Twenty Things

We’ll begin our final week of class tomorrow and be finished on Friday.  Lord willing, we will leave Fes by train Saturday morning for our next destination, which may not be as conducive to blogging as this one (mostly) was.

So, how about a quick list tonight?

  1. Met with nice people again this morning.
  2. Afterwards, we walked to the mall for coffee as has been our custom.
  3. Ran into a nice family whom we saw earlier.
  4. As Jim and the husband/father were chatting, his  2-year-old boy disappeared, as little boys do sometimes.
  5. What ensued was a semi-frantic search by the parents, mall security folk, and us.  Little guy was found in about 5 minutes.  Praise the Lord.
  6. Every morning after breakfast we go outside on the deck for a few minutes.  Usually we see Fes, car washers, storks (ibis?  to be determined), maybe a train.  Today was a first —

7. Came home and worked on memorizing conjugations of “i want to ___/you want to ___/he/she/they,we,you want to _____.

8. Our second purchase in the medina yesterday was minimal and began the same way:  “Come in to my shop.  You are welcome to just look.  I will not pressure you to buy.”

9. Yeah, right.

10. Ended up with two sugar bowls when I only wanted one, so one of you is getting a present.

11. Have I mentioned spineless shoppers before?

12. Paid a muleteer three dirhams for this.

13. That’s about 31 cents.

14.Petite taxis are convenient and cheap.  I’ll try to get a picture soon.

15. Oh, this is cool:  on Friday we chatted over couscous at school with a lady taking  classical Arabic lessons here. She’s married to a Moroccan and they live in Scotland with their baby boy.

16. We learned that she is a contributor to Fodor’s, and is house-sitting for the author of the book “A House in Fes.”

17. We bought the book and I’m reading it aloud to Jim.

18. It’s been cooler, in the 80’s.  We’ve turned the AC off a few times.

19. But, the temps are rising again.

20. Forecast is for 108 tomorrow.

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Speed Dating in a Medieval City

Shopping for carpets in Fes is a lot like speed dating. From what I understand, speed dating involves a group of men and women intent on establishing a long-term relationship by first eliminating unwanted prospects.  They meet.  They chat for five minutes.  Once two participants  agree that yep, they’d like to exchange phone numbers, the real work begins. 

Like carpet buying, speed dating provides for lots of variety. After ten or twelve quick chats, you can narrow the field.  This method excludes such Romeo-type cues as eye contact across a crowded room, but does you right to the point.  A woman, for example, may attend a speed dating event looking for a lanky man with rugged features, an aquiline nose, and deeply-set, mysterious eyes.  In the course a five-minute chat, she could realize that nope – she was surprisingly attracted to the balding, blue-eyed dude of average height. Who knew?

So, let’s say your intent is to purchase a carpet in the oldest continuously-operating medieval city in the world. You do your research and prep your husband.  First, the two of you discuss the style of carpet, the size, and the price you’re willing to spend.  You stroll down the Talaa Kebira on a Saturday morning, thinking that maybe you’ll find a suitable carpet but also not wanting to pay too much attention to any one vendor because if you hesitate too long, he’ll reel you inside. 

From all your reading and talking to ones who have purchased carpets in Morocco, you know you’ll have to haggle.  Forget you’re an American and have never haggled for anything in your life.  You also know that salesmen can be extremely aggressive here, and that you will be paying more in Fes than you would in other places. Fes is Fes.  You’ll have read Trip Advisor reviews, and know where you think you’ll have the most success.  You’ve also read bloggers who’ve come away paying upwards of 6,000 euros for a carpet – unintentionally — and you wonder how in the world anyone could be so spineless.

Armed with such information, you stroll leisurely through the uncrowded medina on a Saturday morning.  Naturally you’re accosted by a gentleman who asks your husband where he’s from and if he likes Fes.  “Ah!  The United States – I’m Canadian!  From Montreal!”  It doesn’t matter if your husband believes him or not, because he’s apparently not selling anything.

Further you wander, truly enjoying the stroll.  You’ve passed the food vendors, seen hunks of meat and one very fresh cow’s head (it was black, BTW), and arrive in the merchants’ area.  Jewel toned kilim rugs drape outside shops, begging to be photographed and admired. 

“Come in, come in,” invites a tall, young Moroccan.  “You are welcome to just look.  No pressure.”

His shop is small, but piled from floor to ceiling with rugs.  He begins to gently explain to you that these are Berber rugs, this one is Kilim style, that one thicker because it’s made of camel hair, these more modern.  Without your realizing, the speed dating process has begun. “I show you small ones,” he offers, opening three carpets that would fit a small bathroom.  They are gorgeous. 

