Marrakesh

Bobbi, Dusty, Glenn, and Vance in Morocco and Spain

June-July 2000

MARRAKESH

Arriving on the bus from Essaouira, the red character of the architecture is apparent. The bus station was just outside the city walls. If you went through the big stone gate, you would walk down a street that eventually led to the Islane, the hotel that Pete had recommended to us. I was tempted to put everyone through the walk, eager to plunge into the delights of the medina, especially as the fare to the Islane by taxi was 20 dhms, twice the price we were accustomed to. But the soon baked sense into our heads and we hopped in one of the many petit taxis in the huge Gare Routiers parking lot adjacent to the station.

The Islane had a room. It was not too expensive, around $40, near western standard, and air conditioned. That latter aspect convinced us to take the room as soon as we'd seen it. The hotel was supposed to have a bar but didn't. There were signs in the hall pointing to the Bar/Terrace where the bar was supposed to be but in fact this was blocked off so to get there we had to go out on the street and up another flight of stairs to reach the spot just meters from our room where you could take in the activity outside around the Koutoubia, an ancient minaret and landmark in the city. So we didn't try that till 11at night but the restaurant had just closed, so we didn't find out till next day that there was in fact no beer available there, and we left before getting drinks when they insisted we move from one of the empty tables we had chosen with a view which in their view was reserved for dining to one without a view, which in their view was where customers only drinking should sit. So we never ate or drank there. We went downstairs to a sidewalk cafe and had drinks there instead, right on the square opposite the Koutoubia, where we could savor the fumes and noise from the heavy traffic at much closer range, but at least sit in the shade meters away from the heat.

Our second day at the Islane we found a stack of brochures which detailed events having to do with the festival of Marrakesh which was taking place at the time. We found in the schedule that the night before we had missed a fantasia, a charge of Berber horsemen which I had seen in 1973. This event took place only a short walk from the Koutoubia just outside the Bab Jadid, in a dirt lot outside the walls, but was not staged our second evening there. There was also a cultural show of some sort which was supposed to be free. There was a cultural show our second night as well but it was Palestinian artists, not Moroccan as on our first night. So our first night there, arriving late afternoon as we had, we didn't "twig" to events of the cultural festival until next day, after we had missed them.

What we did on arrival, as soon as we had cooled down in our room, was head over to Djemaa el-Fna square, only a short walk around the corner. This place was described in most glowing terms in all the tourist literature, LP for example, as one of the most entertaining outdoor spectacles in the world. Myself, I remembered it fondly from my travels in 1973. I remember vaguely the Khoutoubia and the nearby square, which I recall was lined with tented booths in which locals lounged nonchalantly smoking cannabis products. The square seemed then more of an extension of the souk than it is today. I don't recall that it was paved back then, but today its tarmac surface gives off more heat than in the past, so it's not such an easy place to relax. The water sellers are still there in their colorful hats and cloaks, but today they don't bother so much to carry water (why lug the weight when your real business is posing for photographs), and their costumes end at their tennis shoes and patterned socks. One "seller" wearing a common straw hat stood posing with the others more traditionally attired in the bangled bonnets.

In 1973 it all appeared to me to be more exotic and spontaneous. Here in the heat of late afternoon, there were a few snake charmers working in the shade of umbrellas all trying to attract paying customers, and a charming man with a rustic violin who wanted us to take a photo with him. Here I started the habit of speaking to people in Arabic and avoiding divulging where I came from. This threw them a bit off balance, esp. as my Arabic is far short of perfect. But I know enough to keep up my side of a conversation, and tell them that I don't want a guide, I'm from the same world that they're from, why would I want a photo of this, and thanks but I don't need whatever it is you're selling.

We walked through the medina, seeing nothing much of great interest, and not able to stop really without having someone invite us into a shop or ask us what we were looking for. We were approached several times by "faux guides," kids who insisted we would be lost in the souk without their expert guidance (which we were), and I spoke to them in Arabic and told them we didn't need their services (which we did). Without their assistance, we did a circle without finding the former slave souk or other points indicated on our LP map, but it was impossible to get really lost in the souk, and eventually we returned to the square. The place was still too hot for much of interest to be happening, so we retired to the tranquillity of the Agora restaurant, one of the many offering grandstand seats on the spectacle at sundown. I don't recall these places either from 1973. I don't remember much from 1973, only that the place I visited in 2000 and the one I visited in 1973 might as well have been two completely different places, and probably were.

