remembers things we’ve liked, asks how recent purchases look in the house . . . it’s just that he’s a stricter Muslim than his brother and won’t touch a woman, let alone another man’s wife. Even when the woman’s husband is standing right there and he’s just kissed and hugged him in a warm embrace. The first time he shunned my handshake I was a bit put-off. M’hamoud was apologetic and touched his hand to his beard as he explained why he had to refuse my proffered hand. The beard, we’ve come to learn, is a sign of someone who takes Islam very seriously; Hamoud actually calls these men “barbes,” which means beard in French, with uncommon derision. He associates them with fundamentalist Islam, which is always a hot-button issue here.

Sometimes I like to think about the origins of one of M’hamoud’s modish plexi-and-mirror chandeliers. I imagine the piece hanging in a swanky Parisian apartment, looking down on a party epitomizing the sex, drugs and rock and roll era. I wonder if the irony of his wares registers with M’hamoud.

Megarama

2006-11-28T10:12:00.000-08:00

Word trickles through the expat community that a new movie theater is opening in Marrakech. For these two film fans, this is exciting news. We’ve seen films at the main theater in Gueliz, Le Colisee, but it’s got just one screen. The other theaters – there are a handful spread throughout the medina – are rundown old places that tend to screen Bollywood musicals. I found one ratty theater a short walk from our house, and went up to the projection booth to meet the manager. The middle-aged film lover had grown up in the theater as the son of the owner. He showed me the mostly empty thousand seat theater and a pair of British arclight film projectors dating from the 1930s. He’d upgraded to a new projector (so all the reels could be spliced together on one platter instead of requiring a change each eleven minutes), but the new projector was showing a bad Vin Diesel movie (is there another kind?), which I noticed looked oddly stretched. The film had been shot anamorphically (widescreen format), but the projector was missing the required lens and all the characters looked tall and skinny. The manager acknowledged the problem, but said that none of the poor neighborhood kids who pay 69 cents for a double feature really care. With pirated DVDs available throughout Morocco, he’s riding a downward trajectory of business. Eager to chat about movies, he invited me back to hang out in the projection booth whenever I wanted.

Taking a different approach to the situation is Megarama, the spanking new seven-screen theater 4 kilometers out Boulevard Mohamed VI next to La Pacha, one of Marrakech’s premiere nightclubs. The government hopes to develop this desolate strip of road into a bunch of clubs, casinos, hotels and condos in a sort of Moroccan Las Vegas. In our first week here, we spent one regrettable evening at La Pacha, an oversized Disney-fied version of Marrakech, and haven’t been back since. Late at night taxis line up and charge 100 dihrams for the 20-dirham ride back to the medina. But…. The opening of Megarama has tempted us to head back out Mohamed VI. We’re not sure what to expect, but we hear the new James Bond movie is playing. We’re confident that even in French we’ll be able to follow along. Sadly, the film has been dubbed in French, and while we recognize this as a chance to improve our fluency, we do wonder: Why do the French like to dub movies, when the rest of the world reads subtitles? Do the French secretly not know how to read? (Someone should look into this.) Where other theaters here offer potato chips (huh?), Megarama offers popcorn (yippee!)

Finally, the ushers lead us into the grand theater, and we find 1200 plush red velvet seats and a screen bigger than the Cinerama Dome in LA. It’s two minutes to show time and we’re the only people there. This is just the second day the theater has been open and in fact workers are furiously putting the finishing touches on the lobby, but still, where is everyone? James Bond is, well, James Bond, better than recent entries, and the projection and sound system are admirable. Afterwards, we ask the manager if there are plans to screen films in their original language. We think that with seven screens, they could dedicate at least one to original language with subtitles. With a straight face, the manager in her snappy blue vest tells us that French films are show in the original language, and that other films are shown dubbed in French. OK, then.

As we leave the theater in the late afternoon sunlight, we discover that the overpriced taxis we expected to find queued in front of La Pacha have yet to arrive, and probably won’t for another four hours. Taking in the snow capped peaks of the Atlas Mountains around us, we conjures plans to gt the Megarama to program films in English as we stroll the four kilometers back to the Place Jemaa el Fnaa as dusk gathers.

The Bull and the Lion

2006-11-26T09:30:00.000-08:00

In Persian iconography, the bull and the lion symbolize dueling extremes of human nature: the base and the noble. And this week, the publishing world gave us a chance to ponder both. First, did you get that the bull represents humanity’s dark side, its underbelly, and that the lion stands for our nobler leanings? We didn’t either, but we took Mr. Elliot’s word for it as he presented slide after slide of Persian art, architecture and breathtaking landscapes during a presentation and reading from his recent book on Iran. Mr. Elliot is the author of two books, one chronicling his travels through Afghanistan and the more recent one on Iran. These are meaty tomes, well researched, but full, too, of personal anecdote. Mr. Elliot is a good old-fashioned British intellectual, the kind that digs into a subject until it has become part of him and he it. He spent a decade researching and writing his first book on Afghanistan (learned Farsi in the process) and about as long on his Iran history, with which, he says, he hopes to shed new light on Persia, beginning with a long list of things we owe to the Persians, from the Shiraz grape to the flying buttress.

We were invited, through friends, to a cocktail party to hear Mr. Elliot speak at the Palmerie villa of Maryanne and Gary. She’s a Senegalese-born designer, who is one of the true divas of Marrakech design, and he is an American ethnobiologist. Their villa and several maison d’hotes are some of the swankiest in Marrakech and we’d been hoping to get a glimpse of them after seeing photographs in various design books and magazines. Three or four times a year, Maryanne and Gary host a literary weekend in their villa. Paying clients enjoy writing workshops with the visiting author, and, in the case of Mr. Elliot, tours of Marrakech’s architectural highlights.

The lecture was lofty, the sepia-toned photographs gave us all instant wanderlust, and the smartly dressed group had plenty of thoughtful questions and interesting dinner table stories. And the villa proved even more beautiful in person than in photos. In all, a most lionine evening.

When we arrived home and hopped on our email for a late-night fix, we were greeted by headlines of the latest chapter in the Regan Books-OJ Simpson “If I Did It” scandal. The latest revelation was that a friend of a friend had ghostwritten the squalid memoir, as he has a number of Regan titles. It’s not to say that we don’t enjoy a bit of good smut from time to time – a quick peruse of US Weekly and other trashy magazines, for example – but on a night when books and the study of a culture had seem so elevated and refined, it was sobering to return to the low-brow razzle-dazzle that has the publishing world aflutter. What does it mean that Mr. Elliot’s book on Iran will sell, we imagine, in the meager thousands, while the Regan-OJ travesty has that many copies already “leaked” into the “right” hands?

Ultimately, who wins out, the lion or the bull? We’ll ponder this tomorrow as we shop for a Christmas tree and some lights for our courtyard – two more items we owe to ancient Persian culture, it turns out.

Thanksgiving in Africa

2006-11-24T09:30:00.000-08:00

“Hey Samuel and Caitlin, it’s Rupert. I’m just calling to say happy Thanksgiving and to get your thoughts on Thanksgiving in Africa. Probably isn’t much different than Thanksgiving in L.A., right? It’s sunny and about 75 degrees here . . .”

Well, Rupe, you’re not far off the mark. Thanksgiving dawned a lovely sunny day (thanks #1) here in Marrakech. After a lazy breakfast of French toast with carefully rationed servings of real Vermont maple syrup (thanks #2), Stephanie and I packed up our bags and headed off to a much-anticipated half day at a European-style spa called Bains de Marrakech. We’d tried to go earlier in the week, but the spa was booked, so Samuel and Vladimir grudgingly agreed to shop for Thanksgiving fixings and we promised to channel our inner Iron Chefs once we’d emerged relaxed and sparkling from the spa. At the swanky spa, one hour enveloped in Eucalyptus-scented steam was followed by a slathering with black soap and then gommage, or loofah, that left our bodies shiny and smooth as a baby’s bottom (thanks #3-5). Seriously, never seen so much skin shed voluntarily. Quick reprieve for mint tea on teak lounger next to burbling, rose petal-strewn pool in spa courtyard (thanks #6), then on to hour-long massage tonique with argan oil (thanks #7) and then half-hour soak in grapefruit oil-doused bath. Flickering candles, soft music, girlie chatter from our tandem tadelakt tubs (thanks #8 and #9). Good, good stuff.

Meanwhile, in the Mellah, Vlad and Sam (eternal thanks) are doing some serious damage. Sure, we’d all voiced some traditional Thanksgiving must-haves over breakfast: mashed sweet potatos, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce, etc. But. When it comes down to it, shopping here in Marrakech is catch as catch can. You never know if the vegetable stalls will have fennel, or Jerusalem artichoke, or leeks. Even mushrooms can be a challenge to find. At any rate, confronted with a fortuitous and stellar bounty at the markets, the boys went crazy. Despite, mind you, warnings that we were doing a low-key meal for four, not forty.

When we returned from the spa at a bit after three in the afternoon (worth another few thanks, come to think of it), the kitchen was strewn with black plastic shopping bags spilling over with beets, potatoes, fennel, leeks, rosemary, sage, yellow and red peppers, mushrooms galore, carrots, wild celery, frisee, endives, and on and on (thanks, thank, thanks). Not to mention a large, large slab of crimson beef. Albeit not the usual Thanksgiving meat, but this seems to be our year to break the rules (merci, shokran!!).

Panic set in at the sight of all that food and the dawning realization that we had just three hours to concoct before jetting off to a cocktail party in Gueliz before dinner back at Dar Noury. The boys cleared out (only because our kitchen is too small for more than 2 cooks; despite the fact that Vlad and Sam are both culinary talents), and the girls got to work. Within and hour, mushroom-sage soup was bubbling away fragrantly and Stephanie was turning out beautiful free-form apple and pear tarts. Given our lack of counter space, she rigged up a rolling station with a cutting board and baking sheet on the concrete floor of the dining room! Ingenuity (thanks squared).

Somehow, we managed to get the beef braising with fennel, rosemary, leeks, garlic, Jerusalem artichokes and wine, the table set, and our make-do version of cranberry sauce - a mixture of persimmon and pomegranite with clementines, clove and cinnamon – boiling on the stove. We even had time to change into festive outfits and “powder our noses,” as Vlad teased.

Off to Sandra and Josh’s chic apartment where we learned that Sandra’s straightforward Dutch-ness proved the perfect complement to Vlad’s Turets-like, rat-a-tat banter. Each of Vlad’s uncouth remarks: “That painting over there doesn’t really speak to me,” he said, pointing to a work on their wall, were topped by Sandra’s unexpected innuendos: Upon hearing that Sam and my bedroom shared an adjoining wall with Vlad's in LA, she raised a suggestive eyebrow at Vlad and said, "So, didya get much sleep." If there was a venue for stand-up in Marrakech, these two would have a good routine going. (Thanks for mixing company and finding a match!)

We almost regretfully retired to Dar Noury for dinner. Sandra and Josh (thanks for interesting friends in far-flung places) agreed to join us and we christened our new dining room table with a near-full house. A paucity of spoons (not to mention plates and saucepans and other essentials for holiday feast) had Sam and me surreptitiously sharing a spoon during the soup course. The mushroom soup lacked the depth of wine (we blame Vlad who proclaimed not to like things cooked with wine), the beef was under seasoned and overcooked, the pies flavorful but underdone and the hoped-for mint tea, a paltry lemon verbena tisane. Despite the gastronomic disappointments, and the chill that our double-thick velvet curtains couldn’t quite keep from creeping into the dining room, the evening was filled with chaleur – good friends, good conversation, and good things on the horizon as we toasted the arrival of Vlad and Stephanie’s daughter Iara. (THANKS!)

