Part I of my trip to Morocco and Portugal
I must say, it was a very sandy trip. If you were to empty my backpack after my return, you would find sand from the Sahara, the Algarve (Portugal), and the endlessly flat beaches in Tangier. Sand in my socks, sand in my shirts, sand in my shampoo. I took a little bit (by accident) from each place I visited, coming home to Granada with a sandy mix of Morocco and Portugal, safely stowed in every article of clothing that I brought.
Two of my goals when I came to Spain were to visit Morocco and Portugal–check, check. In eleven days I went to two continents, three countries and ten cities. Yes, I will shamelessly use the line ¨trip of a lifetime¨here because, well, it was. For goodness sake I saw camels sleeping on the beach in Tangier, I stayed in a Berber camp in the Sahara, I walked along a never-ending coastline in Portugal that was so peaceful I expected to come upon the Pearly White gates. So, I guess one could say that I had, you know, an okay time.
Where do I even begin? Shall we do this chronologically? That means we must start in Granada, where I met my friend Jake who flew in from Milan, Italy where he is currently studying abroad. We caught a bus from Granada to Algeciras, a port town in the south of Spain. We were there for less than ten hours, just long enough to find our hostel, find a bar, and catch a ferry the next morning to Tangier.
To me, the ferry from Algeciras to Tangier signified an interesting passage from affluent Europe to Africa which is, in some places, less than fifteen kilometers away. On the ferry there was a mix of travelers, europeans, Moroccans, children, mothers, and grandfathers, all speaking either French, Spanish, English or Arabic. (I´m sure other languages were represented as well but those are the ones that I heard.) We were all leaving and arriving together, but for so many different reasons. The ferry ride is a beautiful crossing of the Mediterranean, from one world to another with the diversity of so many on a single boat.
The first thing Jake and I did when we arrived in Tangier (after we shed ourselves of the persistent ¨tour guide¨who insisted on showing us around the city) was have the most amazing meal of our entire Moroccan experience. We sat atop the roof of a restaurant where we looked at the remarkable contrast between the stunning Tangier coast and the diry, stacked city, with its countless satellite dishes perched on the roofs of nearly every building, like baby birds waiting to be fed.
We knew we wanted couscous. We didn´t see it on the menu, but all we had to do was say ¨couscous?¨ and the server took it from there. An older gentleman, our waiter climbed about six flights of steep and spiralling stairs to brings us the biggest plate of couscous I had ever seen. It was like a treasure hunt as we dug through it finding chicken and and array of different veggies hidden in the pile (or shall I use the word ¨mountain¨?) of couscous. (Oh no. I need to stop writing about this. Right now I´m in my room in Granada and I can hear my Señora cooking dinner and if I muse over this amazing meal any longer I just won´t be able to eat the chicken noodle soup that we have every night). Let´s just say that our first meal in Morocco is representative of the rest of the trip: a surprising, delicious and exciting exploration.
Suggested Soundtrack before continuing: ¨Marrakech Express¨ by Crosby, Stills and Nash. Go ahead, type it into YouTube or play it on your iTunes if you have it.
We took the overnight train from Tangier to Marrakech and who knew that being on a train for ten hours could actually be so fun? We boarded the train around 10:00 p.m. and arrived in Marrakech at 8:00 the next morning. I shared a couchette with four other women, one of whom had a little daughter named Wiram. Wiram taught me the French names of different animals and drew pictures of her house in my journal while the train vibrated along the tracks beneath us.
Eventually we went to sleep to the soothing movement of the train rocking us in our small beds as we cut through the desert. I drifted off so content in my dreams, knowing that when I awoke i would be in the red city of Marrakech, somewhere unlike any place I had ever been.
Our hostel was situated within the Medina, the old part of the city that is surrounded by a wall, red like the earth with which it was built. The Medina sits under the watchful eye of a Mosque, whose tall minaret gazes down on the city like a pine tree might watch the shrubbery below. Five times each day the prayer is anounced, and one can hear the voice of the announcer echoe throughout every part of the Medina.
When we arrived in Marrakech that morning, the huge open market in the center of the Medina was bustling with a fair number of people, but at this hour there weren´t too many dried fruit stands, mopeds, or monkies on leashes. Jake and I had no idea how the night transformed this plaza.
