Morning in the Medina dawns as a chick unfurling itself from a newly hatched egg. The first small crack runs into the second and then the third, until the fissures become an avalanche of noise. And rolling out, the new life that is the new day opens its mouth and begins its feverish cry.
The city wakes up, and brings me willingly with it.
After less than auspicious beginnings, Mars this morning seems in higher spirits. As eager as I to do some determined haggling in the souks, I don’t have to do much wrangling (in fact, none at all) to convince her to stop by Aziz’s carpet shop as promised.
Of course, finding it amongst the maze of stalls and persistent shopkeepers is a different matter altogether. The labyrinthine maze of colours, sights and smells is enough to overwhelm anyone, particularly when the desire to absorb them is overtaken by intimidation of the many touts’ persuasive techniques.
Battling on, we move deeper into the belly of the beast, ‘la’ing (no! no!) our way past the invisible threads of ‘come in my shop, you see what you like!’ and ‘hey girlie you come here now!’s that seek to capture and keep us.
Eventually we stumble into 44 Semmarine Souk, a veritable treasure trove of organically dyed wools and fibres, all weaved into the finest carpets one could hope to bury their feet in. Our new friend Aziz raises his hands in delight – “Ah, ladies! You came as you promised! Sit, sit, we have some tea now. Mint tea, you know? It is the scotch of Morocco!”
And thus began our wonderful day exploring the heart of Marrakech…
Aziz proves to be the consummate host. After some chit chat over tea, he shows us some pictures of famous people who’ve visited his store. Hugh Grant (in the days of Jemima Khan – she’s wearing a lovely floppy hat, I must say), Will Smith, Patrick Stewart – all have been recipients of Aziz’s hospitality. Even the King of Morocco is featured on the wall, a man Aziz assures me has done much to modernize his country.
“The King is very good and popular here,” Aziz says. “Since he has become King, he has made it illegal for men to now have more than one wife. He has made things very good for women here – they all go to school; they are very modern now.”
Aziz himself has only one wife, Khadija. “Ah! One wife, one heart….” he explains with a big smile on his face. “A man has the energy only to look after one woman anyway…”
The King’s own wife, by all accounts, is a bit of a Cinderella success story. She certainly didn’t move in the kind of circles where women end up married to kings. As the Queen, she still works as an engineer and is apparently seen all over Morocco and loved by all the people.
I’m certainly not against monarchic societies – the Sultan of Oman runs his country very well and peaceably (based on what I remember, and what my parents told me), and the King and Queen of Jordan have also proved very good to their people. On the other hand, look at John Howard and George W. Democratically elected, and complete disasters. Go figure.
I ponder this as Aziz takes us upstairs to feast on the shop’s special Friday meal of cous cous. Layered with vegetables and tender goat, the meal takes approximately 4 hours to make when prepared properly – which rather explains why Aziz’ mother only ever makes it for them one day a week…
As his father’s first wife, Aziz now lives amongst all 9 of her children (of whom Aziz, at 42, is the youngest) and apparently enjoys quite the life. Making cous cous for Stall 44 on Fridays is her gift to the carpet store that has run through Aziz’ male line for 3 generations. It began as a hotel for Berberas (sp?), the native people of Morocco before the Muslims moved in from the east, living a nomadic lifestlye and selling their carpet wares from town to town. Aziz’ grandfather would allow them to stay in the hotel as they passed through in exchange for a commission from their local sales.
When Aziz’ father took over, he said “Enough! No more hotels!” and instead began buying commissioning local women to make the carpets and setting up shop as a proper supplier.
Now that it has passed to Aziz and his brothers, he tells me they continue to employ local woman (especially Berberas, like themselves) to make the intricately crafted pieces of art that adorn the walls and are piled high in stacks ready for tourists to salivate over.
And salivate over them we proceed to do! Because there is always a catch in any kind of business arrangement, Aziz has arranged for his employee Abdul to talk us through the history of the carpets – conveniently asking us to put aside the ones we like and the ones we don’t. One by one the staff roll out luxurious items before us while Abdul explains the four basic categories of Moroccan carpetry. The most beautiful are those made from wool dyed in glorious colours, painstakingly weaved together by Barmera women looking to keep afloat in these troubling times. Indeed, they are true works of art and more than once I catch myself calculating how I can possibly afford to take an armful home with me.
“In the olden days,” Abdul explains, “Barmera mothers would make carpets as part of their daughters’ dowries. The carpets would tell stories of love, designed to last many lifetimes. Now, only a few women make carpets for these reasons – mostly, it is to make money because the times, they have changed now.”
And perhaps it’s the romanticism of trousseaus, or the idea of a mother gifting her daughter with something intended to be passed from generation to generation, but I discover that Abdul’s words have worked their own magic on me. Against all financial judgement, I point to one and say ‘wa’huy’. This one. I want this one.
It is to be the first in a long line of Moroccan purchases, justified to myself through the sheer beauty of the objects and the intoxicating power of bargaining a good salesman down. I manage to knock a third off the asking price for the carpet that has chosen me. Already I am imagining burying myself into its winter side during the cold season, and tripping lightly over its summer side when the days are long and hot.
The great salesmen that they are, Abdul and Aziz assure me that for anyone else they wouldn’t be so kind but for me, “we will do it, because you are our friend!” I’m not fool enough to think they still haven’t made a profit from me, but their good humour is comfortable to bask in. This is how haggling works, I remind myself. Ain’t it a gas?
It turns out that meeting Aziz on the train was a true stroke of luck (apart from placing me significantly out of pocket for a carpet that yes, may well last forever, but is guaranteed to not have a proper home for some years yet). He fixes us up with one of his employees, Jamal, and instructs him to take us into the souk to find the things we want for reasonable prices.