Fishy

2006-11-22T10:30:00.000-08:00

We hired a car and driver for the day to take us on a day trip to Essaouira. Brahim taught us several Arabic phrases as we drove. Including yellah, sort of a “let’s go/move it!” and Waha. Waha means "yes" or "OK". What does it say that while the first word we learned when we arrived was la, or "no," it took us six months to learn the word for yes?

Not really waiting to hear if we were interested, Brahim pulled the car to the side of the road at an women’s cooperative that produces Argan oil. The Argan tree is native to the Essaouiran environs, and its oil, at about $175 per gallon wholesale, is reportedly the most expensive liquid in the world. The cooperative is run by divorced women from the area, and they make the oil entirely by hand. The tree bears a tough, nutty fruit, which is harvested by goats, which climb into the trees to eat it. Locals will stand on the side of the road and flag down tourists in the effort to gain a few dihrams from a photographer catching the sight of the horned beasts clambering up the branches with the dexterity of, well, kids. After passing through the digestive tracts of the goats, the Argan seeds are processed by the women by hand. As we watch them grind the seeds between flat round stones, we can’t help but think this would be a good way to make peanut butter. Of course, the tour ends in a small shop, where a multi-lingual woman explains how Argan oil, aside from being a tasty dipping treat, can cure virtually any ailment from high cholesterol to diabetes. Two afflictions the Dowe-Sandes have covered - we’ll see what happens as we consume a half a liter!
(Vlad took these pictures, and we'll post them soon.)

On our first trip to Essaouira, we’d discovered the delicate inlaid boxes of Thuya wood (a variety of juniper). We’ve been wanting a couple of pieces, but the costs are double in Marrakech, so we’d waited for a return trip to the coast to make some purchases. Before we can get to the wood we’re in need of fish – something that Essauoira’s fishermen provide in spades. Vlad takes a proprietary interest, as if nine years living in New Orleans makes him an expert. The rest of us indulge him as he picks out our meal and bargains over the price until we pay little more than double the going rate. Indulging Vlad becomes the order of the day, and we watch him try on attire that he’s thinking of bringing back to LA. Vlad and Stephanie buy enough Thuya boxes to keep the local merchants in mint tea for years. If they don’t give you a smart looking box on their return, then they really must not like you.

Vlad + Steph

2006-11-21T10:30:00.000-08:00

Vlad and Stephanie have arrived, bearing cured pork from Italy as well as treats (peanut butter!) from the girls of Clifford PR. We all used the fact that Stephanie is five months pregnant as an excuse to take a leisurely approach to the mornings. As Mohamed, a local carpenter, stopped by to install some shelves and build a frame for our bucking bronco of a washing machine, Vlad took the opportunity to watch carpentry pre-powertool in action. As Mohamed shaved an eighth of an inch from the bottom of a leg to make the frame maizen, or level, Vlad shook his head and confessed he'd never be able to so effiently wield a basic saw. Perhaps this is what got him thinking the deep thoughts he posted yesterday.

Stephanie and Vlad agreed they were more interested in wandering the souks than in trips to museums, and this was fine with us. We were happy to show them our favorite place for olives in the Mellah. While we managed to resist the temptation of buying freshly cut lambs heads and feet that we found sold from a milk crate, others didn’t share our reservations. As the man pushed his bike down the street in front of us, he was stopped frequently for his wares.

At the Gate

2006-11-20T04:48:00.000-08:00

The buzzing at the front door was insistent, but when I opened it I was still surprised to see an agitated man holding a pick ax over his head and yelling at me in Arabic. Out of the shadows came a second man, who attempted to translate the tirade to French.

Here’s the thing. Most houses in Marrakech are located on a derb, or street. A standard street address includes the name of the derb, the number of the house, as well as the neighborhood of the derb. By contrast, our address is simply 86 Sidi Ben Slimane; we have no derb. This is akin to having an address like 86 Greenwich Village, NYC, instead of 86 Jane St., Greenwich Village, NYC. In a word: confusing. Our derb-less state exists because our house is immediately next to the mosque that gives name to the neighborhood. For most of its history, the house belonged to the mosque and housed employees of the mosque. To try to clarify things for the mailman and others, it’s been suggested that we add the word Souikat to the end of our address. The word means “little market” and, though we’re next to a mosque and not a market, suggests the center of the neighborhood.

To enter our house, we first pass through a gate we share with the mosque. In the shared hallway are doors to the mosque, a kindergarten, the house of a retired Imam, and us. When we arrived, the metal gate had been stripped of its lock. Hamoud suggested we might like to replace the lock, and on our behalf confirmed with the neighbors that they were amenable. We liked the idea, but it never made much of a fight climbing our ever changing to do lists. That changed, eventually, as a group of teenage boys took to using the hallway late at night as a place to play cards and hang out away from the watchful eyes of parents. When it rained, the covered hall became even more popular. As the kids carried on, whooping and shouting till the early hours of the morning, we suddenly became much more interested in locking the gate, and we turned our “metal man” from other projects to this one. He bought a top quality lock and installed it, giving us the five keys included in the box. Over the next couple days, we left the gate unlocked, and gave one key to each tenant as we saw them.

Keys distributed, we began locking the gate at night, and the noise vanished. Each evening, the Muezzin locked the gate after the final prayer of the day, and opened it before the first prayer around 5 AM the next morning. A few days later, there’s a knock on the door, and I open it to find a jolly fellow. I’m not quite sure who he is, but he’s quite friendly, explains that he’s from the mosque and needs another key for the gate. I smile and give him mine. He pats my shoulder, shakes my hand and wanders off. The following day, as I’m returning home and passing the bakery on one side and the hamman on the other – both emitting lovely smells as ever – I hear shouting behind me. A man approaches and complains that the muezzin had overslept that morning and missed the call to prayer. This man was the backup, and as the Muezzin had the key he couldn’t get in. Until that moment, it had never occurred to me that a Muezzin could oversleep, and was happy to hear that it happens even to the best of us. I told him I was sorry the Muezzin had overslept, and that he should feel free to have the him make the keys for whomever he deemed needed them. As he agreed, he visibly relaxed, smiled and melted into the crowd. I asked Hamoud about the incident, and he laughed and told me not to worry, that it was the mosque’s responsibility to deal with the keys. Hamoud has warned us about neighbors asking us to pay for things, and already dealt with one angry man who was mad at Hamoud for not giving him bags of our concrete during the renovation. “It’s never one bag of concrete,” he told us at the time. “That’s just the tip of the iceberg, and once you’re in, they’ve got you.”

So, there I am in the doorway, and the angry man waves his pick ax. His translator tells me that there are four people responsible for the mosque, and that they need four keys. I try to avoid the conversation and give him Hamoud’s cell phone number, but he’s not interested. “You’re the owner of the house,” he tells me, “not Hamoud.” As the translator tells me that the man is threatening to break the lock off the gate (something that’s pretty clear from his gesticulations with the pick ax) my French, suddenly gets really bad. I claim I need Hamoud to properly translate for me, and take his number, promising to have Hamoud call them.

The keys, of course, cost about three dollars each, and it seems foolish to let any animosity develop over six dollars. I’m not sure what principle is at stake here. Hamoud has assured us that we only need to give one key, and that if we were Moroccan, they would never have asked for a second key, let alone four. Neither the kindergarten nor the other apartment asked for additional keys. If it was one of them or the man who’d asked Hamoud for our concrete, it’d be easier to ignore, but the angry tenant is a mosque. By now, the teenagers who have been robbed of their hang out have jammed our lock with broken wires, necessitating a couple of calls to the “metal man.” Is this more trouble than it’s worth? Are we being good neighbors? Are they? Can you ever go wrong being the magnanimous ones? We’re not sure where this is heading, and whether we really need the gate to lock. In the meantime, we bumble along.

The Dog That Bit Me - Guest Blog #2

2006-11-19T22:30:00.000-08:00

Vladimir has been posting comments on the Baraka Chronicles since the begining. Now that he and Stephanie have come to visit us in Marrakech, we thought it only fitting that he do a post of his own. Was this to be a mistake?

"Writing takes something out of me. As I procrastinate on the Internet instead of working, my ego protects itself by likening myself to those Native Americans who eschewed photographs. Something like that, anyway. I create it in my mind’s eye the aversion to writing as a noble fear of losing my soul. It takes too long, I complain. It makes me think too much. All my calories get used up on… Let’s face it… Words. Most of them, empty. I crave to fill them with something. But what?

I am told that an audience of faithful Baraka Chronicles readers awaits (and/or dreads) my post. So as I sit in the courtyard of Dowe-Sandes’s Dowe-Sandified riad sipping their beer and listening to the soft sounds of French lounge singers murmur from Ipods unseen, I try to come up with something pertinent to say. Something a little less trivial than a say… a travelogue on Moroccan expat whateverness.

So let’s start with back-story. An appetizer, if you will.

Late September 2004. Venice, California. A dog bites me. A pint of blood is lost to the streets. Scars are formed. And my life is changed forever. One of those moments that you look at in retrospect and see as a fork in a road. (And no salad fork here. Large… Heavy…. Serving fork. Turkey or roast beef, anyone?) Why? A woman stayed instead of leaving (to take care of the wounds, you see). The wayward ego that is “I” allowed for love. And now look. A scant two years later, my life as I know it “c’est finis”. 41 in December. A visit from the stork in March. I spend my days in Marrakech in a fog of diesel weighing my options. There are the small questions of how many of my future daughter’s diapers I’m willing to sacrifice to a rug merchant or a punch metal lamp broker to weigh down my already overstuffed bags. And of course, there are the bigger life altering questions of direction. Direction, you ask? Then let’s change it. An aside:

A bit about our trip. It is a honeymoon-anniversary-let’s get out of town quick before the baby comes voyage. Italy first, Morocco last. Two continents. Western this… Africa/Middle East that. I could do a couple of paragraphs for an airline magazine on the comparison alone. But everyone reading is already ahead of me on this. Platitudes, really. I won’t bore you. Just… You know… Keep it in mind.

Italy. Euro robbery. But… Nice. Villa. Olives. A problem with the choice of gas to put into the rental car. But… Can’t complain. It’s Tuscany. The countryside alone! I mean, come on! A man could live here. With a wife and family. But Euros. Euros are a problem.

No problem. Catch the Marrakech express and there you are. The streets, as narrow. Cobble stones, a little newer. And I am, suddenly, what you would call a third world kind of guy. Maroc, Maroc. The royal we. The poetry of mayhem. And oh, those lovely Dirhams. Ahhhhhhh.

But, but, but, but… No matter where you go… You know the rest. Let’s change directions back. A hard left into the souks of my paranoia.

I am… From ersatz screenwriter to ersatz restaurateur to ersatz contractor to… What? Husband…. Father to be… I wonder if “ersatz” will follow me into these rather more important of my life’s pursuits. I sway adrift in possibilities. (A positive, I assure you. They ARE possibilities, these days.) What will I do tomorrow, and a week from now… Next year?

I fantasize. As does my wife. About adventure. Telling the landlady to eat my unwashed shorts and taking off. And I mean OFF! My friends live in Morocco! Why can’t we? Well… There’s the kid. And mumps. And slight impediments of lack of French. Then there’s the money thing. Play money turns to real the minute denominations shift from a hundreds to millions for a riad of our own (without the Dowe-Sandes touch at that.) And then there’s work. What would I? What would she? Would little one be mad at having to learn Arabic and French and English and a Russian word or two… Or would she just become a princess of the world who’d love us for a life less ordinary… Away from everything LA that never meant a thing to me. And then our friends. The families back home. What would my mother think of losing granddaughter to the four winds for a year or five?

Gee. I don’t know.

In any case... Direction. That’s the thing these days. It’s what I think about. And now I think about it as I shop for lamps. And Marrakech? It is the perfect place for someone who is relatively lost to think about these sorts of things. N’est pas?

The blog meanders, as do I. But there are possibilities galore. And that is lovely, in its scary way.

