Time Travel

It's 2/17/07 and that means we've been married for 19 years. The weatherman is not impressed and gives us an off-and-on rainy day. Breakfast was quite good, although the poached eggs in the tahine could have used better presentation. There were two kinds of bread, one being a very dense corn bread, yoghurt, a sort of doughnut, fruit and great orange juice.

Our guide for the day looks like me. He wears a pointy-hooded robe-like garment called a jellaba, common among older men in Morocco.

The Medina is a labyrinth of narrow alleys with walls that mean you have no reference to use to get your bearings. I have read estimates in the thousands for the number of passageways in the Medina, so even though it is only a bit over a square mile, it is a maze that could keep you going in circles forever. Therefore the guide. Donkeys are the only form of transport in the Medina, and therefore you have to watch your step, although our guide assures us that to step in donkey shit is good luck. We take a rain check on good fortune at every step.

The souks, or markets of the Medina are difficult to describe. You walk through a very narrow alley festooned with goods and foods on every wall, often overhead as well. There are small stalls-in-the-walls, varying from a few feet square to maybe 8x10 feet in size, selling everything you could imagine as well as several things you couldn't imagine, such as camel meat, with a severed camel head propped up to advertise the goods for sale. Everywhere you turn your head is a picture you can't get in Greenfield Center NY. There is nothing to prevent you from believing you are in a medieval Arab market.

We take a break from the hustle and bustle of the Medina and are taxied out of the Medina up a hill overlooking the city, then go to a ceramic "factory" to see how the various clay products are hand crafted into colorful tahines, bowls, you-name-it products.

Back in the Medina, we stop for lunch in an over-the-top decorated restaurant where we continue our lack of enthusiasm for food and have fruit, tea and biscuits because we feel somehow obligated, knowing our guide is probably getting a percentage of our bill total.

Next, we climb stairs that go up from an alley, to a second story leather store, walk straight through it and emerge on a balcony overlooking the tanneries of Fez. We gaze down on a panaorama of large clay pools filled with various colored dyes, with men, knee deep in the dyes, dipping the tanned hides for leather products production. It's so archaic, but amazing (see pix above.)

At dinner that night we pull out all the stops and have vegetable soup and a fruit cup. That's it. We're just not hungry. Then to bed, but not to a good sleep. Max is bothered by a putrid odor coming from our ancient bathroom.