Chellah– Roman City, Stork Sanctuary, Merenid Mausoleum and Relaxing Gardens (All for the Low Low Price of Three Easy Payments of $1.20)

May 12 (Sunday)
Chefchaouen, Morocco

We are in probably the most ridiculously photogenic town in Morocco. More on that later, because I need to catch us up on our journey so far, including Chellah in Rabat and the absurd urban rhythm of Marrakesh.

But for now, Chellah. Originally a Roman settlement near Rabat, it was later abandoned in favor of Sale, across the river. Later one of the Islamic dynasties in Morocco (Merenids) built a mausoleum on top of it for the royal family. Hey, recycle, reduce, reuse. Now the city has converted a good portion of it into some really nice relaxing gardens. For the low, low price of 10 dirham (about $1.20) you can get in, wander around take photos like an obnoxious tourist (guilty). Which Dave, Saumya and I did on May 7 (sixteen years ago). There is also a pretty large flock of storks that have taken up residence among the ruins, making the ruins-on-ruins experience even more bizarre.

Maintenant: les photos -

View of the Roman ruins and Islamic mausoleum (walled and with minaret) in Chellah.

Stork nest in the minaret of Chellah.

Ruined octagonal Roman pool, Chellah.

Ruins in Chellah (Students quarters? Signs of fire on the stones? I’m making stuff up?).

Stork nest, Chellah.

Storks keeping watch in the ruined mausoleum.

Chellah, door in Merenid mausoleum.

Chellah, mausoleum.

Chellah, Gardens behind mausoleum.

Chellah, view after scrambling up a wall (hi, Mom!)

Chellah, main gate (exiting).

Chellah, main gate exterior.

Kill the Lights–Let’s Try to Ruin Your 30th Birthday with Crippling Embarrassment, American Style!

Marrakesh, Morocco
May 9 (Thursday)

I’m a bit behind on the chronology here, but thought I’d post about our May 6 birthday dinner for Dave in Rabat. It was Dave’s 30th and we wanted to celebrate it in style. After wandering back and forth down the same street in the medina looking for our restaurant, we finally found it, and the riad that houses it. Riads are like basically big fancy mostly-vertical homes with multiple levels and a big open courtyard space in the middle that have now been converted into small guesthouses (like between three and seven rooms). The proprietors of these micro hotels are known for their very generous and welcoming nature, taking in weary travellers and offering green mint tea, a cozy bed and all the best travel advice you’d like to hear about the local area, including recommendations on things to do, see and avoid. Here’s the kind of general feel of them (from Riad Oudaias):

Riad Oudaias, while open to guests, was actually closed for dinner, but the owner was nice enough to take us over to another restaurant owned by the same chef. We went in and sat down, but the menu said “menu touristique” and there were two large tables of American retirees and we weren’t really feeling the vibe, so we left and went to Becca’s favorite restaurant in Rabat, Dinarjat. The interior was pretty spectacular:

It's a restored 17^th century Andalusian style house in the heart of the medina, with a contemporary style that still keeps with tradition (parroting Lonely Planet here). We sit at a round white table next to a burbling fountain in the center of the restaurant, looking up at the arches and stonework above.

The copper lanterns above and the delicate mosaics all around us amid these soaring columns and arches gives an authentic and local feel. We have an enormous and delicious meal. We order a bottle of red wine, and as an appetizer we order a sweet and savory pigeon pie which is quite good (Dave said he had pigeon in Paris and it was the best bird he has ever eaten – this one is sweet too; its flaky exterior is covered in powdered sugar) and a series of Moroccan salads (pictured below).

We get cauliflower, beans, carrots, beats, liver, peppers, eggplant, and … a mystery dish none of us can quite figure out. Which actually was my favorite of the eight plates. It has a soft, tofu-like texture. None of us can figure it out. Tofu? Cheese? Chicken? None of them seem right. Becca suggests maybe brains. Brains? Really? Cow brains? Becca asks our server to confirm, which he does. And we all kind of look at that dish in a new light (see above photo, first plate to the right of the plate closest to the camera). New foods tried, check. Unanticipated culinary adventure, check.

We're feeling pretty good by this point, despite the brains, and the main courses arrive: four tajines. Becca gets lamb and prunes, Saumya gets lamb and eggplant, Dave gets lamb and almonds? I get the chicken and almonds and onions (I’ve basically abandoned my vegetarianism in this country: if I stuck with it, I’d be eating omelets and vegetarian pizzas the whole time in Morocco; I continue to struggle with this choice, to some degree, but given the importance of food here, I don’t want to miss anything). It’s quite good. An enormous amount of chicken, however. We each get a little roll to wipe up the fantastic sauce. We're stuffed at this point, but Becca wisely orders the flaky, crispy, sweet but not too sweet pastilla for dessert.

