Last Sunday, Gina and I returned home from a two-week tour of Morocco and Spain. Allow me to share a few impressions of our trip while they are still fresh in my mind.
The Marrakesh Local
And here’s a shocker: The train we were riding on was packed with Moroccans. Incredibly young. Very courteous and helpful. Smiling eyes. Thin, long faces. Dusty, tan skin.
Most of the women wore headscarves. Some wore hijabs; some, colorful silk robes; and some, black wool burkas. Most were dressed in fitted jeans with Tommy Hilfiger shirts or the equivalent. The men were uniformly thin and rather tall. They wore sprayed-on jeans with long-sleeve leather jackets despite the heat of the day. Our guide told us that Moroccan men are convinced leather actually cools them in hot weather. I rolled my eyes. Something had to be lost in translation, no? Perhaps they think they look cooler in tight leather. Ah, to be twenty again. (Everybody looked about that age.)
In my head I was humming along to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s Marrakesh Express.Listen to the song. Thinking, Ah to be twenty again when I first heard that song.
Arabic is their first language; French, their second. Morocco used to be a French colony. As you approach the northern area of the country, up by Tangier, they speak Spanish, too, because at one time Spain controlled that area.
Trying to Escape the Sweep of History
Everywhere we went we couldn’t escape the sweep of history, try as we might.
In the medina (the old Muslim quarter) of Fes with its narrow, winding passageways, donkeys are a common mode of transportation. Pictogram signs inform pedestrians to yield the right of way to passing donkeys. Once we stopped for one loaded down with iPhones and firewood. That qualifies for having two hooves in the twenty-first century, I suppose.
The city of Fes received a UNICEF grant that today allows craftsmen to continue making fine leather goods using the same process they’ve been using for eight hundred years. We visited a pottery factory where they use the sun to dry pottery before oven firing. How energy efficient is that? Our tour guide told us the hot summer days are not the best because the clay dries too quickly. This time of year, October, is perfect.
All the women bring their bread for baking to a central oven. Now that’s energy efficient, of course, but it also gives the women a place to gather and talk.
They reserve the longer time for women at the Turkish bath (In the late afternoon. They reserve the late morning for the men to gather and sweat). In the late afternoon: That’s when the women get to luxuriate and exchange news. They don’t get to luxuriate very long. They work, making crafts and taking care of their families while the men get to sit at cafes sipping mint tea. No women here! And that’s how they’ve been doing it for the last eight hundred years.
Seeing Jewish Ghosts
Everywhere we traveled in Morocco ghosts of the Jewish presence hovered over the land and we the living. Their presence in Morocco dates back to just after 70 C.E. when the Romans destroyed the ancient temple in Jerusalem, according to this Wikipedia article. Read the article. Today only about 7000 Jews live in Morocco.
All the guides we talked to (and we talked to quite a few) claimed that Moroccan Jews lived in harmony with Moroccan Muslims. Jews lived in separate quarters, of course, but in quarters that were side by side.
One guide told us that Jews fought alongside their Muslim brothers in wars against Spanish Christians. Another one said that when a baby boy was born, Jewish parents would call the Muslim “mohel” to do the brit milahor circumcision; and Muslim parents would call the rabbi to do the brit milah. It didn’t matter to them because the communities were that close; it was the same religious ritual, the same covenant the baby boys were being born into, after all.
Although Jews in Morocco are scarce today, Jewish symbols appear in pottery and in other crafts made there. The plate we purchased in Fes (which you will find on my Facebook page) displays a Star of David in the center, surrounded by a traditional Muslim design motif, meant to emphasize harmony of traditions over the centuries.
The sweep of history has both the Moors and the Sephardic Jews being swept out of Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1493; then swept together into the dustbin of Morocco where they joined their brethren already there. As you can imagine, this caused a tremendous sense of loss and grief among all the displaced people.
Exploring Volubilis, a First Century Roman Settlement
Traveling through the scenic high country north of Fes on a small bus, we stopped and inspected the Roman ruins at Volubilis. It’s in the center of what once was a rich agricultural heartland.
On these lonely, windy outcroppings about two thousand years ago as many as 1,500 Romans lived, grew wheat and other crops, sending all the grain, olive oil, grapes and figs, the spoils of conquest, home to Rome. Our guide told us that Roman legions fought the Berbers for two hundred years before being allowed to settle in Volubilis. (I put a photo of what these ruins look like today on my Facebook page.)
That night we slept over in Moulay Indriss, a city built on a steep, rocky cliff that has its own rich history. The only way we could bring our luggage up to the hotel? By donkey. I had this strange feeling we were in Tibet, at the top of the world.
Visiting the “White and Blue City”
The next day we proceeded on to Chefchaouen, a city founded by displaced Jews and Moorish exiles from Spain who, in 1471, gathered up in the mountains to fight against the invading Portuguese who wanted to enslave them and take their land.
The Jews and Moors fought bravely and ran off their attackers. And they stayed where they were. The Jewish people began painting their homes blue while all the Muslims began painting their homes white. That’s what you see now, a town of stucco white and blue block homes.
Yet no Jews have lived there for a long, long time. It’s another case of the Jewish ghosts. So why do descendants of the Moors still paint certain homes blue (if no Jews live there)?
The guide told us that the people of Chefchaouen got it into their head that blue keeps “the evil eye” away. So why don’t they paint their entire city blue? No one knew the answer to that one except me: Over the centuries, the people of Chefchaouen came to identify with their “blue and white city” positioning. That’s how it’s known today, “the blue and white city.” It’s a good marketing ploy and makes for standout photos. (See one that I recently put up on my Facebook page.)
Everyone in the town, both women and men, pitch in and repaint every house in Chefchaouen once each year. The women paint the walls as high as they can reach without ladders. Then the men use the ladders to paint the rest.
Organized by Intrepid Tours
Our tour, produced by a company based in Australia known as Intrepid Tours, included one week in Morocco where we visited Marrakesh, Casablanca, Fes, Rabat, Moulay Indress and Tangier; and one week in Spain, visiting Seville, Granada, Madrid and Barcelona.
Barcelona is the Austin, Texas, of Spain
I could go on and on, but I won’t. Just one other thing: Like everyone else, Gina and I fell in love with Barcelona. I have a theory: Barcelona is the Austin of Spain. Culturally speaking (if you squint your eyes like a Travis County country singer who’s had a pretty rough life) the Catalon people resemble the varieties you find around Austin. They have their own language (Catalonia), music, wines, cheeses, meats and cuisine. They’re aggressive about sustaining their very distinct culture.
We attended a food festival in front of the main cathedral in the Gotic neighborhood of Barcelona. What a blast I had when one of the merchants showed me a map of part of Catalonia with all the country wineries marked off. Let’s rent a car and stock up on Catalan wine! They must have “visitor centers,” right?
There was a lot of talk in Catalonia about an election that’s coming up on November 25th: Catalonians may vote to declare their region economically autonomous from Spain. I’ve got news for you: All the people at that food festival were aggressively declaring their independence the same way they do it in Austin, by keeping it weird, in the case of Catalonia with wacky spellings and pronunciations of Spanish words. It's Catalon, to them a completely different language. It’s a hoot! Ya gotta go! Next thing you know: Austin and Catalonia unite!
(Historic fact: During the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, Catalonia was a place where anarchists gathered. Maybe Catalonia a little bit too much like Austin for my blood.)
