Fes, Morocco, Thursday January 1st

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Our tour this morning got off to a bad start, since the guide didn’t turn up. After admiring the city skyline and the passing parade of donkeys and people going through the gate into the medina for about half an hour, a substitute arrived. He was a high school student of 18, studying maths, science and languages. A nice enough boy, his command of English and his knowledge of history and his own culture were simply not up to the task. After an hour of walking around with us pumping him for any information and with him not quite understanding our questions, or not knowing the answers but not being prepared to ever say that he didn’t understand or didn’t know, we decided that we should call it quits for his tour. He insisted that the French had arrived in Morocco in 1961 which was too much even for me, and Keith had lost patience with him way before that. He was most reluctant to be dismissed and said that he studied maths and not history, but that he was an expert in the medina. Keith asked him to show us only things that he could tell us a lot about and we agreed to continue.

What we needed in a guide was someone who would talk to us, someone able to see things through our tourist eyes and realise what was different and interesting to us. We had a man who could lead us places and point to the written historical information on the signs at some buildings, and that was all. Worse than that, he didn’t have an overview of life in modern Morocco and gave us misinformation, as we later found out. We followed where he led, with him often telling me where we were heading and me relaying it to Keith who was taking photos and who could not walk beside us due to the narrow streets.

There were some good points. He showed us the hand of Fatima hinges on doors that ward off the evil one. The best one was when we went into a nursery school where five children from three to five years sat at desks with slates, where they were practising writing English numbers. When we entered they stood up and sang a welcoming song in French that was sweet at first but went on and on and on. I think that they were singing the same thing in different languages and certainly people here are adept with languages. French is widely used with tourists and many people speak English and Spanish as well. That is on top of their own mother tongue, and the Arabic that they learn at school. We met waiters, fruit sellers and other salesmen who switched languages with ease for whoever they were serving. The little children had a curriculum which included literacy in English, French and Arabic, numeracy and, judging from the huge world map on the wall, some geography, as well as study of the Koran. Their teacher told us that she usually has twelve students. I looked at the writing on the slates and nodded and smiled for each child, as they sang on. At last we heard ‘Merci pour votre visite et aurevoir’ (Thankyou for your visit and goodbye) but as the teacher was explaining that the education system is the same as the French one, with three years of nursery school, six years at primary school, four years at college and two years at lycee, followed by University at 18 or 19 years, the song started again. We thanked everyone and left.

We saw mosques but we were not able to go in since, unlike in Egypt and Turkey, non Muslims may not enter here. Of course our guide did not know why that was.

We also visited Merdassas, which were great centres of learning and universities way before western universities were established.

Nowadays they are still universities for studies of Islam and culture, and the other areas are taught in universities all over the country. We paid to go into one, with only the courtyard and end porches being actually available to enter. It was very beautiful, with tiles and decorative plaster and stone work. It made a huge contrast to the crumbling buildings of the medina, where wooden boards prop up walls which are rendered in grey or a drab sandy colour. The medina is not beautiful when it is not bustling and full of life, and it is only the mosque and merdassa doors and entries that are richly and elaborately decorated.

No motorised vehicles are permitted in the medina and indeed it would be physically impossible to take them in. Donkeys and horses laden with goods are driven through the crowds with cries of ‘Attention!’ (Look out!) warning us to squeeze up against a stall or wall so that they can pass.

Some animals wear a nappy bag but others do not, making watching your step important. There were incredible numbers of stalls selling cakes and pastries, including lots of heavily creamed cakes that we would think of as for special occasions. Even though the streets and lanes were crowded, I could not imagine that there would be enough people in the whole city to eat all the cakes that we saw all over the medina. A sweet tooth must be common because we also saw sellers of home-made lollies, such as nougat and peanuts in toffee, with their laden stalls being swarmed over by bees. The sellers continued cutting and packaging their wares, taking no notice other than to check that a bee crawling over a piece of peanut brittle had not been included in a bag.

Our visit to the leather tanneries was very interesting. From the top floor of a leather goods shop we looked down at a complex of stone vats where leather in various stages of processing was being dragged in and out of liquids. One side had milky mixtures of pigeon droppings, where the hides are soaked and softened over seven days. The wool or hair is scraped off and kept for other uses. We had learnt from a carpet seller that there is dead wool, such as this taken from a dead animal, and live wool which is from shearing a live animal. Dead wool is not of such good quality and is used to make cheaper goods. A man stood on a roof top tossing wool from one pile to another, drying it. On the other side all the vats had reds and browns for dyeing, and an in-house guide told us that it took ten days for the dying process, and that each ten days the dyes in the vats were changed to different colours. The pigeon droppings are caustic so the workers wore protective clothing but the guide claimed that the dyes are all from plants, so the workers had bare legs, hands and feet. They moved the skins from vat to vat, walking on them to ensure they were all fully covered and looping them up with their feet to drag them on again. Other workers with yellow arms and legs were slopping saffron dye onto skins on a ledge.