We are sort of food coma'd out and then suddenly the power goes off, to everyone’s shock, and the whole place is plunged into darkness. Must be a power outage. Becca said in Senegal they have power outages all the time, but it’s very rare in Rabat. And then the pastilla comes out, with five candles, and the oud (lute) player and drummer break out into song with the waitresses. First a round of happy birthday in French, then in English, then in French again. I fumble for my camera, get a picture with the flash on, and then off and then Dave blowing out the candles. He's sort of shocked and we all laugh about how they probably cut the power to the city block to pull off this little trick.

Becca orders an after-dinner mint tea for the table and the waiter comes out and pours it from over his head down to a tray at about waist-height (this is the typical Moroccan style of tea pouring). The trick is to get the tea to foam, Becca says. That shows you’ve got it down. The tea is quite good: delicate and not nearly as sweet as Cafe Maure.

Food-drunk and delirious with flavors, we waddle out the door with a bunch of other westerners and follow an old man in a fez with a candle lantern to the main street and hail a cab to her car.

All in all, I think Dave’s birthday dinner was pretty awesome. Could have used a few more versions of Happy Birthday as performed by the staff, though, maybe a little beatbox. But the brains were a surprise addition and I think in the end, a welcome one at the beginning of his new decade.* So welcome to Real Time Adulthood, my friend.

* I guess if we could have known we had ordered brains ahead of time, we could have made Dave’s birthday zombie themed? (Braaaaains, braaaaains!). Gotten the staff to dress up like Michael Jackson Thriller Zombies and done the dance? A Thriller Birthday Dance? A birthday cake with an undead hand clawing up out of the cakey “earth?” I think I may have a profitable business model here. Dibs.

Random Moroccan Cultural Notes, Vol. 1

Somewhere between Rabat and Marrakesh, Morocco
May 8 (Wednesday) – 3 pm

Since we’ve got a four hour train ride between Rabat, the capital, and Marrakesh, one of the larger cities in the southern part of the country, I thought I’d write down some random notes so far about Moroccan culture. Timestamping above because I don’t have internet access and so will post when I can.

1. Parking Attendants. Throughout most streets in urban areas, you’ll find these men in bright green or yellow safety vests working as parking attendants, either formally or informally. They will help you back up, direct you to open spaces, and generally watch out for your car (for damage, theft, etc). You have to pay all of them a few dirham, and their utility is of widely varying quality.
2. Sidewalk Parking. If the sidewalk is big enough and your car is small enough, it’s fair game. See:
   
3. Dress. Female dress seems to vary almost entirely relative to generation. Younger women tend to wear Western clothes (jeans, some tank tops, fancy shoes, sweaters, etc) while the older women stick more generally to traditional dresses and head coverings. On the platform waiting for the train there was a young woman wearing a male-style button up shirt with a man’s loose tie at a rakish angle, very stylishly.  I think that would be certainly pushing the envelope with the older generation. Men seem much more uniformly to stick to Western attire, although you do see some men in traditional clothes now and then.
4. Café Voyeur. At outdoor cafes, almost everyone (men especially) line up with their backs against the café wall, facing the street. The idea I guess is to watch the people going by but Becca mentioned that some of it is to ogle/hassle women who pass by. Some cafes put only half the seats facing the café, since almost everyone wants to face out toward the street. Better people watching. It is kind of surreal when an entire café is facing you in a line, with not a single person having their back to you. On a somewhat related note: Becca says women get a lot less verbal harassment/undesired attention when accompanied by men. When she and Dave and I went to the kasbah in Rabat, she got a lot less attention, simply because we were with her.
5. Unhurried Pace. A nice feature I think of the culture here is the unhurried pace. You only get your bill in restaurants and cafes when you ask for it. So you could potentially just hang out for hours in a place, taking your time and watching the world go by (see #4). American places seem to want you in and out as soon as possible so they can turn over the table (and with it a profit).
6. Yes is Yes and No is Yes. I’ve noticed only a little bit of this so far, but I got a lot of it in Panama, and even with my very rough French I’m catching it here and there. Yes and no questions almost always get you a yes answer. “Are the seats together?” “Yes.” (They are not. Well, one of them is not.) Also ran across this in India. The customer is always right, even when they are wrong. Most especially when they are wrong. Some of this is certainly just me getting lost in translation, but some of it is a desire to not disappoint the foreigner who came so far to visit their country with a negative response.