Again, I’m not fool enough not to realize that this means “take them to the shops owned by our friends – we keep it all in the family here, yes?” but hey….the stalls all seem to be much of a muchness really. The prospect of having a guide to take me through them and facilitate my more determined haggling pleases me greatly.
And Jamal is an intimidating presence. Tall and burly, I’m almost looking forward to having someone try to cheat me so that I can whisk him into the store to give the erstwhile brigand what for. It’s the kind of thing I enjoy having my father around for. (Unfortunately, Jamal’s feelings turn out to be slightly less than familial considering he later jokes to Aziz that not only does he want to marry me, but that he’ll pay 10,000 camels for the privilege. I’m told this is a very good asking price.)
Indeed, the day turns into a bargainers’ idea of heaven. Mars (whose mood has improved dramatically – this is the Marrakech she was looking for, not one of grabbing hands and aggressive touts) and I load up first on vibrantly coloured leather bags, before being treated to a fascinating lesson on the various medicinal balms and spices stored within the local Berbera pharmacy.
Our pharmacist Sayeed has the chocolate brown face of an angel and the kind of smile that makes a woman feel like he has eyes only for her. He smooth talks us into buying various oils, teas and natural products designed to make us better, healthier versions of ourselves and then invites us to later join him for mint tea (an offer I will continue to consider for the duration of our stay….). His shelves are adorned with all manner of spices, potions and sweet smelling agents, while the king of them all is saved for last.
Saffron.. the spice of the gods, where even the merest thread can transform a dish and whose magical properties seem to extend far beyond a pinch turning three bags full of rice a bruising yellow.
I think I may be a little in love with him, a feeling which only intensifies when he demonstrates the remarkable healing properties of Argane massage oil, strong hands manipulating my bare neck with the skill of Don Juan himself…
Laden down with our bags, Jamal takes us to our final destination – The Jewellery Store Of Ancient Wonders And Incredibly Heavy Silver. Our shopkeep is wily – the toughest faced so far. “Tradition”, he informs us, “dictates that you place all the items you like on this tray and at the end, we discuss the price.”
This. Could. Get. Dangerous.
Indeed, the store is a spendthrift’s nightmare. I have to restrain myself from placing everything I see on our assigned Tray Of Regretful Choices, because I know the bargaining stage will be relentless and brutal. And it is. Of course, it doesn’t help that the items I’ve chosen include the most wonderful teapot, gigantic in size and mosaiced almost entirely from the buttered pearly sheen of camel bone.
“This one is 3950 Dh. A very good price for this!”
3950Dh. 395 euros. AUS$790.
“No. No. It’s impossible. It’s beautiful, but impossible. I cannot do it!” I tell him. But he’s crafty and determined. He will not let me get up until I perform the next stage of the dance.
“Right, you tell me (no, you write it here please) what you want to pay. What is your best price? And please, do it with a smile!”
He can see that I’m most dazzled by the teapot and a fabulous silver pendant embedded with turquoise and into which a deer has been lightly etched (and to which he’s already attached the pricetage of 1200 Dh or AUS$240).
“No, you write down, write down!”
I look to Jamal with trepidation in my eyes. Surely he can get me out of this potentially financially ruinous corner?
“It’s okay, you don’t have to buy,” he soothes (conveniently using the opportunity to stroke my shoulder tenderly). “But maybe just make him an offer and see what he says.”
I feel trapped, powerless against the shopkeep’s insistence and the seductive lure of that o-so-beautiful teapot. I can just see myself impressing guests while nonchantly remarking, “Oh this? I bought it in Morocco from a shopkeep so cunning you could brush your teeth with him,” while they all ooh and aah.
I offer 2000 Dh. 200 euros. AUS$400.
He counter offers. 3500. Can I justify $700 for a pendant and a teapot?
I make my last move. 2500 Dh. I half hope that it’s so insulting he quits the game in disgust…..but a salesman never quits.
“Done! You have cheated me, but for you I give it because you are my friend and business is slow!”
And there’s no backing out. It’s checkmate. Technically I’ve won - but I wonder who’s really beaten who…
Later, sitting in Aziz’s shop and drinking strong, sweet Moroccan coffee, I begin to think it doesn’t really matter. The winning and the losing – it’s all relative. Mars and I may have spent inordinate amounts of money on things we probably don’t really need, but the prizes extend far beyond the products.
Through a chance meeting with a Marrakech carpet seller on a long haul train ride from Tangier, we secured a Moroccan host, a ready made tour guide-cum-bodyguard and a passport to some of the most colourful elements of the Medina’s marketplace. Our day has been a history lesson, a shopping expedition and an exercise in cultural immersion all in one.
We sit there drinking coffee with our hosts, and chatter excitedly as ladies are wont to do following a day of Buying Pretty Things. Aziz arranges for Jamal to meet Mars and me outside our hotel in the morning. He is to deliver us to a Moroccan hammam, or spa, and then conduct a guided tour around the mosques, the old palace and the qu’ranic college. So what if there’s a little quid pro quo going on between businessmen? Where one hand scratches the other one’s back, there are still three hands left for the giving of things.
It seems that, for only the small price of a priceless carpet, I’ve seen more of Marrakech than I could have hoped to discover stumbling around by myself. What is there to begrudge in that?
And now, a suitable ending.
Immediately before I find myself in sudden possession of an expensive camel bone teapot, I am led to the roof terrace “so you can have an excellent view across the city!” We climb four flights of stairs and step to the edge.
It’s simply breathtaking.
Pink roofs with battered rugs hugging their folds stretch out before us, while the souk and food stalls hum below. A storm appears to be rolling in, as shutters and overhanging tarps flap madly in the fierce winds. Sand and dust cloud the horizon in a thick smog, the furrowed eyebrows atop a crinkled and well worn face. To the east, we can see the snow capped Atlas Mountains; to the west, the sprawling mass of Marrakech’s New Town.