And so I raise my glass to Marrakech and to the Dowe-Sandes and their well-appointed lair. Salut!

To be continued. Surely. But for now…

Au Revoir"

-Vladimir Nemirovsky

Wired

2006-11-15T09:59:00.000-08:00

This morning, we woke up to the sound of rain on the roof. Even though it was past 8 a.m., the house was still dark and rather gloomy. Rolling out of bed, we tossed on our new black wool djellabahs and pulled the hoods over our heads to cross the soggy courtyard to the kitchen for tea and breakfast. There’s nothing like a cozy djellabah and a cup of Earl Grey on a rainy day to make us think of one thing, or rather a sort of ultimate couplet: movies . . . in . . . bed. Our new bed arrived yesterday and we are finally installed in our own bedroom. A day in bed with movies seemed a nice way to celebrate.

At about 2 p.m., after watching the classic 1939 dramedy "The Women," starring Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford, whose glib cattiness and witty euphemisms we intend to adopt (like “She’s on the train for Reno,” meaning she’s off to get a divorce), we were startled by a loud bang and a crackling sound. We scrambled down the stairs to investigate and noticed that one of the city electrical wires that traverses our courtyard about 40 feet up was swaying dramatically. Figuring a bird had flown into it, we retired upstairs again. An hour later, as Samuel was reading aloud Martin Amis’ three-part essay in The Observer on Islamism titled, “The Age of Horrorism” (a fascinating piece and worth reading: http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsphilosophyandsociety/story/0,,1868839,00.html), we heard a second loud crack and a whooshing noise like something falling. This time, when we reached the courtyard, a live electric wire was dangling over the edge of the terrace, hanging all the way to the courtyard floor . . . a very wet courtyard floor, by the way.

“This is not good,” we said in tandem, “let’s see if we can reach Hamoud.” Hamoud, we knew, was on his way to Casablanca to be the driver/guide for a German cycling team that is doing a week-long ride throughout Morocco. Fortunately, he had cell reception on the train and advised us to get on the phone immediately with Radeema, the city’s water and power agency (see Aug. 22nd posting “The Crush”). Given our previous dealings with Radeema, the seriousness of the situation, and the fact that Hamoud was on a train and unable to work his usual magic, we called in reinforcements. Our friend Craig, who is far more fluent in French than we are, graciously offered to come over to help. He got on the phone first with Radeema and then with some municipal office and we were assured that help was on its way. The three of us settled into the dining room with some beers and peanuts for the anticipated wait.

Within an hour, however, we heard a banging on the roof of our terrace stairway and found two technicians from Radeema inspecting the broken wire from the mosque roof. One jumped over to our terrace and reached up with a pair of pliers to touch the wire. Zap! He jumped back with a yelp and shouted to his co-worker, what we guess was a confirmation that the wire was live. They then called Radeema to have the current cut and proceeded to drag the wire out of our courtyard and then reattach it to the electrical pole from which it had dropped. By now, it was dark, but the workers refused our offer of a flashlight. As they were reattaching the wire –with just a pair of work gloves – a tremendous bang and bright flash of light sent our heart rates soaring. We expected to see one of the worker’s fried bodies tumble onto our terrace. Nope, they brushed it off and weathered a second nerve-wracking bang and flash before reattaching the wire to their satisfaction. Craig noticed that at least they’d been tethered onto the electrical pole with some kind of work belt, but still the maneuver seemed rather cowboy. We also wondered – more seriously than in jest – if they’d reconnected the wire with scotch tape, which is how much wiring is done here. At our house, the electrician had only used those plastic plugs to tie wires together when we stomped our feet and insisted.

As the Radeema technicians cheerily waved goodbye, we marveled at the efficiency of the service call. Back at home, we might still have been on hold with the DWP’s answering machine.

Cocktail Shakers

2006-11-12T10:30:00.000-08:00

On Saturday night, we christened Dar Noury with long-overdue and impromptu cocktail party. The gathering followed a reading and almost-book signing at our favorite café/bookstore. The author on show is a British fellow who has written a book about renovating a palatial home in Casablanca. The palace is situated in the middle of a bidonville, or shantytown, and the renovation involved run-ins with bureaucrats, corrupt neighbors, a shady assistant, resident Jinns and three guardians that came with the house, part and parcel. We’d read the entertaining book before embarking for Morocco, but after having dinner with the author a month or so ago, we were anxious to hear the tales in his own voice. He’s one of those born raconteurs: funny, smart and self-deprecating. This, combined with his natural affinity for adventure – including some recent and harrowing ones in Afghanistan – assured an amusing afternoon. The event drew many of the city’s English-speaking expats and some faces that we’d been hearing stories about for months, crusty old-timers who moved here before the Getty-types made it chic. Marrakech is a city for the unwanted and the wanted, as one guest reminded us. Not unlike Monaco: a sunny place for shady people. As we’ve said before, the city’s expat community is rather cliquey and there were lots of raised eyebrows and stage whispers as the room filled and people settled into the café’s plush velvet booths.

Unfortunately, because of Morocco’s strict regulations and paranoia about pornography, the books didn’t make it out of a Casablanca customs office in time for the author to actually sign them. Undaunted, however, he launched into a performance that balanced readings from the book with extemporaneous stories and background details. He opened by saying that even though the room was filled with friends and familiar faces, he was daunted reading about his palace renovation in front of a crowd of people, many of whom have had very similar experiences as well as tales as hilarious and enlightening as his own. That might be true, but the fact that his are thoughtfully written and bound between two hard covers trumps the rest, in our minds.

One story that resonated, which I’d not remembered from the book, was an encounter the author had had at a local vegetable market in Casablanca. As he was shopping, he noticed a beggar woman with a basket filled with the most exquisite fruit and vegetables. As she made her way from stall to stall, the merchants would take pains to select the choicest piece of produce for her basket. When the author inquired of one the sellers why they were all giving their finest fare the beggar, he replied that just because a person is a beggar does not mean that they don’t deserve a lovely piece of fruit. Here in Morocco, he continued, we don’t treat our beggars like trash. Having lived in cities like New York and LA where the homeless are ubiquitous, we’ve become rather steeled to their entreating, glancing aside, even here in Marrakech, as we pass the arthritic, old homeless woman who begs on our corner. Since the reading, we’ve felt both shamed and freed to drop a few dirhams into her hands as we pass, even bringing her a hot dinner one night.

After the reading, a group of the author’s friends and some of our own headed back to Dar Noury for cocktails. One of us lit lanterns and pulled out bottles, glasses and ice, while the other fetched people from the nearby Riad Laarous taxi stand. In all, we were perhaps 20 people and the courtyard was a ablaze and abuzz for three hours before people disbanded for dinner. We headed to an Italian restaurant in Gueliz with a small group, including a couple whose acquaintance we’d only just made. New house, new friends, good stories . . .

Buying a House with Credit

2006-11-10T10:00:00.000-08:00

Hamoud stopped by today with a leather folder and proudly whipped out a thick stack of official documents. He’s in the process of buying an apartment in a new complex under construction near the airport. He’d made an initial deposit many months ago, and has been waiting for the place to be completed. This week, he received notice that the building is finally finished and ready for him and his family.

We mentioned before the difficulties of obtaining a bank loan here (see post: Third World Construction) and that’s true for Hamoud, too. When he tells us proudly that he’s buying an apartment, he always qualifies it: “I’m buying a house with credit.” Of course, in Western countries, virtually all houses are bought with the assistance of banks, and all-cash offers are rare; the opposite is true here. But as Hamoud points out, only a small professional class receives paystubs from employers that can be verified. He counts teachers, doctors and policemen in that group. However, for the vast majority of Moroccans, establishing credit is not easy, so he’s quite pleased that his employer of six years has written letters (which have been notarized, legalized, stamped, and then stamped again) stating he’s been employed for six years. These papers are part of the stack he’s assembled and is off for his first attempt at a loan from a bank.

His enthusiasm is infectious, and we’re crossing our fingers that it all goes well. Given our knowledge of American mortgage lenders and Moroccan bureaucracy, we’re worried that he’ll have more hoops to jump through.

Red Carpet Arrival

2006-11-09T10:00:00.000-08:00

We’ve grown quite fond of our quiet new neighborhood so we’re surprised to hear a racket outside as we’re cooking dinner. We wander out to the street to investigate and find quite a production. A beautiful path of red carpets has been laid along the cobblestone street. An acrobat does back flips on the carpets. The noise we heard is the acrobat trying to keep a hoard of kids off his performing area – with little success. The kids are happy to take in the free entertainment and roll giddily in the plush carpets that have for the night replaced muddy streets.

We follow this path of red carpets from just in front of our door through several twists and turns to one of the better local restaurants. (We haven’t actually tried Dar Zellij yet, so we can’t speak to the quality except by reputation.) These are not the thin rubber-backed “carpets” that only add to the cheese factor of Hollywood premieres. These carpets, laid end to end, are thick and gorgeous in all manner of reds, and we aren’t the only people looking. The spectacle had brought most of the neighborhood out to the street. The acrobat is not alone; he’s joined by a fire breather and musicians standing in three groups of six or eight between the restaurant and the taxi stand.

For the most part we ignore the entertainers and studiously walk up and down the carpets.
“What do you think of this color?”
“Have you seen that pattern before?”

We ask one neighbor if this is for a local wedding. Much less interesting, he tells us it’s for some tour group planning a special dinner at a Dar Zellij. The hired performers are to guide them through the maze of streets. Just then, the group unloads from a bus and the entertainers begins their dramatic work. Neighborhood kids fill in (OK, so do we) – free extras – and make the night seem even more festive.

It’s an odd mix of exciting spectacle and also a “Morocco-light” packaged in an easy dose for foreigners with cameras ready, a reminder that most of the economy here is based on tourism. We rush home to make sure we aren’t burning dinner. Thinking over the hundreds of carpets, we shake our heads with envy. Now there’s a red carpet arrival.

Royal Theatre

2006-11-07T10:30:00.000-08:00

We entered the grand front door of the theater at 8:30 last night just as the concert was meant to begin. The stairs up to the auditorium were blocked off and there was nobody around. In one hallway, tables were set up for what looks to be a dinner for fifty people. But we’re here with Josh and Sandra trying to see the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Morocco for the first concert of their 10th anniversary season, and we’re not sure where to go.

Wandering past many signs proclaiming “off limits to tourists,” we followed a couple of people heading out a small side door exit. There, a ticket taker points us around the back of the theater to an outdoor garden area where members of the orchestra are smoking cigarettes and tuning their instruments in the night air. It’s a bit strange to find ourselves “backstage,” but at least we’ve joined a group of a few other equally confused concert-goers.

High over the stage, workers hastily strung blue tarps and we realized first that the concert was open air, and second that the tarps do not cover the audience. For the past week we’ve had brief showers each evening - not a lot of rain, but enough to prompt us to remove the cushions from our courtyard. We’re a little surprised that this Royal Theater has the concrete risers of a high school football stadium rather than actual seats, albeit with cushions, and we sit down to look over the program of Beethoven. We check the names in the orchestra, and see among the 75 musicians about ten women, and perhaps three Europeans.

We’re used to going to concerts in the States where a large part of the audience is highly musically educated. You can feel the energy coming from the front of orchestra seating, and know by the coughing or lack thereof how they’re responding to the performance. There’s no such sense here, where a brightly bedecked and enthusiastic European woman encourages her fellow-audience members to rise to their feet and claps between movements.

Midway through the second piece, a violin concerto featuring soloist Patrice Fontanarosa, we noticed a cat slowly descending the stairs to the left of the stage. Cats are all over Morocco, so this should come as no surprise, and the feline sauntered out onto the stage, weaving its way between the musicians. It wasn’t until he rubs against the leg of one of the second violins, that he seemed to have any impact on the musicians.