That’s all for now, but these revelations/notes seem to build up over time. I expect I’ll have more to report later on in our journey.

Finally–Morocco! (you sigh loudly)

Rabat, Morocco

Finally – something about Morocco!

Honestly the first few days have been kind of lost in a haze of jet lag and laziness. But we did manage to do some interesting things, which I have posted below in the form of PICTURES. Because they say a thousand words?

We’re staying in Rabat, Morocco, the capital of the country and described in guidebooks as the somewhat dreary and sleepy bureaucratic hub of the country. Lots of government employees, diplomats, international business people, and all the people who support those people. It’s really nice, though, I think. There are some interesting history sites, and we’ve had two great dinners so far (one French, one Moroccan).

The weather is drop dead gorgeous. One of my favorite French phrases so far is “il fait beau” – literally “it makes beautiful.” And it does. Highs in the upper sixties, clear skies. This is about as good as it gets. This is spring, though, and summer is coming, when the heat will be out of control I’m told (our friend Becca who lives and works here just arrived in October so she’s never gone through summer yet). Rabat is on the coast and that spares it from some of the worst heat, but we’ve heard that Marrakesh and Fes are already hitting 100-110 F. So fun ahoy there.

Anyway, the most exciting thing we have done so far is visit the Medina in Rabat. So the medina is the “old walled city” part of town (in contrast to the French “ville nouvelle” that are the new sections of town). Within the medinas you’ll often find a kasbah, or a fortified villa where the rich folks would live and be self-sustaining enough to survive a siege. Kind of like a castle I guess?

So on Sunday afternoon Becca graciously offered to drive us to the Rabat medina and kasbah. Here’s the photo journey:

(Click to enlarge) Dave and Becca walking through the medina market, where you can get everything. Literally everything. Furniture, incense, cookies, dresses, perfume, shoes, leather goods, burned DVDs, decorative knives, cloth, rugs, tea sets, street food, etc. A mad jumble of people and smells and trash and things for sale.

Nice shot of a relatively quiet section of the medina. Notice the parapet-looking brickwork on the left. We had just gotten a fried fish sandwich which was quite tasty from a street vendor. Tip: go to the ones that are busy with locals.

Inside a woodworkers shop in the medina. Moroccan woodwork in general, but doors specifically, seem to be a source of great pride and craftsmanship. This one I found particularly impressive. Note the massive bolt and lock that closes the door. Seems like something from another time.

Again, fantastic woodwork along a street in the medina.

The exterior wall of the Kasbah, heading north. Note the heavy fortifications (some green bronze cannons still keep watch out of the corner towers on the southern end – not pictured).  The 12th century Almohad Bab Oudaia (“Oudaia Gate”), the dramatic gate to the kasbah, can been seen in the distance (closeup later). 

The Andalusian Gardens within the kasbah. Designed by the French during the colonial period.

The view from Café Maure, a café just inside the kasbah beyond the Andalusian Gardens. It has a fantastic view (above) of the outside of the kasbah walls and the Oued Bou Regreg, the river that separates Rabat from her sister city Sale, seen in the distance (beaches and buildings).

Looking back at Café Maure from where we were sitting. The view from the Café is the previous picture. This gives you an idea of how close the café is to the edge of the precipice.

Moroccan mint tea – our first! Very typical Moroccan local drink. This particular sample was ok – but very very sweet. Note the mint tea leaves in the glass and the lack of handles on the tea glasses. You have to hold it by the very bottom and the rim to keep from burning yourself.

The beautifully painted white and blue residential district of the kasbah. I couldn’t take enough pictures (but I’ll only share some). The plaster and cobblestones and winding, narrow streets give it a distinctly other worldly feel. Keep in mind this area has been inhabited since the 12th century. Which kind of blows my mind.

More of the blue and the white.

Somebody’s gotta keep it blue!

The view looking southwest from the kasbah’s Plateforme du Semaphore, where you can see the ancient battlements, the sunning beach goers (the weather was perfect) and the graveyard to the left. Both in Rabat and Sale across the river we noticed that the graveyards were very close to the beaches. We weren’t sure why this was the case.

The northern view from the Plateforme du Semaphore, looking across the Oued Bou Regreg to Sale and its beaches.

Battlements and beaches: Modern and medieval Rabat. View from the Plateforme du Semaphore.

View from the beach, Rabat side, looking back up at the kasbah. You can see the top of the mosque sticking over the wall on the right side.