His assistant is swift to bring you both a cup of mint tea, further insuring you’ll spend more time looking.

“Okay,” you venture.  “Show me some bigger ones, in blue.” 

There are many.  So, so many, probably thirty rugs in the size you want, and the two guys want you to see them all.  They open each, one at a time, pile it on the previous one, and keep going.  They even show you the ones that are decidedly not blue. 

Soon your husband remarks that the Berber style is growing on him, and even though you both came into this gig wanting a Persian carpet, these are so pretty that maybe…

All righty, then.  Gone is the dark-eyed, fine-featured guy you thought you’d date, replaced by a more rugged, down-to-earth country dude in a pick-up and you’re fine with that. 

After all the rugs in your size have been piled atop each other, it’s time to narrow things down.  You ‘re instructed to say “haali“ for keep this one out, and “ ishmaa “ for not interested.  It’s easy at first.  One is too gold, another too modern.  Finally, you’re down to three, then one.  The one you’ll invite to live in your house and meet your kids. Except that first, you must agree upon a price.

Imagine our surprise, if you will, when the first price our salesman offered was exactly the price Jim and I had agreed we would pay.  Exactly.  What ensued in the next 15 minutes was as fun for us as it probably was for him, as I had nothing to lose by offering an amount much lower than that.  Back and forth we went, him inching downward and us inching upwards until he finally said, “I tell you.  You are my first customers of the day, and I want to offer you a very good price.  You tell me what is your final offer.  I will wait outside.”

We whispered.  We agreed.  He came in, accepted our offer, shook our hands, and that was that. 

Maybe tomorrow I’ll relate the rest of our morning in the medina, as we made one more small purchase.   And, post more pictures.  Dumb internet.

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Chapter Two: The Plot Gets a Teeny Bit Thicker

Later that evening, after a stroll through the oasis to admire the flora, Ibis and Yemkin chose an outdoor table for their dinner.  As they had noted in the morning, things had changed for the better, allowing hotel guests to consume food prior to sunset.  Because they were the first – nay only — dinner guests, the couple was greeted eagerly by Turmeric, the waiter, who brought them just one ala carte menu to share.

“I’m ordering a salad,” declared Ibis.  “I just don’t care anymore.  We haven’t been sick from eating tomatoes on hamburgers, so surely our tummies are adjusted.”

“And shall I,” agreed Yemkin.  “Shall we also split a pizza?”

“So long as it doesn’t have eels – I mean, anchovies,” Ibis responded.  “Really, dear, I think we should take this seriously.  I have quite an anxious feeling about that gentleman.”

“Darling, I’m sure it’s nothing,” Yemkin reassured his beautiful wife.  “Come now, eat your salad.”

Just as heavy wet drops began to plummet from the gray sky and splatter on their table, Turmeric presented each with a salad.  The “mixed greens” Ibis had been longing for were artfully arranged on her plate:  shredded green peppers, snippets of cucumber, red slices of plump tomato, half a hard-boiled egg, corn from a can, large pearls of boiled potatoes and –

“Oh!  Oh, oh!  What is that?  That’s not an eel, is it?”  Ibis practically shrieked as she spied four small, silvery strips arranged like compass points atop her mixed greens and other things.  Beneath these was a scoop of flaked tuna. 

“Well, well,” chuckled Yemkin.  “I do believe it’s an anchovy.  Give it a try, darling.  I think you’ll like it.”

Convinced the foreign objects were truly not eels, Ibis began to eat.  Appreciating how tangy and salty the anchovies tasted –contrasting delightfully with both cucumber and tomatoes– she devoured it quickly.  In fact, so engrossed was she in her food that she was unaware of the dark, beady eyes surreptitiously surveilling the couple.  Fleshy cheeks and craggy eyebrows framed his spectacles, and his feet remained shoeless.  He was dressed in a shabby black T-shirt and sweat pants, all in need of a wash. 


“Dear me,” mumbled Yemkin, patting his pants pockets.  “I’ve left my money clip in the room.  I’ll just pop up there now and retrieve it.”  He pushed back his chair.

“Now?”  gasped Ibis.  “You’re in the middle of our pizza.  Surely you can get it afterwards, my love?”

Refusing to be deferred, Yemkin hurriedly left the restaurant.  The beady-eyed man in black also snuck toward the lobby, his bare feet slapping against tile floors.  Ibis just happened to catch their reflection in the restaurant’s massive windows as the two entered the same elevator and the door slid shut.

