After a few days
in
I did a lot of
moving around in
After a few days
in
I did a lot of
moving around in
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I wandered through
the medina for a few hours and came out on the northern end; I was in a large
modern commercial district. After a few minutes, I walked past an old-fashioned
barber shop. My hair was getting a little long so I went in for a cut. The shop
was small and narrow. There was room enough for two old-fashioned barber's
chairs and a pair of plastic seats for waiting customers. The shop already had
one customer, a big Arab man in his 40s. He was heavy-set, like a bouncer, and
had his shirt halfway off. He was getting cut, but not in his hair.
The barber and his
customer chatted amicably in Arabic. They greeted me in French and asked me to
have a seat. The man's shirt was draped over his left shoulder. His right side
was exposed, but I couldn't see it from my vantage point. The man groaned and
massaged his right shoulder. The barber found a small glass and rinsed it out
in the sink. He wadded up some tissue in his hand and lit it with a match. He
put the burning tissue into the glass. He stood behind his customer and watched
the tissue burn. Just before it burned completely out, he put the lip of the
glass on the man's back near his shoulder blade. The man grunted. I could not
for the life of me figure out what they were doing.
The barber kept
the glass against the man's back for about three minutes. When he detached it,
the man gave a heavy sigh and rotated his arm. The barber showed me the glass;
it held about a quarter-cup of blood. The man smiled at the glass. He looked
relaxed. The two of them explained it to me in French. I caught little
snippets: “lots of blood” “tight muscles” “lots of pain” “take blood” “relaxed”
and “no pain, no pain.” I averted my eyes to the floor. Along with the locks of
previous customers' hair, I noticed drops of dried blood.
The barber swabbed
the wound with alcohol and put a sterile bandage on it. Now it was time for the
left side. The big man took his shirt completely off and I got to see the whole
procedure. First the barber took a straight razor and made little cuts near the
shoulder blade. None of them were very deep; only a few gave up a drop or two
of blood. He made about thirty cuts, all of them grouped in a small circle.
As before he put
burning tissue into the glass and cupped it over the incisions. Then I
understood what the burning tissue was for. As the fire burned out, the cooling
air in the glass made a vacuum. The skin on the man's back was pulled into the glass.
A little bubble of flesh rose up in the glass and started to bleed. The man
groaned. The barber advised him to raise his arm. He lifted his hand above his
head and moved his arm in circles. Each time his arm reached the top of its
rotation, the bubble in the cup gave up a little blood. The barber put his hand
of the man's head and moved it forward, back and side-to-side. More blood
streamed into the cup. The barber lowered the glass and with a barely audible
pop it came off. The man leaned forward and put his head in his hands. He
looked at me, gave me a thumbs up, and said, “Tres bien.” I smiled.
The barber rinsed
out the glass and bandaged his customer. The man put his shirt back on gave the
barber a hug. He went out and said something to me in French. The barber mopped
up the floor and asked me to take a seat.
I didn't get a
bleeding. Just a haircut for me, thank you. My haircut is really simple. It's a
military-style buzz cut--number 3 razor on top, number 2 on the sides. With my
limited language skills, I can't say, “Cut it clean over the ears, part it on
the left, and sweep the top back.” But I can hold up three fingers and point to
the top of my head. The barber did a pretty good job. I thought about asking
for a shave. But I thought, if I pointed toward the razor, he might
misunderstand and start cutting into my back.
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I got into
I had a problem in
The
The red-light was
one extremely narrow and winding street. It was somewhat close to one of the
entrances but still well hidden from sight. I won't say exactly where it is. In
the medina finding little secret streets
is half the fun. When you find yourself surrounded by teenage and 20-something
men, and there's not a woman in sight, you know you're close. Follow the sound
of loud music and try not to get lost.