We sat sipping mint tea and stretched that into orange juice at three times the price what they were selling it for fresh squeezed in the square below. We watched as families or tribal members set up musical events down in the square and soon had circles of gawkers. Typically there would be a native violinist or fret instrumentalist and a drummer, and a dancer, one of whom in one circle was a man posing as a veiled woman. From the safety and comfort of the Agora we could watch them all set up and play, whereas down in the square, if we were spotted pausing near one, we were immediately set upon for dirhams. I don't mind contributing to street musicians, but it's not comfortable being singled out from among the hundreds gathered there repeatedly for contributions. Acrobats tumbled and stacked themselves inside one circle, and across the way a large group of musicians set up and began to play, possibly as part of the festival activities. That was in fact probably the cultural show at sundown we saw next day in the brochures at the Islane.

Then just before sundown trucks emerged carrying materials for setting up stalls and as if setting up a carnival, food stalls were erected and in business within the hour. The configuration in the square was now orange carts ringing the square, food hawkers dominating the middle, random entertainers at the periphery, and grands taxis massed off to the right. Tour buses lined up on another quadrant and through the spectacle weaved several lines of package-tourists. We finished off our drinks and went down to join them.

The most interesting act I thought was a pair of octegenarians in dirty djelabas who played single-stringed instruments and sang. At one point one of the guys got up and started jumping around the circle while still strumming. Because he was so short and wizened, he was really cute, yet talented and much experienced at this genre of music and dance. Sadly, the two were playing to an audience of only a few by the time we left the square after dark in search of dinner.

The food at the stalls didn't appeal that much. There were stacks of sweets and smoke from braziers, but the kebabs seemed to have fat interspersed with the meat, and there didn't seem to be much variety. We had read about a buffet on the roof of the Hotel Ali for 60 dirhams a person and we went up there. It was on the roof in the open air, and it was a buffet, but it seemed that each dish in the buffet was a different ingredient in tajine, so essentially, you were putting together a tajine from its component parts. Well, it was pretty good for Moroccan fare, but, well, it was one more indication that Moroccan fare didn't seem to vary much.

The Hotel Ali also had an Internet niche. It seemed odd in 2000 to be just meters off the square that had been such a strange and exotic place in 1973 checking my email and wondering where the world was being led by the many forces of homogeneity, of which the Internet was only a recent such force. Pico Ayer wrote a good book on the topic, "Video Night in Katmandu." It's sad that travel has become so predictable, and geared so much toward the wrong kind of tourism. Anybody and his dog can travel these days (and often do). If Pico Ayer were to write a book today it should be called, Internet Cafe in Katmandu.

We had a comfortable night in the Islane and next morning set out to see the town. I had a list of objectives all gleaned from the LP and the only problem was to work out how to reach them. The first was the Palais el Badi, a latter 16th century structure built by the Saadian Ahmed Al-Mansour on the proceeds of the tribute paid by the Portuguese whom he had defeated in 1578. But now it was just a shell of its former self since its decorations had been ransacked in 1696 by the notorious Moulay Ismail to decorate his new palace in his distant capital of Meknes.

As we walked around the corner of the Khoutoubia toward Djemaa Square we passed a line of horse-carts along side the park and decided to hire one. We went from one to the other trying to arrange a fare to our liking to our first destination and were given wildly conflicting prices. When we reached the lead horse, we turned around as if to walk off, but accepted the final offer of the lowest bidder we'd found having tried them all, which was about 20 dirhams to take us where we wanted to go. So we set off in a caleche for the 15 min ride to the ruined palace, the clip-clop and odor of the horse alongside the tall red city walls a pleasant counterpart to the noise and exhaust of the traffic in general.

Almost all the things to see in Morocco had a 10 dirham a person charge, only a dollar, and once inside, there was always the offer of an explication and a cursory point of the finger (to indicate direction) when the offer was refused. In this particular monument, there had been placed some signs explaining the significance of a tiled floor space or two, but the signs had been badly vandalized, I imagine by the guides who saw them as a threat to their livelihood. This palace had a lake at its center and storks roosting in all its high places. In one corner was a set of underground rooms, some of which had been dungeons. There was also a watchman guarding an especially well-preserved corner of the palace, but there was also another entry fee, so we didn't bother. At one end of the palace a stage had been erected, as this was the venue of the son y lumiere spectacle each evening.

