Morocco
MARRAKECH (cont'd)
The next morning I checked out as soon as possible and headed for the Riad Zina on the north end of town. The taxi dropped me off some ways away since the roads leading up to the riad itself weren't wide enough for cars. I walked about a hundred yards down a dark cobblestone path and, out of the corner of my eye, saw 'D. Assebane' scratched on a wall in tiny chalk letters. On a whim I went down the narrow alley next to this wall which wound and turned several corners before heading into a low tunnel. When I came out on the other side there was a door to my right, 4 feet tall, with the words Riad Zina in white on a white stucco marquee. Honestly, they should have given me a free night's stay just for finding this place. Feelig like a giant, I crawled into the hobbit hole.
Riad Zina is nice. Clean. Stylish (Ikea/Alessi sort of post modern decor). But it's overpriced for what you get so stay somewhere else when you go. The owner was out of town and the lady who was managing the place while I was there asked me to tip her as I was leaving (which is poor form for an overpriced riad) and then had the audacity to ask for another tip for the other innkeeper.
Whilst in Marrakech I mainly walked around the souqs (market place) and D'jemaa-el Fna. The souqs are amazing. They're an enormous labyrinthe where every wall is covered with treasure. The shops are usually small but packed to the gills with merchandise. A lot of the walkways are covered, making it impossible to keep your bearings (I don't know about you but I often use the sun and tall landmarks to keep my sense of direction). Guide books offer maps of the souqs but let me assure you that these are all completely useless. Roads can lead under buildings and narrow to four feet wide in places while countless unmarked alleyways can be as wide as a road. I tried using maps a few times. It never worked.
The souqs are north of the D'emaa-el Fna and Riad Zina is north of the souqs. Several times I tried to just walk through the souqs to get to the plaza and that never faired well. In the best case, I'd walk a totally random path that led me out only after two hours of wandering. The only thing I can recommend is a compass with magnetic needle.
If you happen to be in the mood for shopping and lots of walking there's nothing more fun than getting lost in the souqs. They're sort of zoned by craft. There's the blacksmith souqs, the spice souqs, the leather bag souqs, the babouch (leather shoe) souqs, etc. The pictures here are of the babouch souqs and a guy selling nuts and dried fruits. The guy is standing in a hole in this mountain of snacks.
In addition to being exciting, the souqs are also phenomenally annoying. Marrakech sees more tourism than all the other places in Morocco and the salemen know it. They're very pushy and often stepped in front of me while I was walking to direct me into their shops. Add to this the continued harassment for being a non-Muslim woman and the souqs can drive you mad in only a few hours. But it was a strange new experience to have so many people playing 'Guess Her Ethnicity'. "Francais? Espanol? Japonaise? Chinoise?" When I told someone I was half Korean I'd get either "Oh" or "North or South?" If you know to ask North or South you at least took a geography class. But if you have to ask, it wasn't a very good geography class.
Actually buying stuff in the souqs is a whole adventure in itself. Sure, I've been to countries where people barter in the market places but never anyplace where 1) nothing had a fixed price and 2) the vendors tried to coax you into absurdly high prices. After some pain I figured out that if you decide beforehand what you want to pay and keep refusing to pay anymore you'll do just fine. Especially if you try to leave in the middle of bartering. "No, that's simply too far out of my price range. I truly can't afford a dirham over XX. I should leave now."
After much bartering I did come away with some awesome treasures in Marrakech. I got a belly dancer costume for my little niece (which was hard since Moroccans don't understand why you'd dress a child as a whore), finger cymbals, a tagine, jewelry (some cheap and some decent quality), some iron meteorites, and a trilobite fossil. Admittedly, the trilobite is part fake. Moroccans fossil hunters are paid per fossil, not per quality fossil so they often damage them during excavation so the sellers have to do some cosmetic touch up which means large portions are fake. But seeing as how my trilobite cost $10, if the entire thing turned out to be a fake I'd still be happy with it.
There were exactly two shops that I stumbled on more than once (that's how big the souqs are) - the rock shop where I got the fossil and meteorites and a wood furniture shop. The wood furniture shop is where I met Samir. He didn't try to sell me anything, which was good because I didn't want to buy any big furniture. He just wanted to chat. He told me all about how he drinks beer and smokes hashish and is so happy he got this great job selling furniture and oh he's making so much money now and he was dating this skinny girl for a while but Moroccan men don't like skinny girls they only like curvy women and he really wants to meet a full-figured Canadian woman and do I have any woman friends who are single and curvy? As an aside, yes, I did lie and say I was Canadian more than once. Bush was visiting Europe and it made me nervous to have foreigners know I live in a country that re-elected Bush when he was in the news there so much. Anyway, I told Samir I had some single girlfriends and he immediately gave me his phone number. I even took his picture for all the ladies out there. If you're a full-figured woman from Canada looking for a complete stranger from Morocco to marry...
Fortunately, after the claustrophobia and harassment of the souqs I emerged into the D'jemaa-el Fna and found my way to juice stand #27. I forget the name of the guy who works there but he speaks excellent English and is very sweet. He and the other juice guys shared their lunch tagine with me one afternoon. And when I was despairing about being harassed too much he introduced me to some friends of his - two American females in Morocco on Fulbright Fellowships (Mariam and Elizabeth).
When you walk around the souqs and the D'jemaa-el Fna, 99% of the people you see are men. But there are some women there. They're selling baskets or bread or doing henna tattoos for tourists. As a rest break I had henna done on my hands. It was gorgeous. Probably would've stuck for much longer too if I hadn't taken a bath two hours later. The women sitting together where I got my henna done were obviously a mom with her two daughters. One of their friends came by who, even from behind a traditional chador (scarf covering the face), had such a loud personality. She is seen here hogging the spotlight in the photo I took of the ladies who did my henna. It was nice to hang out with them. They weren't as friendly as the men I'd encountered in Marrakech and it was really relieving.
I wanted to see more of the sights (the medersa, the tanneries, the hamams, the palaces, etc) but I got the flu the second half of my time in Marrakech. In reality I probably got the flu in London or somewhere else in Morocco and it was dormant until I got to Marrakech but that's not my specialty so I dunno. If you go to Morocco bring vitamins and wash your hands at every opportunity (five times a day like the Muslims wouldn't be a bad idea). If you're drinking out of juice and tea cups that aren't being washed in soapy water and sharing food out of communal tagines with total strangers you should definitely keep your immune system up. Moroccan dwellings are not at all insulated from the outside and Morocco gets really cold at night and in the winter.
So I, unfortunately, did not get to go back to Casablanca and see Mourad and his family before leaving. But I'm sure I'll go back to Morocco some day. And when I do, I probably won't have to pay for a single night in a hotel.
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