It was early Sunday morning when our heroes woke up to leave Freedonia; it was getting close to ten o’clock when they actually left. This was due to going over to the host family house one last time – ostensibly to give them the key so as to take care of Amal – but also to have a delicious breakfast of Mama Mahjouba’s beignets. We were soon on the road, however, and just a little after noon found ourselves in Moulay Idriss, the small village just a few miles away from the ancient Roman ruins of Volubilis.
Volubilis can be a tricky place to get to. First, because the Moroccan name for the site is Welili and it’s hard enough for your accent to be understood when you’re saying the right word, and, second, because only tourists really ever go, and the taxi drivers are fully prepared to charge you out the nose to get there. If you go straight from Meknes, you’ll probably pay around 300 dirham, but if you go to Moulay Idriss – only a 10 dirham ride – you can catch a shared taxi for 30 dirham. That’s what we did. And we had lunch, Salma’s first prune and mutton tagine, essentially the filet mignon of Morocco.
My host brother Mohammad, when we told them that morning that we were on our way to Volubilis, replied that “it’s just a bunch of rocks.” This is true, but what I couldn’t convey to him at that time is that they’re ancient rocks, some of which are carved into delicate Corinthian columns or aligned in beautiful mosaics, and supercool. We spent a while talking about what it is that leads people to go wander among the ruins of the past, and, to be honest, we never really came up with a good answer. Most of what we were looking at were just ordinary people’s olive presses. But the truth is that it’s fascinating, and perhaps our answer is that we just want to know, and to feel a connection with something we understand but still can’t quite imagine. Maybe it’s just to see the rocks.
Whatever it is, we had stayed too long, and still had to get ourselves to the quaint village of Chefchaouen before dark. The problem was that to go anywhere other than Meknes from Moulay Idriss requires hiring a private cab, and, as a result, paying like a tourist. By absolute chance, however, a taxi was filling to go to Sidi Kacem, a city very comparable to Newark, but best known for having a train station on the route to Tangier, the city we were planning to visit after Chefchaouen. We decided to go a little crazy and switch up the tour schedule and go there first. A 45-minute taxi ride later, and we were sitting in the station waiting for the last train out, which, after breaking down for several hours, disembarked us in Tangier at around 12:30.
Now, we had never made reservations anywhere else and hadn’t had any difficulties, but, it being the middle of the night, we decided to play it safe and go to one of the higher-end hotels nearish to the station. We got in the taxi and told the guy to take us to Solazur. He said, “Sure.” We got there, and he asked, “This is Solazur. You want to get out here?” We nodded a sort of “duh, that’s what we said,” paid, got out, walked across the street, watched the taxi drive away, and noticed large signs on all of the doors saying Closed for Reconstruction. And so, there we were, standing on the main tourist strip of a city known for its hustlers, shadiness, and beaches (and hash), holding onto large tourist suitcases and genuinely looking lost, and without a place to stay in the middle of the night. (I’m pretty sure that’s the name of a country and western song, actually.) Then we saw the big red sign up the street of the Ramada hotel.
Ramada is a nice hotel in the States, but it’s a five-star luxury resort in Morocco. It was like a beacon of hope; an outlandishly expensive, completely beyond our means beacon of hope. We decided to go. Not at first, of course, but I rationalized that at the least we could explain our situation and ask for help in finding a new place. We did that. Salma reasoned that, since we were there anyway, we might as well ask how much a room would be. We did that, too. The guy told us that he had a lower-quality room for a little more than half the usual price (I’m not going to tell you how much it was). We pretended like we were considering it although we were really only waiting for the other to say okay. Let me tell you, there is a real difference between five stars and a bargain traveler’s hostel.
The rest of Tangier was mostly just a relaxing weekend after the stress of Freedonia. We got to stroll through the old medina, which is nice, and walk along the beach, which was still rather cold. The highlight for us was a little Scottish church in the center of town. Despite the fact that cars and people were going by outside, you couldn’t hear any of it in the church garden. It was like being in another world. We also made excellent friends with the guys at Hamborger Stop right down the street from the hotel, and ate there for pretty much every meal of our abbreviated stay.
And now it was time to go back to Chefchaouen. We took the CTM bus and pulled up a little after noon and again were met by someone representing a hotel. A British tourist going the other way told us to trust them, though, so we did, and it turned out to be the main hotel for volunteers (none were there when we were, though). The price was having to go to the guy’s “artisana” (shop) and listen to his brother chat with us and act like he respected how we told him that we didn’t want to buy anything. He was a nice guy; we just weren’t interested.
Eventually we got out and took a romp around the old town. Chefchaouen is most famous for being the “chillest place in Morocco” and a number one favorite of volunteers. I’d say it’s adorable, though there really isn’t a whole lot to do there if you only have a day (with more time you could take some allegedly fantastic hikes in the mountains just outside). One great thing about it, though, is that you can’t get lost in the medina. No matter where you turn, all directions lead back to the center. And these alleyways are what make Chefchaouen so distinctive because they’re all done in a peaceful blue and white wash. It was here, walking along through the heart of Chefchaouen, that Salma and I had our most memorable experience. A handful of kids were selling some kind of food on the side of the road, and, it being in the Geneva Convention to always purchase what little kids are selling on the side of the road, we got one. It seemed like a type of sweet bread from the looks of it, with a slight quiche-ish quality, but it wasn’t. Oh, no. I have no idea what it’s called – Salma likes to say “gelatinous salt” – but it will haunt me for the rest of my life. I’ll never buy anything from little kids again.