Inhaling it deeply, I realize just how much I have missed the desert after all these years.
When you grow up surrounded by white washed walls with elaborate carvings, flat roofs that collect both dust and wind whipped heat, and the haunting calls to prayer that bookend days spent marveling at the sparse and barren beauty that blankets you, you forget how these things become a part of you. They form a story around your edges, dyed threads woven into the fabric of your skin, your senses, your soul.
And though the story may change, may discover new colours and new patterns, may even change course entirely, may reveal itself to be a lowbrow satire as opposed to the heartfelt tragedy you once expected it might be, still it began with those very first threads.
The beginning is as intricately connected to the end as the first line is to the next. A life is nothing more than carpet of connected threads; it is nothing less than a work of art.
The carpet tells the story, and like all things, a well made one will survive.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
Is lucky for you, for the good sex yes?
I know, I know. I’ve been woefully forgetful when it comes to sharing the delights and amazements of Roma and its followup, the most incredible city in the world and if you’ve never read Carlos Ruis Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind I command you to get it THIS INSTANT and fall deep into the very heart of its intrigue preferably while traveling through the city of its mise en scene ooh, check me and my ostentatious grip on the romance languages out but seriously read it and go here because you will DIE of love Barcelona.
More of that to come, including how one can eat their way entirely through Florence, tales of the Former Mormon but always Marvelous Max Freeman, and how, if one is going to fall in love with a madly attractive 6”4 Chilean, they best do it in Barcelona because frankly, everything and everyone is better when done in Spanish.
But for now, I want to talk about Morocco.
After carving out a small piece of my heart (whose topography has grown evermore mountainous with similar incisions made in similarly seductive cities – its landscape now is a testament to both the maps I have filled in and the ones I have yet to carve) and hiding it well amongst the winding streets of Barcelona’s Barrio Gotic, I followed Mars reluctantly to BCN’s El Prat for our scheduled flight to Malaga.
Away I went from the city of dreams, the city of love and the city where I had, for three brief days at least, allowed myself to dwell on what it might be like to casually ride a bicycle there every day, eating ruby red apples and concocting long winded Spanish sentences with all the tat-a-tat rapidity of a spitfire.
No matter. There are always more adventures to be had.
From Malaga, we traveled by bus to La Linea where we planned to spend the next day exploring the enclave of British owned Gibralter. La Linea itself was uninspiring as was the entirety of Gibralter beneath its famed Rock Of. I ask you, isn’t it just like the British to hold onto something that, for all intents and purposes, should no longer belong to them and then further desecrate whatever natural beauty it had by infiltrating the place with BHS chains, Top Shop and Miss Selfridge? And let us not forget the pasty-yet-sunburned British tourists, clamouring over themselves to avoid foreign food of any kind whatsoever in their determined search for slop like egg and chips ordered in their native tongue – a prize for anyone who can guess where that little nod to 1980s pop culture came from….
So we scampered around the top of the rock for some time, tentatively avoiding the apes who have made its old fortress walls their personal playground. Regardless of what waited below in Gibralter proper, it was indeed an impressive sight. To the right spread out the bottom-most part of Spain; the our left, Africa glimmered on the horizon.
And it was to Africa we were headed next.
Unfortunately, our ferry was two hours late and we missed the last train to Marrakech. This did not sit well with Mars who, and I know she’ll read this so….hi!, is somewhat of a more nervous traveler than myself. While I like to go with the flow, roll with the punches, see where the wind takes me and any number of other obnoxious clichés designed to denote easiness (or perhaps aimlessness), Mars prefers to have a plan she’s able to stick to. Hence, an unscheduled overnight stay in Tangier threw her for somewhat of a loop.
It didn’t help that while I was upstairs scoping out the cleanliness of our exorbitantly priced hotel room, Mars was busy shitting her pants (her words) in the taxi outside while three young scamps began some fisticuffs next to her window.
“Why didn’t you lock the door?” I asked, somewhat sensibly I thought.
“They would have heard it! It would have been a direct provocation!” she exclaimed.
“Mars dear,” I soothed. “You’ve had a terrible fright. But I would guess that the likelihood of you being pulled into their little fracas was rather slim. Next time, lock the door or run inside.”
Which, of course, is exactly what I had done when I’d come out of the hotel and seen all the fuss. Ha! I guess that makes me a Slytherin…
(As an aside, I re-read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows en route to Marrakech. Man, that Rowling is a fracking GENIUS.)
Needless to say, faced with all this cultural uncertainty (on her part) and after a particularly heated debate with the taxi driver over why exactly ten euros was a ridiculous fee for a three minute ride (me I’m afraid), Mars’ mood did not improve throughout the 10 hour train trip to Marrakech. As a surprisingly luscious carpet of green rolled past us, I remained hidden behind a book so as not to say or do the wrong thing – that is to say, so as not to demonstrate my at times (most times, probably) remarkable insensitivity to the valid feelings of others.
More haggling greeted us at Marrakech Train Station. Aziz, a local carpet seller and great admirer of Australia, had informed me on the train that we were not to pay more than 25 dirham for a cab ride to the Medina. “If they try to charge you more, you tell them YOU KNOW MOROCCO and you WON’T pay it! Then tomorrow, you come to my shop and have cous cous with us for lunch, yes?”
I answered as best I could in Arabic, having learnt the essential phrases the night before. My father, a great traveler particularly throughout the Middle East, once told me that the only essential things one needed as a tourist are
a) a passport;
b) a willingness to try the local food (and, consequently, a strong constitution Just In Case); and
c) at least a smattering of the language and the pith and vigour with which to use it.
And, if you’ll permit me a moment to brag, I’ve always been rather good at the last one. Accents, dialects, retention….it’s kind of my thing - though, to be fair, I employ rather too much time impersonating old ladies from Yorkshire is probably necessary.
