Our tour of Fez skipped right over the “ville nouvelle,” because it had only been built in 1913 and consequently had no history, at least not according to the tour guide. As we drove past, he gave us a brief description: “It's like the Champs Elysees. The only difference is here we have palm trees and no Arc de Triomphe.”
Our first stop was the royal palace. We stood back, admired the doors, and learned about its history. At 82 hectares, it is the largest royal palace. It was built in 1968 out of cedar and bronze, and marble. The marble was kept clean and shiny by lemon juice. When we got closer to the doors, our tour guide picked up a seed to show us how recently the doors had been cleaned.
The mosaic predominately featured blue and green. The green was for Islam, and the blue was for Fez, at least in this context.
There were two marble slates. The one on the right had writing on it, but the one on the left was blank, so there was something left for future generations to do. Once every other world problem has been solved, I'm sure they can get to that.
The guide talked a bit about Mohammed VI (the current king) and I watched while tourists from another group went around to touch the handles of the each of the 7 doors. Our tour guide later explained that it was for luck. Not a Moroccan tradition, an Italian one.
Before we got on the bus again, the tour guide stopped to explain his clothing. He was wearing the traditional Moroccan garment, the djellaba. I'd seen them a lot around Rabat. This apparently differs from the traditional Egyptian garment in the presence of a hood. “It's good for the sun, good for the sun, and good for shopping,” since you could put items in the hood.
Djellaba were originally men's garments. Eventually, they started being made for women too, with only small modifications. Men will never wear a pink djellaba, and only women get embroidery on theirs. Both have intricate buttons that you could do and undo, but only if you felt like spending 3 hours getting your outermost garment on. It's much better to buy one that slips over your head.
He also explained the babushes, which were shoes that I'd seen a lot of men wearing. They're more like slippers than shoes, which might make Morocco the first country I've been where the men wear less sensible footwear than the women. Apparently rounded toes are for Berber and pointed are for Arabs, but if you're half-and-half (like our tour guide) you do not buy one of each. Also, the yellow babushes aren't yellow. They're “saffron.”
We went back on the bus for a bit, then got out, walked down a tiny street and a short flight of stairs, 16 Juneand paused for the tour guide to explain a bucket of wool. Rather than be for any interesting or useful purpose (mmm. Yarn.) the wool was used for stuffing sofas, and was simply airing out in Andalusian style. They change the height of the sofa depending on if its winter or summer, and air out the stuffing while they do so, and some Moroccans follow that custom.
We continued on and went to an old Jewish synagogue. Morocco used to have a lot of Jews, but now there are only 130 in Rabat, 150 in Fes, and over 700,000 Moroccans in Israel. The synagogue we went to existed when there were several thousand Jews in Fes, and they needed a lot of synagogues for all of them.
The synagogue had been restored with the help of American Express, and it was in museum-like eetcondition. There was a Torah that dated to I believe the 14th century, which I thought was the most impressive part. It also included a second story in which the women would sit, and could even go downstairs to see the Mikvah. Finally, we went up to the roof and looked out at the vast Jewish cemetery, the largest in Africa.
The synagogue was in the Jewish quarter, or “Meleh,” which means salt. There were two reasons for this name. First, Jews were often merchants, and would therefore sell salt, which at the time was quite expensive. It was also a symbol of their hospitality, since they would often serve visitors bread and salt.
Buildings in the Jewish quarter tended to differ from other buildings in two major ways. First, they would be taller, with stores on the ground floor and the rooms for living up above. Again, this had to do with many being merchants. Additionally, Jewish houses different in the absence of giant skylights and the addition of windows, because it was all right if a Jewish woman was seen by the outside world.
We went from the synagogue an open air mosque. It is used twice a year (after Ramadan and two months ten days after Ramadan) for about 30 minutes per person. The rest of the year, the cemetery is used, and tourists come to take pictures of the panoramic view.
While we huddled in the shade of one of the pillars, our tour guide explained a bit about Fes. The Mdnia was 370 hectares, with 187 neighborhoods. There were over 450 mosques, earning it the title “spiritual capital of the world,” and the entire Mdnina was bowl-shaped.
Fes has been called the “Jerusalem of the West” and the “Athens of Africa.” It includes the first university, and between the Jewish, Berber, Spanish, and Arab influences it also has really good food.
Finally, we were taught the second-most important word in Darija (“Balak!” watch out, said whenever you were in the path of a motor cycle or mule) and went back to the Mdina.
We were led through streets and markets. At one point the guide stopped to describe all of the different parts of a cow we could see in front of us. “These are the legs. And this is the spleen. And this is the heart... But perhaps the ladies would rather look over on the other side” The other side that he was pointed to was vegetables (including artichokes!) But right next to them, there was someone weighing struggling chickens. And then someone picking up the chickens by the neck. At least the cows were already dead.
Natasha goes to college in Portland, and during dinner the night before, someone had asked if it was anything like Portlandia. She'd said some parts were, and cited an example where people, obsessed with the freshness of their chickens, visited to see how they were treated before they became food. Natasha didn't like the chickens being slaughtered any more than the rest of us did.