There were some tombs nearby that the deposing sultan Moulay Ismail had ordered sealed at the same time that he had ordered the palace to be dismantled, apparently over scruples about disturbing the dead. The tombs were only recently discovered and they remain the only extant examples of the decoration from this period similar to that which must have graced the Palace. We set out on foot only to find that the tombs were several blocks away. I asked and was given directions at several points along the wall blocking a more direct route until we came to a Berber shop with a sign on it saying the tombs were through the shop. This was true in a way. Once inside the shop we were encouraged to stop and look, but we asked the way to the tombs and were routed politely through the shop to a back door where we emerged in back alleys where we had to ask kids the way. The kids insisted on showing us and we insisted on thanking them and moving on in the indicated direction Soon we were back on a main road where a collection of shops and horse carts and tour buses signaled us that we were in the right place, and there we paid our token fee and entered into a garden with the Saadian tombs all around.

The decoration in the tomb alcoves was busy, fluted, almost like the work of nature in a cave. Considering it was carved from stone and cedar, the rest tiled, it was impressive, and makes you wonder at the mindset of a leader who would plunder a building with such decorations simply to gain materials to construct elsewhere. Like the vandals who knocked the noses off statues throughout Moghul India, the intent was obviously to discredit the previous regime. From the artwork in the tombs, it was obvious that the cost to posterity was high.

My visit included a bathroom break. At the exit, the doorman tried to hit me up for extra dirhams for use of the facility. Then he asked if I had any cigarettes, or coins from my country. The simplest most natural acts could be made a gauntlet in Morocco.

I had planned our morning according to the closing times given in LP. The Badi Palace and Saadian Tombs both closed at noon according to the guide, but the Palais de la Bahia, a restored 19th century residence, was open till one, or so it said. So outside the Saadian tombs we hired another caleche, just 20 dirhams again, to trot over to the Bahia Palace. We arrived in plenty of time or so it seemed, so we were quite surprised when the guards at the gate pointed to their watches and the sign showing that this place was closed at 11:45, of all odd hours. And it was just coming on 11:45 at that moment. We stepped back outside and they closed the gate behind us.

Wondering what to do now, we were approached by a man who told us there was a synagogue in that part of the town and it was just up that way. You might find it interesting he said. In any other country we would have thanked him and set off to find it, which was in fact what we did, but this was Morocco, so as soon as we passed a side street we discovered the same man behind us indicating that we should go this way. Suspicious now, we turned down a narrow residential alleyway, and he positioned himself alongside me, keeping up a banter that was intrusive and prevented me from talking to the people I was with. He started on about the synagogue and how it was hard to find and how few people knew about it, and when he made another right turn, Bobbi and Dusty and I just kept walking straight. He shouted after us but we kept moving down the residential alley until we came to a covered market street. We turned right again and followed the souk until it seemed we should have regained the square, but didn't. I pulled out my compass. I kept it in my side pouch and I always knew which direction I should be going. I figured we had come too far south and should be heading west, so we turned back up another residential alley and followed that with a few twists, heading west until eventually we emerged at about the place where the man had distracted us, and where we had been locked out of the walls of the Bahia Palace.

We walked back to our hotel. We worked up a sweat doing it, but in this way we got a gauge on where we were and how far we had come. It wasn't far really, just half an hour, but it was hot. Along the way we met a man who invited us to a restaurant. Did we look like we wanted to eat, I wondered? I spoke to him in Arabic as he propositioned me in English. Sorry, not hungry. No we don't want to eat now. He was persistent, but so were we. We soon shook him, but had the impression we had offended him by not at least looking at the restaurant (and had we looked, by not eating there, and so on).

With the Koutoubia as our beacon, we were soon back at the Islane, but we couldn't return to the a/c since we had checked out that morning. We had worked out by then that we didn't have time to do the trip into the interior that Pete had proposed. Glenn was flying into Casa that night, Tuesday. We had been in touch with him by email, and he knew to get a cab at the airport to the Ibis, where we had prepaid a room for him. We could have called him there that night - there were 'teleboutiques' all over Morocco with attendants that gave change that could be fed into the phones a dime at a time to maintain the connection with wherever you wanted to call. We could then find when Glenn would be taking the train to Marrakesh and we could meet him at the station or have him come to our hotel.

