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Published: August 10th 2007
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ALLAH U AKBAR, ALLAH U AKBAR
ASH-HADU AL-LA ILAHA ILL ALLAH - ASH-HADU AL-LA ILAHA ILL ALLAH
ASH-HADU ANNA MUHAMMADAN RASULULLAAH
HAYYA LA-S-SALEAH - HAYYA LA-S-SALEAH
HAYYA LA-L-FALEAH - HAYYA LA-L-FALEAH
ALLAHU AKBAR, ALLAHU AKBAR
LA ILAHA ILL ALLAH By the time the prayer caller reached the final verse, my eyes were open and my teeth were grit in contempt. I rolled over and tried to fall back asleep before the brief silence was shattered with a second verse after the caller sucked in an Olympic swimmer-sized lung full of air. When the third verse started at 5:05AM, I couldn’t help but laugh out of frustration, knowing that Gina was wide awake beside me. Having sworn she would sleep through the obnoxiously loud banter the previous night, I felt some gratification in knowing I wasn’t the only one stewing.
Like some bad dream on snooze, the entire process repeated at a little after 7AM. I would have sworn the megaphone was in our room.
What is wrong with these people? Gina and I finally pulled ourselves from the sheets a few hours later and took turns fighting the testy knobs
in the shower. Clean and ready to explore our surroundings, we descended the stairs from our room to take advantage of the offered breakfast at our riad. Surprisingly, we found a table set with food, coffee and tea waiting for us - a woman was washing the floor by hand nearby. Unsure what the protocol was, we interrupted the woman and asked, “Breakfast?”
She returned a look of confusion, before pointing to the set table and muttering, “Abdul,” the name of the manager whom we met the day before. Without hesitation we sat to indulge ourselves and Gina quickly scanned the fare and pointed with enthusiasm, “Check out this pound cake!”
Unbeknownst to us, the cleaning woman disappeared down a set of stairs only to be replaced by Abdul a few minutes later. By this point, I had poured myself a cup of coffee while watching Gina devour half of the pound cake. We greeted a seemingly flabbergasted Abdul with smiles and quickly realized something was askew. “This table was set for another couple who had requested it last night because they are leaving early,” Abdul sternly, but politely informed us.
Gina stopped mid-chew and shot me
a look of
Oh, shit. My stare alternated between Gina, Abdul and the luggage-toting couple I noticed descending the opposite stairs. “We’re so sorry. We didn’t realize. We asked the cleaning lady and she pointed at this table. We didn’t touch much. They can have it and we’ll wait…” I rambled off in apology. Thankfully, my tone was sincere enough to convince Abdul that we weren’t rude Americans and that the situation was truly a mistake. Needless to say, Gina and I finished the meal with our heads hung low.
Having gone almost two weeks without doing laundry, I had emailed the riad in advance to ask about local self-service facilities. To my surprise, the response indicated that several locations could accommodate our needs within walking distance and to ask for directions upon arrival. After our awkward breakfast, we approached Abdul reluctantly and inquired, “Could you direct us to a laundry?” while holding two overstuffed bags of dirty clothes.
Abdul’s directions were meticulous enough to convince us that there was a laundry on every other street corner of the medina. Unfortunately, the reality was anything but. We wandered through the various artisan souqs before encountering the first
laundry. Accustomed to pay-per-kilogram, Gina and I were dumbfounded when the man behind the counter insisted that each piece would cost us the equivalent of $4 US to launder. Naturally, we laughed and continued on through the Medina for the next hour only to repeat the process a second and third time. Disgruntled and frustrated, we decided to return to the riad and consult Abdul.
We fumbled through the
Lonely Planet French Dictionary for a few minutes before finally conveying the situation to Abdul, who looked perplexed by our incorrect pronunciations. “Not in medina,” he replied.
“Then where?” we persisted.
“Walk to the corner and ask a taxi driver to take you,” he suggested.
Without clean underwear, shirts and shorts, we had few options but to try our luck at pigeon French. We thought we’d hit pay dirt when the first cabbie understood enough English to comprehend our predicament. However, the relief was short-lived when he advised us, “No meter.”
Tired of being cheated, we declined, only to have the Moroccan woman standing next to us enter the cab and the driver engage the meter.
Asshole. Gina hailed the next cab as I frantically
cobbled together a sentence in French to convey our need. I confidently spouted off the sentence only to have a blank look returned. Flipping a few pages in the
Lonely Planet, I tried again while holding up the bag of dirty clothes under my arm. This time, the man nodded in understanding. “Meter?” Gina inquired. The man pointed at his apparatus and nodded.
We climbed in the backseat and the driver engaged the meter and sped off, away from the medina. As the scenery changed from old town to new town, Gina and I became optimistic about wearing clean underwear later in the day. After a few roundabouts, right turns and stoplights, the cab stopped across from a building labeled
Lavanderie. The cabbie instructed us to wait while he scoped out the establishment - we sat patiently in the vehicle.
Minutes passed before the driver returned and advised that the woman inside said she’d do laundry for 6 Dirhams ($0.60 USD) per piece. Stuck between a rock and a pair of shorts that could stand on their own, we decided to cave and pay the inflated price. When we entered the shop and unloaded our bags of clothing
onto the counter, I noticed the woman eyeing us and decided to confirm the price. “How much?” I asked without acknowledging the price the driver had informed us of.
“50 Dirham ($5 USD),” the woman propositioned.
“Per piece?” I countered with my jaw nearly on the floor.
“Yes,” she answered with finality.
Before the woman could finish her sentence, Gina was already pushing our clothes back into the bags and headed for the door. I wasn’t far behind.
We advised the cabbie what had happened and he simply shrugged in indifference. Defeated, we asked, “Could you take us back where you picked us up from?”
Having spent nearly 60 Dirham on the fruitless ride, Gina and I decided to retreat to the riad for the remainder of the morning. We setup shop near the courtyard pool and blogged for a few hours before concluding that we should explore the nearby souqs (shops) in the medina during the balance of our day.
Wandering past many of the same shops from our earlier laundry scavenger hunt, Gina and I took the time to observe what each stall offered. Having read that Morocco is noted for
its artisans, we found ourselves ducking into pottery, looming and wood working shops before happening upon a man carving barbeque skewers with his feet. Intrigued, we watched as the man fashioned a crude necklace for Gina, and quickly parted with a handful of Dirham for souvenirs to send home.
As we traipsed from shop to shop asking for the price of various items, we concluded that months of bartering had jaded us. “I’d rather pay the exorbitant prices at Nordstrom just to see the price on the tag,” I proclaimed at one point. Gina concurred.
The sun was headed for the horizon by the time our stomachs started growling and we stopped for some cured meats and a glass of wine before retiring to the riad for the evening. With a few hours before dinner, I worked on unfinished blogs as Gina tried napping beside me. Unexpectedly, her slumber was broken by an upset stomach that deteriorated to what we assumed was full blown food poisoning. I rubbed her back while she clutched the toilet, dreading that it would be my turn soon - it never came.
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