But I digress.
After haggling our way into a clean, comfort and cheap (the all important trifecta) hotel with a marvelous rooftop terrace view over the Medina, Mars and I ventured out into the hustle and bustle of a Typical Night Out At The Souk….and promptly were swindled by two highly organized and no doubt well trained con artists peddling their henna tattoos.
“You like?” one said to me, who has sadly always looked to recreate the indelible excitement of my Middle Eastern school fete days. “Here, sit! Sit! I make for you, one hand, 250 dirham! Is good for you! Very lucky, very good for the sex, you get good sex and health from this!”
And before I could say boo to a blind mouse, she’d pulled my arm in and started trailing long lines of ink up and down its length.
“You take for other hand?” her partner in crime asked, grabbing my left hand and leaving me basically helpless. “Is extra lucky for you, with the sex!” I wondered what it was about me especially that screamed needs help in the sack department. But perhaps it’s just that I’m white, and everyone knows that we’re all whores… *ponders *
“Wait! Wait!” I tried to say. “How much is this?!”
“For both, 400 dirham, and we throw in a free foot!”
Ignoring for a moment the relative absurdity of that last bit, I tried to tell them that 400 was far too expensive.
“Is not!” they both exclaimed, wounded, as if I’d taken their henna pens, stabbed them in the heart and expelled all the black ink throughout its core. “Is best price! Cheap! 400, okay, you pay 400.”
They continued to decorate my hands while I tried to think quickly on how to escape such an exorbitant fee. 400 dirhams is roughly 37 euros, which is roughly AUS$74. I mean….seriously. In fracking Morocco. The land of henna and cheap things.
COME ON!!
But then they rounded on Mars.
Uh oh, I thought. This is about to get a whole lot worse.
“I don’t want it!” she yelled, furiously trying to pull her hand back as our self appointed Sex Guru struggled equally as furiously to pull her in.
“Is okay! For you is free! Gift!”
“No!” Mars yelled. “No!” I noted, almost absentmindedly, that she was failing to use the one piece of Arabic she considered the most important, and had spent the previous night practicing - bad manee. “Don’t touch me. Leave me alone.” So it’s true, I thought, We really do lose our heads in a crisis.
The assault on Mars did not go well, to put it mildly. Within a few minutes of her receiving the unwanted tattoo, she smudged it while trying to retrieve the few hundred dirham stuffed down my bra (gone, now, to finance the snake juice and eye-of-newt no doubt high on the shopping list of the Medina Henna Witches) leaving a stained splodge of ink across the back of her hand. Needless to say, we hadn’t eaten yet after ten hours on the train. She was NOT going to take this well.
Her fury was only compounded by the refusal of the MHW to accept my (to them) paltry offering of 300 dirham (AUS$60!!), all that my underwear was able to yield.
“No! You pay 400! We make for you, is very lucky! YOU PAY NOW!”
“But you just did it without my consent! How could I agree?! I have only 300, so that’s all you get!”
Mars, I could tell, was on the verge of punching one or both of them and ACTUALLY ramming their henna pens into the dark abyss where their hearts ought to be. I wondered briefly if there was a third one missing in action. Perhaps I had encountered the Fates?
But once they realized I wasn’t going to give them any more than I already had, they let us go, muttering under their breaths – possibly retracting the lucky sex charm they had placed within the pattern and dooming me to a lifetime of self love and lonlin….oh. wait. SIGH.
Mars was livid. Back at the hotel, she scrubbed and scrubbed until she could scrub no more but the stain refused to fade beyond a pale noir. “Out! damn spot!” she cried, while the three (minus one) witches cackled beyond. In vain, I tried to placate her but she, like the stain, would not budge. Her hand, she declared, was RUINED.
And if you cannot get past this, so, I thought ruefully, is our holiday.
It didn’t help that our immediate venture back out into the markets brought forth all manner of culturally challenges for my dear Mars. While I agree it’s disconcerting to be stared at and grabbed (non sexually, I should clarify) by touts wanting to sell you their food and/or wares, it seems to me part and parcel of visiting a poor country with an overwhelming reliance upon more fortunate western travelers for their livelihood. One must develop a thick skin or they’ll forever be hiding in hotel rooms, too afraid to face the throng of people determined to get something out of them.
More unsettling I think is the way in which your white skin marks you as a target for either sexual advances or harassment. During our little walk, I was convinced that the Witches Two and given me some kind of special Whore Henna pattern, so intent were the stares from passers by and calls of ‘Hey baby!’ But this was quickly dispelled when onearrogantly helpfully told me that women with tattoos like that don’t smoke in Morocco. Well then, I surmised. I can’t be branded as a prostitute - because one would surely need to smoke simply to survive such a fate here.
Tangentially, I have noticed the different way I feel about male attention here as compared to the previous markings on my map. I’ve questioned myself about it all day, but I don’t think it’s an unconscious racial prejudice. It’s simply that, to me, there seemed to be a level of innocent cheekiness in the ‘Ciao bella!’s and ‘Hola bonita!’s that greeted me in Italy and Barcelona. Sure, the odd one or two were leery, but mostly it all seemed in good fun – just a general kind of appreciation I suppose. (And indeed, it’s hard for a woman not to feel more attractive in these countries considering how pathetically absent the concept of wooing or even cheeky flirtation seems to be amongst most Australian men.)
But maybe there is a prejudice of sorts at work – my cultural understanding is that the Arabic world sees Western women as racier than their Middle Eastern counterparts. One can’t help but hear little traces of this when yelled at in the street, or gawked at by half a dozen men, or told to keep bending over when tying one’s shoelace because they ‘like the view’. I dunno....it occurs to me that that’s actually the kind of thing I expect from Australian men. Which is depressing to say the least.
