Another 8.30am breakfast today… to the horror of the hotel manager who clearly thinks we ought to be relaxing followed by another car ride with Yassine.
Today’s plan involved exploring Marrakech with a guide. Having done our research online, we were not brave enough to venture into the Souk unsupervised!
Our guide for the day was called Yosef and started by telling us a little about himself. He has a BA in English with linguistics and speaks fluent Japanese (which he proved when we came across a snake of Japanese tourists and he began to talk to them) as well as English, French, Arabic and Berber. His knowledge of local history was impressive and as we walked he showed us everything from recent earthquake damage to walls standing since the 11th century.
We had a list of what we wanted to see and Yosef was enthusiastic about our plan. We started south of the city with a visit to the square minaret on the biggest mosque in Marrakesh, displaying the Jewish influences on architecture when it was built and today. Unlike in other countries, Morocco only has square (not circular) minarets.
Our next stop was the Saadian Tombs housing the remains of various royal members. We enjoyed the organised queueing and giggled at the Spanish and French tourists who didn’t understand the system and had to stumble apologetically to the back after the gardener and security guard got lairy!
Many of the graves outside were not named, and some are possibly empty because they are a memorial for plague victims for whom remains could not be recovered. The tombs of the king and queen were much more ornate (as you would expect) with beautiful tiling and repeated geometric patterns. We had to explain to Josef what tessellation was. He enjoyed and referred to my maths teacher status regularly!
Josef took us to the Bahir Palace next, which was named after the wife of a prime minister. We discussed the status of prime minister in Morocco, and the resultant riches they enjoy. The areas open to the public are examples of places that the prime minister would have entertained important foreign guests. Josef talked us through the uses that each of the rooms would be have been put to as guests were brought from the outside and closer in stages to the important host.
To avoid a long(ish) walk to the north of the medina, we jumped in a taxi with Josef. A slightly frightening experience. The driver clearly has to renew his brake pads every day, based on the amount and ferocity he used them.
Once the other side of the city we continued our tour.
Fortunately, Josef knew where he was going as the route we followed was quite convoluted and I would not have been able to re-trace it. He took us to an area which has components repeated over and over around the city: a hammam, a mosque, a fountain and a community bakery. The fountain is no longer operational, the hammam was closed (although perhaps just temporarily) and the bakery had moved with times! Josef told us that baking bread at home was a ritual that women wore as a badge of pride. In cities or towns women shaped and let the bread rise daily and then took it to the community bakery to be cooked, and to be eaten at home. Now people choose to buy bread, there are a lot of bread sellers on street corners and fewer women take pride in their home baking. This means that the community baker cooks bread for street sellers and shops, not individual homes. Josef took us inside a community bakery and introduced us to the baker. The gentleman was clearly happy to be paid for his photo to be taken and happily slid all the things he was cooking out of the enormous oven to show us. He was cooking some bread but also a fish dish (sardines by the look of them) and various other things. The oven was enormous, a shallow in height space that was the size of a whole room. While we were in there, a woman arrived with her bread and left it with no communication with the baker still posing for the photos!
By this point we were tired and hungry, so to kill two birds with one stone, Josef took us to the Secret Garden to look around and have lunch. In retrospect, we probably wouldn’t have bothered. There are much more impressive gardens in the UK and the food just the Moroccan equivalent of museum food all over the world! The impressive thing about the Secret Garden is the way water was engineered from the mountains, into a local aquifer and then by underground channels to the garden. Without the water, the garden would not be possible and represents a serious investment in time and money. Walking around it, it becomes apparent how little green there is in the rest of the inner city.
Like children after a nap, Josef collected us from the Secret Garden and carried on his tour. He found us an accommodation house that caravans used to stay in while they were delivering their wares to the souk. Apparently it was used by a film as a location, but I can’t remember which film! It has been converted into a series of small shops around an upper balcony.
Our next stop was disappointing. Josef didn’t warn us in advance but took us to a herbalist. It was quite a long stop as the delightful young salesman was diligent in displaying every one of his products to us. Unfortunately, most of the products were ones we had seen before at the cooperative and had no intention of buying. The salesman was very funny and teased Keith about needing hair loss products. He was also very convincing about his opinion that Keith was 10 years younger than he is! He was obviously disappointed when we did not purchase anything, but hopefully his next customer was more generous.
Two more stops to go and our feet were starting to ache. The last bit of obligatory culture was a visit to the largest Qur’anic school in Northern Africa – Ali Ben Youssef Madras. Josef went into full flow on his pet topic of the potential greatness of Morocco given the length of time that they have been teaching students religion, philosophy, geography, history, logic, mathematics etc., and his frustration that it is hamstrung by financially based decisions made by today’s politicians.
It is a beautiful, well kept building a bit like a boarding school with various sizes of individual rooms mostly with very low doors. There is an intense feeling about the place, like you get in a library.
Lots of things we saw triggered interesting discussions with Yosef about why the political, socio-economic and religious environment in Morocco is the way it is today. He displayed a significant lack of confidence in the government of the country, a disappointment in the system of education (they have just emerged from a four month long strike by teachers over pay and conditions) and a fierce sense of national pride. He could list so many historic and modern Moroccans who had invented, developed or improved technology (the lithium battery for one) but most of them lived and worked in France or America. He seemed saddened by the fact that the government did not seem to want Morocco to develop or to encourage higher levels of education in the children. He gave the impression that most Moroccans had only rudimentary education as it was not valued by parents so they did not fight for their children to have it.
He talked about the explosion of population – 3 million when the French arrived (1907-1934) to colonise and 40 million now. That explains why children build their own houses and implies most family sizes are as big as the ones we have been discussing. Yosef said his Mum was one of 15 and he was one of 7.
He also talked about the pyramid that maintains society here: economic, politics and religion. He asked how Islamic states were perceived and portrayed in the west and we talked about our experiences at home and how politics isn’t really discussed, with any evils emanating from the region being blamed on religion by our press. We learned, though, that Islam is not a religion, but a way of life and religion intermingled, and that there are various branches of Islam each with their own interpretations of how to live.
Josef was almost out of enthusiasm by now, but our last stop was the souk to get a look around and get presents for the children. Josef asked ahead of time what if anything we wanted to get and then took us to specific stalls to get what we wanted. The tiny booths on each side of the paths contained dark workshops and piles of goods. Each one was manned by a gentleman of varying enthusiasm, most of them communing intently with their phone. They were not as pushy as we had been led to expect and it did not feel intimidating, except when Keith and Josef pulled significantly ahead of me and I felt a bit exposed.
Shopping completed, Josef took us back to the agreed meeting point and passed us back into the care of our driver. Sadly, Yassine was otherwise engaged taking Tom to the bank, so another very polite young man, Ahmed, took us back to Fawakay. The car was very hot on the way back and Ahmed was less chatty than his colleague.
Showers, lots of water to drink and a cuddle with a dock-tailed cat called Weasel prepared us for a pre-dinner cocktail. Obviously it is very important not to be late for dinner as the ladies get twitchy, so we took our cocktails in with us. Tom was starting to struggle with managing the staff in the owner’s absence. He shared his frustration with us, and we laughed about it with him, while he made our drinks.
Dinner tonight showed evidence of the care of the chef, with our salads made into the shape of hearts! At first I thought they had got the date of Valentine’s day wrong, but it turns out that is normal. The food was good, but the after effects were seriously uncomfortable. Perhaps they had washed the salad in dirty water, but whatever it was, it left us regretting our dinner choices.