Yellow was traditionally considered to be a royal colour because of the cost of producing it and the need for the dye to he applied by hand. A man was using a knife to slice off fat from skins that were already dyed pink while another removed wool. It was hard work and the smell rising to us was not pleasant, and must be a hundred times less so for the people working in it.

25 families, which have worked together for centuries, form a cooperative where various ones specialise in preparing the skins of different animals. The guide estimated that most would receive 250 Euros ($A500) a week to support a family of six. The job is passed on from father to son, along with the trade secrets and techniques. I wondered how many children questioned this as their life’s path and wished that they had been born to tailors or carpet makers.

We had read that if someone has given you a little tour, you give a tip, so Keith had this in mind for our in-house guide, especially since we would not be buying anything and sales are really why they are giving the tour. Our guide and I were down the stairs wondering why Keith took so long. It was because, before he could give a tip, the man had his hand out for money. Keith only had very small change, so he gave a large note which the man wanted to keep without giving change. Keith insisted on change, and afterwards discovered that his already very generous payment had been added to by the man short-changing him. When Keith told our guide that he should warn us if there was to be a payment so that we could then decide to go in or not, he said that there should have been no payment since it was free. He said that Keith should have checked with him, which was true but not something that he had thought of on the spur on the moment, with the idea that a voluntary tip would be appropriate. Something strange happened when we left, with the man saying to us that our guide was a very good one and knew lots about the city. I guessed that our guide had confided in him that we were demanding clients who wanted to know ridiculous things like what life was like for women in Fez, to which his answer had been that he was not a woman so he couldn’t say. When pressed by me about whether women worked away from home he said that they could be taxi drivers, as if plucking a job out of the air. Oh dear.

So we ploughed on, dissatisfied and ripped off. It is to our guide’s credit that he offered to reimburse Keith for the money taken at the tannery. Keith said that it was his own mistake and the tannery man’s trickery and not our guide’s fault, so he did not accept it. We thought that the herbalist where we were told about the origins and uses of some of the products and smelt them all was interesting, but Keith was disappointed because he had asked the guide if we would be seeing the creams and syrups being made and our guide had said ‘Yes’. It was not the guide’s fault that the palace we came to was now a restaurant and we could only catch a glimpse of the glories within unless we ordered food or drink. Really we now just wanted the tour to be over. All we needed was to return to the hotel so that we could change to a new one. Outside the palace our guide was talking to a Spanish couple who now came with us. After a hundred metres or so he pointed forward and said that it was straight ahead from there. He had asked me if we were happy with the tour and I said not entirely because of the lack of information and nothing on culture and history. We paid less than the amount the hotel man had suggested for a good tour. He had told us that if we weren’t happy we should pay nothing. It was simply a relief to be on our own, able to walk at our own pace and discuss what we were seeing.

Changing hotels was easy, and we now had a power point and the promise that the hot water could be used any time we wanted without special techniques or men in the cubicle with us. We ate at a little café on the square in the medina, enjoying watching everyone passing by. Nicole and Yango came over to talk to us. They had arrived at the bus station not long before us, and had believed a man who said that there were no rooms left in the city. They had slept in a filthy room in a house for 200 dr ($A40) and were leaving Fez already. Their plan had always been to go surfing on the coast so they were not too fussed, but the bad accommodation had hurried them away.

After lunch we went for our own tour of the medina. Really I think it is fine without a guide because there are clearly marked routes with coloured stars to help you so you don’t have to get lost unless you don’t care about it and want an adventure. We wandered about, lapping up the atmosphere and admiring the handicrafts but mostly avoiding going into shops. We passed through fruit and vegetable markets, shoe souks, metal workers souks, and rows and rows of mixed stalls. Many shops are just like a cave in the front of buildings with only room for a small array of goods and the sales person. Others are bigger and set up like western shops with display shelves. Everywhere people just waited patiently for someone to break out of the flowing stream of people and buy their eggs or beautiful ceramics. On some days there must be no sales for some vendors, there are so many stalls selling the same things.