Anyhoo.
So I finish the day in Marrakech tapping away here while spiderwebs of black henna trace their way up my hands. They will act as a constant reminder (at least for the next month) of the wileyness of women, the questionable sanity of consenting to be branded with symbols you don’t understand, and the occasional foolishness of Western travelers who labour under the delusion that their bullshit detector is as old and worn as the hills.
In short, namely myself.
But I’ve learnt my lesson, yessiree.
Tomorrow I’ll wake Mars with a gentle nudge and deliver her down to the breakfast table where we shall feast on Moroccan delights. Then it’s off to see Aziz for lunch and hopefully convince him to act as our local escort through the harangue of a souk whose sole purpose where we’re concerned seems to be in radically inflating its prices.
Because dammit, where else but in Morocco can I obstinately refuse to pay anything more than $15 for a beautifully handcrafted leather bag in the most brilliant of sea greens?
Chance of Mars killing someone before the week is out: Fair to Good.
More of that to come, including how one can eat their way entirely through Florence, tales of the Former Mormon but always Marvelous Max Freeman, and how, if one is going to fall in love with a madly attractive 6”4 Chilean, they best do it in Barcelona because frankly, everything and everyone is better when done in Spanish.
But for now, I want to talk about Morocco.
After carving out a small piece of my heart (whose topography has grown evermore mountainous with similar incisions made in similarly seductive cities – its landscape now is a testament to both the maps I have filled in and the ones I have yet to carve) and hiding it well amongst the winding streets of Barcelona’s Barrio Gotic, I followed Mars reluctantly to BCN’s El Prat for our scheduled flight to Malaga.
Away I went from the city of dreams, the city of love and the city where I had, for three brief days at least, allowed myself to dwell on what it might be like to casually ride a bicycle there every day, eating ruby red apples and concocting long winded Spanish sentences with all the tat-a-tat rapidity of a spitfire.
No matter. There are always more adventures to be had.
From Malaga, we traveled by bus to La Linea where we planned to spend the next day exploring the enclave of British owned Gibralter. La Linea itself was uninspiring as was the entirety of Gibralter beneath its famed Rock Of. I ask you, isn’t it just like the British to hold onto something that, for all intents and purposes, should no longer belong to them and then further desecrate whatever natural beauty it had by infiltrating the place with BHS chains, Top Shop and Miss Selfridge? And let us not forget the pasty-yet-sunburned British tourists, clamouring over themselves to avoid foreign food of any kind whatsoever in their determined search for slop like egg and chips ordered in their native tongue – a prize for anyone who can guess where that little nod to 1980s pop culture came from….
So we scampered around the top of the rock for some time, tentatively avoiding the apes who have made its old fortress walls their personal playground. Regardless of what waited below in Gibralter proper, it was indeed an impressive sight. To the right spread out the bottom-most part of Spain; the our left, Africa glimmered on the horizon.
And it was to Africa we were headed next.
Unfortunately, our ferry was two hours late and we missed the last train to Marrakech. This did not sit well with Mars who, and I know she’ll read this so….hi!, is somewhat of a more nervous traveler than myself. While I like to go with the flow, roll with the punches, see where the wind takes me and any number of other obnoxious clichés designed to denote easiness (or perhaps aimlessness), Mars prefers to have a plan she’s able to stick to. Hence, an unscheduled overnight stay in Tangier threw her for somewhat of a loop.
It didn’t help that while I was upstairs scoping out the cleanliness of our exorbitantly priced hotel room, Mars was busy shitting her pants (her words) in the taxi outside while three young scamps began some fisticuffs next to her window.
“Why didn’t you lock the door?” I asked, somewhat sensibly I thought.
“They would have heard it! It would have been a direct provocation!” she exclaimed.
“Mars dear,” I soothed. “You’ve had a terrible fright. But I would guess that the likelihood of you being pulled into their little fracas was rather slim. Next time, lock the door or run inside.”
Which, of course, is exactly what I had done when I’d come out of the hotel and seen all the fuss. Ha! I guess that makes me a Slytherin…
(As an aside, I re-read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows en route to Marrakech. Man, that Rowling is a fracking GENIUS.)
Needless to say, faced with all this cultural uncertainty (on her part) and after a particularly heated debate with the taxi driver over why exactly ten euros was a ridiculous fee for a three minute ride (me I’m afraid), Mars’ mood did not improve throughout the 10 hour train trip to Marrakech. As a surprisingly luscious carpet of green rolled past us, I remained hidden behind a book so as not to say or do the wrong thing – that is to say, so as not to demonstrate my at times (most times, probably) remarkable insensitivity to the valid feelings of others.
More haggling greeted us at Marrakech Train Station. Aziz, a local carpet seller and great admirer of Australia, had informed me on the train that we were not to pay more than 25 dirham for a cab ride to the Medina. “If they try to charge you more, you tell them YOU KNOW MOROCCO and you WON’T pay it! Then tomorrow, you come to my shop and have cous cous with us for lunch, yes?”
I answered as best I could in Arabic, having learnt the essential phrases the night before. My father, a great traveler particularly throughout the Middle East, once told me that the only essential things one needed as a tourist are
a) a passport;
b) a willingness to try the local food (and, consequently, a strong constitution Just In Case); and
c) at least a smattering of the language and the pith and vigour with which to use it.
And, if you’ll permit me a moment to brag, I’ve always been rather good at the last one. Accents, dialects, retention….it’s kind of my thing - though, to be fair, I employ rather too much time impersonating old ladies from Yorkshire is probably necessary.
But I digress.
After haggling our way into a clean, comfort and cheap (the all important trifecta) hotel with a marvelous rooftop terrace view over the Medina, Mars and I ventured out into the hustle and bustle of a Typical Night Out At The Souk….and promptly were swindled by two highly organized and no doubt well trained con artists peddling their henna tattoos.