I spent a lot of time focusing on cats. They were the only creatures that seem happy. Mules were perpetually tired-looking, the chickens were scared, the tourists were uncomfortable, the non-tourists humans were busy, and everything else was dead. But the cats were reasonably well-fed.
Ducking out of that street and into the clean, unscented, and beautiful Merdersa was a relief. This Merdersa was a school, mosque, and lodging house that was built in 1350.
There had once been a fountain and a small river for ablutions. Now, there was just a fountain. There were different rooms for the males and females, with females having walls through which they could look out, but men could not easily look out, which is a motif I've noticed in many buildings. There were also 12 bedrooms which were for poor students who were studying here. The youngest students got the worst rooms, because the older students needed to be able to study in a better environment.
There were five elements of the construction. Marble, (they'd traded with the Italians for salt, one kilo for one kilo. Initially, the Italians got a better deal because one kilogram of salt is a lot of salt, but one kilogram of marble isn't that much. However, the Italians don't have the salt anymore, and the marble is still standing, so in the end the Moroccans won.) zacij (Moroccan mosaic) wood, (cedar) plaster spackle, and stained glass.
Since Islam forbids the use of depictions of figures, the decoration of Islamic buildings tend to be very symbolic, with lots of calligraphy and floral designs.
Mosaics had very specific meanings, but the meanings were affected as much by the location as the design. The design that he picked apart and analyzed had a lot of infinities. First of all, the mosaics were a tesselating pattern, so they could extend infinitely.
The blue represented the infinity of the sky and spirituality. The white was for life, the yellow was for spiritual and material wife, the black showed the infinity of time, and the green was for nature and Islam.
Additionally, the pattern featured a lot of rough stars. Each of these stars had specific meanings. (I took notes on them, but that page [and only that page] of my notebook got wet so it's completely smudged. But the mosaic was highly symbolic.)
After looking around for a bit, taking pictures, and eavesdropping on Japanese tourists, we went back to the street. The slaughtered animals were slightly easier to take after the break.
We walked by the public oven, where people would bring the bread they had prepared in their house to be baked. No one offered us bread (they had for the people on the spring trip. Apparently the people in spring looked nicer than us.)
Then we stopped by an old Koranic school that was now a preschool, serving children up to seven years of age. The children there shouted several songs and sentences, including the morning prayer in Arabic, the body parts in French, and “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” in English. Then they said goodbye in Arabic, French, English, Spanish (when they were asked to say it in German), German, Spanish (this time with the right prompting), “Chinese” (they said “Konnichiwa”) and Australian (“Oy oy oy. Ozzie ozzie ozzie.”)
We were led from there into a building selling a lot of leather products. The building was cool, but we didn't get to linger in front of the air conditioning unit for long. Instead, we were led upstairs and outside so we could watch (and smell) the leather being treated.
It smelled like raw meat and something else I couldn't yet identity. I didn't have the time because someone came around and gave us mint leaves, which I gratefully took advantage of to press to my nose as the process was explained.
First, the animals are slaughtered and the skin removed. Then they were treated in limestone to remove the smell (kind of) and prepare them. After that, they were soaked in pigeon poop (which is where the second noxious smell came from) to soften them. After that they could be soaked in giant barrels of dye. The only color not present was yellow, because to create one kilo of dye took 350,000 saffron flowers, which was too expensive. Instead, the soon-to-be-yellow leather was treated on a separate shelf. Making leather is currently ranked as the 3rd hardest job in the world.
We went back inside, basked in the air conditioning for another few moments, and finished up our tour. Apparently we got lucky, as on most days you could smell the leather being made from a block or two away.
From the leather shop we went to one of the best places- a fabric shop. We got to see fabric being woven, have scarves wrapped around our heads in a variety of styles, and even buy some ourselves. The fabric was beautiful and soft and smelled like wool or silk and it was wonderful.
Aren't the fabrics in the background gorgeous?
And then our tour was over, and we had half an hour of free time. The six of us all stuck in a group and walked down the street, checking out stores. Shoes, books, and especially jewelery. After one store, where 3 people bought something, the man selling them asked if we wanted to go inside to check out his selection of djellaba.
“Well, I did kind of want to see them,” Natasha said, and Erika seconded that, so we all followed the man down a street that turned into an alleyway towards a house.
“Natasha, what did you get us into?” Megan muttered.
There was a sign on the door marking it as a shop, but every other door around felt purely residential. It wasn't until we were inside and could see shelves upon shelves of djellaba that it became less sketchy. We tried on djellaba for a bit (I looked like a sorcerer with the hood up) but because of lack of money, lack of time, and/or lack of interest none of us bought any. Which I felt kind of bad about, because they were clearly trying, willing to bargain or throw in other things.
Like this fez.
*This is perhaps the moment to mention that since Morocco has never been invaded by the Turks, any similarities between names of cities and names of hats are purely coincidental. The name "Fez" comes from a golden axe that was legendarily found at the moment of founding the city. However, this will not stop people from trying to sell tourists hats.
