Arabian Nights
17 October 2010 | Chefchaouen, Morocco
Peter
(For those interested, we also posted a blog dated 10-9 today.)
The title of this blog pertains to the tome of fascinating stories coming from the Muslim world. I will try to keep this as short as I can, but our day yesterday was so full of interesting, and sometimes exciting, events that need telling, that I can't guarantee their brevity!
The day started innocuously enough with a wonderful breakfast prepared by our hosts - Carlos and Ana - at the Casa La Palma B&B where we are staying. Remember the name of this B&B - if you ever want to visit Morocco then Casa La Palma should rank right at the top of places to stay.
After breakfast Ruth, Will and I decided to take in the town before we met up with Carlos and Ana again for lunch at one of the only three restaurants they could recommend. Apparently the others are sketchy at best and the chance of illness from contaminated food or in particular, spoiled dairy products, can be high. With little refrigeration available, many restaurants just cook and sell whatever is available, regardless of the quality!
So our morning walk took us to the bridge over the small, but fast-running spring running out of the Rif mountains and past the village. As you can imagine, the mountain water, is clean and good to drink. But only above the bridge because the trash in the stream bed below the bridge was just a bit too gross. Just above the bridge on the other side we came upon two Muslim women washing their clothes. Most of the village still washes their clothes by hand at this one rock next to the stream.
I couldn't pass up the photo opp and snapped a pic. No sooner had I done this than the young woman washing clothes turned around and gave me the finger. Not that finger! She took her index finger and shook it back and forth indicating "No, no." I tucked the camera way, did my best to indicate I was sorry, and sheepishly walked away. It was only later that I learned from Ana that Muslims believe that pictures steal a part of a woman's soul. I guess Muslim men don't have any souls to steal, cuz it is OK to take pictures of them! And I hoped that since my picture was of the backside of the woman that not too much of her soul resided there!
After that we went and had a wonderful lunch with Carlos and Ana. For 80 dirhams ($11 USD) we had a choice of 4 large Moroccan salads or the traditional harira soup, one of about 8 entrees, and a dessert. It was quite filling. Since I had a wonderful tajine dish the night before I settled for the safe chicken kebabs for lunch. (I was/am still fighting an illness.) After lunch Ana offered to help Ruth do some shopping to pick up some things. It seems there is a quadruple standard here, with prices of things varying depending on whether you are Moroccan, Spanish, American/English, or German -- with the prices increasing in that order! Since Ana knew both Spanish and Arabic, we hoped we could swing a better deal with her local knowledge.
Ruth first found a beautiful, handmade blanket for 100 dirham ($13 USD). There were two men in the shop working - one on a hand loom making the next blanket or rug, and another spinning 4 previously-spun strands of wool thread into one larger strand for use in a rug or blanket. It was all pretty amazing to see it all being done by hand still.
From the blanket shop we took off in search of a tea tray Ruth wanted for the boat. There are two kinds of trays the shopkeepers have for sale - the genuine Arabic tea trays, and the more modern imitations. You can tell the difference because the fakes are shiny for the tourists. As we walked the streets, Ana stopped and talked (usually in Spanish) to many people she knew -- small town. We arrived at one shop and found a couple of trays that both Ana and Ruth were interested in. Only the shopkeeper was asleep! His assistant would periodically waken him to ask him how much for the trays and other such questions and the shopkeeper would answer the questions and then fall back to sleep - in the middle of the afternoon!
What really got Ana and I laughing hard was the tray that Ana found. Inscribed on it were both a Star of David and a menorah! It was a Jewish tray being sold in the middle of an Arabic town and shop! We were both floored! Ana thinks it is worth quite a bit more than what the shopkeeper wants because it is Jewish. Apparently the Jews left this area some 50 years ago. The owner wanted way too much for either of the trays, so we left the shop and had a good laugh over the irony of the Jewish tray in the shop. Ana will return in a couple of days (without us) to talk the shopkeeper down in his price. I am pretty sure walking around with some American tourists cut into Ana's style.
We watched as another shopkeeper tried to sell Ana a blanket that he claimed was made right here in Chefchaouen. Ana knows otherwise because there is not a loom in the town wide enough to have made that blanket -- it was imported from a factory either in Tangier or Casablanca. In a nutshell, the shopkeepers here are willing to sell you anything, and apparently willing to tell you anything as well to make the sale! So buyers beware!
We'll be posting this blog after we get back to the boat. That is because we managed to leave the boat to travel to the center of an Arabic state ruled by a dictator without our passports!! We forgot the bloody things and left them on the boat!! I didn't even think about bringing them once! When we checked in to the hotel Carlos needed our passports because he had to fill out a form and take it to the police. Oooops! There are police everywhere - mostly out in the streets. I am told they only earn 200 Euros per month, so they are always on the take. Fortunately we got into and out of town without any issues, but only with a bit of luck.
We are told that many of the people of Chefchaouen live on 30 dirham ($5 USD) per day! And while much of their squalor is to be pitied, there is also much to their lives to be envied. They live a very simple life - free of stress, deadlines, mortgages, or even cell phones. They breathe clean air and drink clean water. And with the city built on the side of a mountain, there is not one among them that isn't fit and healthy from climbing the stairs all day and carrying bundles of things on their backs.
Chefchaouen has public ovens where the women bring their bread and can bake it in a wood-fired oven for 1 dirham (12 cents). I saw one small boy with a pot of something held high as he weaved through the crowd in the street - no doubt on his way to one of the ovens in the village. There are also public bathrooms, though many of the houses have bathrooms, and also public wells. But since everyone drinks from the plastic cup at the well, it probably isn't advisable to do the same till you have fully acclimated to all the germs and bacteria in the area.
The houses are quite interesting. They are small and crowded together in the medina - the old part of the city that is walled. But each house is 3-5 stories high with an atrium in the middle encircled by a steep, narrow staircase to each floor. The atrium serves to cool the building in the summer by inducing convective air flow up through the atrium. Since the streets are very narrow, the sun does not shine down on them so the air entering the house from the street is cool. Pretty smart, eh?
The whole day revealed an existence we had never known. It felt like a National Geographic holiday tour.
And then, after we returned to our boat on Sunday, on Monday Rafael insisted on taking us on a tour of Ceuta, Spain about twenty miles away. Rafael lived in Ceuta for 24 years and was anxious to give us the grand tour. I am/was still sick and very tired from our journey to Chefchaouen, but couldn't pass up the opportunity. So he and his girlfriend, Klede, were patient as I trudged after them seeing all the sights of this wonderful island city. Maybe more on that later. This is enough for now.