By this point, the sky had started to spit. One woman came prepared, and opened an umbrella until the people sitting behind her complained that they couldn’t see. We were spared the few fat drops turning into actual rain, though the gusts that pass through the theater managed to send one cellist’s sheet music flying from the stage.

These missteps never developed into a fiasco. The performance itself was solid, if not spectacular. The orchestra seemed to have a hard time remaining focused, and crisp, beautiful passages give way to muddle. There were a few times we thought we saw a brief look of frustration cross Fontanarosa’s face, but we were excited to be sitting among expats and Moroccans (we waved hello to a shop keeper from the souks we’ve come to like) taking in the music.

Between November and June, the orchestra travels each month for concerts in Casablanca, Marrakech, and its home base of Rabat. For less that the cost of a movie at The Grove, we’ll happily attend more, but as we’re heading into the wet season, we’ll bring raincoats and hats next time.

Risky Business

2006-11-05T13:52:00.000-08:00

Tarte Citron, the saucy neighborhood girl that we reported on several weeks ago, has beaten down our resolve with her persistence. Every day, make that many times every day, she’s at our doorbell, ring, ring, ringing with her cold little fingers. When we open the door, Shayma – her real name – always plants a chilly kiss on both cheeks before making the day’s case for food, money, a visit. For a few weeks, we’ve had her wait at the door while we hurry to the kitchen for some snack, usually an apple or some bread and cheese.

The other day, though, she begged to come in, promising to sit quietly while we worked at various projects. And she did, for awhile at least, perch patiently on a black café chair in the entryway, swinging her legs back and forth, peering at Samuel as he worked on his computer in the study and at me painting the downstairs bathroom. “You see, it’s not very interesting, here,” I said, thinking she might take it as a cue to hop on her bike and find some friends her own age. It’s a sunny afternoon in Marrakech, after all, school’s out, what’s the appeal in hanging out at our house? Oh . . . right, I remember.

After about 10 minutes, her attention becomes unnerving and I turn on some music, curiously compelled to please the little urchin. She smiles and bobs and sways on the chair in time to Bob Dylan and then The Kinks. “It’s good,” she says, of the foreign tunes with lyrics she can’t understand. There’s a gameness and a buoyancy about her attitude that is compelling; you get the feeling that she’s the kind of sprite that will give anything a try and make the best of it.

Soon, Shayma’s at my side, offering to help with the painting. She dabs solicitously at my paint smeared arms with a turpentine-soaked rag and tells me I really should visit the hammam tonight for a proper cleaning. I have images of burly women sloughing off not only the paint, but several layers of my epidermis as well. Thanks, but no thanks.

Once I’m done, I offer her a cup of hot chocolate; I’m determined to warm her up with something. She’s never had hot chocolate and watches me curiously as I add cocoa powder and sugar to a saucepan of hot milk. She offers to take a cup to Samuel, whose name she can’t get her tongue around, instead just calling him “Monsieur”. She slurps her cocoa hungrily and asks if we have any bread to go along with it. A half baguette and a few pieces of La Vache Qui Rit cheese later and she seems sated. Several times she offers to refill our mugs and jumps up and runs to the skink to wash them out as soon as we’ve finished. We tell her to stop, she’s our guest and she’s not to clean, but she’s very insistent, demanding Tide, the catch-all cleaning product here in Morocco. When I show her the liquid hand soap and Palmolive, she’s incredulous, washing her hands four times in the course of a half hour and sniffing them with pleasure.

This becomes our routine: A knock on the door around 4:30 p.m. each afternoon and a break from whatever we’re doing for hot chocolate with Shayma. Now, she asks for music herself when she arrives and she likes to have Sam pull up photos on his computer. She’s especially keen on the one of herself that we took a few weeks ago, but nods appreciatively as we tell her the names of various friends and family, which she repeats back to us as if memorizing them for an exam. Conversation is minimal, but we piece together little bits with a mixture of French, Arabic and gestures. At one point, when the two of us are alone, she gestures to me and then Sam, making an “O” with the index finger and thumb of one hand and then pushing the ring finger of her other hand back and forth through the “O”. At first I’m a bit taken aback by what I take for a rather crude sexual gesture, but then when she points to my bare ring finger, I realize she wants to know if we're married. I haven’t been wearing my wedding ring, or any jewelry for that matter, so her confusion is perhaps warranted. Marriage is a big concern for this eight-year-old, perhaps because she’s being raised by a single mum, and as we sift though the pictures on our laptops, her first question when we come to a new female face is: "Is she married?"

Today, when Shayma asked to watch a movie with us, the only thing I could come up with that seemed appropriate was Bridget Jones’ Diary, which of course isn’t appropriate at all but given that she doesn’t understand a word, all the bonking jokes went right over her head. When she tired of Bridge, we practiced counting in French until it was time for her to leave . . . with a kilo of bananas to take back to her family.

It’s almost impossible for us to leave the house without Shayma spying us and skipping along as far as the taxi stand in front of the mosque that marks the edge of our neighborhood. I’ve become accustomed to her cold little had in mine on the three-minute walk from the house to the taxi stand. It’s risky business letting this one cozy up to us, we know, and this evening, as if to illustrate the point, no sooner had Shayma closed the door on our taxi and waved good-bye than we saw her prance after the two Brits who’d just exited the cab we’d hailed. She was smiling and chattering away at them, charming them into some purchase or other, I’m sure. I can’t deny being a bit stung by her capriciousness, but what do we really know of her or her motivations. Maybe the visits to our house are a diversion from her daily life. Maybe we’re just meal tickets.

Hotelier

2006-11-03T10:30:00.000-08:00

So the American owner of the first riad we stayed in (when we grew tired of the particular charms of the Hotel Tachfine) has returned to Marrakech. As you might remember, we found his riad through Hamoud, who’s been, essentially, its manager for six years. The riad, with its six bedrooms, has served primarily as a vacation house, though it is licensed as a maison d’hotes, or boutique hotel. We enjoyed the small pool in the courtyard, the kitchen and dining room on the terrace, and the quiet street less than a 15-minute walk from the Place.

After hearing various stories about the man from Hamoud off and on over the last several months, it was nice to finally meet him. Quite the raconteur, he told tales of his years in Bangkok, and his dealings with Southern Baptists and Brazilian thieves. Now, though, it seems he’s ready to sell his house in Marrakech. He’s been coming less frequently, and hasn’t bothered to market it at all as a hotel, so the guests are few and far between.

This is odd, given the fact that hotels with any sort of visibility are constantly booked. And this hotel for sale gets us thinking: might it be nice to buy this riad, give it a makeover, and open it for business? We hear every day about the growth in tourism, and the fact that the airlines are complaining that Marrakech doesn’t have enough hotel rooms to house all the people who are booking tickets to fly here. We’ve spent some time with an interior designer from New York who’s in the process of redoing a maison d'hotes himself, and many of the other expats we’ve met are involved in hospitality here, sharing the humorous ups and downs of the industry.

It seems that this riad could be bought for about $420,000, including closing costs. Based on our experience with Dar Noury, we’re guessing another $80,000 and 4-6 months would have it redecorated and ready to open. A conservative 50% occupancy rate would generate over $100,000 a year. The King has made taxes and fees minimal to encourage foreign investment. Labor costs are low. Our math is fuzzy, our knowledge limited, but still, this is intriguing. Even a challenge. Could we design a chic hotel? Could we market it properly, put up a beautiful website, and get written up in the design and travel press? Would we want to? Hmm. Is there anyone out there interested in investing in a hotel in Marrakech?

Cult-cha

2006-11-01T06:03:00.000-08:00

Before we left, LA, we loaded up our iPods with our entire CD collection, so we’ve not been at a loss for music while in Morocco. However, except for the Gnawa Music Festival in Essaouira this June, we’ve not seen any live music. Okay, we did hear a few classical guitarists one night at a restaurant in Gueliz, but it was a long time ago. We’ve been a bit starved for the excitement and energy that accompanies a live performance. There’s something about sitting with a crowd of strangers witnessing artists at work on stage. Fortunately, Marrakech’s fall season is bringing with it a welcome dose of cult-cha. While the Marrakech Film Festival, which takes place in early December, is the highlight affair, leading up to it, we’re excited to find some musical events and even a Fulbright Conference.

Last night, we went to the Eglise de Marrakech in Gueliz, the city’s only Christian church, for a concert to benefit the restoration of the church’s organ. Of the mind that organs are, for the most part, better left defunct, i.e., they always look much nicer than they sound, we are wary about the contribution, but happy to support this first public concert. On the program are pieces by Handel, Mozart, Verdi and Strauss and guest appearances by a Spanish soprano, Valeria Florencio, and the first violinist of the Avignon Opera, Cordelia Palm. The violinist is quite sublime, standing above us in the organ’s nave, wearing a black strapless gown. Her bow dances across the strings, filling the room with emotive notes; it’s incredible the expressive power that a single instrument can wield.

But when the African Students Choir of Marrakech took the stage midway through the concert, we thrilled at the power of 20 clear, young voices. The group was lead by a lionine student conductor, who directed with graceful undulations of his body and arms and muscular pounce-like punches; at one point, he twirled around to face the audience and sang out himself, something we'd never witnessed from a conductor. The group opened with a fresh interpretation of a Bach classic, and followed with a tam-tam piece, or more typical African drum-led music. We were sorry to see them parade out in their blue and white robes after just two short numbers. The choir performs regularly at the church and we might consider going back to see them again.

The Eglise is a non-descript concrete place that was built in the 20s, and when we arrived, just ten minutes before the concert was meant to begin, we were sorry to see the audience pews largely empty, just a few couples and groups scattered on either side of the aisle. By the time the performers took to the “stage,” the room had filled up, mostly with older European couples. There was a whisper of excitement as the city’s major walked in with his suited retinue. They took seats in the far rear, which might have been for security or privacy, or merely to save the mayor from craning his neck to see the performance as those of us sitting closer endured. Some commented that it was significant to have the mayor attend a performance in a Christian church. As Samuel pointed out, he’s mayor of the whole city, even it’s small Christian population, and in our minds, it would have seemed more significant for him to stay away.

Spilling out of the church after the concert, we were greeted by warm, orange blossom-fragranced air. Not bad for our first night of Marrakech cult-cha. Next up, an evening of Beethoven with the Morocco Philharmonic on Saturday.

Ramadan Bonus Round

2006-10-31T08:00:00.000-08:00

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

2006-10-28T10:30:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-26T06:32:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-24T10:50:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-23T08:30:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-20T09:07:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-18T12:30:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-16T00:50:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-15T09:50:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-13T06:16:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-12T08:00:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-10T10:30:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-08T13:00:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-06T23:00:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-05T11:01:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-02T03:36:00.000-07:00

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.

Twilight Traffic

2006-09-29T09:00:00.000-07:00

The rhythm of the days has changed dramatically. Shops open much later in the morning as people have been up late celebrating during the night. Towards the end of the day, by 5:30 or 6:00, most shops are closing down as people head home to break their fast. As we went out for dinner last night, we made it to the street at 6:40, about 10 minutes after sirens the city over signaled the fast was over. It was a ghost town: shops were closed, and the streets, normally teeming with activity, were silent. We’d been warned about this, but had forgotten, and with twenty minutes till our dinner reservation, our taxi prospects were slim. As we waited in the falling light, a taxi came screaming around the corner and ground to a halt in front of us. The driver, on his way home to dinner, offered to take us where we wanted. But for the eleven Dihram trip, he demanded fifty Dihrams. We sent him on his way; afraid our “principles” might mean a long walk ahead. Would we find another taxi? In moments, we got lucky, and a friendly taxi driver came our way, his house was near our destination. We hopped in and sped across town. With the empty streets the 20-minute cab ride took us just five. Our driver didn’t so much as slow down as we flew through red lights, careened around corners and drove the wrong way down one way streets. We laughed out loud, and the driver told us not to worry; every Moroccan was at home eating harira with family. He dropped us off under a salmon sunset and sped away to a waiting bowl of harira.

