I’ve never been good with maps, particularly city maps. I quite like getting lost because there is usually someone to set you on the right path. And in Morocco you can always use a GPS. By that I don’t mean the hi-tech computer equipment, it’s the nickname given to young boys in the street who are always offering to guide you somewhere. The truth is that half the time they don’t know either, but you’re lost, so who cares.
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| credit photo : Pixabay |
On my first visit to Fez I’d bought a map. First lesson; never buy a map that has a pretty little seal on it. It may seduce you into thinking that you are opening a box of delights, but for all the good this one did I might as well have asked someone to scrawl a quick diagram on the back of a cigarette packet. But what the heck, I’ve got a mouth (which sadly speaks neither Arabic or French), and so long as I remembered that R’Cif is actually pronounced ‘R’Sef’, I couldn’t go far wrong.
I start in the Plaza R’Cif, and before I enter the melee of the medina I become absorbed by some ladies sorting through mounds of second-hand women’s and children’s shoes laid out on blankets. Bent double, they delve into the haphazard scattering, trying to match a pair. I watch for a few minutes, and the only pair I can spot are some bright red canvas sandals with enormous heels and a lace that ties around the ankle. It occurs to me that it would make a pretty good temporary job for some young kid, sorting out the pairs and tying them together with string. Although perhaps part of the bargain hunting is in the chase for the lost slipper, the reverse of the Cinderella story of trying to find a foot to go in one.
As I’m just having a wander it doesn’t matter which direction I take, so I walk into the medina, turn right and weave my way in. As you enter the medina in Marrakesh from Jmaa el Fna, all the shops in the first few hundred metres are given over to almost exactly the same products, mainly aimed at tourists. What I like about the medina in Fez is that while you still have the babouches, djellabas and brass trays for sale, the tiny shops are mixed in with butchers, coffee grinders and vegetable stalls, purveyors of all your daily needs. I also like the way the narrow alleys rise and fall, often at awkward angles, as they make their way up the hill.
Within a few minutes I find myself at the foot of a steep set of steps. In front of me a lady with a pushchair is trying to carry both it and a couple of bags of shopping up the slope. In the pushchair, or ‘stroller’ as Americans call it, a dumpy child swathed in clothes glares out grumpily, as small children can when not exactly pleased about being bumped up and down a flight of steps – and it was a long flight of steps. I gesture to the lady to take the handles, I take the crossbar at the front and between us we haul child and shopping up the steps.
When we reach the top I put my end of the pushchair down and, with profuse thanks from the lady, turn to continue on my way. And then I see another flight of equally steep steps, with no alleyways heading off in another direction. The only way is up. I turn around with the thought that sometimes it pays to mind your own business, and pick up my end of the pushchair again. My shortage of breath when we finally get to the top of this flight is as much to do with carrying a weighty young chap as it is to being out of practise with trudging uphill, but I comfort myself with the thought that the poor dear probably does that every day without a word of complaint.
The slope continues upward, out of the world of the tourist wanderer into the everyday world of Fez family life. Outside a butcher’s shop a young boy is deftly shaving a camel’s head with a cut-throat razor, whether preparing it for the pot or practising for a future as a barber, I’ve no idea, but he was doing a pretty good job. Next to the shop a ram with a wonderfully curling set of horns is tied to a door with a length of string. Tomorrow’s lunch or a woolly guard dog, again I’ve no idea, but with a set of horns like that I’m not about the get any closer to find out.
I pick up two ballpoint pens from a blanket on the ground covered with pens, pencils, notebooks and the like and ask the price. A pretty young teenager says “Quatre dirham.” “Pardon?” I say, not sure if I‘ve heard correctly, and behind me a voice says, “Six.” I wasn’t going to argue for the sake of a couple of dirhams, so I hand the money over to the man sat on the blanket, who seems bemused by the whole operation. I look at the girl and laugh. “You said four.” The broad giggling smile she gives me is worth every cent of the two dirhams I’ve been overcharged.
