Morocco

Tangier

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 21:12:16 +0000

My Moroccan journey ends in Tangier. After the full-on sensory experiences of Fez and Marrakesh, Tangier is something of disappointment - a pale pastiche of Morocco that feels is if it’s mainly been put on for the day trippers from Spain. It’s certainly not an unpleasant place - watching the golden sunset over the Grand Socco square as the locals emerge en mass to enjoy the cool of the evening is a pleasant way to kick off Friday night. Later, on a carpeted stage set up in front of the handsomely restored Cinema Rif, an energetic group of Berber musicians and dancers entertain the crowds with their acrobatic moves and rhythmic drumming and singing. Also for all its reputation as an edgy place of hustlers, drug dealers and ne’r-do-wells, I’m hardly approached by any touts and certainly hear no whispers of “hashish?” as I push through the medina.
The faint whiff of hash wafts out of the cafe opposite the entrance to Hotel Continental, the famous Victorian-era establishment overlooking the ferry terminal. This is where they filmed part of the Sheltering Sky and Paul Bowles’ photo is displayed in the restaurant, while the corridors are decorated with posters for other Moroccan-based movies. Its breezy terrace is the best place from which to watch the ships come and go out of the port - it’s certainly an atmospheric place to wind up my own road through Morocco. Before I leave I also have one of the best meals of the journey at the rustic Restaurant Populaire Saveur. The set menu kicks off with a rich seafood soup, packed with fish, shrimps and squid and flavoured with saffron. Side dishes of black olives and a fiery chili paste are laid down with a selection of flat breads, including one that that’s like compressed strands of angel hair spaghetti. The tagine of seafood and spinach is the tastiest such dish I’ve had during the trip. This is followed by a whole grilled fish - I choose St Pierre. Dessert is a bowl of couscous and nuts and a tangy jam and another bowl piled with ripe green figs.

Fez: Dar Seffarine

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 16:11:01 +0000

For the last two nights I’ve stayed at Dar Seffarine (www.darseffarine.com) a perfect mini-palace at the heart of the medina. It’s steps away from the Place as-Seffarine, where metal workers shape giant copper pots and pans in front of the oldest medressa in Fez, and its unmarked doorway, as with so many of these residences, gives not the least hint of the grandeur inside. This is characteristic of all homes across the Arabic world - to modestly conceal your wealth rather than announce it to the world in a gaudy facade - explains Ali, the Iraqi architect who with his Danish wife Kate, have resurrected Dar Seffarine from ruin.

When they bought the complex three years ago the bones and possibilities of the 500 year old structure were apparent but all the glorious detail was hidden under centuries of dust and neglect. My room on the first floor overlooks the dazzling central courtyard where nine stout pillars soar up from a mosaic floor.

On my first evening here I gather with the our host and other guests, who all happen to be English, in the outer courtyard for a feast of kebabs, sauteed potato, salads, roast vegetable and humous. Photos are passed around of the house in its previous sorry state - all of the Dar’s staircases had crumbled to dust and the courtyard where we now sit was stacked high with the rubble of a collapsed small house and other rubbish.

Ali and Kate’s pride in what they have achieved is palpable from the great passion with which they talk about the house; after dinner Ali gives us a tour of each room, explaining the details such as the viewing gallery from which the women of the house could view the male guests and the fine Arabic inscriptions that form part of the decorative plasterwork and tiling around the ground floor salons. “Who lives here is going to live with pleasure,” he translates one inscription which is impossible to disagree with. The highlight is the so-called “honeymoon suite”, a jewel box of room with stained glass windows, a beautiful painted bed and ceiling studded with an inverted cupola - a sign of the wealth of the original owner.

We all end up on the roof, slumped in the white cushioned seats that provide a panoramic view across the medina. The darkness cloaks the tell tale signs of the 21st century - the white satellite reception dishes that sprout from each flat roof like daisies - leaving the outline of the ancient city punctuated only by the loft minarets.

