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Asilah
Entry 15 of 37 | show all | print this entry |
Something funny happened in the evening in Casablanca, before I left for Marrakesh the next morning. I was sitting at a fountain reading, and waiting for sunset when the restaurants might open, and was approached by a young guy. He sat down and first asked if I was looking for a restaurant or wanted to buy something, so I figured he was a typical tout. But then he slid over right next to me and, saying something about "Moroccan karate," hooked his foot around my ankle like he was pulling off some kind of martial arts move. I was confused, because although I didn't really think his goal was to show me karate, I wasn't sure what he was up to ... was he trying to hold me up? So I looked down to see if he was holding a knife to me, and saw that he was holding his hands together, with the top hand concealing that the bottom hand was unzipping my pocket! It was a new pickpocket technique I hadn't heard of yet. I just got up and walked away then ...
Since I'm here during Ramadan, I'm more or less observing the fast. Partly out of respect and partly due to the fact that food isn't highly available anyway. However, a couple times I've given in and had a beverage during the day -- it's not easy walking around all day long without a drop to drink.
Many restaurants are closed entirely, even after sunset. One fun thing to do is to go to a cafe just before sundown and grab a table. You order some food, but don't begin eating until sunset, when everyone digs in. Officially, sunset is announced by the mosques: sirens, lights, and a person singing over the public PA all at once. Some typical foods for this tradition are harira (spicy bean and pasta soup), dates, bread, sweets, and orange juice or coffee.
During the day, I usually buy some food and drink to have in my hotel room late at night and in the morning. My favorite specialty here in Morocco are the sweets. There are many patisseries in every city/town, with various sticky sweets piled high in row upon row, like this:
http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~mdw/travel/morocco/med/img_4263.jpg
In the morning I took the 3-hour train to Marrakesh, the southernmost of the old imperial cities. Most of the buildings there have a reddish hue, and the streets are broader and cleaner than in Casablanca. It has less of a big-city feel than Casablanca, but rather alternates between "medieval Berber trading center" and "modern Disneyesque destination for wealthy tourists." I walked through what seemed to be an entire suburb of gigantic new palatial hotels.
As seems to generally be true in Morocco, most of the action is in the old walled town, the medina. At the center of it all in Marrakesh is the Jemaa al Fna, the expansive city square. Throughout the day, there are stalls selling dates, figs, sweets, etc, stalls laden with hundreds of oranges which sell fresh-squeewed (while you watch) juice, craft vendors with their blankets laid out, and a snake-charmer here and there. Around 5:00, they begin setting up food stalls. There are perhaps 20 or 30 of them, mobile restaurants, each with its own open kitchen and a few rows of benches. At these you can get decent cheap food in the most lively atmosphere. At the first one I visited, the "maître d'" served each bottle of Coke with a flourish, by using the back of a fork to send the cap flying in a random direction, sometimes into his competitors' stalls.
After dinner, as full darkess sets, the square fills up with musicians, storytellers, and other entertainers. Each group (and the food stalls too) has its own gas-powered lights. Since the square itself doesn't have much lightening, the effect is that there are numerous lights scattered around, each surrounded by a circle of onlookers. The strangest one might be the boxing for children. Other than that last one, its a pretty romantic setting.
Just north of the square are the souks, medieval-style markets arranged in an impossible labyrinth, lit from above by occassional rays of sunlight that slant through the coverings. These were a lot of fun too, mainly for being able to become lost. Around town I also visited the Ben Youssef mederasa and the Saadian tombs, two sites with breathtaking carving in stone and cedar. Also there was the Majorelle garden, created by a European painter early in the 20th century.
Two nights ago I took an overnight train to Asilah, where I'm writing this. It's a small town on the Atlantic coast just south of Tangier, and is famous for having one of the most beautiful medinas in Morocco. This medina is like a little fort on the sea, with narrow lanes and internal walls whitewashed and trimmed with bright blues and greens. There is an international arts festival here which results in murals being scattered on walls throughout, too. The air here is nice and cool, a welcome change from the scorching hot sun in Marrakesh.
Tomorrow I am leaving Morocco already: by either train or bus to Tangier, then by ferry across the strait to Algeciras, Spain, and finally by bus to Gibraltar from which I have a flight the next morning. I've just finished getting used to the strange keyboards and seeing stray cats everywhere instead of dogs ...
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