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We breakfasted at the same café we had had our dinner at and it was interesting to see that only tourists and café staff were on the go at 9.30. Stall holders were only beginning to think of setting up, which was reasonable considering how late they stay open at night. We each had a whole round loaf, cut in half and toasted, with orange juice, mint tea, cheese and jam.
It was amazing how much easier it was to find our way out of the medina in daylight without back packs, and we were able to see the landmarks that had escaped our notice the night before. We also saw that the street that we had been looking for was blocked off for renovations so that explained a little of our confusion. At the internet café there was a long queue of Moroccans waiting for a turn in the internet telephone booth. We read our emails and saw that two Moroccan couch surfers had invited us to stay. We asked the boy beside us where we could buy a Moroccan map so that we could plan how to fit everything into the next two and a bit weeks, and he told us two places. He spoke French.
At the first place the map was more expensive than our hotel bill, which seemed a little skewed for value so we decided to try elsewhere. As we were walking along, we could see lots of young people preparing for a demonstration march. Shortly after that we came upon another group and finally a third contingent, looking to be high school students marched along chanting and shouting. While we were buying a more reasonably priced map, I asked the sales assistant what the protest was about. He said that it was in the cause of the Palestinians. Another man said that the Israelis had killed children and Caroline thought that it may have related to an Israeli attack on young Palestinian soldiers. This was certainly an issue that united the community because in the evening the adults came out and demonstrated loudly for a long time. We needed to learn more.
While we were in the map shop, a man entered, lifted up a magazine with closed sections sealed with bands of paper, looked at it, put it down, picked it up again, and then harangued the old man serving. The shop keeper had seemed to tell him to put the magazine down, and then became quite irate and walked around his counter and bustled the man from the tiny shop, telling him off as he shooed him down the street. Here are our two interpretations of this event. Keith’s – that the man was reading rather than buying the magazine, and mine – that the man was expressing his disgust with the type of material that the shop was selling.
We worked our way back to the bus station so that we could sort out bus tickets to
We bought some extra fillings for our bread at a little fruit and vegetable stall on the square and went back to our room to eat our lunch. Having a picnic in the square would have been perfect for us but it is not customary for Moroccans to eat on the street, and so not appropriate for us to do so here. Everything except the olives was delicious, and I will know to taste before I buy a large quantity next time. We had a whole afternoon to explore and look around. Now and then we saw threads stretching from one corner to the next close to the wall, and people spinning them together with a little hand held contraption. The streets of the medina below our hotel had many stalls that were of everyday items and not particularly aimed at tourists. Many shops sold caftans and they are regular wear for women here, with silk braid on the front and along the seams. Men wear a version of the caftan too, although not in pretty fabrics, and their braid trimming is more subdued. The hooded cloak was on sale beside windcheaters and is just part of regular clothing and not tourist fare. The craft shops were everywhere, and while they would attract local buyers, I think that they would rely heavily on selling to tourists. Spice shops had powders of every colour of the rainbow in baskets, and rows of dried things that looked like mushrooms. The smells changed with every stall and with turn of the narrow lanes. It was hard to know where to go and where to look, there were so many options, so we simply gave up on trying to know where we were and turned corners randomly. Children seemed to be out and about all day, so we did not know when school was on, although we had seen children in pink smocks heading off in the morning and a mother escorting children and school bags at about ten past ten. We passed two little girls, walking along happily in front of their mothers with the youngest singing a song about Allah very tunefully at the top of her voice. Maybe due to the demonstrations the hours of attendance were different. Cats, the most beautiful cats, were everywhere, in every café, on walls, on doorsteps; just everywhere.
At last we came to a gnarled old olive tree with a beautiful woven fabric hanging up on display. As soon as I touched it a man invited me in to have a look at others. Inside and downstairs we were again in a series of display rooms, with the small shop look at the door giving a completely erroneous impression. A man was working at a loom weaving a lovely fabric using silk made from cactus fibres. Apparently no silk worm silk is produced in
We looked at smaller pieces similar to the large one that I had liked outside. I really liked one and we discussed prices, but since I had no comparisons, I was still reluctant to buy. I explained that and said that I would look around and come back if we decided we liked this one best. The vendor said that people say that but never come back, and I thought that that could be the case for us too since we had no idea how we had got here or where we were at all. Still, the olive tree was pretty distinctive so we noted that.