Fez: Reconstructing the Medina

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 15:03:12 +0000

Fez’s medina, a 3000-street maze of medieval alleys, maybe a World Heritage site but it’s also crumbling in on itself. This situation is nothing new. The celebrated American novelist Edith Wharton, who toured Morocco in 1917 (and recorded her vivid impressions in the travelogue In Morocco) found Fez in much the same state as I do today. Carried through the medina on the back of a “pink donkey” she passed houses like “fortresses looming across the narrow strip of blue and throwing out great beams and butresses to prop each others bulging sides.”
Bemoaning the “supine indifference that lets existing constructions crumble back to clay,” Wharton said “dust to dust should have been the motto of Moroccan palace-builders.” In fairness to the largely poor inhabitants of medina today they are no financial state to carry out the necessary repairs. Behind the towering walls, these ancient and sometimes enormous homes may be owned by a score or more family members; the owners may actually live in them but most likely they are to be found in more modern homes in the nouvelle ville or elsewhere, their place taken by even poorer tenants who are not adverse to selling off the buildings’ beautiful antique fixtures including carved and painted wooden antique doors and window frames.
Doing their best to shore up Fez’s built heritage is ADER, the agency for the dedensification and rehabilitation of the medina - I find out a little about their work from Helen Ranger, one of Fez’s expat residents and a fellow Lonely Planet author. Helen also runs Fez Riads (www.fez-riads.com), an accommodation booking agency for traditional houses in the medina. A small portion of the money earned supports restoration projects of Helen’s choice. So far she helped renovate a water fountain; you find these fountains, beautifully tiles with zellij mosaics, all over the medina. There’s also a small public courtyard garden that she’s planted with orange trees - the locals have started to tend them and have added their own plants and vegetables. Helen has also bought her own riad in the medina, as many other foreign investors are doing - steadily pushing up real estate prices in Fez as they have been in Marrakesh. Buying a house is only the start of it though - then comes the reconstruction which, depending on what you have to do structurally and decided to do for decoration can cost a small fortune. Helen takes me to her home, still a builiding site after 18 months of work - she’s hoping that it will all be finished within the next six weeks. Watching the craftsmen at work plastering the walls and planning the home’s original doors you can see that this is a project that necessarily takes time. Further down the same street is the restored fountain - it’s on a largish square where people would have once brought their horse to wash them.

Fez: Initial impressions

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 15:37:14 +0000

The 8.15am train from Casablanca to Fez is delayed by 40 minutes; the first class compartment is comfortable and for much of the 4 hour journey I have it to myself. On arrival at Fez, I take a taxi from the nouvelle ville to the medina - it’s a pleasant surprise to find the drivers using the meters without debate. Unlike in other cities I’ve visited so far it’s quite a distance between old and new towns. The monumental sandy-coloured walls of the medina are impressive. I’m met in a square by a guide from the my hotel Dar Bouanania and immediately led into the narrow, disorientating streets of the medina.
Dar Bouanania makes up for its relatively compact size with a riot of colours inside, seemingly every inch of woodwork painted or surface inlaid with mosaic tiles. I spend a while engrossed in the geometric patterns traced on the panels and beams of cedar-wood ceiling. The guide tells me that the original 3 metre tall doors that hang outside my room were sold to a museum, which in turn will sell them to whoever makes an attractive enough offer.
Around the corner from the hotel is Talaa Kibira, one of the two main shopping streets threading their way down the hill towards the 12th century Kairaouine Mosque, the spiritual heart of Fez with a massive prayer hall able to hold 20,000. It’s currently closed for restoration.
The Medresa Bou Inania has been spruced up though and is open to visitors to marvel at the decorative work inside. Legend has it that the guy who commissioned this dazzling complex said when presented with what was, no doubt, an astronomic bill, “whatever is beautiful cannot be expensive at any price. What is enthralling is never too costly” - a sentiment taken to heart by generations of Moroccan salesmen ever since.

Casablanca: Deco Delight

Sat, 21 Jul 2007 21:17:36 +0000

I board the 7am CTM bus from Essaouria to Casablanca arriving 7 hours later in the city made famous by Bogie and Bergman. Shot on a Hollywood sound stage, Casablanca the movie had little to do with Casablanca the city - certainly the most European looking and feeling place I’ve been in Morocco so far.

On the edge of the Medina, there’s a Rick’s Cafe - a pretty impressive recreation of the movie set where, Planet Hollywood-style, you can buy the souvenir T-shirt and gin glass. I also spot a humbler tagine joint downtown that couldn’t help jumping on the movie bandwagon.

What Casablanca does have a legacy of French colonial rule is a fine selection of stately buildings in the style known as Mauresque - combination of traditional and Art Deco architecture. Some have had their facades beautifully restored, others - like the Hotel Lincoln opposite the Central Market – are on the point of collapse. What catches my eye the most are the ornate metalwork grills on doors and windows, with beautiful designs of peacocks, flowers and arabesque flights of fancy.

One of the most lovely restored buildings I come across during my ramble around the city centre is the restaurant Le Rouget de l’Isle - this 1930s whitewashed villa could very well have served at the model for Rick’s Cafe. I return for an elegant French dinner - served by candlelight in a garden draped with bougainvilla. From the balcony on the side of the house, the patron - a fearsome looking madame in a sleek, lipstick red ensemble - greets the guests and keeps a beady on the staff. Bogie would have approved.