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Published: July 31st 2023
Today I’ve booked a tour to the Roman ruins of Volubilis which are somewhere around 50 kms west of Fes, and then on to the city of Meknes.
First stop is the very pretty mountainside village of Moulay Idris, which overlooks Volubilis. Its major claim to fame is as the site of the tomb of Idris I, who was a direct descendant of the Prophet Mohammed, and co-founded Fes along with his son Idris II.
The tomb is of course off limits to “infidels”, but no problem there I’m told by an enthusiastic looking local who thinks he can smell money. “Just follow me my friend“ he says, and the message seems to be that he can get me to a viewing point overlooking the tomb site. I assume this is just a few steps away, but it seems not. I’m led ever further uphill through the maze of narrow alleyways. I want to see the view, but not at the cost of the angst of a haggle over the “guide fee” that’s almost certainly going to come with it. I try to ignore my “companion” completely and just pretend that I’m wandering aimlessly. I’m not overly sure however
that my cunning ruse is working. I might like to think that I’m doing a good impression of aimless wandering, but I suspect he’s picked up that it’s no coincidence that my wanderings just happen to be following his wherever he goes. He tries to engage in conversation by asking me what language I speak - English, French, Spanish, Italian and German are all met with a deadpan response. He’s struggling now. He pauses for a few minutes before trying Czech. I wonder if he speaks Czech? He hasn’t tried Chinese yet, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time. We seem to be getting a long way from the middle of town, and I’m now less fussed about seeing the view and more worried about missing the bus. I concoct another strategy. Why don’t I pretend I’m having a heart attack; maybe then he’ll panic and abandon me. But no, it seems that if I’m about to die I mightn’t be able to walk uphill anymore, but downhill is still apparently OK. So where’s the payday going to come from now if he can’t “guide” me to the viewing point. Of course, there’s a Plan B; he’s going
to sell me a hat. I’m not quite sure where the hats came from, but suddenly they’re there, a whole array of them … I make a beeline for the bus, and he finally gives up and heads back to the square in search of another victim. That was exhausting.
But it seems my troubles for the day have only just started. I head back into the main square to take some happy snaps. Hmmm. There’s an interesting face - an elderly man sipping coffee outside a cafe. I don’t want him to know I’m taking his picture, that would be rude, so I move back to the other side of the street and extend the zoom lens. But I’m sensing all is not well. I’m approached by a policeman. He’s smiling, but I don’t think he’s happy about the photos. I’m not entirely sure why; the elderly gentlemen has no idea I’m focussing on him, so I’m struggling to see the problem. Mr Policeman doesn’t speak any English so for the second time in the last few minutes I pretend I’ve got no idea what I‘m being told. He asks me if I speak Spanish, and I respond
with “un poquito”, which I hope means “a tiny bit”. He tells me “no sabe nada”, which I think means “you don’t know anything”. I struggle for a few seconds to understand what he’s just said, and in the interim I just repeat it back to him. Uh oh. Did I just tell a policeman that he doesn’t know anything? This isn’t good. Fortunately he still thinks I’ve got no idea what he was trying to tell me, so he wanders off, content that he’s terrified me enough that I’ll stop doing anything, anything at all, and just crawl back to wherever it is he thinks I’ve come from.
So that’s two run-ins with uniformed Moroccans in two days, and both of them while trying to take happy snaps. Photography’s clearly become a hazardous hobby. I’m sure it‘s only a matter of time until I try to happy snap something I‘m not supposed to again and end up in a Moroccan dungeon. It’s probably just as well we’re leaving tomorrow. So the photography rules here seem to be a bit hazy. On the evidence to hand, you can generally take pictures of buildings … but not ones with soldiers
with machine guns standing in front of them, even if they’re hard to see because they’re so far away. And I’m not sure quite what the rules are about taking pictures of people. I can understand that you should ask permission if you’re going to poke a camera in someone’s face, but what about other situations? Now that I think about it there are probably people in most of the pictures I’ve taken in Morocco, and nobody seems to have had any problem with that up until now. Maybe I need to stay away from controversy and take pictures of say … trees, surely that won’t be a problem, or animals perhaps. What about mountains ... but only if they haven’t got people on them .… or soldiers with machine guns that are too far away to see ….
We move onto nearby Volubilis, which sits all by itself out in the middle of the paddocks. The area around here all looks pretty fertile, and the Berbers apparently thought so too; they set up shop here way back in the third century BC. The town grew quickly under first century AD Roman rule, before eventually falling to local tribes
in 285 AD. The site’s large and impressive, and a lot of the structures are very well preserved, particularly the arches and mosaic tile floors.
Next stop is Meknes where we enjoy a traditional Moroccan lunch. I get chatting to my very friendly travelling companions, two Italian couples from Turin who only met each other when they got in the bus, and a very young couple from Germany. The two younger Italians are both engineers, and she’s currently studying for a doctorate in chemical engineering. She says she’d love to come to Australia, “but there’s a problem”. I assume it’s because we’re so far away, but no - it’s “spiders”. But no problem with snakes, sharks or crocodiles - this delightful young lady says she can cope with anything that’s got four legs or fewer, but spiders are apparently a non-negotiable. We hear this sort of thing so often - people terrified of coming to our shores because they don’t think they’ve got any hope of ever going home. How do they think we Aussies cope?
We’re left three hours to wander the streets of ancient Meknes. I peer through a traditional gate in the old walls at
what looks suspiciously like …. a golf course … right in the middle of the city … completely surrounded by ancient walls. The city was founded back in the eleventh century, so golf must have hit the area early … either that or as usual I’m missing something. Next stop is the very impressive Mausoleum of Sultan Moulay Ismail who ruled Morocco in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Unfortunately the remaining wandering time feels like it’s about two hours too long. A lot of the old city has been knocked down, and it’s currently just a giant construction site. We’re told they’re rebuilding it with modern shops and supermarkets, which feels a bit sad, although that said we don’t know what it was like before.
We enjoy a couple of drinks on the Riad’s very pleasant rooftop, to the accompaniment of the sounds of the Medina. It’s just starting to feel like home, and now we have to leave.
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RENanDREW
Ren & Andrew
Moulay Idris
What a saga to just get to a viewpoint! I really liked this place, but we had a local guide walking with us - which probably ensured all other hasslers stayed away. I was going to say hope you have more photography luck for the rest of your stay, but I see you left Morocco soon afterwards. I'm slowly catching up on your travels... :)