Before anyone
suspects anything, I didn't make a purchase at the sex souk. A walk down that
street was experience enough. Middle-aged wrinkly women wearing granny panties
stood in high heels and feather boas, their lips a bright red and their cheeks
painted blue. Young men, most in their teens, ran from door to door peeking
inside to see what was for sale. Some houses opened into steep staircases with
a gang of women up top. The men ducked their heads and stared upward. Every now
and then one of them sheepishly stepped into a house and quickly slammed the
door behind him. The whole thing reminded me of the movie 8 ½, when young Guido
goes to see the voluptuous Saraghina. The customers were as big and crazy-eyed
as Saraghina herself; and despite their age the customers all acted like little
boys looking at a woman for the first time. Viewed as a chance to see beautiful
women half-naked,
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I didn't go to
Hotel du Louvre founded in 1936 besfore
World War II, is a historical Monument when has hasted some very important
personalities such as the Poet Moufdi Zakaria who composed the Algerian National Hymen.
So if you ever get
see an Algerian hymen, think of Moufdi Zakaria. Now off to
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I woke up early so
I could take pictures of the sunrise. It was anti-climactic. The terrain was
mostly flat, but there was a tall mountain due east of us. The sun was hidden
behind the mountain until it well up into the sky. As day broke the sky took a
light pink tint for about twenty minutes, then it turned a clear blue that it
kept all day. So much for a dramatic desert sunrise. I still managed to snap
some good shots of the landscape. As always, my photos are at
http://www.flickr.com/gringracho.
We'd driven for 9
hours to get to that desert camp. Now we had to drive 9 hours to get back. We
took a brief stop at Ait Ben Haddou, an old walled city in the middle of the
desert. It was once an important trading post for goods travelling between
sub-Saharan
We got back at
7:00 that night, completely exhausted from the long trip. We went to sleep
pretty early. Kit had to get up early to fly back to
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Our desert tour
was the highlight of my trip. We booked an overnight trip through Moroccan
Views. I'd recommend that company to anyone.
The bus picked us
up in the morning after picking up two groups of tourists at other hotels.
There were eleven of us in all. Our guide was named Mustafa. One of our group
affectionately nicknamed him The Lion King. Abdul was our driver. He was pretty
quiet the whole trip; partly because he didn't speak English; mostly because he
had to concentrate on the twisty Moroccan roads.
Moustafa took a
liking to a pair of American girls in our group. Maggie and Katherine were
cousins from Boston and Tampa Bay. I thought they were both incredibly
beautiful, and Moustafa did as well. He gave Maggie a “good Arabic name,”
Aicha. For most of the drive Moustafa sang along to DJ Khaled's romantic tune,
“Aicha.” It's a good song. It's something Michael Bolton would sing if he'd
been born in Morocco. He and Abdul got into a mock bidding war over the size of
Maggie's dowry. The bride-price got up to 200 camels, but Aicha wouldn't budge.
There was also
Michael, an Australian financial advisor visiting from London. When we found
that there were two Michael's on the bus, Moustafa changed my name to an Arabic
one. For the rest of the trip I was “Mulit.” For the record, I don't have a
mullett.
Rounding out our
bunch were a foursome of two professional Rugby players and their wives. Ryan
was from South Africa and came to Morocco with his wife Jo. Paul was originally
from New Zealand and was there with his girlfriend Louise. The two men had been playing Rugby in Spain
for the last year and a half. They told me that Spanish rugby wasn't very
popular and that only two of their teammates were actually from Spain. Most of
their team was from the UK, Australia, and Germany. Still, they loved the game
and they certainly loved the lifestyle. Imagine: You're born and raised in
South Africa, brought up playing all kinds of sports. You marry your high
school sweetheart, and then you go play professional Rugby in the Gold Coast of
Spain. I think that's a pretty good life.
And then there
were Kit and I. It's hard for us to answer the question, “Where are you from?”
Kit's response was, “Well, I was born in northern California, but I moved to
Germany. Then I lived in Iraq for a year and after that I moved to Honduras.
Now I live in Germany again.” My answer was equally complex, but I just said,
“I'm from Indiana.”
