So I'm sitting in the only room in Fort Knox with wifi that I've found yet. I have time enough, I think, to post a few more days of Morocco. This is exciting, because when I catch up, I can post all of the boring in-processing stuff that will no doubt happen over the next few days in one post, rather than having "Today I got a shot!" and "Today I filled out paperwork!" be two different blog posts. Anyway, now that I've somewhat justified (to myself, at least) my lateness, please enjoy Days 6 and 7 of Morocco. Thanks for reading!
Should Have Bought That Man-Bag -- Day 6
Fez. Is. Huge. Way bigger than Rabat. It's kind of like how Athens is the capital of New York rather than NYC. We capped off today with a drink and a view from the balcony of the Hotel Les Merinides. We could see the entire city... breathtaking.
Backtracking a little, we headed into Fez after breakfast at the top floor restaurant in our hotel (which also has a fantastic view). We toured through the Mellah, the old Jewish Quarter (fun etymology fact: "Mellah" comes from "mellh," the Arabic word for "salt," and is so called because Jewish merchants had a monopoly on salt back in the day). It was a bit sad, if only because it's no longer truly a Jewish district; Jews moved into the new French town because the houses were nicer, and the district fell into disrepair. It's still bustling, but no longer Jewish. Nabil pointed out the differences between Jewish and Arab architecture: Jewish homes tended a bit more towards European and Moorish influence, with twisted metal balconies and other small touches of ornament on the exteriors of houses. We visited a restored synagogue, absolutely gorgeous, named Slat-el-Fassiyene. It was unlike any synagogue I'd ever seen, with a glass skylight covering most of the ceiling. However, though it's no longer in use as a synagogue but only as a historical structure, I still felt the same quiet peace steal over me that I do in any synagogue, be it one in Atlanta or Jerusalem.
We then bussed over to a pottery and ceramics factory, which manufactures some of the high-quality, gorgeous pottery that Fez is renowned for. It was fascinating to watch the creative process from beginning to end, from the clay pit to the potter's wheel or the tile chisels. Blue is the official color of Fez, and a large portion of the factory's wares are in blue and white; beautiful, understated, and with a tendency to make me feel afraid to breathe too hard lest I disturb the china cabinet that I've obviously wandered into by mistake. I may have picked up a gift or two.
The restaurant that we ate at served lunch up in what I believe is a uniquely Fez style: several (twelve or thirteen) small communal appetizers, including olives and fava beans, followed by a large communal tajine. Afterwards, the general consensus was that we were refreshed enough to spend a lot more money, so the next items on the itinerary were perfect: a clothing store and a tannery.
Sherif wasn't kidding when he said that Fez had the best shopping. If Willy Wonka had decided to diversify and branch out into textiles and leather, his facilities might have looked something like the factories that we visited. Sherif also wasn't kidding when he said that Fez had the best and most determined salesmen. I managed to get out of the clothing store without purchasing more that a blue scarf for myself (which can also be made into a khaffiyeh-style head wrap, perfect for not dying of heat in Marrakech). At the tanner's, however, the salesmen very nearly convinced me to spend around 80USD on what Gabrielle and LP termed a "man-bag". In my opinion, if Jack Bauer uses one then it can't help but be manly. I decided in the end that I couldn't justify it, but I came disturbingly close.
Afterwards, we crashed that hotel that I mentioned at the beginning of the post to sit on their balcony and take in the view. We then went back to our hotel, relaxed for a while, and got prettied up to go out for a fancy dinner. The food was great, the restaurant royal, and the dinner shot a lot of fun. There was a band of old dudes in white robes and fezzes, and belly dancer, and a magician, who had a phenomenal mustache. I got called up to dance with the belly dancer, which was pretty fun! Thanks, musical theater.
We were all in a pretty good mood upon getting back on the bus to the hotel, but before we disembarked Nabil said something that made me think. He told us that some tour groups will spend their entire time in Morocco doing only things like that restaurant, and go home with a severely incomplete image of Morocco. For some reason, that made me a little angry. Travel is about broadening your horizons, challenging your perceptions, and learning about other cultures and yourself. If all you're going to do is drink and watch a circus, you can do that at home, and without the *ahem* digestive problems that foreign food causes in some. That sort of ethos has probably contributed to the overall negative global image that Americans, and America, have. I'd love to help repair that, however possible or impossible it may be.