Thoughts on Ramadan

2006-09-27T10:00:00.000-07:00

It’s really true that people are the eyes through which we see another culture. The problem with blogging, as we’ve found out, is that people tend to find out about it (with mixed feelings), which makes us a bit gun shy.

So there will be no names or photos to accompany this post. Suffice it to say that on the second day of Ramadan I met for a coffee with an educated Moroccan fluent in 5 languages. When I say we met for coffee, I should say we met at a café, and as this is Ramadan, I felt awkward already. Cafés are great places for casual meetings, but there’s an expectation that you will, in fact, order some coffee. I ask my companion outright about the protocol. The café in Gueliz is filled with clients sipping afternoon espressos, but these are exclusively foreigners. He waves off my concern, pointing to the waiters around us. “No Moroccans are here during Ramadan. If foreigners like you don’t come here and eat, they’ll have to close the restaurant for a month and they’ll all be out of work.”

He complains about all the hypocrites during Ramadan. In private, behind the Medina’s high walls, people having sex during the day while parents are away, drink water and booze, then put on a veil, go outside and talk about how difficult their fast is. He argues that lots of Moroccans are like sheep, free to wander and eat, but only within very narrow confines. I didn’t have the nerve to ask him if behind closed doors he keeps a strict Ramadan himself.

We’ve spoken with several other Moroccans about Ramadan, and for the most part they want to share their excitement for the month-long holiday. Lots of Moroccans ask us if we’re joining them in fasting during Ramadan. The answer is a resounding no, and I confess to being a bit surprised they ask. They couldn’t be more conscious of the fact that we are not Muslims, and they frequently share their thoughts on religion with us. While some seem to hope that we will fast in solidarity, others indicate that we’d be foolish to fast. My café companion tells me that if the King (who is both the ruler of the kingdom, and the religious head of Moroccan Muslims as well) announced that as of tomorrow there would be no Ramadan, most would happily give up the practice.

We’re in the early days of the month, before the cumulative effects of deprivation have begun to take their tole. Who knows what the next few weeks will bring.

Following the Moon

2006-09-25T09:40:00.000-07:00

After about a month-long build up, Ramadan has finally arrived. For weeks we’ve been hearing cabbies talk about the upcoming fast with a mixture of excitement and dread, listened to cashiers tease the Ramadan sales and noted our workers taking later and later lunches in preparation of the fast. Now that it’s begun, we can’t really help but want to be swept up in the communal rite. Islam is so pervasive here, it seems only the tourists and expats are left indulging in food, drink, smokes and sex during the daylight hours. There’s a great sense of Moroccans enduring and celebrating something together, and we’re left out like orphans looking through the glowing windows onto another family’s holiday feast. Well, except for the fact that the orphans are feasting, while the family is not, but you get the idea.

Though we’re a bit curious to know if we’ve got what it takes to fast for four weeks (okay, those who know us know we’d last about a day!), we decided against it after hearing a fellow expat’s story. She runs a chic riad in Marrakech and in deference to her Muslim staff, decided to keep the fast along with them. A few days into it, one of her employees asked her if she was Muslim. When she replied no, the woman persisted by asking why on earth she was keeping the fast. Our acquaintance’s “out of respect” reply elicited a snort from her employee and she explained, “If we weren’t Muslim, none of us would be fasting. You’re crazy.” Enough said. We’re happy to learn from the lessons of others, but it hasn’t staunched our interest in the rituals of Ramadan.

Samuel’s now-favorite pastime is to ask every Muslim how the fast is going. "Having a good fast today?" he inquires with a smile. "First few days not so bad," he says, rubbing his tummy. Of course he's been pretending to keep the fast, too, telling anyone who asks that he's "right there with them." Oh, the travesty!

Since Muslims follow a lunar calendar, Ramadan does not fall on the same dates every year. In fact, the holiday moves ahead each year by roughly two weeks, which means that by 2010, the year Morocco is gunning to have 10 million tourists visit the country, Ramadan will fall squarely in the month of August. No food is tough enough, but no water when temps are 110-degrees and above and you’ve got pesky tourists clogging the streets is downright lethal. We spoke to a taxi driver the other day told us he celebrated his first Ramadan 30 years ago during August and every one since has been a cinch. Boy, in a month, these belt-tightening puns sure are going to seem old.

Oualidia

2006-09-24T10:00:00.000-07:00

For all that we’re enjoying the food in Marrakech (and the markets really are great), there are a few culinary holes. When we were in Essaouira, we had plenty of wonderful fish, but in Marrakech it’s been decidedly harder to find. The situation is made worse by the few restaurants that offer fish; all that we’ve tried cook it till it turns to cardboard. So for two people used to eating fish regularly, it’s been a little disappointing. Over a month ago (as we’ve mentioned) we discovered the sushi at Kosy Bar, and that was quite a treat. Since then, we ventured to a French restaurant in Gueliz, Bagatelle. The menu is pretty standard bistro fare, but that includes fantastic escargot. While we both tend to think of escargot as a garlic-butter delivery vehicle, these were the most tender little critters we’ve had. Makes us think we might even be brave enough to venture to one of the snail stalls in the Place. Even more exciting at Bagatelle, however, were the local Moroccan oysters. Oualidia is a town not too far up the coast from Essaouira, and it produces a lot of seafood. The oysters were an incredible sliver of the sea, briny and plump, and we enjoyed them so much we went back two days later for more. Today, beaten down after a series of battles at the house over finish work, we knew just the restorative cure. Again, we braved the raised eyebrows of waiters who don’t think oysters and escargot make a meal, and enjoyed a culinary respite from lamb couscous.

As things settle down with our house, and we start exploring more of the Moroccan countryside, we dream of taking a field trip to Oualidia and spending a weekend eating oysters breakfast, lunch and dinner.

In the meantime, here are a few shots from the Marrakech Museum, including the largest lantern we’ve ever seen. The copper plaques pictured are from the Museum’s restrooms. Can you guess which one is for women and which for men? We couldn’t either and it wasn’t until we saw an older French man wander into the bathroom marked with the plaque on the right (his wife in tow with a video camera, no less!), that we felt relieved.

Ramadan Comes Early

2006-09-22T06:32:00.000-07:00

For weeks now, Moroccans have been getting ready for Ramadan. There’s a sort of nervous excitement in the air. We’ve been hearing Ramadan sales at department stores that will put a President’s Day Sale to shame. We’ve heard how life in Morocco changes dramatically during Ramadan, and we’ve been offered plenty of advice on how to get through it. The ninth month of the Islamic calendar (starting September 24th this year) commemorates the Koran being revealed to Mohammed. Like a much more severe version of Lent, during Ramadan Muslims don’t eat, drink (including water), smoke or have sex during daylight. This leads to a lot of feasting at night, and rising to eat breakfast before dawn. We’re expecting to run into a lot of hungry, tired people as the month wears on. (We’ve also heard that airline pilots are exempted from observing Ramadan so that they don’t fall asleep at 35,000 feet.)

While during the year, observant Muslims refrain from alcohol, our experience in the supermarkets of Gueliz is that plenty of Moroccans take a more liberal approach to this rule. Not so come Ramadan, when it is not just a religious rule, but a government law that forbids Muslims to buy alcohol.

With Ramadan just three days away, I head to Acima for some groceries and wine, only to find the liquor section walled off but for a guarded turnstile. As I enter the line and the guard writes down my passport number, she explains that the prohibition on alcohol begins three days early to prevent Muslims from stocking up alcohol in advance. The French expat in the line behind me tells me to expect to be approached by Moroccans outside the store with handfuls of cash. Like teenagers in the States, they’re looking for someone to buy them a bottle of Syrah. The guard hears the comment, but doesn’t seem either surprised or inclined to do anything about it. She’s content to write down a list of what bottles I’ve picked out next to my passport number in her ledger.

Later, over dinner at our favorite bookstore-café, the proprietor tells us that she’d been told by one of her Moroccan staff that she is required to stop serving alcohol to Moroccans three days before Ramadan as well. And since the undercover morals police check in on her establishment from time to time, she will certainly oblige.

With this much buildup to the holiday, we’re excited to experience it for ourselves firsthand.

Sense of Space

2006-09-20T02:32:00.000-07:00

BADI PALACE

As we all know, having visitors in town prompts us to check off cultural sights in the guidebook, points of interest that we’d perhaps neglected during the lazy days of summer. Before Tara and Carlo’s arrival, we decided to poll some of our more informed friends. This in itself proved a bit tricky. How to one, balance our need for a “Top 10” must-visit list or at very least a “Top 5” with two, our desire not to seem too terribly ignorant of Marrakech. We’ve lived here going on four months now, after all. Our friend Craig proved just the resource we were looking for. The fellow is a walking history of Marrakech (let’s just say he’s on his second biography of Glaoui, a notorious tyrant ruler of Marrakech), so there was no sense of insider one-upmanship – he wins hands down.

“Okay,” says Craig, “I like to start by taking people to the Saadian Tombs and then on to the Badi Palace. After they’ve taken in the opulence and artistry of the Tombs, I take them to the Palace and say, [and here he makes an expansive gesture with his arms] ‘Now, imagine this place covered in gilt and tile’.” Not bad. Since we’ve yet to see either place, we’re rather excited, and I practice mimicking Craig’s docent-like gesticulations. This is very good. A few more minutes with this guy and we may never fess up to Carlo and Tara that we’re looking at these two sites with newbie eyes, too.

After arriving at the Saadian Tombs five minutes before the long mid-day close, we decided to take in a leisurely lunch at Kosybar before returning to see the tombs; we’d worked up quite an appetite navigating the souks all morning. We took lunch on the terrace where we enjoyed a great view of the storks and partook of a tasty Moroccan beer called Casablanca. Wandering back towards the Tombs, we got lost and ended up at the gates of the Badi Palace instead. Laziness won out and we decided to reverse Craig’s appearance schedule, taking in the Palace before the Tombs. We expected ruins to be a quick stop at a lackluster monument. We were wrong.

Instead, the vast plot and sighting of the Palace ruins proved a real treat. In the cramped Medina, where many of the streets are only single-file wide, the expanse of Badi gave us pause. The ruins of this 16th-Century Palace include numerous sunken gardens with fruit and olive trees, a lagoon, grand pools, and many halls, the most notable of which was the Koubba el Khamisiniyya, which had at one time fifty columns. All are enclosed within not just one, but two protective walls. A true fortress, and the most appealing level of crumbling decay we’ve seen in Morocco. After taking in the endless blue sky with puffs of autumnal cumulous clouds (yes, fall has finally arrived!), we headed to the Palace’s troglodyte quarters. Creepy even on a sparkling afternoon, the caves went on an on, pierced with beams of sunlight shooting through Renaissance-era skylights. Who lived down here, we wondered. Slaves? Discarded mistresses? No, that didn’t seem plausible since Sultan Ahmed el Mansour, the fellow who built the Palace, named one of its pavilions for his favorite mistress. At most historic sites, these pedestrian questions would have been easily answered by reading one of many informational plaques on the walls. Not so here. We’ve never visited a monument with a more minimal signage policy. We counted about five in the whole place, two of which pointed us to the terrace and exit. While a bit frustrating, it was a bit like we’d discovered the ruins ourselves. “Hey look, guys, it’s even got caves . . . er, dungeons. Cool.”

After the caves, we all needed some air and hiked up to the Palace’s terrace, which has to be one of the tallest in the Medina and from which we could see most of the Medina and the Atlas Mountains beyond. The ubiquitous minarets of the city’s many mosques were the poetic foil to the skyline’s other icon: the satellite dish. If ever there was a good cause for airbrushing, the dish is it.