“You like?” one said to me, who has sadly always looked to recreate the indelible excitement of my Middle Eastern school fete days. “Here, sit! Sit! I make for you, one hand, 250 dirham! Is good for you! Very lucky, very good for the sex, you get good sex and health from this!”
And before I could say boo to a blind mouse, she’d pulled my arm in and started trailing long lines of ink up and down its length.
“You take for other hand?” her partner in crime asked, grabbing my left hand and leaving me basically helpless. “Is extra lucky for you, with the sex!” I wondered what it was about me especially that screamed needs help in the sack department. But perhaps it’s just that I’m white, and everyone knows that we’re all whores… *ponders *
“Wait! Wait!” I tried to say. “How much is this?!”
“For both, 400 dirham, and we throw in a free foot!”
Ignoring for a moment the relative absurdity of that last bit, I tried to tell them that 400 was far too expensive.
“Is not!” they both exclaimed, wounded, as if I’d taken their henna pens, stabbed them in the heart and expelled all the black ink throughout its core. “Is best price! Cheap! 400, okay, you pay 400.”
They continued to decorate my hands while I tried to think quickly on how to escape such an exorbitant fee. 400 dirhams is roughly 37 euros, which is roughly AUS$74. I mean….seriously. In fracking Morocco. The land of henna and cheap things.
COME ON!!
But then they rounded on Mars.
Uh oh, I thought. This is about to get a whole lot worse.
“I don’t want it!” she yelled, furiously trying to pull her hand back as our self appointed Sex Guru struggled equally as furiously to pull her in.
“Is okay! For you is free! Gift!”
“No!” Mars yelled. “No!” I noted, almost absentmindedly, that she was failing to use the one piece of Arabic she considered the most important, and had spent the previous night practicing - bad manee. “Don’t touch me. Leave me alone.” So it’s true, I thought, We really do lose our heads in a crisis.
The assault on Mars did not go well, to put it mildly. Within a few minutes of her receiving the unwanted tattoo, she smudged it while trying to retrieve the few hundred dirham stuffed down my bra (gone, now, to finance the snake juice and eye-of-newt no doubt high on the shopping list of the Medina Henna Witches) leaving a stained splodge of ink across the back of her hand. Needless to say, we hadn’t eaten yet after ten hours on the train. She was NOT going to take this well.
Her fury was only compounded by the refusal of the MHW to accept my (to them) paltry offering of 300 dirham (AUS$60!!), all that my underwear was able to yield.
“No! You pay 400! We make for you, is very lucky! YOU PAY NOW!”
“But you just did it without my consent! How could I agree?! I have only 300, so that’s all you get!”
Mars, I could tell, was on the verge of punching one or both of them and ACTUALLY ramming their henna pens into the dark abyss where their hearts ought to be. I wondered briefly if there was a third one missing in action. Perhaps I had encountered the Fates?
But once they realized I wasn’t going to give them any more than I already had, they let us go, muttering under their breaths – possibly retracting the lucky sex charm they had placed within the pattern and dooming me to a lifetime of self love and lonlin….oh. wait. SIGH.
Mars was livid. Back at the hotel, she scrubbed and scrubbed until she could scrub no more but the stain refused to fade beyond a pale noir. “Out! damn spot!” she cried, while the three (minus one) witches cackled beyond. In vain, I tried to placate her but she, like the stain, would not budge. Her hand, she declared, was RUINED.
And if you cannot get past this, so, I thought ruefully, is our holiday.
It didn’t help that our immediate venture back out into the markets brought forth all manner of culturally challenges for my dear Mars. While I agree it’s disconcerting to be stared at and grabbed (non sexually, I should clarify) by touts wanting to sell you their food and/or wares, it seems to me part and parcel of visiting a poor country with an overwhelming reliance upon more fortunate western travelers for their livelihood. One must develop a thick skin or they’ll forever be hiding in hotel rooms, too afraid to face the throng of people determined to get something out of them.
More unsettling I think is the way in which your white skin marks you as a target for either sexual advances or harassment. During our little walk, I was convinced that the Witches Two and given me some kind of special Whore Henna pattern, so intent were the stares from passers by and calls of ‘Hey baby!’ But this was quickly dispelled when one
Tangentially, I have noticed the different way I feel about male attention here as compared to the previous markings on my map. I’ve questioned myself about it all day, but I don’t think it’s an unconscious racial prejudice. It’s simply that, to me, there seemed to be a level of innocent cheekiness in the ‘Ciao bella!’s and ‘Hola bonita!’s that greeted me in Italy and Barcelona. Sure, the odd one or two were leery, but mostly it all seemed in good fun – just a general kind of appreciation I suppose. (And indeed, it’s hard for a woman not to feel more attractive in these countries considering how pathetically absent the concept of wooing or even cheeky flirtation seems to be amongst most Australian men.)
But maybe there is a prejudice of sorts at work – my cultural understanding is that the Arabic world sees Western women as racier than their Middle Eastern counterparts. One can’t help but hear little traces of this when yelled at in the street, or gawked at by half a dozen men, or told to keep bending over when tying one’s shoelace because they ‘like the view’. I dunno....it occurs to me that that’s actually the kind of thing I expect from Australian men. Which is depressing to say the least.
Anyhoo.
So I finish the day in Marrakech tapping away here while spiderwebs of black henna trace their way up my hands. They will act as a constant reminder (at least for the next month) of the wileyness of women, the questionable sanity of consenting to be branded with symbols you don’t understand, and the occasional foolishness of Western travelers who labour under the delusion that their bullshit detector is as old and worn as the hills.
In short, namely myself.
But I’ve learnt my lesson, yessiree.