Arabic Word of the Day: المللة, Al-mellah -- The salt
Render Unto Jordan That Which Is Jordan's
Today was busy as all hell. We visited three distinct cities, took two tours, and spent four hours or so on the road. I can't believe we're only about halfway through the trip; it feels like it's been a year.
Meknes was first today. Our guide was awesome. Very funny, very thorough, and his jellaba-over-a-three-piece-suit look, complete with skullcap, made him look like a wizard (a jellaba is a hooded robe widely worn in Morocco, sports fans!). He toured us around a bit of Meknes, specifically the silo of Moulay Ismail, who built it to help support the black army that he used against the French. The silo looked like a fort, it was so large; I felt like Howard Carter, exploring Tut's tomb (although Ismail's silo is substantially younger, only sixteenth century). Strange to think that this vast complex, at least fifty feet high (I'm bad at estimating distances, it could have been a hundred), was at one point literally filled to the ceiling with grain.
We then went to one of the only two mosques in Morocco that non-Muslims can enter (obscure law dating back to French colonization that no one bothered to change, don't ask). It's in the royal grounds in Meknes, so it was incredibly lavish, decorated beautifully with the same sort of tile patterns that we saw in Fez. When I asked about the star motifs (five-, six-, and eight-pointed), I learned that there are two versions of the five-pointed star, and both are culturally significant in Morocco. The one on the current Moroccan flag, your standard pentagram, represents the diversity of Morocco, with one point for each major group: Arabs, Amazighi, Jews, Christians, and Muslims (there's some overlap, obviously). However, the ancient one, with one point longer than the others that appears in things like mosque decoration, is meant to symbolize Islam, with one point for each pillar. That longer point symbolizes the first and most important pillar: There is no God but God (Allah), and Mohammed is His prophet. It's interesting to me that the first pillar of Islam and the First and Second Commandments are, with the exception of the bit about Mohammed, more or less identical. Noting the little similarities and differences between my religion and Islam fascinates me. So many people seem to think that Islam and Judaism are locked in some eternal conflict, bound to fight one another until one is eliminated. There's nothing in any text that makes this the case, though. It's one of the reasons that Sherif hates the British: their meddling in the Middle East (or, as a self-proclaimed "genius" once admonished against, "getting involved in a land war in Asia,") was a major factor in escalating the low-level conflict between Jews and Arabs into the very violent, global-scale issue it is today. Plus, they taxed us without representation and shit. Fuck those guys, seriously.
Speaking of imperialism and colonialism, on the way from Meknes to Chefchaouen we stopped at Volubillis for lunch and visited the nearby Roman ruins. Everyone took a bunch of great pictures, and I think someone got one of me posing like a Roman statue, so look out for that. John and I talked about hoe the Roman Empire, once the all but undisputed master of the known world, had devolved into a pile of strewn-about rocks that foreigners walk through and take pictures of while talking smack about the Romans. It was a little harrowing considering America's current status as the most powerful entity in the world; people have drawn the comparison before, I know, but it had never seemed quite as scary or plausible as when I faced tangible evidence of the rise and fall of another immensely powerful civilization. I was reminded of a story from Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, which purports to take place in our world several ages along from the present on the "Wheel of Time," a device built on the concept of cyclical time. One character tells another the story of two giants, ages and ages ago, named Mosk and Merk. The giants destroyed each other and broke the world by hurling spears of fire and light across vast distances, each trying to murderify his opponent. Jordan, writing during the Cold War, depicted global thermonuclear war between the Soviet Union ("Mosk" for Moscow) and the United States ("Merk" for America) as having destroyed the world and obliterated any memory of its inhabitants save a severely distorted fairy tale. The concept of something that I take as much pride in as my country being wiped out so completely as to preclude any legacy, or even only to the extent of leaving nothing behind but ruins, terrifies me a little bit, as I think it would any reasonable person.
Anyway, enough literary criticism. We finished the day in Chefchaouen, a resplendent mountain town that I'll tell you about in my next entry. Thanks for reading!
Arabic Word of the Day: امريكا, "Amreeka," -- America
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