MINISTERIO DEL GUSTO

We’d be remiss not to mention our trip to the thirteen-year-old Ministerio del Gusto space, tucked away on a side street near the Mouassine Fountain. Since most of our experience has been with more traditional riad renovations – even those that embrace a European minimalism retain some of the classic Moroccan architectural details like carved plaster and wood and interesting tile work – it was refreshing to enter the MdG space and get a shock of something entirely new. Or sort of. The place does have a slightly outmoded, kitchy feel. The references here are tribal and harken to styles south of Morocco’s borders. The gallery has been a favorite of all the design books on the country and we recognized elements like the rope banister that weaves up the house’s three stories, the fountain-plunge pool with its ethereal stick sculpture hanging above.

MdG is a gallery for art – more of Martina Bigot’s luminous sculptures – furniture, comprised of a mixture of classics like Eames lounge chairs (not so common here in Marrakech as in LA!) and designs by the gallery’s owners, as well as an enviable collection of vintage fashion and some beautiful glass pieces from Italy.

On the terrace is a rope hammock suspended between two columns that’s big enough for four and the place’s outdoor shower makes us regret our decision not to install one. We were concerned about our mosque proximity!

Context is, I guess, everything. Over the past several months, we’ve been inspired by Marrakech’s compactness and its Andalussian/Islamic design influences. MdG and the Badi Palace reminded us that big open spaces and great mid-Century furniture where you least expect them can be thought provoking as well.

PARTING SHOT

And we leave you with a bit of “poetry” that we overhead in the Place. It was delivered by a young Moroccan, one of the white-coated juice sellers, to an elderly Englishman:

Hey Old Man
Your promises like child
Fucking off.

Hurray Visitors

2006-09-19T09:09:00.000-07:00

Our first visitors, Tara and Carlo, have arrived from Los Angeles for a four-day stay. Despite the warnings we’ve heard about visitors that stay for weeks on end – it’s Africa, after all, hardly a trip to Maine for a long weekend – expect no-holds-barred entertaining, complain about minor inconveniences like donkey dung in the streets, et al, we’d like to get it on the record that we’re very pro houseguests. Granted Tara and Carlo are our first guests since we arrived three months ago, and they’re more-than paving the way for others by being brilliant company and providing news from home and amusing conversation (subtext: the Caitlin and Samuel show can get a bit old without some outside influence). At any rate, the gauntlet has been thrown, so go check out those fares on Atlas Blue.

As for Tara and Carlo, they’re providing us with an opportunity to enjoy our adopted city with fresh eyes. The result is that we appreciate some of Marrakech’s marvels anew: fresh-squeezed orange juice in the Place; the shock of color and smell one encounters upon entering the souks for the first time; the adrenalin rush of maneuvering through a narrow street with donkey carts, scooters and pedestrians all jockeying for place; the somber, sometimes melodic sound of the call to prayer at five in the morning. At the same time, we also take great vicarious pleasure in watching Tara and Carlo navigate some of the trickier elements of Marrakech culture . . . like haggling.

It all began with a carpet, or the prospect of a new carpet, we should say. It’s common knowledge that Morocco affords some pretty incredible shopping, from leather goods and pottery to chunky jewelry and textiles. And a visitor would be a fool not to pack and extra bag or two for one of the many types of carpets on offer. Carlo and Tara, who graciously lugged in 20 pounds of supplies from home for us, were positioned with a full bag ready to fill with goodies.

Up to now, we’ve only bought simple Berber kilim rugs at the Bab El Khemis flea market, so we decided to check out a giant rug emporium near the Place to get an overview of what the many choices are and what colors, patterns and textures our guests might be most inclined towards. This is just a scout trip, we all agreed, no need to buy, just look. Rug salesmen are always obliging and there’s a certain ceremony to their salesmanship that’s quaint – at least the first time you experience it. We were led into a cavernous room and two fellows were summoned to help unfurl rugs for us to touch and admire from every angle. And unfurl they did; we probably saw forty rugs before narrowing down the field to the two or three that Tara and Carlo most liked. We were shown the difference between knotted, woven and embroidered rugs are and watched as a vermillion carpet turned to, yup, dusty rose when we moved to look at it from another angle.

Once we’d narrowed in on a few selections, mint tea was offered and plush chairs pulled out. Though we’d already explained that no purchases were to be made that night, the salesman couldn’t help but suggest that the front-runner was a truly unique carpet and one that another savvy buyer might snatch up before morn. As we felt ourselves weakening, a swift call to Hamoud brought us back our established strategy – look first, buy later – and we strode out of the shop confident that for tomorrow’s buying outing we were well prepped.

Cut to the next afternoon and the four of us, along with Hamoud, are sipping sugary mint tea with the proprietor of a very swanky rug shop near Bab Laksur. The guy has assistants bring out framed photos of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith in the shop, beaming after purchasing 35 carpets. Another shows Dennis Hooper (in the blurry photo we think we recognize Dennis Hopper) though his name has been misspelled and a third has Frank Langella. This is no Will Smith, but the photos are clearly proud property. “Look, that’s me,” says one of the assistants, pointing to the photo with Patrick Stewart. He’s a man of about forty now with a beard and slight paunch, but back in the photo his face has the pink scrubbed, freshly shaved look of and eighteen-year-old.

The owner of the shop is an old friend of Hamoud’s, a sort of mentor figure, so we’ve been promised fair prices. His shop is a soaring mid-nineteenth-Century place with ornate plaster and wood carving, beautiful zellij and carved marble pillars. He’s from Fez and the place reminds us of some of the amazing architecture we saw in that city.

Again, carpet after carpet is rolled out for Tara and Carlo to inspect. Since last night’s scout, we know the general style and color palette they’re after, but since all of these carpets are hand made and unique and because the shop is lined with thousands of them, it doesn’t make the going any easier.

To watch a couple select and then haggle over the price of a rug is a curious psychological study. First off, Tara speaks French quite fluently and Carlo does not, so the bulk of the communication about what they did and didn’t like about each carpet fell on her to convey. This also meant that she needed to distill the text and subtext of Carlo’s vague comments about the carpets; in his defense, few of us have the faculty to articulate the nuances in color and pattern and texture that make one carpet more appealing than another. After an exhausting 2-hour session of looking at another 40 carpets, who wouldn’t be a bit tongue-tied. Also, although they’d come to Marrakech determined to leave with a carpet, they hadn’t actually discussed their price range or measured their living room to know the size carpet that might work in the space. Fortunately, they both seemed drawn to the same rose and gray-blue color palette and simple geometry of the Berber rugs, but when it came down to four favorites and calculators came out, things fell apart. Knowing that our friends were in danger only of dispensing a bit more cash then they’d hoped, we settled in to watch the circus.

Quick note: Moroccans love to present price offers and counter offers either in writing (I guess it seems binding), or on the face of a large calculator. Once they’ve set a price, they offer the paper or calculator to you and you are meant to scratch out their price and put in your own counter offer. This can sometimes go on for an hour or more, with scratched out numbers in columns filling a whole page.

To start, the prices were a fair bit higher than those we’d encountered the day before, though the rugs were undeniably of a much higher quality. Regardless, they needed a minute for the sticker shock to settle and since Carlo was keen on spending more than Tara, a team huddle was required. We all watched as they whispered in the corner, cheeks flushed, arms pointing and waving in agitation. Since the first quoted price from the shop owner was higher than either wanted to spend, Hamoud was called into the circle to help determine what kind of counter would toe the delicate line between insult and a good deal. Hamoud, who’s steered innumerable foreigners through this very purchase, must be the type of knowing father that pushes his son off for his first ride on a bike without training wheels knowing that scraped knees are inevitable but necessary. In other words, he shrugs and says, “Go for it.”

Tara and Carlo turn out to be shrewd negotiators and leave us wondering if all that hemming and hawing was part of the act. They discard the most expensive rug and have the proprietor and his minions bring out a second slew of rugs in a more moderate price range that have similar color tones and design. From this new batch – is that sweat I see on the brow of the uber-cool proprietor! – they pick two faves and then use our ever-handy tape measure – hey, I thought they didn’t know the size of their living room! – to cast another rug off as too small, another too narrow and long. Within 15 minutes, we’re left with a winner and Carlo’s low-ball offer warrants nothing more than a tired sigh and a minimal counter.

A decision made beats out caffeine and probably a few other uppers for bolstering the energy and spirits of a crew. While Carlo is lead upstairs to the credit card machine where two receipts are generously created: one to share with customs; the other with the true amount charged to his card, we are lead to the VIP room (we recognize it from the Will Smith photos) for our own photo op. “You send me photo of carpet in home,” says the owner, “I want to put you in my book.” (Note the photo of Patrick Stewart that’s being held proudly by the assistant in the picture of Tara and Carlo, Hamoud, the rug seller and Samuel.) Look at a carpet from one direction and it’s all pale, soft tones, walk around to the other side and its rich colors are revealed. I guess you could say the same about some so-called-novice rug buyers.

Also included are a few pics from our trip to the Jardin Majorelle.

Barbershop Blues

2006-09-18T10:00:00.000-07:00

Barbershops are about as common as internet cafés throughout the medina, which is to say that every street has at least two. Tiny little rooms with one or two chairs serve a regular clientele of men. Back in Los Angeles, it seemed the barbershop was a dying breed, and it certainly lacked the glamour of the latest salon with its list of A-list clients. I don’t think we’ve seen a salon here, and since so many women cover their heads, it might be that Marrakech isn’t quite ready for the trend. For men, though, the barbershop is a regular visit. It seems especially popular on Thursdays and Friday mornings, before Friday’s midday prayer. This particular prayer is so important that mosques run up a white flag to remind people. We wonder if even locals begin to tune out the frequent calls to prayer, in much the same way a new worker on a construction site soon ignores the constant beeping of a bucket loader driving in reverse. We certainly have.

Whether as part of a ritual cleansing, or to keep up on the neighborhood gossip, the barbershops are popular indeed. That doesn’t mean that we feel the need to peer into them; we tend to pass with heads down trying to avoid the pitches of adjacent salesmen. So it took Craig, an American expat who’s recently retired to Marrakech, to point out a series of photos in the window of a barbershop the other day.

As we paused to lean in, we expected to see the barber with his regular clients smiling broadly, showing off stylish new coifs. Instead, we were treated to photos of clients whose expressions could be better described as grimaces. The sun-faded prints taped to the grimy glass showed five-year-old boys moments after being circumcised. For the most part, they were well dressed from the waist up, but their faces covered in tears emphasized that the barber’s scissors had more than hair to snip. Evidently it’s customary for photos of bloodied, freshly clipped penises, photos taken by beaming fathers, to be proudly displayed in the windows of the obliging barber’s shop. The event is the subject of much paternal pride (a rather late-term bris, if you ask us!), though we wonder if the boys themselves are eager for their friends in the street to see their scared, tear-streaked faces in the shop window. That’s one appointment at the barbershop you want to make sure to get straight.

As we were “admiring” the photos in the barbershop window, the scissor-wielding barber himself emerged. Moroccans love a good joke, and he indicated to the three men in our group that he’d happily do the honors. You’ve never seen such swift back stepping to a chorus of high-pitched “Fait accompli! Fait accompli!”

Les Copains

2006-09-17T12:20:00.000-07:00

We’ve never had a front entry hall before. In all of our apartments, and even our house, the front door opened directly into the living room. So the fact that we’ve got a real live entry hall at Dar Noury has been cause for some mild celebration, silly as it may sound. It’s been hard to imagine what it might look like after it’s finished. It started out with a sink right in front of the door, which evidently didn’t fit in the bathroom. And as the walls were skinned back to the underlying brick, it seemed impossible that it would ever be finished.

