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Published: December 20th 2006
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With just 10 shopping days till the Eid - Morocco’s most important religious holiday - there’s none of the frenzied build-up that an American would expect this time of year. No long queues for olives and goat cheese and other stocking stuffers. No Eid carols pumping from the
salons de thé. No wide-eyed little runts scribbling wish lists and gawking at the elaborately done-up fig stalls in the medina. True, the Eid might not be quite as photogenic as scenes of Ebenezer Scrooge and jolly ol’ Saint Nick in Herald Square. In fact, you get the suspicion that the traditional holiday climax - when a goat has its throat ceremoniously slit - would make a pretty piss-poor diorama. Still, it’s odd to think of all the Christmas chaos on the streets of New York right now: the frothing tykes in Toys ‘R’ Us, the pandemonium around Rockefeller Center, the registers chiming and clanging a tune that Bing Crosby himself would’ve been proud of. Here, just a few miles across the Strait of Gibraltar from Catholic Spain, life shuffles along as methodically as the sheep on the side of the road, pausing just long enough as they graze to watch our
car go speeding by.
I’ve hitched a ride with Francisco and Paola out of Merzouga, pulling into Fes just after nightfall. It’s their first time in the city, and I’m happily chattering away like an old pro - doling out tips as if I’ve spent the better part of my life selling dates in the medina. We have dinner at a rowdy restaurant in the Ville Nouvelle, where a dapper old guy is strumming a guitar and a drunken table of locals sings a wavering chorus. Beside us two gaudy women - their pants straining in all the wrong places - are flanking a tall guy in a brown corduroy suit. He’s lean as a matchstick and sitting at his table with admirable suaveness, the looks he’s shooting us loaded with the implication that his partners are willing to show us a side of Fes not mentioned in all the guidebooks.
In the morning I’m off for Meknes, the light at the end of my Moroccan tunnel coming into view. After the smoky clamor of Djemaa el-Fna and the pressure-cooker of the Fes medina, the city comes as a glorious anti-climax. I meet a couple of
Americans passing through en route to Mali, as one does, and we enjoy a day of wandering the medina that’s so free of hassle, I’m practically
begging to see some Berber rugs by the end of it. When we do get pulled into a shop, the owner makes just a single, low-key pitch while we sip our tea. He hands us a few business cards and urges us to spread the word - “Berber telephone,” as he puts it - and if I fail to steer a few of you his way when you’re in Meknes, it’s only because a certain knucklehead lost his card.
Though it briefly reined as the most important city in the country, Meknes today lags behind tourist workhorses like Marrakech and Agadir. Not surprisingly, locals like to toot their own horns a bit - especially when casting a scornful eye toward Fes in the east. In fact, it’s become such a popular schtick during my few days here - “Meknes is very calm, yes? Not like Fes!” - that I start to feel there’s something more pernicious at work here: a good cop/bad cop routine that, in the end, ensures you’ll be parted
from your dirham one way or another.
Whatever the subtext, though, I’m taken by the city. In the Mellah - the old Jewish quarter - we’re practically given a hero’s welcome. True, Josh and Sarah - the American couple - are playing it up a bit, poking their heads into little artisan’s shops and cheerfully chirping “
Ssalamu lekum!” But before long the “
ssalaams” are carpeting our path like rose petals; kids are gleefully shrieking; women - squat, toothless, hunched over piles of onions - offer merry waves. That the past month didn’t play out exactly like this hasn’t escaped my notice. And while I’m happy that their first day in Morocco has given Josh and Sarah so many Kodak moments, a small part of me hopes that - when all’s said and done - they don’t make it out of here until they’ve gotten harassed by a couple of angry little glue-sniffers.
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