So we left for Rabat. Salma almost got herself on the wrong bus a stopover halfway there, but we got to the capital city without any problems. Rabat is unlike any other major city in Morocco in that it was developed pretty much exclusively by the French, and it really feels like being in a European city. It was also incredibly hot, so we headed down to the ocean and one of the coolest places in the city, the Oudaia.
Granted, the Oudaia is known for its adorable streets of blue and white wash, and we just came from Chefchaouen, but it’s so beautiful looking out over the ocean. Plus, we got to fight with some of the henna ladies who are incredibly pushy about decorating you. (They say it’s a “cadeau,” but it’s a “cadeau” you then get pressured into paying for.) We also took a long walk through the medina, and I suddenly became a tourist and bought everything I saw. I’m not sure what came over me, but it was a lot of fun. I rationalized most of it as being clothes for summer camp in Jedida (on the beach, we’ll talk about that later), but I think I was really just getting jealous of the souvenirs we were buying for Salma and other people. I’m probably not going to use a mirror shaped like a traditional Moroccan door in Jedida.
Our second day we spent most of the morning at the Peace Corps office taking care of a little business and introducing Salma to my “family.” As usual, my friends seemed to like her more than they like me, and so we left and went back to the medina. This time, Salma bought everything that she saw.
We reserved Friday for seeing the main highlights of Rabat, starting with the ancient settlement of the Shellah. I have to confess that I am a bit of a romantic, and I love nothing more than the Indiana Jones/Tomb Raider adventure of walking into an overgrown ruin, climbing through it, exploring the unexplored corners, pretending that there might be unexplored corners at a major tourist stop, and feeling supercool. It was also my first time going there, which was not the case with our next stop, the Hassan Tower. The walk was a lot longer to get there than I had thought, so we were fairly tired and ready to sit and/or eat something, but it’s still incredible to see the partly built tower of what would have been one of the biggest mosques in the world.
That night we thought about seeing a concert of the just opening Mawazine festival (which went on to make quite some news later the next week), but time didn’t allow. We did stop at our two favorite spots, the medina – this time we got to see a police raid against venders sticking their wares in the street – and the Oudaia Park. The next morning we walked around a little bit, and then caught the train to our final city: Casablanca.
Clever people and guidebooks like to point out the fact that the movie, Casablanca, perhaps the most well-known aspect of Morocco among Americans, was filmed entirely on a soundstage in Hollywood. There are only two things similar between the city and the movie (aside from the name): they both have a restaurant called Rick’s, and there’s nothing for people to do there but sit around and wait. Which is mostly what we did. Our only real reason for being there was for Salma to catch her plane two days later in the morning and we didn’t want to have to worry about travelling the day before. Now, don’t get me wrong, we had fun in Casablanca, it’s just that if you have a choice between watching the movie and visiting the city, the movie is better.
So we saw what we could, but Casablanca is very much like Houston; it’s really big and there are a lot of people who live there, but as hard as it tries, there’s really nothing interesting to see. But we saw all there was. We went to the Mohammad V Park and saw the cathedral that resembles a beautiful example of Communist Industrial Architecture, and we walked through the old medina (about the size of a small grocery store) to get to the Hassan II Mosque, the second largest Islamic building in the world and the only mosque in Morocco that allows admittance to non-Muslims. Unfortunately, non-believers have to pay 120 dirham each for the tour, so we decided to skip that. We even went to Rick’s Café to take some photos, but here even the faithful have to cough up a good 150 dirham for dinner.
We found a movie theatre near the hotel and watched Angels and Demons in French, and had an amazing cross-cultural experience. We bought our tickets for a show scheduled to start about 20 minutes later, and the ticket-taker opened the door for us and showed us to a seat. It was a little odd, since she was using a flashlight and there seemed to be a film showing on the screen, but we thought that maybe the lights were out on purpose to show previews. A lot of previews. That was until we noticed that it was a “preview” also starring Tom Hanks, and he seemed to be reprising what we expected to be more or less exactly his role in Angels and Demons. No, it was the end of the previous showing, so we got out to wait for the beginning of ours. This was the shock. All the people working at the cinema were accommodating, but not a single one of them – or the 20-30 other patrons who came while we were waiting – thought it was normal to wait for the start of the movie. You start watching when you get there, and you stop watching when you get tired of watching. It doesn’t really matter where you start in the story since a good 60% of the people watching are really only there to make out with whoever came with them.
And then it was three o’clock in the morning, May 18th, and we were getting up to get Salma to the airport. She flew out at 8, I had already caught the fast train back to Fes, and by early afternoon I was standing in my house in Freedonia, a little stunned, but feeling fantastic about everything I had just seen and done.
No comments:
Post a Comment