But from the bedroom window of our rental, we saw a broken old window frame that we thought could make a dramatic mirror. The window was on the roof of an adjacent little general store, and since the store doesn’t sell our preferred brand of water, we don’t shop there. So it’s with a little guilt that I approach the shopkeeper, who recognizes me from the 10 times a day I pass his store with bags from other shops, and ask him about buying the window frame. He’s friendly enough, but tells me that it belongs to the landlord, the woodworker with a shop across the street who just left town on vacation.

Of course, this only makes things worse. The woodworker is quite friendly to us. He and his friends at adjacent shops, a barber and a realtor, pull up chairs in front of door and chat most of the day. Sometimes they’ll bring a little radio and listen to it late at night under our bedroom window as we’re trying to fall asleep. We’d been thinking of buying something like a small coffee table from him as a neighborly gesture until Hamoud told us the woodworker is over priced, and any design of his we liked we should take to Hamoud who’d get it made for less. The woodworker knows we’ve bought a house and has intimated he’d like to sell us something; we’ve indicated we’d wait till we’re finished with the house.
“How’s the house,” he’d ask as we came home.
“Petit a petit,” we’d reply. It’s the first half of the popular French expression, “little by little, the bird builds his nest.” One day he nodded knowingly, and shared with us a Moroccan version of the expression. “Little by little, the camel enters the marmite.” Moroccan marmite is a large meat stew made for family holidays, not the repulsive British spread. The point is, that when you’re making a meat stew, no matter how big, it takes a fare bit of work chopping up the camel into pieces and making a stew of it.

After a couple weeks, the woodworker returns, and we debate who’s going to ask about the window. The broken window. The old broken window. Should we call it rotten? Should we say, we’d take it so he wouldn’t have to go to the bother of throwing it out? The following morning, we open the door to head out, and there’s the woodworker sitting in front of our door. No time like the present so we start in about the window. He’s quite friendly and offers to sell it to us if we get a ladder to climb up on the roof and look at it. We ask about cost, and he replies that we won’t have a problem with him about price. He likes us, he says. Likes chatting as we come and go. We thank him for looking after the place, and dumping the occasional bottle of water over the plants by the front door. I’m trying to turn our little love fest to our advantage. We’re neighbors after all, and that’s got to be good for something. But as I’m speaking, the word for neighbor eludes me for a second. As I’m trying to say, we’re voisins, I say instead that we’re copains, and while you can rhyme the two in a pop song, a copain is a very good friend, sometimes used for a significant other, and now I’m wondering how to back pedal. It’s out there, that we’re these great friends. Do I now say, “no, we’re not great friends, I misspoke. We’re just neighbors?” Or is that worse, should I just let it stand and hope that he chalks it up to cultural differences or my language skills? And he steadfastly refuses to state a price, repeating with a big smile that we’ll have no problem with him about the window. How hard a bargain can we drive with our new copain? We smile and back our way out into the street and disappear into a throng of video camera wielding Italian tourists.

The problem has not gone away, but it has been put off for want of a ladder tall enough to scale the wall of the shop. He’s promised to bring one in a few days and I guess then we’ll know the truth: are we voisins or copains?

Sabotage

2006-09-15T08:15:00.000-07:00

Yes, it’s an ugly word, made all the fouler when it involves a drainage pipe that has run amok inside the walls of a just-painted house. Owning to circumstances that are still not clear to us, one of our workers stuffed a plastic water bottle (oh, how we’re bemoaning our earlier post extolling the many uses of said bottles!) into the drain pipe that runs from our terrace through the walls of the guest bathroom and dining room to its eventual exit in the city sewer beyond the mosque’s walls. Not only did the offending creep hide the bottle in our drainpipe, he then added a 40-centimeter layer of cement and other rubble that contributed to a colossal blockage and the resulting backup and overflow. You see, each night before heading home, our workers shower on the terrace (and doing other things that involve a drain, though we hate to even think of them as we consider our mucked up walls), so you can imagine the grimy water that filled the pipe. Having no where to go but up, once the “dust” as Hamoud so poetically calls the stuff that goes down drains (toilet, sink and otherwise), it overflowed and stained our freshly tadelakted and painted walls with vile brown rivulets.

Once the sabotage had been discovered, the Marrakech equivalent of RotoRooter arrived to clean out the drain and then the team set to work repairing the not inconsequential damage. “Look at this,” said Hamoud in disbelief, fishing his hand in the murky water and pulling out bits of debris that had comprised the blockage. Now, our new tadelakt must be stripped and reapplied (a two-day process), the dining room ceiling must be replastered and the walls repainted, and so on. Mustapha, our plumber/electrician, has remerged and set about cracking walls to ensure that the pipe has not suffered long-term damage and that we won’t sustain further leakage. Welcome back, Mustapha!

While we are upset by the setback, the sting of the betrayal by one of our own team is even worse. All those times we pinched ourselves for the good luck we've enjoyed with our able crew, especially as we listened to others complain about their worksite woes, is coming back to haunt us.

We were quite pleased, however, with how Hamoud and Mohamed handled things. Once they’d discovered the identity of the pipe plunderer, they swiftly fired him and rallied to right the problem caused by his sabotage. To be honest, the remaining crew seems even more cohesive and dedicated to getting our renovation back on track. When we located a photo of the saboteur on our computer (curiously, a lanky smiling boy who’d been one of our favorites), the team gathered around and shook their heads in disbelief at the traitor that had infiltrated their ranks. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. In Marrakech, though, one has to wonder if a sheep’s attire is the safest costume to don.

A Welcome Presence

2006-09-13T04:08:00.000-07:00

Yesterday’s thwarted bombing attempt at the U.S. Embassy in Damascus served as a bit of a reminder to us of our guest status in this Muslim country, and a warning not to get too complacent or comfortable. We were struck too by the swift military and police response. The medina was crawling with uniformed officers and before we put two and two together, we assumed it must be some kind of parade or that Tom Cruise had decided to pay a visit. Watching all that military might patrol the streets had the desired effect of making us foreigners feel safer while at the same time driving home the seriousness of the situation. The recent red alerts in the States and London seemed very far away, even the attention surrounding the fifth anniversary of September 11th was remote until we found ourselves walking through the souks to our house along a familiar route now lined with stern, watchful soldiers.

The appearance of Morocco’s military has coincided with the disappearance of one of our trusted workers. Mustapha, our plumber/electrician has gone AWOL. Several weeks ago, he took a week-long vacation with his family in Jadida. At the time, we were a bit taken aback seeing as how his absence would hold up work at the house during the crucial final stages, but vacation is vacation and we wished him a happy trip. He returned from the seaside break a few days later than promised, but seemed refreshed and as anxious as us to get the job done. A few days later, Hamoud took us aside at the end of the day and explained that Mustapha wanted an advance on his final payment (including a healthy bonus) in order to enroll his kids in school. Evidently, he’d overspent during the holiday and was having trouble scraping together the cash for his kids’ tuition. We’re not talking break-the-bank prep school prices here, just 30 dirhams per month, but boy did he know which strings to pull with us. Despite all that we’ve been told about not paying people in advance, we acquiesced without a second thought, throwing in some extra money for school supplies.

Well, the next day Mustapha doesn’t show up. “He had to deal with some stuff,” explains Hamoud rather lamely. But when the same thing happens the next day, we hit the roof. This time, Mustapha’s excuse is that he doesn’t have any place to work, meaning the worksite is too crowded for him. With steam coming out our ears, we walk though the house room by room with Hamoud noting the electric/plumbing projects that are still incomplete and that the whole first floor is free of workers so Mustapha would have plenty of room to breathe. Alas, it looks like we’ve fallen victim to a classic construction woe and walked right into the situation like one of the lambs that will soon find its throat slit in our courtyard. Mustapha’s got another job and is two-timing us.

We have to remind ourselves that screaming gets you nowhere with Moroccan workers and try our best to channel our anger into the more effective grave disappointment. “Tell Mustapha we trusted him and were generous with him and now we’re very, very unhappy at how he’s mistreating us,” we tell Hamoud. The problem is we’re the only ones set to lose on this one; Mustapha has been paid, and to get another electrician/plumber will only cost us more time and money. Hamoud promises that if Mustapha isn’t at the worksite by 6:30 a.m. tomorrow, he’ll go to his house himself to shame him in. In the meantime, lovely Hamoud takes up a pickax himself to carve out a trench in the wall for our shower line.

The incident is a classic novice mistake, but to be honest, we’ve felt so lucky about our team and the pace and quality of the work that we’d started to wonder about all the horror stories we’d heard from other renovation projects. Maybe this day has taught us never to let our guard down, or maybe the appearance of the black cat is a sign that our baraka needs a little replenishing.

Arches

2006-09-10T09:46:00.000-07:00

Slowly but surely the arches have come into existence. Some required knocking out cement and bricks and reforming with fresh concrete and rebar, others were already in pretty good shape.

We’ve had a team of three plasterers here for about a week. They replastered all the ceilings, and then turned their attention to the doors, doing their best to mimic the classic design of the arched doors at the adjacent mosque. It’s been interesting to watch the hand mixing, shaping and carving of the plaster and that have been passed down from the master to his lieutenant to the assistant who brings them water.

For the most part, the plaster has gone up pretty painlessly. That was until yesterday. With two arches remaining, the master plasterer gave his team the day off and went about finishing the job on his own. Suddenly his skilled hands betrayed him, and he carved a lopsided arch that seemed the work of a novice. When he asked how we liked it, we pointed out the adjacent arch, and how beautiful it was, noting politely that the one he was working on “wasn’t finished.” He nodded and went back to work, only to come to us 30 minutes later with an arch lilting decidedly to one side. We brought over Hamoud to try to explain what we were after.

Soon, most of the work crew had gathered around and was laughing and teasing the master plasterer, asking him if this was his first day on the job. We joined in and asked if he’d had a little too much to drink, a favorite joke between Muslims and non-Muslims here. After another hour of frustration, he took out a hammer and chipped away all the plaster, having decided to give it a fresh start in the morning.

Black Cat

2006-09-09T09:43:00.000-07:00

A black cat jumped from the roof of the mosque next door, scampered across the top of our terrace wall and then made itself at home on our terrace. As it did so, the late afternoon light turned a ghostly yellow. Hamoud shook his head: bad luck. “If you see one at night and say God’s name, it will disappear. Like a Jinn.” Jinns are the evil spirits we’ve heard tell of in Morocco, though in our experience they’re not frequently discussed with foreigners. We didn’t know the bad luck of black cats was so universal. “Oh, yes,” said Hamoud. “Back cats and black dogs.” Now there’s a different twist, we think. This is one of three neighborhood cats that have been scouting our worksite, weighing the place as a possible residence once the work is finished. Since terrace hopping is second-nature for Marrakech cats, we have no idea how to keep them away.

More often than Jinns, we hear of their opposite: baraka, or blessing. Of course, that’s the name for our blog, as it seemed pretty obvious that for two people to have the opportunity to pack up and move to a new country for a year’s exploration was quite a blessing in any language. We’re told rain is a baraka, the bird living in our house brings us baraka. Frankly, we’re pleased that the list of things that either are or bring baraka is quite generous. The word has many meanings and many uses as well. The most recent usage we’ve learned is a polite way of saying, “that’s all.” As in when buying vegetables at the market, after ordering kilos of black figs, lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, avocados and leeks. The vegetable seller will ask if you want anything else, and the answer, “baraka,” means blessing enough, that’s all for today.

Back on the terrace, the black cat continued to eye us warily, and the work crew (Team Hamoud, we’ve dubbed it) was hard at work. The brother of the chief mason is a long lanky guy who works quite hard all day, except at lunch when he pauses to smoke a little hash in a long wooden pipe. We get along well, despite the fact that he speaks no more than a handful of French words. So in the eerie yellow light on the terrace, we were both a bit confused when he seemed to say something to us about “couper un mouton.” We frankly were not sure if he was speaking in French or Arabic, but he repeated the phrase a couple of times and then for emphasis, drew a line across his throat with a finger. Not quite sure where this was going, we took our usual approach, and called Hamoud to explain.

