The Spouse and I planned to hire a guide when we arrived in Morocco, but could never agree on what exactly we were looking for (I was anti-guide, he was pro-guide). We never actually hired one, but probably just because we were too timid. Our taxi took us to the hotel that I had emailed the night before (the never received the email) and since the room wasn´t ready we left our bags and wandered the streets.
Although Tanger is 30 minutes directly south of Spain, it is in a more reasonable time zone, and is thus two hours behind Tarifa. When we hit the streets it was 8 a.m. on Friday, the holy day, and very little was happening. We struck out for the Medina, which was quite close to where we were staying. As we walked down the steps into the market area just outside the grand socco familiar scents and sounds came to me - things that I hadn´t experienced since I was living in Asia. The market smelled like raw meat - new and old - and dust, and rotting vegetables and overripe fruit, sweat, tumeric, paprika, urine, and more dust. Men were unloading trucks of live chickens, boxes of apricots, crates of socks and electronics and slippers and silver jewelry. All along the market were coffee houses with dim florescent lights and rusty tables. Everywhere there was activity, noise, and chaos.
When we reached the grand socco, which is relly just a roundabout with a fountain, a small old man with only a few teeth and a wool cap on his head kindly offered in broken English to be our guide. In his hand he held a tin cup and two fresh, still-bleeding ckicken feet. We said no as politely as we could several dozen times until he left and walked through the arched gate into the Medina.
The streets in the Medina are low and narrow. The buildings overhang some of the small alleys, so they are less like streets and more like tunnels. This makes sense considering the heat, but since there were no maps of the medina available at the tourist office and our guide book shows the heart of the old town as a blank spot, they can be a little frightening when one is lost in the evening, and we were lost often. We wandered for several hours, visited a museum, and then tried to find a place to eat, which proved to be our biggest challenge.
On almost every block there were large, dimly lit coffee shops with men drinking cups of coffee or strong, minty tea. The men sat in these shops and watched the world go past. They also watched me go past, and it was uncomfortable and menacing. Jordan was hungry but I refused to go inside one of those rooms full of stares, and I was convinced that they would refuse to let me inside if I tried. We searched for a restaurant that had another woman sitting in it but never found one. Eventually, we discovered a women´s shelter with a restaurant inside. The courtyard was packed full of laughing, chattering French men and women, with their heads uncovered, enjoying each other´s company and good conversation. Quite different from the leering men in the street cafes. We ate tagines full of couscous, chicken, and steamed vegetables, scented with raisins and cinnamon.
I could write more but that would make this post too long. I could talk about the fact that the shadows were full of skinny, pathetic cats and kitens...but no dogs. I could write about the little boy with sad eyes who the Spouse and I saw being beaten by two older men in the street, or about the long stretch of beach where families strolled slowly in the evening, or the Moroccan man with the Brooklyn accent who pestered us for blocks offering us evening from restaurant advice to drugs, or about how the white buildings turn tangering and purple when the sun sets in the evenings.
We were very anxious to leave Morocco the next morning, and were on the first boat away. We understand that Tangier is the armpit of Morocco - a dirty, dangerous, unpleasant border town. We were told that the further you go intot he country the more wonderful it gets, which I believe. I don´t judge the country or the people on my one-day experience. We simply didn´t have time to do those things, and so instead we made our way back to Tarifa where, since I hadn´t eaten any food after the women´s shelter the previous morning, we immediately headed for a restaurant, and watched men and women and children all enjoying each other´s company with totally new eyes.
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