We drove into the
mountains for nine full hours. By the end of the trip, we were thoroughly sick
of the bus. Something most people don't realize is that Marrakech isn't in the
middle of the desert. It's at the foot of the Atlas Mountains on the side that
faces the ocean. What few clouds come out of the Atlantic get stopped at the
mountains and fall as rain on Marrakech. As a result the city's in a semi-arid
zone. At this time of year, it's surrounded by lush green wheat fields and
scattered farms. To get to the desert, you cross over the mountains and into
the rain shadow. We drove for three hours through the mountains and another
four beyond that. Only then did we get to the rocky edge of the Sahara.
We unloaded from
the bus and waited for a team of camels. None of us had ever ridden one before.
They have a longer and smoother gait than horses. They're more comfortable in
my opinion. Our equipment made the ride a little rough.. Our saddles were just
blankets thrown over the camels' backs. There were no stirrups and no real
seat. After two hours of riding, the men in our group were a
little...uncomfortable. The rugby players were wearing shorts. One got off the
camel with a wedgie so deep he needed Ex-Lax to get it out. I still have a rash
on the inside of my legs. I hope it's gone before I meet my girlfriend in
Egypt. If she sees it she'll scream, “You got jock itch from some whore in
Morocco!” Then I'll have to shout, “I swear I wasn't with another woman. I was
with a camel!”
We arrived at camp
just after sunset. There were other groups of tourists and each group got its
own tent. The nine of us filed into our tent and laid back on piles of
blankets. We cracked open the booze we'd bought earlier. I had a bottle of
cheap French wine. Ryan had a bottle of local Moroccan wine. The Moroccan stuff
was actually better than the French. The two American girls had picked up a
dozen cans of Moroccan “Special” brand beer. The flavor was nothing special.
But it was funny to watch people open the first few cans. They were agitated
after the long camel ride, and they sprayed all over the tent.
After dinner in
the tent we joined the other groups for drumming and dancing around a big
bonfire. I felt a little embarrassed to be drinking in front of our Bedouin
hosts. They didn't seem to mind. In fact, they asked us to share some of our
vodka and Coke. We all wound up happy and drunk and capped off a great evening.
Posted at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Kit's quite a hard
bargainer. His initial offers were about a fourth of what the shop owners
offered. As they went down in price, he went up and down and up again. One shop
owner asked 500 dirhams for a small glass lamp. Kit offered 100, then 125, 150,
down to 75, then 100 again. They finally settled at 130. I think I'll send him
to negotiate the next time I make a purchase.
In the evening, we
wandered around Place Jemma al Fna. The plaza had come alive with henna
artists, snake charmers, amateur boxers, drummers, trumpeters, singers, and
plain old crazy screamers. Bicycles, mopeds, and a few cars battled for the
right of way with pedestrians in the square. Beat-up donkey carts loaded with
vegetables meandered behind elegant horse-drawn carriages with smooching
tourist couples.
Brion Gyson and
William S. Burroughs were living in Morocco when they developed their “cut up”
style of writing. They would type up three or four short stories, cut sentences
out of the typed sheets, and paste them out of order onto one page. In their
books, one might simultaneously read tales of giant centipedes taking over the
medina, a drug-filled trip to New Orleans, and the aftermath of a nuclear
explosion. The stories intertwine not just metaphorically but literally as one
paragraph contains sentences from all three stories. Buroughs' and Gyson's
cut-up style was mostly the result of addiction to hard drugs. But I think some
of their inspiration came from Moroccan medinas. To walk through the medina is
to experience a cut-up story.