“He wants you to sacrifice a ram when we finish the house,” Hamoud told us. “It will bring baraka.” We look at each other a little surprised. “Is it to get rid of the Jinns?” I ask eagerly. As we arrived in Morocco we both read a book called “The Caliph’s House,” about a British man who redid a palace in Casablanca and was nearly thwarted at every turn by workers trying to rid the house of Jinns. We’ve had no such problems, and if one of us feels we should count our baraka, the other feels we might be getting a little gypped. At any rate, we tell Hamoud we’d be happy to slaughter a ram in the courtyard to celebrate with the house workers when they finish, so long as he takes the role of honor and does the actual throat slitting. Hamoud is pleased, and shares the good news with his team. We learn that they will all divvy up the meat amongst themselves and give some to the neighbors. The plumber took the opportunity to show off his new drainpipe, and claimed it can easily handle all the spewing blood, unlike older drainpipes where the blood would back up and rot in the courtyard for a week. The imminent slaughter has clearly made the workers’ day, and more than once they mime the throat slitting, giving us a smiling thumbs up. We’re not sure what we’re getting ourselves into, but it seems too late to let down the members of Team Hamoud. Of course, there’s a lot more work to be done before we head out to the ram auction.

Blame Canada

2006-09-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

Whether walking through the souks or riding in a cab, the two pro forma conversations we encounter over and over are about the weather and where we are from. For the merchants in the souks, country of origin borders on an obsession. Among the various expats and seasoned travelers we’ve met, the understanding is that there are strong stereotypical assumptions made about people’s spending habits based on where they come from with Japanese ranking first in the shopkeepers eyes, and the French last.

“Italian?” one shopkeeper shouts. “Bonjour,” says another. “Fish and Chips?” says a third, guessing we’re English. We always find this frustrating and beside the point, whether we’re interested in buying something or passing quietly through the souks. Perhaps, if it felt like sincere curiosity rather than the first line of a script, we’d be more open, but our knee-jerk reaction is to say we live in Marrakech.

Recently, Hamoud took us to the lantern shop of an acquaintance of his. As we need over two dozen lights, we were looking for a good bargain. Only this lantern maker was a bit more political than most and when we told him we were American, he asked why we hadn’t done anything to stop the slaughter in Lebanon. As we left his shop, Hamoud suggested that with some people it might be better to say we’re Canadian, a practice several other Americans we know have adopted.

So that afternoon we give it a shot, beginning in a taxi. “Oh, it’s cold there,” says the taxi driver, and the conversation ends. Cold there? That’s all you have to say about our country? We’re not very pleased. The next taxi driver goes a little farther. “Cold,” he says. “Like Siberia.” “In the winter, sure, but it gets hot in the summer,” we qualify defensively for our adoptive homeland. “120 degrees?” he asks, and we have to shake our heads in shame. We don’t think it gets that hot in Canada. But suddenly he’s grilling us: What’s the capitol? How many people live there? What percentage speaks French? We look at each other, struggling to remember these details out of respect for both 7th grade teachers and Canadian friends alike. Ottawa! 32 Million! 30 percent! As the cab pulls to our stop, we get out pleased that we’ve handled ourselves well as Canadians.

But still, it all feels a bit too safe. Other than commenting on the cold weather, nobody has a bad thing to say about Canada. When we were Canadians, nobody blamed us for the killing of innocent women and children. But then, nobody lit up as they said “New York City! I love rap!” Or “Hollywood. You know Jim Carey?” Or “I have an aunt who lives in Florida, near Disneyworld.” Although our three days spent playing Canadians passed smoothly, we realized that nationality isn’t something you put on like a cap to keep the sun off. Sure we’re ashamed of many of the actions perpetrated by our government; nonetheless, we’re Americans and to deny this seems both silly and disloyal. It may make life easier here pretending to be something we’re not, but we’ve decided to embrace that elevated state of curiosity each time we say we are American, and wonder where the conversation will take us.

Red, White and Blue

2006-09-05T06:45:00.000-07:00

The Martha Stewart paint collection alone must have 50 different shades of white, from summer linen to antique parchment. Factor in the white offerings from Ralph Lauren, Farrow & Ball, Benjamin Moore and others and you’d have the Rose City looking like Casablanca pretty quickly. Color choice, and lots of it, is something to which we’ve grown very accustomed.

Since the painters start at the house today – though what exactly they’re going to do is a mystery since we haven’t a single room finished enough to entertain a coat of paint – we trekked off to the paint store yesterday to stock up on supplies. As we’ve done for the other work projects, we bid out the labor for the paint job and are buying all of the supplies ourselves to ensure quality and a better price. Unlike trips to pick up sheet metal and various types of cement, we feel like we know our way around a paint store and are looking forward to weighing swatches and color options. Comfortable territory at last. When we arrive, we jockey for position in line at the storefront. This is no palace of paint like you’d find at Home Depot; no, the store is more like a musty corner bodega with employees scuttling to retrieve items for customers from the shelves in the shop’s dark depths.

Hamoud hands our list to the shop owner and we wait expectantly for the forthcoming color wheel. What we get is a piece of laminated paper with color tabs divided into two finish groups: peintures brilliantes, or “glossy” and peinture mates. No eggshell, no semi-gloss. There is a subcategory for façade colors, which is basically a study in rose: Rose Mamounia; Saumon; Rouge Marrakech; Rose Chtouka; Rouge Brique, and so on. I catch Samuel eyeing these shades longingly, despite the fact that our home has no exterior walls to be painted. Evidently, when a budding, 12-year-old aesthete, he’d begged his parents to paint his room “dusty rose,” a color he associated with the heights of sophistication. Saving him from sure skewering during birthday party sleep-overs, his sage parents steered him to a mocha color instead. He’s clearly not over his rose fixation.

“But we don’t want glossy or matte,” we say to Hamoud, “we want the walls to be semi-gloss.” “Don’t worry,” he replies, “we just mix the shiny and the flat,” he continues, miming the mélange. Seems plausible, I guess. But what about the colors? We see just one red in the gloss section and one in the matte category. And there isn’t a single white on the page. Not one. “Red is red, and white is white,” says the shop owner when we inquire, the dawning realization of our paucity of choice making us momentarily faint. “But how, but how, but how . . .” we stammer. Surely all of Marrakech is not painted in just Rouge 700 and Rouge 704. Where are the other 699 shades of red? The chart we’ve been given has just 36 colors total; like we said before, Martha’s whites collection tops this number easy.

Unfortunately, this tale does not have a clear conclusion. We left the store with 400 kilograms of paint, mostly white, some black and a half-gallon each of the two reds on offer. Over the next few days, I guess we’ll have to channel our inner Ralph Lauren and come up with some passable versions of Tuxedo White and Dressage Red. We’ll let you be the judge of our mix-master success with forthcoming photos.

It seems that yesterday was destined to be a day of color quandaries. Our bejmat tiles arrived for our bathroom floors. We’re doing a white and black basket-weave pattern. Bejmat is the term for terra cotta tiles that are glazed and fired. Because the glazes are mixed and painted on by hand, there’s always a good deal of variation in the color. Our white batch, unfortunately, could only be described as khaki. A nice color, but not what we’re going for. The problem is that the tiles are made to order and come from Fez. To have a new batch made and shipped would take at least a week and our contractor is ready to lay the tiles this week. Given that our first guests arrive in just two weeks and with Ramadan looming, we’re loathe to invite a delay like this.

Sure, a house project is all about compromises and creative solutions, but some things are non-negotiable. Yesterday, on his birthday, and with king-for-a-day attitude, Samuel threw down the gauntlet: We find white bejmat tiles today or, or, or . . . else! Hamoud shook his head at us – he hates it when voices get raised or when we seem stressed out about anything -but his good nature and resourcefulness soon had us all in a better mood as we set off on a journey to find pure white bejmat, one that took us first to the industrial zone and then to a factory 20 kilometers outside of Marrakech on the road to Essaouira.

We have varying degrees of luck when we decide to stick to our guns about something, but yesterday it paid off. While we can’t be sure what color red our dining room will end up, we’re damn certain the bathroom floors will be a pristine Vermont Snow White.

Reduce > Reuse > Recycle

2006-09-02T12:00:00.000-07:00

In the States the environmental movement is founded on the basic belief that it’s the responsible thing to take care of the planet; that we’re using up the earth’s natural resources and will have no future if we continue this way. From afar, we’ve heard a lot of talk about the “Al Gore documentary,” or AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH. Needless to say, it hasn’t made it to Marrakech just yet.

In Marrakech, and indeed throughout Morocco, there’s a great deal of environmentally friendly behavior, and though the motives are quite different, the net result is in many ways positive. The three Rs of environmentalism - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - are very much in evidence here, though the motivation is primarily a financial one.

The first thing we noticed was how little electricity is used. While looking at close to a hundred houses between Fez and Marrakech, we were struck by how stridently people conserved electricity. A light would be turned on in each room, and tuned off the moment we left, both conserving electricity and helping to keep the rooms cooler in the hot summer. Almost without exception fluorescent light bulbs are used because of their energy efficiency. Fluorescent is an aesthetic concession, though; we’ve had dinner in high-end restaurants where we asked them to turn off the harsh green glare, leaving us in near-dark candlelight. The pervasive American habit of turning all the lights on and leaving them on (not to mention TVs, stereos, air conditioners, etc.) is completely foreign here. Scooters are a popular alternative to cars: in addition to being dramatically cheaper, they’re cherished for their fuel economy.

We’ve also been struck by how much less garbage Moroccans generate than Americans. This garbage can is the product of a street full houses for a week. Garbage bags hardly exist in the stores; people reuse grocery bags. And even the garbage that accumulates is subjected to a form of local recycling. It’s common for garbage bags to be torn into and scavenged for useful things. And the men who drive the donkey carts will frequently find any organic material - watermelon rinds, for example – and feed it to their beasts. And since all the garbage bags are torn open before they’re carted away, we’ve had ample opportunity to observe that there is no junk mail. There is no evidence of the vast, vast quantities of paper – paper towels, paper napkins, computer paper, newspapers, catalogs – that we are accustomed to throwing out in the States.

Repair shops proliferate for any item imaginable. Scooter repair shops can be found on virtually every block. Someone will patiently tinker on an old industrial engine indefinitely. The idea of repairing most electronics in the States is a bit of a joke. Why spend $80 to repair something when you can buy a new one for $100? And so the garbage dumps and landfills continue to expand. In Morocco, the cost of skilled labor to repair is much cheaper, and since a savings of $20 amounts to about two day’s wages, demand for repair stores keeps even VHS Camcorders in use.

Of course, there are problems. Water use is very high. The standard cleaning practice for tile floors is to pour bucket after bucket of water on the floor and then squeegee the water across the tiles and into drainpipes. And there’s an odd habit that shopkeepers have of watering down the sidewalk in front of their little stores. It’s meant to keep down the dust and make the area a bit cooler, but we sat in one café that watered down its sidewalk five times in as long as it took us to drink an orange juice.

In addition to water, there is no recycling in the American sense. All the plastic water bottles we drain daily are thrown out with eggs shells and stale bread. And while we’ve seen plenty of creative uses for water bottles on our construction site, the two of us alone generate more than is needed for all of Marrakech’s construction sites. So while Morocco has a lot to learn about recycling from the West, the West could learn a great deal from Morocco’s frugal approach to its refuse. And speaking of stale bread, we’ve discovered that the heels of our day-old baguettes make for an excellent bread pudding. Maybe we’ll share the recipe and get the neighborhood recycling its bread come cooler weather.