We did allow a boy to take us to a house where weavers were working, because I was keen to find a gift. We met a charming man who spoke English and explained to us about the cactus silk, which he said comes from Australia and is produced from the cactus prickles for a short time in summer. There were several looms working and a man was spinning wool with ancient equipment. Another used an electric gadget for the same task. We bought a beautiful piece of fabric in wool and silk the colours of flames.

After many more wanderings we stopped to have a mint tea at the stall of a blue turbaned gentleman, just off the path but in the centre of the action of a medina street. This was what I had imagined Fes to be, with relaxing as well as learning being a priority to me at this end of our trip. A happy haze settled over us, ridding us of all the angst of the morning.

On our way back to the hotel we met the owner and the man who had explained everything at the weaving house. They invited us back for a cup of tea. This was a wonderful visit, with Mouhcine being everything you could ever want in someone to talk to about Morocco. In the course of an hour or so, he answered all our questions and explained all sorts of aspects of life. He was interested in Australia and in the changes that we have noted over our lifetimes.

He gave the examples of his aunt, a village woman, who had married her sixteen year old husband when she was twelve, and his sister, a city girl with a Masters degree, who wants to work in her profession and so does not want to marry yet, as contrasting experiences for women. Women do not generally work outside the home once they are married, and in Fez children are kept off the streets and play in the house. Children and wives respect and obey the man of the family. Education is important in the city and not so necessary in the villages where old traditions are more likely to be followed. The majority of women over forty wear caftans and head scarves, while younger women don’t always in Fez. Similarly younger men in Fez wear more western clothing and older ones wear the dejab, or caftan, although some young men also do too. Marriage age for men varies, and is related to having enough money to provide a house, all the items in it and to support a wife and family.

Sometimes women from other countries, such as Germany, come here looking for husbands, often after a divorce back home. Mouhcine knew of marriages across countries but they had not lasted and the men had returned to Morocco.

Mouhcine told us that the King, Mohamed VI, is a popular leader who really reigns in the old way, taking part in decisions. He appoints ministers, who carry out the projects that he proposes. He goes around the country meeting ordinary people and checking up on the projects that he has financed from the treasury. Some ministers are corrupt, and when he finds this he reprimands them but gives further funds directly to the workers. He has a young son who will succeed him and who will be a king with a regent if he is a child when he becomes king. Even if he is four years old he will have to sit in the place of the king for the discussions with the ministers. Later we learnt from Mohamed in Midelt that Morocco is a constitutional monarchy, in which there is a democratic vote every five years for the members of the two houses of parliament. The Prime Minister is the leader of the majority party. While the king can initiate projects and policies, they have to be passed by parliament before they are enacted. The age for voting is from 18 years, and not the vague ‘24 or 25 years’ that our 19 year old guide in Fez told us.

There are five languages found in different geographical areas but everyone speaks the Arabic that is taught at school, as well as their mother tongue. Nearly everyone has Berber heritage as do the people of other places such as Algeria, Libya, Western Egypt, Mauritania and Mali. The heritage is mixed due to marriages with other groups over the centuries. People in the Sahara are called Berber, but it refers really to the way that they have continued to live by the ancient Berber traditions. Our guide book says that some people claim to have pure Arabic heritage, being descendants of Mohammed.

Of course our conversation ranged over many more areas and in the end we felt that we had made an articulate and very thoughtful friend. He loves his country and has fears for the future of artisans who must rely on the whims of tourists for sales of their crafts. When we left, the boss made a lovely speech to us in French, saying that the next time we come to Morocco we must not stay at a hotel, but with him at his house. When we left at about 7.30 the spinners and weavers were still working on.

We quickly purchased our dinner supplies and returned to the hotel to eat and type, feeling as if we had experienced a long and very varied day. Someone was hammering nearby, tap tapping away as if he was the cobbler in the story of ‘The Cobbler and the Elves’, busy creating new shoes before the cobbler woke in the morning. It sounded more like hammering stone or metal. From the cafes below an incongruous mix of western music such as ‘Hotel California’ and many Cat Stevens numbers wafted up along with the clanging of cutlery and muted voices.

More views of the medina of Fes; a truly hectic and fascinating place

Above: one of the many gates in the wall through which people enter the medina. A gate nearby (below) had been restored a few years ago, but the new gigantic doors now lie rotting and damaged on the ground, with large quantities of rubbish also spoiling this site.

Satellite dishes embellish the otherwise medieval cityscape of Fes.Motor vehicles are not permitted in the old city, so horses and donkeys do the deliveries.