The market

For once I am not too tired, too sick, or too out of time to make a post.  I might even have adequate internet.  Some catching up:

The Medina in Fes, you may have heard, is a centuries old warren of narrow streets and blind alleys packed with vendors of everything.  That just barely scrapes the surface. 

The medina from a distance

Yes, narrow streets with unpredictable footing over cobblestones, sewage grates, dung.  People all around, including those with great burdens on their backs shouting for you to get out of the way, donkeys with and without carts with drivers shouting for your to get out of the way, motorbikes dodging and weaving.  You don't have the entire alley, either, because of the tables of the vendors spilling out of the tiny cubicles of the shops.  Nobody apologizes for bumping into you or shoving you.  Elderly beggars hold out humble hands.  Cats wait for scraps and kittens cry for absent mothers.

As you move slowly past the stalls, there are the smells: spices, leather, rose and orange blossoms for making perfume, food, more dung, unwashed bodies.  Piles and piles of fruit, fresh and dried; honeyed baked goods; nuts; meat in all forms from whole carcasses (with the camel's or shark's head hanging to show you what to expect) to sausage to organs.  The street of silver, the street of leather, the street of ceramic.  And we only saw a tiny, accessible part of the whole.

The street (!) where we had lunch

I was wrong about having time.  I forgot to set my watch 2 hours forward when we came back to Spain today, so insert 3 hour intermission for dinner and flamenco show.

After the medina we were led to a rug shop, which supposedly is a government-run program to give income to widows and other women without male support.  Of course it was a hard sell without much bartering due to its special nature, but I could see the work and understand the amount of effort it takes to make stitch after stitch or knot after knot.  I bought one.  Very pretty, squares containing floral shapes with a red background.  I admired those with more stitches per inch, but could not have afforded one.  Now to figure out how to get it home.

Another tagine without couscous or, apparently, seasoning, in dubious cleanliness, then back to the hotel.  We had passed a lovely park running down the center of a wide street, with shiny electric toy cars in several squares, fountains all over, but earlier it had been empty.  By 6:45 pm it was jammed with people - little kids running the cars, people lounging in the shade, eating on the grass, just hanging out.  I never saw a Moroccan stand in the sun if he/she had shade as an option.  There are light displays attached to streetlight poles as if for Christmas, but it's Ramadan decorations.

The next day we were up early for the long trip to Marrakech, through mountains and grazing land liberally spotted with wildflowers.  We were told that many of the cattle were imported from Texas because they could handle the climate.  This is the land of the Berber people, who write in a text similar to Greek and breed beautiful horses (descendents of Dothraki or Rohirrim, no doubt).  We ran into a lot of road construction slowing us down, and in many places they used piles of rocks instead of traffic cones.  Yet another tagine lunch.  Apparently there is not much in Morocco to feed a celiac.

Fun fact: none of Morocco's rivers flow into other countries, so they anticipated less future violence over water supply than is expected for some countries that share rivers.

Next: Marrakech.