At night the
Marrakech medina is lit by street lamps and strings of bare light bulbs. In
smaller shops, bright white kerosene lamps cast harsh shadows and make a
hissing sound as they burn. Six drummers scattered around the plaza bang out
six different rhythms, all as intoxicating as they are incompatible. A young
woman tugged on my sleeve and held out a box of sweet cookies. When I refused
to buy one, she motioned to her young daughter, who chased after me with another
box. A pair of teenagers shoved her away and held two fliers to my face. The
one on my left had an brochure written in Arabic. In English he told me where
to find a great hammam with a mud bath and massage. The one on my right had a
French restaurant menu and was saying something about brochettes and poisson. I
didn't acknowledge them but they walked beside me shaking the brochures. The
English speaker broke off when a motorbike zipped in between us. The French
speaker switched to Spanish, something about couscous con cordero. I heard the
rhythm of the drummers on the far side of the plaza and spotted a shop selling
Moroccan spices. I caught the smell of incense and heard the mosque giving the
last call to prayer. “Te gusta cordero? O caracol? Tenemos caracol rico.”
“Allahuakbar! Allahuuuakbar!” “You want Moroccan spices? Come see my spices.
Come take a look!” And still those ever-present drums pounding away. I listen
to those drums and hear the roots of Latin music. Flamenco and salsa are hidden
in those beats. If Africa begins at Lyonne, then Latin America begins at
Marakech. Did the djinn become orishas when they found their way to Cuba?
If you open all
your senses to it, it makes you a bit schizophrenic. You experience everyone's
story at all once. You forget which story is yours and which are someone
else's. If your name is Bill Burroughs and you're whacked out of your mind on
drugs, the result is Naked Lunch.
I think I've come
around in my opinion of the Moroccan medina. It's like those syncopated drum
beats. If you can't catch the rhythm the medina is chaotic and frustrating. But
once you catch it you become part of the song. I'd like to take a trip back to
Tangier and Fez; see if they look different this time. But I've already booked
my flight to Tunis. I have three days left in Morocco. I'm certain I'll be
back.
Kit and I wandered
around the side streets for a while and then returned to the medina for a meal.
He ate a bowl of roasted snails for 10 dirhams. He proudly pointed out that he
had the courage to eat Moroccan snails while I stuck to chicken. We both passed
on the boiled sheep's head. A handful of food stands sold whole sheep's heads,
sheered of skin and eyes but with all their muscles and teeth. They dipped the
heads into a big drum filled with boiling oil. After about 15 minutes, they
took the heads out and set them in a long row where tourists could pick which
head they wanted to eat. Kit said that we had to share a boiled sheep's head
while in Morocco. Somehow we never got around to it.
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I arrived back in Marrakesh on Friday, a day before Kit arrived. I had booked a night at the same hostel I stayed at before. Before I went to Agadir, I told the owner that a friend and I would be in Marrakesh from Saturday to Tuesday. I asked him to reserve beds for us, and he confirmed that he had space. I hadn't told him that I would be back on Friday, so I booked that day on the web while I was in Agadir.
When I got there, the owner told me they didn't have any beds for the weekend. He asked why I hadn't booked our two beds from Saturday to Tuesday on the Internet. I told him that I had spoken to him directly. He remembered the conversation, but he thought I was going to visit the website and book the room's there. I asked him why I would ask the owner in person to reserve the rooms and then go make another booking online. He said he thought I would reserve the rooms myself.
So after a quick night in that hostel, I made a reservation for a hotel outside the medina. Kit's flight was scheduled to arrive at 9:30 am. I got to the hotel a little after 9:00. I said to the receptionist-again in my rough French- “I'm Michael Cornn. I have a reservation for today through Tuesday.”
The receptionist looked a bit confused, “You are here to see Mister Cornn?” she asked.
I replied, “No. I'm Michael Cornn.”
She picked up the phone and said to me, “But Mister Cornn is in his room. Moment, let me call him for you.”
For just a second, I pictured in some kind of exotic spy movie where my identity had been stolen by an international doppelganger. But it was just Kit. His flight had arrived early and he had already checked into the hotel. The receptionist didn't asked for his passport. She assumed he was Michael Cornn. After a bit of confusion I got to our room, and we headed out to the medina.
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