Che in Chefchaouen

I wanted to come to Chefchaouen because I saw a picture of it once and the whole town is painted blue: houses, stone walls, alcoves, arches, streets, are all covered in whitewash tinted a sort of shimmering iceberg blue. The doors and window frames are painted in shades from cobalt to aquamarine. It has an underwater feeling -- as if a Greek village had been relocated to the bottom of the sea. Kids play soccer in narrow cobblestone alleys and housewives bring trays of bread dough and peppers for baking in the wood-fired community oven. No one seems to mind the stray cats constantly underfoot or the hoards of bees that colonize, with great fervor, the pastries at a street stall.

In the evenings we climb to the rooftop terrace of our hotel to hear the sunset call to prayer. As tradition dictates, the muezzin at the biggest mosque starts the prayer and the lesser ones echo it in turn across the town. Our hotel is in between several of the town's mosques, so being on the terrace during the call to prayer is like being ensnared in a web of music. The first time we hear the muezzins' voices, they sound gruff to us, almost admonishing, offering not a friendly reminder or even a rallying cry, but a stern command that everyone in earshot is duty bound to obey. The second time, the call seems evocative and mysterious, if still a bit intimidating. But by the third or fourth time we find it oddly gentle, even soothing. We will miss it.

All the guidebooks agree on the same two important facts about Chefchaouen: the town had been a Moorish stronghold and Christians were not allowed entry until sometime in the 1920s. Of the three who tried to sneak in, one was poisoned. Also, the town had a season as a hippie hangout, owing to the large quantities of marijuana (locally known as kif) grown in the nearby hills. The hippie influence seems to have faded now, except for a lingering fad for Che Guevera, whose face we see on T-shirts and on posters in people's homes.

Our guide, named Anass, allows that Che is indeed popular in Chefchaouen and that he too has a Che poster in his room. This is because Che stood for being hippie happy all the time, he said. At least we think that is what he said. Anass is both hard to understand, owing to rudimentary English language skills in addition to a slight stutter, and hard to believe, as he seems to say whatever comes into his head, sometimes giving different answers to the same question. This lends an air of unreality to his stories that fits perfectly with the dreamlike atmosphere of the town. Some Anass facts: 80 percent of the people in town smoke kif. This includes his 74-year-old father, who smokes every single night and who does not look a day over 50. It includes the Securite police and also the king, who when he comes to town brings 4.000 people with him. AB and CP

Stoned Scottish Hippies

I know there has been a large gap between the last pre-trip post and this one. It turns out that having to write in ramshackle cybercafes on French keyboards from which all the letters have worn off the keys is not conducive to keeping a blog up to date; Situation somewhat improved so I will try and catch up. Still writing on French keyboard; so please excuse typos. Our first night in Morocco demonstrated the fallibility of internet trip planning. Based on a charming website and rhapsodic online reviews I had booked us into an establishment in Chefchaouen that turned out to be run by stoned Scottish hippies and was far from town; Fled the next morning and lucked into a wonderful small hotel near the town square staffed by a lovely young man named Mohammed, who was perfectly happy to discuss everything on the list of banned topics with us: He was explaining about being a moslem in morocco and said, i don't know if you know this, but there are two branches of Islam: Sunni and Shiite. We know now, we said. Ah, yes, he said, ever since Sept 12th.

Satan and Me

I was vaguely aware that you are supposed to use only your right hand in Muslim countries, reserving the left for what are euphemistically called “ablutions.” Satan, it seems, was left-handed. And so am I. Very. I didn’t think much about this – Morocco is pretty sophisiticated as Muslim countries go – until I read a blog that advised lefties traveling to Morocco to practice using their right hand ahead of time. The author suggested duct taping the left hand to one’s side for several weeks, the better to get the feel of not using it for eating or handing someone money.

According to a website called Protocol Professionals, another way of giving offense is to talk about anything I am interested in. “Good topics of conversation are history, sports and culture,” it advises. Under bad topics of conversation are listed the royal family, the political situation in the Western Sahara and the role of women.

Of course it repeats the modesty injunction that women should cover their bodies: “If you receive lewd stares or children pelt your posterior with small pebbles, you’ll know you are too revealing.”
AB

Hot

Just went on a half-dozen websites checking the temperature forecast for Fez this weekend. The lowest was 98, highest 104. I may wish I had bought that ugly wicking bandana after all.

Packing, 1

Morocco in June is hot. Not as hot as it gets later in the summer, but bad enough, according to numerous blogs, that you don't want to even consider going to the desert. This is complicated by the fact that women are supposed to cover up. Long sleeves, say some sources, short say others. But not sleeveless. No shorts, short skirts, or tight clothes. This pretty much rules out one of our wardrobes.

Then there is the question of "wicking." There are whole clothing lines now that promise to transport the sweat from your skin to the outer layer of the garment, where it then evaporates. The problem is that these clothes are usually expensive, festooned with logos and are quite unattractive. Obsessive web surfing on the part of the main trip planner also turned up another category of clothing designed for keeping cool: menopause clothes. These tend to use more cotton-like fabric and the websites promise comfortable nights in their special menopause-enabled wicking nightgowns.

In the end we decided to forgo wicking for oversized shirts in cotton -- absolutely the worst fabric you can wear in a hot climate, according to posts on the Lonely Planet message board. We shall see.