Continuing on in nearly a straight line, we arrived at the river. It rushes out of the rocks and cascades down in a fury of white water until it is tamed to pass two washing rooms. These have roofs and channels of water running through them and stone scrubbing boards where many women were thrashing their clothes with vigour. They each wore a striped cloth around their middles which would have soaked up the water that slopped over them. At this spot, women have washed their clothes over the centuries, oblivious to all the people peering down at them from the walkways above.
On the near and steeper side of the mountain there were stone walls and prickly pears edging a kind of rough pathway amongst the stones. A woman was walking up and we thought that we would explore up there for a while. We met a couple of locals coming back the other way, but eventually it was just us and the woman in the lime green caftan with matching lime green slippers. She seemed to be carrying a couple of bags of shopping. She indicated to us to go with her, but we weren’t sure if that was what she meant so we stopped at a fork in the path. She gestured emphatically and she was definitely telling us to follow, so we did.
Up we went with the path becoming stonier and more zig-zaggy. She unlocked a gate in the prickly pear hedge, and we stepped through after her. Higher we went until we could see a little cave hut under a cliff, and once we were through another locked gate, we walked up a path to it.
The lady found a cork stump seat for me, as light as could be, and placed a red woven cloth on it. She told me to sit, after I had admired her hen and chickens. She indicated for Keith to sit on the rocks near me. She disappeared inside and I was alarmed when she came out, holding the hen that I had admired by its legs. She used it like a broom to sweep out some chickens for us to look at. I was alarmed because I really thought that she might be going to give me the hen, or worse still, kill it for me. She was making a fuss of me so I wasn’t sure what could be about to happen. Keith whispered to me that he was definitely not accepting a dead chook. Meanwhile the lady had driven out a rabbit for us to admire. I hoped she didn’t like me enough to give me a hen and a rabbit.
She had been teaching me the Arabic words for some things and we had been hopefully trying some Spanish to make some conversation. So far we had said that the mountain was beautiful, that Chefchauoen was beautiful, that the hen was beautiful and so was the rabbit. She must have thought that we were mad. Eventually she invited us in, and then we saw that this was not her home, but animal sheds where she kept chooks and rabbits and she had come up to feed them. I asked if the largest rabbit was the mother and she said it was. Her hand movements told us the fate of the father rabbit and since there was no rooster on the scene, we guessed that it was one night of fun and then the pot for all the males.
At this point we indicated that we would be going, and she held out her hand for some money. We were happy to give her some because it was interesting to see what the little mountain cave building was used for and also to have a little interaction with a local. In other ways of course it changed her behaviour into money making rather than friendliness, which was a pity and took away from the experience. Maybe reality lay somewhere between the two, with local expectations of money for all services not meaning that some of her actions were not motivated by good will to strangers.
We climbed back down and to the source of the river where there were buildings that may once have been a bath house. There were spacious pathways and terraces for promenading and relaxing, and they seemed in such contrast to the narrow streets and packed in houses of the town. The situation under the rocky hilltop and beside the river would not have allowed for wasted space in the old town anyway so it was a luxury to have given so much to the river side promenades. Crossing the river we climbed steps up the hill on the other side. We followed a rough path past tethered sheep and a couple of farm houses, across a creek and up to the top of the hill where there were the ruins of the Spanish mosque. 
On top of the Spanish Mosque. It was hard to know who had been smoking what in this area.