To a fly-on-the-wall observer, connecting the dots would be the stuff of intrigue.  Who was that strange man?  Was he stalking Yemkin?  Did Yemkin really leave his money upstairs, or was this a clandestine meeting for nefarious purposes?  Why had Yemkin insisted they vacation in Morocco in the first place?  And, if that man could afford a Mercedes, why on earth was he shoeless?

The more Ibis pondered, the more she recalled further complexities of their stay.  Tour vans equipped with seatbelts, yet none of them long enough to buckle around a waist.  Escalators that never moved, forcing patrons to walk from floor to floor.  Wait staff seemingly outnumbering hotel guests.  Maids who collected dirty towels first thing in the morning, leaving none for drying hands. Shop owners who spoke French to all foreigners, even those who spoke only English to them. “You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me Lucille” sung by an entertainer who spoke no English at all. Firefighters who allowed a hillside to burn during a heat wave. Ice cream coolers with no ice cream in them. Servers who removed their own tips from diners’ change.  Lifeguards who wore earbuds on duty. A language that conjugated its nouns and adjectives along with its verbs.  All this — and Yemkin getting into an elevator with a beady-eyed, shoeless man in desperate need of a haircut.

“Let’s explore the medina tomorrow,” announced Yemkin abruptly, returning to his wife. 

“All right,” Ibis replied.  “But first, tell me what’s going on, Yemkin.  Immediately.  I insist.”

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Night Life and Tests

Bats flitted, cats yowled, and the hotel garden was lit.  Who knew?  Not the ones who mostly go to bed before dark.

 

Fes is pretty, too.

For a couple of teachers who are good ‘test takers’ themselves, we were flummoxed by a test today.  Confounded by unfamiliar words and befuddled by inconsistent spelling, we did our best nonetheless… but I’m not looking forward to getting it back next week. (Yep, I’m whining!  Just like my students do!)

Lastly, a clerk in a store was having difficulty understanding what we wanted today.  “You should learn Arabic,” she told us after we said sorry, we don’t speak French.  Well, guess what we’re trying to do, store-lady!

Good night!

 

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Tagine? i’yyah!

Finally.  We ate an authentic Moroccan dish.  With our fingers.  It was chicken and vegetable tagine with khubz, and it was delish.  Now that R is in the past, the cafeteria at school serves lunch, plus coffee, mint tea, and other stuff.  Ahhhh.

Also, we found a dead cockroach in our room.  Dead, as in dead already by the time we saw it; so I guess that’s much better than having to dispense with the thing ourselves.  Where it came from and how it died are mysteries we shall not pursue.

Now we’re beginning a unit about family and family relations, which is a good subject for me to know well, methinks.  Mohammed says that the women care mostly about this subject, not the men.  Men don’t sit around the coffee shop asking each other, “how’s the brother of your wife’s sister these days?”  Women, remember, drink mint tea in their homes and discuss family topics.  I’m memorizing words for “father”, “mother”, “my brother”, “your brother”, “our sister”, and “the son of my father’s sister” (who would be my cousin…except no).

Mohammed also told us that after class today he would attend the naming party for his new granddaughter, born last Friday.  This involves killing a sheep and feeding about 200 people, and it also sounded like many of those people were spending the night.  (And here I am, 6,000 miles from home, co-hosting a baby shower for Amy the weekend after we get back.  Erin – let’s forget the sheep, shall we?)

In a bit, after the sun sets and dusk falls, we’re taking a walk in the garden to watch the bats.  Cool, right?  We did this a couple of weeks ago, but haven’t been out after dark since then.  Now that we’ve finished White Gold and Thomas Pellow is safely back in England, we’ll turn our attention to night life in the oasis.  Cats and bats, folks. 

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We Know More Now…

…than we knew two weeks ago.  In fact, we were able to walk into Maroc Telecom this morning and buy a SIM card for Jim’s old i-Phone, turning it into a Morocco phone. The guy spoke darija, French, and a tweeny-weeny bit of English.  The nice lady spoke darija, French, and enough English to say with a smile, “I don’t speak English!”  Between the four of us we got the job done.  My contribution was to correctly ask “tlateen”? for thirty after the guy mistakenly said in English “thirteen dirhams”.  (Yay for me!)

And, just a bit ago, we visited our favorite Hanoot owner where Jim asked, in darija, how much for the candy bars (B’shal kulshee)?

 

“Sitta”, he answered with a twinkle in his eye.  “Six?” said I.  (Yay for me again!)

We are thankful for hotel porters, for Hanoot owners, for waiters at coffee shops, and for our maid, Miriam, with whom I exchange quick pleasantries when she comes for our dirty towels.