Tomorrow I’ll wake Mars with a gentle nudge and deliver her down to the breakfast table where we shall feast on Moroccan delights. Then it’s off to see Aziz for lunch and hopefully convince him to act as our local escort through the harangue of a souk whose sole purpose where we’re concerned seems to be in radically inflating its prices.
Because dammit, where else but in Morocco can I obstinately refuse to pay anything more than $15 for a beautifully handcrafted leather bag in the most brilliant of sea greens?
Chance of Mars killing someone before the week is out: Fair to Good.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Guess where I'm headed...?
ROMA!!!
Ah...La vita e bella... Feminism be damned. I am swanning through piazzas and revelling in wolf whistles like there's no tomorrow. It's freakin' Rome.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
how to be lame.
This reminds me of why I hate film collectives.
Where to start.
Checklist for archetypes and/or motifs employed by pretentious student film makers.
Someone, somewhere, reading a book. CHECK.
A modern day damsel in distress in need of rescue. Emotionally. CHECK.
Widescreen. CHECK.
Nafftastic film title that eschews capitals so as not to detract from the simple pure essence of the film itself yet simultaneously works to tell the audience that yes, this film will understand you as much as you understand it. CHECK.
Hobby photography. CHECK.
Favourite lines include but are not limited to:
1. "I don't use facebook." Check out how deep she is. WHAT A LUDDITE HA HA WANT TO BONE HER AND FEEL HER SOUL.
2. "Yeats, Plath, Beckett." In towers from floor to ceiling apparently. I bet he carries a dog-eared copy of The Bell Jar around in his back pocket because it's a) less predictable than The Catcher In The Rye and b) demonstrative of his superior affinity for emotionally volatile females in need of a little TLC.
3. "You're real." "And so am I, let's be real together and loooooooovvvvvveeeee maaaaadddddlyyyyyyy."
God. I knew so many dicks like this at university that it actually shocked me to discover this was written and directed by a girl.
Mtk says: "Oh yeah, it is that whole Mary Sue thing you guys were telling me about where a girl can be completely ordinary and boring and PASSIVE and yet still get chased by the exciting handsome fellow..
Boring!"
I say: "Girls never place themselves as the wild exciting type after the boring nothing man. BECAUSE THAT IS BORING. But clearly it is okay for girls to be just a blank canvas. Because who wants to actually talk to them anyway?"
I think the 'best' student film script I ever read involved a girl's loss of virginity represented by the accidental destruction of her Mickey Mouse watch. Her subsequent lack of faith in everything she believed to be true about love is shown by a cinema screen cracking and flooding her with blood. For real.
Where to start.
Checklist for archetypes and/or motifs employed by pretentious student film makers.
Someone, somewhere, reading a book. CHECK.
A modern day damsel in distress in need of rescue. Emotionally. CHECK.
Widescreen. CHECK.
Nafftastic film title that eschews capitals so as not to detract from the simple pure essence of the film itself yet simultaneously works to tell the audience that yes, this film will understand you as much as you understand it. CHECK.
Hobby photography. CHECK.
Favourite lines include but are not limited to:
1. "I don't use facebook." Check out how deep she is. WHAT A LUDDITE HA HA WANT TO BONE HER AND FEEL HER SOUL.
2. "Yeats, Plath, Beckett." In towers from floor to ceiling apparently. I bet he carries a dog-eared copy of The Bell Jar around in his back pocket because it's a) less predictable than The Catcher In The Rye and b) demonstrative of his superior affinity for emotionally volatile females in need of a little TLC.
3. "You're real." "And so am I, let's be real together and loooooooovvvvvveeeee maaaaadddddlyyyyyyy."
God. I knew so many dicks like this at university that it actually shocked me to discover this was written and directed by a girl.
Mtk says: "Oh yeah, it is that whole Mary Sue thing you guys were telling me about where a girl can be completely ordinary and boring and PASSIVE and yet still get chased by the exciting handsome fellow..
Boring!"
I say: "Girls never place themselves as the wild exciting type after the boring nothing man. BECAUSE THAT IS BORING. But clearly it is okay for girls to be just a blank canvas. Because who wants to actually talk to them anyway?"
I think the 'best' student film script I ever read involved a girl's loss of virginity represented by the accidental destruction of her Mickey Mouse watch. Her subsequent lack of faith in everything she believed to be true about love is shown by a cinema screen cracking and flooding her with blood. For real.
Real British
Four days ago, I packed up what was my life in New York and crossed the Atlantic to dwell beneath the grey clouds of London town.
In typical fashion, I missed my flight from JFK and had to buy an entirely new one lest I be forced to turn up once more on Dot’s step and ask her to house and feed me. Although I feel she and I have many more games of magnum vino chess to play, I suspect the novelty of waking up to find me on her couch would begin to wear thin quickly. I’d said my goodbyes to my handsome Israeli. Time to leave.
Now (after two days of being entertained by the Funniest Men On Earth) I find myself shuttling towards the angst-ridden commons of my early teenage years. The landscape is one long expanse of mist soaked paddocks, gnarled and barren trees dotted sporadically along their borders.
Something indefinable wells in the pit of my stomach as I draw forth my last memories from this place. My sensory recollection is keen. It’s the smell of radiators and fairy liquid, the taste of history in the air. It’s the sound of competing dialects talking of ordinary things.
It’s the feeling that, much like the holographic educational books of my youth that demonstrated through overlapping pages how various cities have looked throughout the ages, beneath the layer of modernity and industrialization lies a pictorial encyclopedia of history. One feels history in Britain unlike that of America or the antipodes. Our pasts are a drop in the ocean. We are in our infancy.
Standing on a street corner, I hear stall vendors plying their wares and watch as London’s iconic red double decker buses rattle past. But I feel the ghosts of millions brushing past me, stretching all the way back to the ancients. These people have walked this land and helped to form this country’s identity. And though I may have forgotten it, or at the very least underestimated its impact, this country once upon a time played its own small part in the formation of my identity.