However, Bobbi was thinking to run back up to Casa to retrieve him, no problem since we had pre-paid a room at the Ibis and she and Glenn could sleep in it as easily as could Glenn alone, and a train ticket to Casa from Marrakesh, 1st class, was only $10. She would return with Glenn on Wednesday, and we would travel Wed to Ouarzazate, which I had by then worked out was a 4 hour bus ride, on Thursday. Our actual destination for the day would be Tinerhir which looked now on the map to be another 4 hours. So that would be 8 hours on buses Thursday to get into the Todra Gorge on Friday AND make it that afternoon up to Ifrane by way of Errachidia, Midelt, and Azrou, which looked to be impossible in an afternoon (and later, as we went hiking in the Midelt region, over boring terrain as well). The idea there was to make the trip into the mountains that Pete was arranging for me Saturday and Sunday (climb Jebel Ayachi, 3737 meters according to LP).

In the end we realized how ridiculous the plan was and I emailed Pete that we would all be going up to Casa and traveling next day to Fez where we would base ourselves for excursions there and around Meknes. I had made a lot of that trip with Bill in 1973 in his Mercedes, when we had visited Ouarzazate and then gone all the way to Zagora and seen the sign indicating Timbuktu 52 days by camel across the sands from there. By returning to Casa we would have all day Wed to reach Fez, Thursday for our exploration of Meknes, and Friday to work our way up to Ifrane. So we had checked out of our hotel, and since we didn't have to collect Glenn until midnight that evening, we could take a late train to Casa from Marrakesh, leaving us the whole bloody hot afternoon to swelter away at loose ends in Marrakesh.

The train wasn't till seven that night, so we had a little time, and things that closed at noon would not open again till three, so it was only for a couple of hours that we were at loose ends drinking tea and orange juice at the corner cafe opposite the Koutoubia. At some point, we decided to head back into the Qissaria (covered market) and look for the Kouba Ba'adiyn and the Ali Ben Yousef Merdesa, points of interest mentioned in the LP. We passed through the Djemaa square to the sound of a flute or two entertaining a bored cobra and passed the gauntlet of youngsters trying to convince us of the folly of venturing into the winding souk unaccompanied. We did ask the name of the main street, Rue Souk al Sammarine, but the people there said it was all the Sammarine souk. One fellow indicated we should follow, so we went with him through an alley or two but ended up at his shop, where he wanted us to go, not where we wanted to go, so we immediately pulled away and went our way on a northerly compass heading to try to find these sights without recourse to help from the locals.

Vindicating the opinions of the faux guides who had attempted to thrust upon us their services, we again evinced our ineptitude at finding the former slave souk or any of the other places mentioned in the LP as we wandered to the north. But at least in the deeper reaches of the souk we ceased being pestered, and at some point I asked some metal workers (again, laborers obviously tied to their work) where Ali Ben Yousef Merdesa might be. It seemed to be a well-known corner of the souk, as we were pointed on ahead. Eventually, we came upon an open place with a museum at one end. This was on our map and gave us a reference point. From there we did a compass fix on the Kouba Ba'adiyn and we think we found it just outside the museum. At least there was a monument there of sorts. A pair of ladies emerged from a car at that moment and I asked one of them in Arabic if this place was the Kouba Ba'adiyn. One replied curtly that she didn't speak French and hurried on. I said to her again in Arabic that I wasn't speaking French. She turned on her heel and said to me, in French, "Qu'est-ce que tu cherche?" I said then that I was looking for the Kouba Ba'adiyn. She said she didn't know where it was and turned again on her heel and clacked off. A strange encounter, considering we may have been standing right beside the place. There were some laborers there applying plaster to the wall, working in the heat of mid-day. I asked them the same question. They seemed to indicate that this was indeed the Kouba Ba'adiyn itself, but it was hard to know if they were just telling me what they thought I wanted to hear. In any event, it was a gazebo-like structure built on 4 legs that was fenced off so we could see it but not reach it. It was easy to see why people in the neighborhood had not bothered to learn enough about it to explain it to foreigners. I never really figured out what it was or why it was important.