Promised close-up of the massive gate to the kasbah, Bab Oudaia, which we caught on our way back to the car. Note the intricate stonework patterns and designs.

I think that’s it for now – hope you enjoyed our little springtime walk through Rabat’s medina and kasbah!

Two Airport Chapels, Both Alike in Dignity?

Rabat, Morocco

Being a religion major and fascinated by this stuff, I can’t help but notice certain things when traveling.

This time I noticed airport chapels. Which is not something I’ve ever really noticed before. Beyond thinking “There are chapels in airports? Why do you need a chapel in an airport? Does anyone ever use those?”

The “chapel” in the airport at Dulles was small but well-furnished, and seemingly used. I myself visited for 18 minutes of centering prayer. There were prayer rugs, maybe fifty chairs arranged in rows with kneelers, Bibles and various texts from a variety of religious traditions. A couple of people came in and out while I was there. “Stained glass” windows hung on the walls, with the most ecumenical images possible. Hands in prayer, etc. Against the back wall was a small raised platform and an open religious text, of seeming quality with gold edges (I didn’t inspect it to see what it is exactly). Not a place committed to one tradition over another, but a good, well-designed ecumenical space that someone had put some thought into: an open, well-lit and welcoming design, with a glass front facing the corridor of passing passengers.

In my wanderings through Charles De Gaulle International Airport, I found a “meditation area” sign in the terminal here. Intrigued, I followed the signs (which looked very similar to the Smoking Area signs). I traced it back to a hallway off the main corridor, behind some pillars. A closed, windowless orange metal door, the immediate impression was of a utility closet. Not a glass wall and doors like Dulles, where one could see what was available and going on. No, here I actually had the distinct thought that I'd either get knifed or interrupt an amorous couple, amid the dust and brooms. I find neither. I find a completely dead space. The immediate impression is one of a doctor's waiting area, a dentist's office. A couple of old magazines, some mismatched office chairs facing each other. The dentist's waiting area is for the Jews and the Christians, the sign says, seemingly for them to wait for their spiritual root canal. The Islamic area is better defined at least (perhaps “helped” by the fact that the two areas are separated by a blank, bureaucratic wall). A large arrow, scratched in blue pen ink on the wall by an intrepid soul, points out the direction of Mecca and there are a number of prayer mats lying in a cabinet. But even these noble efforts make it hardly seem any better than an afterthought. This is what terrifies some American voters, I think. The Secular European State. Where the government will make your local church into dentist's’ offices.

The two paired images at least point out the relative continuing importance of religion and Christianity in America, and the withering of Christianity in Europe. There has been much (mostly Catholic) hand-wringing over the latter. As many of you know, a certain prominent European philosopher in the late nineteenth century pointed out that “God is dead.” I have always cheekily thought that he and we Christians agree, and have for two thousand years: our universal image, the central unifying symbol of our faith, is a cross, the means of torture by which we believe God suffered and died. We just extend the sentence with a semicolon: “God is dead; God is also alive.” And I suppose that’s the rub that got Herr N such trouble and such praise, depending on your perspective.

It would be fascinating to try to sleuth out some of the reasons why institutional Christianity has proved so resilient in America and has so precipitously declined in Europe. The 1960s seemed a pivotal moment in this regard, for both continent and nation. Was the European decline simply more abrupt? Had it been in development for longer and thus collapsed more quickly? What makes Americans so devout compared to other developed nations? Is the European collapse of Christianity making room for an Islamic rebirth of religion through migration and demographics? All intriguing questions.

Thoughts on this? Comments below!

Thoughts Over Europe

Rabat, Morocco

So here I am, in Morocco.

But the journey was part of the fun, of course, and I’d like to write about that for a bit if you’ll indulge me.

Dulles was an adventure. First time getting out there, the new experience of taking the 5A from Rosslyn in a Metrobus booking it along the highway at 60 mph. A bit anxious by the line at the Air France counter but I have three hours until my flight. The Russian man behind me is extremely nervous and keeps trying to cut in front of me. We are getting on the same flight, buddy. Food court and bad pizza: next to me a middle aged white dude with a budding paunch carries on inappropriate and chauvinistic conversations about his escapades with female flight attendants and Thai sex workers. Not a conversation for polite company but I can’t tear myself away from the Chaucerian trainwreck gushing forth from this ex (?) pilot.