We had read that people walking in the mountains can be stopped by the police because there is a crack down on tourists buying ‘kif’ (hashish) and encouraging the trade. There were Moroccans in ones and twos all along the route, all smoking things. Nearby there were occasional groups of tourists who had climbed up from the path to sit on rocks and admire the vista of the town and the mountains, also smoking things. The ruins absolutely reeked of smoke not related to tobacco, and a crowd of folks seemed to have got there and no further. It was quite difficult to climb up the minaret, with the last part having extremely steep steps rather like a ladder, and with two major opportunities to bang your head, both taken by me. The people who were up there when we started walking up the hill were still up there, and no doubt it would be some time before they would be in a fit state to climb down again. Of course all the police were deployed down in the lower town at the rolling demonstrations so this may have been an unusual day. We felt a little out of place and after admiring the view, and observing the people, climbed down.
The views were remarkable, with the blue and white town shining against the olive green and browns and greys of the mountain. In the distance a cloud obscured some mountains but a clear peak stood out above it. It is a very beautiful place, and has religious significance. It was closed off to Christians until the arrival of Spanish troops in 1920. Our guide book says that prior to that one man spent an hour here disguised as a rabbi, another came and was discovered and poisoned by the locals in 1892 and the third, William Summers, a journalist, just survived and escaped to write about his experiences in a book called ‘Land of an African Sultan’. The town of
On the way back, wandering again in the medina, we stopped to look in another weaving shop to gain some perspective on the fabric that I had liked. An exuberant New Zealender was showing the salesmen a painting that she had bought elsewhere and asking them their opinions of whether she had a bargain. They said that she definitely had, and that the man who paints them could ask proper prices because his work is so good but he sells them for nothing just to get enough money to feed his drug habit. She told us that she had fun haggling in Fes and
Knowing where the olive tree was did not mean that we could return to the hotel in a hurry, although we did know that it was downhill somewhere. Following a general down and sideways direction, we were lured into a carpet and everything shop by a master salesman who assured us that it would be interesting to have a look and that he understood that we did not want to buy anything. He showed us some carpets under the pretext that it was an educational look at the traditional styles produced by the cooperative of villagers whose work is sold here. There were kilims (woven carpets) and knotted carpets, and some with both effects in the same piece. Traditionally the crafts were passed down in families and women spent their lives making carpets, which was reasonable since they would only be leaving the house twice in their lives, once to get married and once to be buried. The bride and groom would not have met until the wedding. The salesman said that the kilims or carpets that the bride took with her would be a useful guide for the groom as to the sort of wife he had, in terms of her weaving skills and also of her choice symbols and patterns. Carpets were then made throughout the marriage and became a kind of diary, with symbols known to the family woven in so that messages and family stories could be read. Daughters would use those family symbols as well as some traditional ones in carpets ready for their own marriages.
At this stage, with us fully engaged in this interesting history, the salesman asked which of the four carpets I liked the best. I was not committing myself but I had in mind that one of the smaller ones would make an excellent engagement present for Rohan and Kerry, and would relieve Kerry of the need to learn to make carpets for Ro to judge her by. As you will have guessed, we bought a small rug for Rohan and Kerry, one that could be read if only we knew how. Unplanned purchase number 2.
A lane of paintings left us wondering if their creator was the man with the drug habit, and Keith joked that to paint the many vistas of the medina when the stalls were closed you only needed blue and white paint. We seemed to be walking in circles and never finding the Kasbah, mosque and square which were our land marks. We did find Frank and Caroline so we joined them for a mint tea and an enjoyable relax. Frank set us on the path for our hotel and we planned to catch up for dinner. We were at the hotel for a little while and by the time we reached the square we could not see the others in any of the exposed parts of the restaurants. We gave up and went upstairs in a place where a cat sat on the seat beside Keith and a French family was eating. We chatted for a while and they gave us some recommendations for
The drummer who had added such atmosphere to the evening had finished playing and a brief altercation between two young men was over, with one of the protagonists literally being dragged away by his friends. Many hooded men had gone over and broken things up so the peace was very quickly restored. This shows how good it is to have a force of civic minded, seemingly film extras in continuous movement across major squares.
We still had another morning before we moved on, but Chefchauoen is certainly a place that would be great to chill out in and spend a week or so just soaking everything in. The people were friendly and not pushy, other than in the reasonable business of selling you things once in their shops, but even this was carried out with courtesy and gentleness.
The distant Atlas Mountains appear strangely above the clouds in the distance.
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