The seaside village of Sheringham was unlike anything I had ever known when I arrived as a 12 year old. My parents concealed from us their dire financial situation, preferring instead to present the move as an adventure, a change of scenery. For a year, my father sold double glazing windows – a job that fell vastly short of his experience and capability – to avoid what he called the humiliation of welfare.
We had a beaten up old station wagon and a set of hideously pink crockery that elicits fond giggles now. In a two bedroom flat in neighbouring Cromer, I got my first period and wrote long journal entries about how it in a new, world wearied tone. The journal would later see me confess my love for Ben Pert, an impossibly out-of-my-league boy who’d given me his jacket to wear while we all smoked cigarettes on the cliffs overlooking the choppy northern seas.
It was in Sheringham that I acquired the art of the chameleon. To fit in, the most important step was to speak like everyone else. I began to drop my ts and hs, hesitantly at first and then with the confidence of a born and bred Norfolk lass.
I always thought my most important memories of this time were of me and me alone, but returning has brought a raft of feelings I’ve refused to confront for some time. Now, as I approach this tiny village and all the echoes of its past, I think only of my mother.
Snapshots flash through my mind as I think of her here. Traveling to a place where she is not yet dead, she cannot help but seem more alive to me than ever. I recall her drinking endless cups of tea in our kitchen, wrapped in her thick winter coat and smoking cigarettes to keep warm. It was at this table that we once had a spirited conversation about Agatha Christie, and toasted her memory.
In the foyer, I can see her so overwhelmed by the final pages of Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence that she needed to bring my father in to read them for him, tears streaming down her cheeks. Some part of her would have known that he couldn’t appreciate them as she did, but she read them anyway because she was starved by the need for someone to understand this part of her personality.
Her days spilled into one another with no distinction other than the fact that through all of them she was lonely. As insane as it sounds, I feel like going back will allow me to find her and save her - or at least make her understand that I’m sorry. If I hadn’t been her daughter, I would have done everything I could to make her my friend.
Thirty minutes to destination. I’m almost there.
In typical fashion, I missed my flight from JFK and had to buy an entirely new one lest I be forced to turn up once more on Dot’s step and ask her to house and feed me. Although I feel she and I have many more games of magnum vino chess to play, I suspect the novelty of waking up to find me on her couch would begin to wear thin quickly. I’d said my goodbyes to my handsome Israeli. Time to leave.
Now (after two days of being entertained by the Funniest Men On Earth) I find myself shuttling towards the angst-ridden commons of my early teenage years. The landscape is one long expanse of mist soaked paddocks, gnarled and barren trees dotted sporadically along their borders.
Something indefinable wells in the pit of my stomach as I draw forth my last memories from this place. My sensory recollection is keen. It’s the smell of radiators and fairy liquid, the taste of history in the air. It’s the sound of competing dialects talking of ordinary things.
It’s the feeling that, much like the holographic educational books of my youth that demonstrated through overlapping pages how various cities have looked throughout the ages, beneath the layer of modernity and industrialization lies a pictorial encyclopedia of history. One feels history in Britain unlike that of America or the antipodes. Our pasts are a drop in the ocean. We are in our infancy.
Standing on a street corner, I hear stall vendors plying their wares and watch as London’s iconic red double decker buses rattle past. But I feel the ghosts of millions brushing past me, stretching all the way back to the ancients. These people have walked this land and helped to form this country’s identity. And though I may have forgotten it, or at the very least underestimated its impact, this country once upon a time played its own small part in the formation of my identity.
The seaside village of Sheringham was unlike anything I had ever known when I arrived as a 12 year old. My parents concealed from us their dire financial situation, preferring instead to present the move as an adventure, a change of scenery. For a year, my father sold double glazing windows – a job that fell vastly short of his experience and capability – to avoid what he called the humiliation of welfare.
We had a beaten up old station wagon and a set of hideously pink crockery that elicits fond giggles now. In a two bedroom flat in neighbouring Cromer, I got my first period and wrote long journal entries about how it in a new, world wearied tone. The journal would later see me confess my love for Ben Pert, an impossibly out-of-my-league boy who’d given me his jacket to wear while we all smoked cigarettes on the cliffs overlooking the choppy northern seas.
It was in Sheringham that I acquired the art of the chameleon. To fit in, the most important step was to speak like everyone else. I began to drop my ts and hs, hesitantly at first and then with the confidence of a born and bred Norfolk lass.
I always thought my most important memories of this time were of me and me alone, but returning has brought a raft of feelings I’ve refused to confront for some time. Now, as I approach this tiny village and all the echoes of its past, I think only of my mother.
Snapshots flash through my mind as I think of her here. Traveling to a place where she is not yet dead, she cannot help but seem more alive to me than ever. I recall her drinking endless cups of tea in our kitchen, wrapped in her thick winter coat and smoking cigarettes to keep warm. It was at this table that we once had a spirited conversation about Agatha Christie, and toasted her memory.
In the foyer, I can see her so overwhelmed by the final pages of Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence that she needed to bring my father in to read them for him, tears streaming down her cheeks. Some part of her would have known that he couldn’t appreciate them as she did, but she read them anyway because she was starved by the need for someone to understand this part of her personality.
Her days spilled into one another with no distinction other than the fact that through all of them she was lonely. As insane as it sounds, I feel like going back will allow me to find her and save her - or at least make her understand that I’m sorry. If I hadn’t been her daughter, I would have done everything I could to make her my friend.
Thirty minutes to destination. I’m almost there.
Monday, January 12, 2009
This is...
I'm about to catch the train to my old neighbourhood, Sheringham. Anticipate long post by the afternoon.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Share it
