A Christmas Tajine

A Christmas Tajine

I stirred when the vendors started to wheel in their stalls and wares down the street below my hostel bedroom window. A little while later I fully awoke when the restaurants, cafes and shops opened for business. Stacked chairs were taken off tables and laid out, encroaching as far onto the street as the waiters thought that they could get away with. Small groups of men gathered in the street to smoke, chat and watch the beginning of a new day, a day like any other in Fez. A small caravan of donkeys passed. As I stretched and yawned something struck me; this was Christmas Day and I wasn’t suffering from a hangover. It had been some time since this had happened to me. Mulling over this strange phenomenon I shuffled for the shared facilities in the vain hope of even a luke-warm shower.

A short while later I had my first coffee of the morning under a tarp of one of the street-side cafes as sheets of rain washed in over the Bab Boujeloud gate. I watched an unfortunate donkey be loaded with empty coke bottles. Donkeys always look sad, no matter where they are, you'd wonder what they're thinking about. The rain ran down the street and began to collect the debris scattered on the street from the night before. The drops became trickles, the trickles became torrents, torrents which gathered the animal waste, banana skins, orange peels, nutshells and olive pips and funnelled them into gutters and down the steep streets. The filthy water would pick up speed on the hill and eventually wash the narrow alleys and passageways clean. The ever opportunistic shopkeepers, taking advantage of this functional downpour, came to the front of their properties and swept their shops fronts clean, piling more waste into the stinking brown stream. They chatted and laughed with each, the wet not dampening their spirits one bit. Tourists ran from doorway to doorway dodging the worst drops, the carpet and trinket shops welcoming the temporary captive customers. A stand selling umbrellas was set up down the street with admirable speed.

I reflected on my conversations of the night before with a waiter from one of the restaurants under the shadow of the Bab Boujeloud. We spoke in broken Spanish, myself having no Arabic or French, him not having English. Achmed was laidback, he spoke deliberately after careful consideration of his sentence. He was forthright and honest, one the most straight talking people I had met in a while. We sat in the closed restaurant surrounded by stacked chairs on tables, drank tea and discussed each others countries customs, religions and social arrangements. We talked about the importance of the family unit in Moroccan life, the similarities of Islam and Christianity and we compared each others lives, we were the same age. Achmed wanted nothing more than to walk from Morocco to Mecca. I could picture it like a scene from the biblical books we had as children; Achmed strolling through desert oasis, sleeping under palm trees and chatting to shepherds and farmers. He was a wise person with a simple goal, I admired and envied that, such dreams and sentiments are rare where I come from. There are moments in Morocco where the nearby western world seems very far away.

After the rain stopped I headed down into the depths of the Fez Medina. The rain had cleared the air but the hot stoves and barbeque grills were doing their best to ensure that this wouldn’t last. Fresh smoke billowed from nooks and crannies on either side of the small twisting streets. I ducked down tiny alleys so narrow that just two people could pass comfortably. I came face to face with a camel head - it was hanging from a meat hook - smirking and ghoulish. Men and boys pounced off shop steps, greeting me with smiles, urging me into their cousin’s shop offering me ‘special prices’, just for me, ‘a friend’. Suddenly I was shoved to one side, a sympathetic hand steadying me on the precariously slippery stone kerb. A caravan of laden donkeys hurtled out of the murky depths, the bowels of the marketplace. The unfortunate beasts raced up the street scattering the locals with whom the unapologetic drovers exchanged rapid banter. They were bringing carpets from remote mountain villages to sell to the shops. My camera was in my hand, I snatched a photo. They were gone. The crowd closed behind them as quickly as it had parted.

All the while there was a din, such a raucous racket, the noise of a true living city and yet there wasn’t a car engine to be heard. Old women, black and veiled, shuffled up and down laden with plastic bags. Kids ran to and fro shouting, screaming, kicking a coke can as a football, a narrow arch their goal. I was hopelessly lost and my senses were being attacked in all directions. I turned one way and was assaulted by a spice stall, a smith hammering tin beat my ears, I turned again and received an upper cut of the stink of congealed blood and wet hide. The dye works dazzled me with their unnatural looking natural colours. I had to get out. Dizzy and gasping I stumbled through an arch and out into the open air. As I caught my breath I thought about the market... this medieval market place with its food and spices, shoemakers and smiths, leather stalls and butchers, this was a true, living thing, not a sanitized, sterilised shopping centre. This was an experience to make you feel alive.


Benen

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