Boarding the plane it’s all very chipper “bienvenue a bord” and “bonjour” which is kind of thrilling. An American traveller is going apoplectic about not getting the upgraded seat she paid for. Much scurrying and torrents of French vowels. We’re all going to be ok, and sure enough we are. Doors close. The short skip across the Atlantic. (Post-O’Hare-New Delhi everything is in a new context.) Highlights include the adorable Portuguese (?) couple in front of me, the husband especially, who bounces up and down on his calves in the aisle with his cognac. Maybe too much cognac, there, sailor.

The day/night global map won't come up on the touchscreen, but we are flying into the darkness. It is kind of fascinating. After hugging the Atlantic Coast for a while, flying toward Nova Scotia, we will eventually be over the Atlantic and flying into a massive embankment of darkness called night. That global rotating blanket of silence and sleep. The night will fall quickly, not only because night is falling, but we are actually flying into the falling night. Kind of astounding, these modern miracles of transportation.

We cross the English Channel (“I see England, I see France…”). From the map on the back of the seat in front of me I make out what I think is Calais below us, bright in the early morning darkness.

Europe. Looking down from the plane at that shadowy, sleeping continent. Under a deep purple blanket of rippled clouds which I mistook for forest originally, this thriving, pulsing continent. Full of wars and palaces, bloodshed and invention, art and magnificence. I thought about the people on the plane, these proud, funny French people. These Gauls who gave it to the Romans, these proud Frenchmen who died in the trenches against the Kaiser. And suddenly a European peace? For at least two thousand years all Europe could think about was itself: violence and war all turned against each other. Centuries of it. Conquest and alliance and battle and competition. And then suddenly the spasm of two epic wars where the continent committed to a mutual suicide pact (a former college professor’s term). And destroyed itself, with a too-long economic Armageddon in between, just for good measure. Then their eyes slowly opened and the difference between French and German, German and English, English and Swede did not seem so far apart. Suddenly the outward threat of communism would force them and their economic systems together into awkward cooperation out of mutual interest. The Cold War was the crucible in which a modern, peaceful, productive Europe was born. How long it lasts, who knows.

The landscape seemed so foreign too. These beautiful patches of green, brown and tan farms all pieced together. And these little towns looked like they were fit in where the farms didn't quite join right. The leftover land was for the towns. And such extreme compactness: as few roads and houses and buildings as possible. Land is a premium on this crowded, competitive continent. It kind of astounds me: these fields, these forests - this is where ancient Roman, those ambitious Italians, battled with the obstinate Gauls. This is where the machine gunners slaughtered each other along the Maginot Line. What a world of history below me.

So, Europe. And all us people. The bouncing Portuguese, the apoplectic Americans, the anxious Russians, the cocky (sorry) ex-pilots, the chipper French flight attendants. We’re all in this together. Through all this time. People and countries. All together.

And then this line comes back to me, from The Lion in Winter: “We are the world in small. A nation is a human thing. It does what we do, for our reasons. Surely if we're civilized, we can put away the knives.”

Surely we can hope we will.

Friday Doggerel: Poor Imitations of Poor Hafiz, Set to Meridian Hill Park, Circa 2:30 This Afternoon

#1
These humanitarians give me
  pause.
Are they just the
      cannibal cousins
of those vegetarians?

#3
I have spent the afternoon
toying around with words
   on the living room floor,
while you were checking the thesaurus
     for another word for
“hyperventilate.”

#5
   In this concrete channel
the water runs rushing and continuous,
fringed with nodding reeds,
       like some urban Nile,
       like some misplaced desert watercourse.

#6
While you were bent over your pedals,
puffing and furious over
    the stoplights
    the traffic
    the humidity
Hafiz and God and I were riding on your handlebars,
        shouting with lovedrunk joy -
“Look at this gorgeous weather we’re having!”

#8
    God has left you a trail of loveletters,
dotted like crumbs in a forest:
  the crumpled grocery receipt
  the bitter coffee dregs
  the napping baby
  the bus you just missed!
What do you mean you didn’t get them?
They were mailed to the corner hearth
      of your heart’s loveliest chamber.
Once you find them between your couch cushions,
   please don’t stamp Return to Sender!

#9
When I noticed my breathing
  and felt my heart beating
  and opened my eyes
       - slowly! -
  and actually look a look?
I felt your warm presence near me, saying
    “Hello Again, Little One.”

#11
Dear Bathsheba -
   I understand in some way
the desire for evening nudity in the out-of-doors.
I remember squatting in the moonlight
      of a roofless latrine,
my bowels and heart singing that
Final Great Hymn of the Night.

#12
We’re all screwed when the Internet
        runs out.
I don’t even own a dictionary any more!