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