Baby steps, people.  Shweeya b shweeya.

In other news, there are cats here. Skinny, mangy, demanding animals that stalk diners at outdoor cafes – creepy, I tell you.  Are you going to bite my leg if I don’t give you a bite of my kefta, cat?  If I shoo you away will you jump on my back and rip me to shreds?  Shudder.

Also, post-Ramadan life is dramatically different and we like it.  People stroll with their kids.  Men buy coffee and linger at tables.  Bands of roving teenage boys cruise neighborhood streets.  No more McDonalds runs for us.

Lastly, there is swimming.  We’ve had four days off; back to work tomorrow.

 

 

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If Life Were a Movie Script

Like a wool jellaba in June, heavy, gray clouds draped the city. Temperatures dipped below 100 for the first morning in two weeks, and a slight breeze stirred bamboo stalks and ruffled hibiscus blossoms.  Foreign voices hummed in the background as Ibis and Yemkin consumed their scrambled eggs and coffee.

The city was different today.  The couple felt it in the brisk step of the waiters, the swift sweeping away of empty plates, the immediate refilling of the olive dish.  Gone were the languid smiles.  Gone were the bored greetings. Gone was the sense of feigned industriousness one gets when the job is too little and the staff too numerous.  Today all were busy.  All had purpose.

“It’s a good day to buy a SIM card,” announced Yemkin as he drained the last tepid drops from his coffee mug.

“A walk would be grand,” agreed Ibis.  “Just let me freshen up a bit, darling.  I’ll meet you in the lobby straightaway.”

As Ibis stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for their floor, Yemkin strode to the lobby couch where the wifi signal was strongest.  Glancing towards the revolving glass doors at the front of the hotel, he noted again the presence of a sleek, black Mercedes. On this occasion the driver was absent, but both Yemkin and his wife had glimpsed him on previous occasions.

“All ready,” announced Ibis, returning from her freshening.  “You probably don’t need your floppy hat today, do you think?  With this cloud cover?”

Yemkin agreed that the hat was extraneous, especially since he had applied a liberal amount of sunscreen just an hour before.  The two stepped out of their hotel, consciously looking away from the Mercedes, as if ignoring it was crucial to their well-being.

The streets were uncharacteristically quiet.   Crossing three or four intersections without waiting for a barrage of petite taxis, garbage trucks or buses, the two ex-pats strolled on.  Rowdy boys climbed the lion statue in the park, pre-teen girls chatted in quiet murmurs, and men wearing flowy, summer djellabas sipped coffee at outdoor cafes.

“Looks like it’s closed for the holiday,” remarked Yemkin as they approached the phone store.  “I’ll just check the hours for tomorrow.”  As her husband attempted to decipher the French notice taped to the storefront, Ibis smiled.  Here and there cafes were slowly coming back to life.  Whiffs of coffee and mint tickled her nostrils.  A father took a lick of his son’s ice cream cone before handing it to the little boy.  The black Mercedes slowed as it drove past her down the nearly empty street. 

“I could really go for a cup of strong, black coffee,” announced Yemkin returning from his deciphering.  “What’s the matter, dear?  You look troubled.”

“It was him again,” shivered Ibis.  “I didn’t see his face, but he just drove past me in that black car.  Come on, let’s get coffee at that shop down the block from the hotel.  It’s on a side street and a bit more out-of-the-way than these.”

A few minutes later found the couple contentedly sipping hot, black coffee; hers with milk and one packet of sugar.  Their outside table was beneath an awning, and leafy branches shielded them from the serene street.  Suddenly and without warning, the Mercedes driver appeared at their table.  He was shoeless and in need of a shave.  Quickly and without a word he slipped a torn piece of paper near Yemkin’s glass and vanished.

“Oh, my!” gasped Ibis.  “What in the world?  What does it say, Yemkin?”

“Well, I’m not entirely sure,” he answered thoughtfully.   “It’s in script.  I think the most accurate translation would be ‘My hovercraft is full of eels.’”

To be continued…

 

 

 

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Today is Sunday

Jim says I don’t have to be clever every time I post, so that’s a relief.  Because if I had to … the pressure would be unbearable.

So, without pressure I will run through our Sunday.

  1. We attended a lovely meeting of very nice people this morning, and sang songs.
  2. Afterwards, we talked with them for a while in English.
  3. Next, we walked the mall and waited for the coffee shop to open.
  4. It didn’t open for a while, so we wandered around and ran into fellow student, Hannah,  who is here by herself for six weeks.
  5. We drank cappuccinos and sat.  This is the ceiling of the mall:

7.  We moseyed upstairs to one of the three restaurants open in these parts, and waited with some of the nice people we had met earlier for it to open.