We settled into our beautiful hostel, and before heading out to get lost in the complicated streets of the Medina, Jake and I relaxed on the terrace of our hostel, chatting with the owner, a younger woman from the UK named Francesca, who had moved to Morocco two years ago to be with her husband Abdullah. We listened to her explain th ecity and suggest places to visist, as th esounds of the city hummed in the background. If you stood on your tip toes you could look across the satellite dishes and crowded rooftops and into the market place that grew busier and louder as the day went on.
We drank cups of tea that tasted like liquid candy with mint leaves swimming like Beta fish inside the glasses. While we sat on the terrace, Echo, a local magician, musician and entertainer (a man of many talents) made us traditional Berber coffee. He stood there for 20 minutes or more mixing, and whipping what looked like peanut butter, when he finally scraped it into a cup and poured warm milk into the curious mixture. I had my doubts. Coffee the consistency of peanut butter? I´ve definitely heard of more appetizing things. But, as you can probably guess it turned out to be some of the greatest cofee I´d ever tatsed. It was sweet, and latte-like, and smoothe in the way that coffee should be, not at all peanut buttery! I couldn´t get enough of this peanut butter-looking, coffee-tasting goodness. I could have sat up on that terrace for hours drinking that Berber coffee. But alas, there was the rest of Marrakech to explore and I couldn´t well justify spending the entire afternoon on the terrace sipping coffee.
Echo invited Jake and I to his house where we were able to indulge in our respective passions: music and children. Jake and Echo played the drums while I played with Echo´s eight month old sister. She bobbed along to the rhythm of the drums as she attempted to yank out my hair with her remarkably strong miniature hands.
The house was located just off the main streets in the Medina. When we entered we greeted the women who were cooking in the kitchen, removed our shoes and went past what seemed to be the dining/livingroom and into another part of the house.
The house was crowded, but comfortable. When I say comfortable I mean comfortable in the physical but also in the intangible sense. There were large pillows sprawled on the floor that were, in fact, very comfortable. But more importantly I felt comfortable being in the house as a guest, as a foreigner, and as an absolute stranger. I had no way of conversing with anyone (Echo spoke French, so he and Jake could talk, but the women only spoke Arabic). When they served us lunch I did my best to ¨look¨as grateful as possible, which pretty much consisted of over-smiling constantly. They pushed us to eat more olives, more bread and continued to refill our cups with the sinfully delicious and beautiful Moroccan tea. (Let me just explain why I say that the tea was beautiful: as some of you know, I love leaves. I have been known to crawl around in them during Fall, or to stop mid sentence, or mid stride to croon over a particular leaf. The way the mint leaves floated in the tea, limp but brilliantly green was, however mundane it may seem, beautiful to a leaf-lover. Cheesey, nerdy, but so very true.)
We sat on the (comfotable ) pillows around a plastic table while the baby nursed, and we ate. The door to the home opened and closed as a little girl of about seven ran in and out. Each opening of the door brought something new. Sometimes a donkey would be pearing inside, and other times it was just the little girl, running in with newly bought candy to give Jake and me. One opening of th edoor brought an old man, clad in what many Moroccan men wear: a tactful robe and a round cap. No, not a bath robe, a nice robe. One that you might expect Dumbledore to wear. This man was, as Echo informed us, a man of few words. He sat next to me, and I felt a sort of tranquility as you might feel, again, if Dumbledore were to sit down next to you: calm, but in the presence of great power. Not threatening power, rather the power of knowledge. I hardly exchanged one word with this man (at least as far as I know), but I could tell that he understood. Understood what? you may ask. Honestly, I´m not sure what, but it was something important. Here, I could throw in words like ¨life¨, ¨love¨, ¨peace¨or ¨self¨, in an attempt to describe this man´s deep and inmeasurable understanding but those would just be inadequate and superficial guesses. So I won´t use those words. I won´t use any words, in fact, to help you or me understand this man´s understanding. Okay, let´s just say, he´s got it down. A real-life Dumbledore, if you will.
We left this comfortable home and I gave my ¨thank-you-so-much-for-hosting-us-and-feeding-us-and-being-so-hospitable¨look as clearly and forcefully as I could. The little girl leaped into my arms, giving Jake and me good-bye kisses on the cheek (she may have bruised my face with her enthusiasm) and we spent the rest of the day smelling rare spices, trying on Moroccan dresses (Not Jake, just me. And not by choice, but by the insistence of the shopkeeper), nearly being mauled by mopeds, and simply getting lost in the streets of the Medina.
Note: Given that we are only on day two of my journey, I will have to write about this trip in parts. Stay tuned for the rest, I promise it will come shortly! Thank you for reading.