So we continued on toward the merdesa, obviously a school, or what I know in my Arabic as a madrasa. It was formerly a religious school, a place which LP had suggested had once housed 900 students per room, though this must have been an error in translation, perhaps gleaned from an 'explication' at the place itself. The old medinas were full of merdesas, and we visited a number of them. They were all decorated in carved cedar and fluted stonework, with tiles and calligraphy along the lower walls. Whereas mosques were off-limits to non-muslims in Morocco, the merdesas were open to tourists for the standard 10 dirham fee. At many we were admitted only to the courtyard to admire the carving and perhaps view a richly decorated minbar, but at the one in Marrakesh, we were allowed upstairs to see where the students once lived during their religious indoctrination. Many a memorization of the Koran had no doubt taken place here.

Finding the Merdesa proved to be a bit of a challenge. In the main alley, we encountered people who assumed we were going to the tannery not far from there, and we were encouraged to go there with one or another incessantly intrusive guide. We were near the place when we encountered a street circus heading our way. Musicians and tambour players were blowing and pounding for all they were worth, trying to make as much noise as possible, and actually succeeding in making some of it mellifluous. The group formed a procession, some carrying banners, that blocked the street and traffic behind, and made passage impossible. So we found safe places to stand by the side of the street and let the procession work its way past us. The musicians were in no hurry and actually performed right in front of us for some minutes. Someone whispered that it was a marriage morrocaine, but I heard the leader of a tour group that happened along explain that it was a celebration of the prophet's ascension, which would make sense, because celebration of that event was the reason I didn't have to go to work the previous Wednesday (the day I was so sick and also missed my flight; now why can't I get sick on a work day?). In any event, it was photogenic and entertaining, and judging from the fact that no one aaked us for dirhams for having been present during the proceedings, entirely genuine and spontaneous.

Our way to the tannery blocked, we skirted the procession the other direction and managed to get ahead of it to make our way to the merdesa. Down the side street leading to the merdesa, I encountered another Moroccan of whom I asked the way in Arabic, and who again told me he didn't speak French, forcing me to state what I thought was obvious, that I wasn't speaking French, at which point he turned and became forthcoming and explained in Arabic exactly where we needed to go.

After visiting the merdesa we decided to get ourselves out of the souk. It wasn't that friendly a place, and we were tired of being hassled. Even on the way out, I recall being pestered by someone who tagged along for some distance trying to get us to visit the tannery, and insisting that since we were headed nowhere that tourists would normally go, I didn't know where I was going. I had my map of the city and I showed him my compass and told him in Arabic, I knew where I was and I knew where I wanted to go. He looked at my compass and back at me and faded back into the alleys and (thankfully) out of our lives.

We were going to the M Gardens, for no reason other than Pete had mentioned in his last email, when in Marrakesh, be sure to go to this place, which he called Yves St. Laurent gardens. As usual with Pete, we didn't know why he thought we should go there, but we were accustomed to being pleasantly surprised when we found out why, so as soon as we emerged from the souk to the point where we could find a cab we climbed in and asked the driver to take us to these gardens.

It turned out to be a bit more distant than we had expected, so we were glad when we arrived that we had taken the cab. On the way, we read about the place in the LP and discovered that the gardens had recently been acquired by the Yves St. Laurent interests, which was why Pete had referred to them as such. Looking in the gate, they looked like any other gardens, so we were a bit put off by the 15 dirham asking price for entry. We toyed with going elsewhere but this just brought us to the unpleasant realization that we had nowhere else to go, so we decided we might as well go in and see what the fuss was. One thing about these gardens was that professional photography was expressly forbidden. Another thing was that the price of entry precluded any locals from entering, so the place was crawling with tourists with expensive cameras. These tourists were exploiting about every vantage point and angle, photographing even the cats in the garden, so it was a strange place to be unless you happened to be a garden buff or professional photographer. There was a museum on the premises, but as with the palace we had visited earlier in the day, entry required payment of a separate fee within a fee which we figured was a bit overboard, so we didn't bother. We spent all of 20 minutes there and then left to seek an onward destination.