8.  After eating, we questioned the nice people regarding the impending time change and how we will know when this will happen.  They reassured us not to worry — whenever the change occurs (tonight?  next Saturday?  Rumors abound) our phones will figure it out.  Perfect.

9.  We shopped for picnic food.

10.  We studied.

11.  We walked in the garden.  Hoping to see the great, big, long-necked birds that circle around in the mornings so we could take their picture, we sat and watched for a half hour.  No birds.

12.  We came back to our room and had a last-night-of-Ramadan picnic for dinner.

13.  We checked CNN.  We get a different picture of the world from here; lots of UK politics, ads for vacations in Abu Dhabi, Indonesia, South Africa.

14.  Lastly, here’s the pic I tried to load last night (finicky internet).  Class is across this street and a 2 minute walk from right to left.

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skoon bezzef.

What might you do  in Fes when the temp soars to 111 degrees and you have a four-day weekend?

You could watch the cats stroll through the lobby.

You could wash all of your dirty clothes in the tub.

Since your room is cool, the clothes won’t dry as fast as you think they should.  You could stuff unmentionables in a mesh bag and hang them out your window.

You could do your homework.  Fuqaash Adnoo saferoo L Sbanya?  Keefash bgheetee atay?  Waash Aandek MiAad mAa shee waHed?

You could drink some orange juice.

 

You could go outside and walk in the garden just to experience what 111 degrees feels like.

Then you could come in and study some more.

You could decide that a short walk to McDonalds for dinner won’t be that bad, especially if you wear your not-quite-dry shirt.

You could decide not to go to the ATM, to the mall for ice cream, to the big fountain, to the medina (ESPECIALLY TO THE MEDINA) or anywhere else farther away than McDonalds.

You could end the day reading aloud from White Gold, because Thomas Pellow is almost freed from captivity after spending over 20 years of his life just miles from here.

 

 

 

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At Best, Time is Ambiguous

Anna! Thanks for the coffee-date invitation. I shall look forward to that in August; in the meantime, look what we found today:

One black coffee, one coffee with milk (and a packet of sugar) for the equivalent of $1.11. Nice and hot, nice and black, it made us happy before our exam.

So, about time: Within the “coffee shop” chapter is a lesson on days of the week, time of day, words to express “today”, “tomorrow”, “day before yesterday”, etc. Mohammed asked me today what tomorrow will be and I answered “Ssebt” for “Saturday”; however, I neglected to say, “Lord willing.” He corrected me because, as he put it, “if the government doesn’t want it to be Saturday, they will change the day.” Probably he was kidding – he jokes with us a lot — but nonetheless our American brains are muddled about clock time. (Mohammed also tells us that “Americans have money; Moroccans have time.” So true.)

For example, our phones tell us that it is 8:20 p.m. here in Fes. At this moment, we are two hours behind Madrid (10:20 pm.), seven hours ahead of Seattle (1:20 p.m.). When we flew here from Madrid, our flight left at 2:30 p.m. and landed at 2:05 p.m. the same day because the normal one-hour time change between the two places became two hours because of Ramadan time. Our flight took an hour-and-a-half. (This is where the muddling-of-our-brains began.)

When we showed up for class the day before it started, we were told that we were on “Ramadan hours” so classes would begin at 9 a.m. instead of 8 a.m. Got it.  Also, that right after Ramadan ends – this Sunday — we go back to the 8 a.m. schedule. Got that, too.

So, yesterday we asked Fatima, who is very patient with us and our muddled American brains: We change our clocks ahead on Monday, right?

Well, no. Clocks do not change right after Ramadan ends.

When do the clocks change?

Usually not until Saturday. Since Ramadan ends on Sunday, the clocks will not change yet. Maybe they will change next Saturday. Remember, no class Monday and Tuesday because of Eid.

Okay, so what time do we come to class on Wednesday morning?

You come at 8 o’clock.

Even though the clocks don’t change, class time changes?

Yes, because class time changes right after Ramadan ends.

Oh, okay. And tomorrow, Friday, we have only one class at 11:00, right?

No, tomorrow class is ahead by a half hour because it is Friday, so come at 10:30 a.m. for your test.

End of story: we arrived at school later than normal today because we only had one class at 10:30 instead of 8:30 (or 9…or 8:00) but since we arrived 45 minutes early we could buy coffee from the student café and drink it in the garden beneath a lime tree.

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