Because this place was the haunt of foreigners who arrived in tour buses and taxis from elsewhere in town, the taxi drivers hanging about there wanted inflated prices for onward destinations. To make matters worse, we were latched onto by one whom we couldn't shake in order to negotiate with the other drivers, since we were his prize and presumably now in his power. We were even ambivalent on our next destination, since at the time we thought there was a fantasia at the Bab Jadid at 5:30. "Our" driver said the fantasia wouldn't be until much later because it was too hot then, and he mentioned some other gardens, the gardens of the minarets, which I thought sounded intriguing. But this driver wanted too much to take us there so to shake him we started walking, thinking we'd fare better on a busier street. We did manage to lose him that way and another driver who had been following the proceedings managed to track us down and convince us to go with him for a more normal fare.

This driver didn't think there would be a fantasia that night, and also he explained that the gardens of the minarahs was a bit out of town, near the airport. He would take us there, but it was getting on time we needed to be thinking of traveling on to Casa, and also it was obvious that the only way to learn if there was a fantasia that afternoon was to go to the Bab Jadid and see. The driver figured either place fell into the fare structure he had outlined, so he took us to the Bab Jadid.

This is were we discovered that the fantasia was held on the parade ground right outside the walls, and since we could see the Koutoubia from there, we could see it was near our hotel where we had left our bags in storage. There were tents set up at the grounds and we went over to ask about the program for that night. There we were told that there would be no fantasia, but that there was to be a private party there that evening. We started walking across the sand toward the gate and we saw a trio of Berber horsemen traversing the grounds and sped up so as to intersect them. One of them pulled up ahead of the gate and I took his picture from a distance. He reined in while his companions continued on, and as we approached, we had questions for each other. I wanted to know if there would be a fantasia that evening. He wanted to know how many dirhams I was going to pay for the photo. He was carrying a rifle, so in theory I suppose he could have shot me if I didn't pay up. In the end, he neither shot me nor answered my question, but galloped off to join his friends, leaving each of us richer neither in knowledge nor in purse. So Bobbi, Dusty, and I continued on to the Koutoubia and to the Islane and retrieved our bags, and it was there, on departure that we found the brochures detailing the events of the festival, and we saw that in lieu of a fantasia that evening there was to be a parade though the center of the Ville Nouvelle. We saw the parade forming up as we passed that way in our taxi for the train station. There were a group of camel and horse riders gathered incongruously at the main roundabout in town, but by then we weren't much interested.

We had tried earlier to call the Ibis in Casa to see if we could parlay our prepaid single into accommodation suitable for the 4 of us who would now be arriving. We were told over the phone, between being cut off for lack of coins, that the hotel was full, complete (click, cut off again). I had thought it best not to call back, but there was an Ibis at the Marrakesh train station and we went there to have a beer while waiting for the train. We had the staff there call the Ibis in Casa but there wasn't anything to be done. The hotel was indeed full. Our single room would be there for us, but there was at that moment nothing to be done about changing to a larger room. We caught the train and headed on up there anyway, as we'd left ourselves little choice if we wanted to find Glenn.

CASA REDUX

I guess I won't bore the reader with details of our return to Casa. It was a good thing we had prepaid the room. On arrival we were told the entire town was booked out, why I have no idea, but they couldn't refuse us use of the room we had paid for. Bobbi and I wandered in the area looking for another hotel but could find only one, the Terminus not far from the station. We could smell piss going up the stairs, and the room we were shown (there was one available) was basic in the extreme. Bobbi thought the sheets didn't look too clean to her and I wondered at the lice and bedbugs that might be hiding in the blankets, which looked a bit scratchy without topsheets. We went back to the Ibis to sleep on the floor, whatever.

The restaurant had stopped serving by then, but a sympathetic concierge arranged to send sandwiches and warm cokes up to our room. I had meanwhile scored some cold Hawai from the train station (Hawai was a delicious carbonated fruit drink, our favorite in Morocco). Eventually Glenn arrived from the airport and we had a grand reunion. We had moved out on Glenn some years ago in California and he's led an only gradually increasing independent lifestyle. Now he's grown into a reasonably self-assured young man with some prospects of graduating from college in the next couple of years. For the time being, he's into soccer and travel, and into guitar when he's at home in San Francisco. He'd even had cards printed up stating his occupation as world explorer, and giving his email address. Nice kid, and great to see him.