Leaving Fes
The hotel staff are disinfecting my room as we speak. It's time for their little girl to leave... The housekeeping staff have been lovely and managed to work out that two coughs means "hot water with lemon please". I've even forgiven them for not telling me that breakfast was an extortionate 31 dirham. There's no such thing as a free breakfast either it would seem...
I am going to wiggle across to Meknes, which is only a 49 minute train journey. I thought I needed to get back into the habit of carrying my pack, moving without a taxi, and getting used to life without hot water again if I was to make it back to Nador.
Fes has now grown on me a little. It was something to see the other side of life here beyond the Medina full of tourist tat. I've liked being based at one hotel so that the local shops get to know me, the newspaper man who thinks my roots are Moroccan, the mat seller who wishes me good morning, the cafe waiters, and the ineffective saleswomen at the very cool but unfortunately named accessory shop BigDil.
I walked the local market this morning, which was more meat (clean cuts of beef and still unidentifiable balls or kidney attached, no goat heads in sight) and vegetable stacks alongside cut price men's socks and sad looking exotic birds. The market sellers all talk to me in Arabic and I try to nod or shake my head appropriately by way of greeting or declining a chicken, until some smart kid realises I am French (naturally) by virtue of the fact that I don't have nearly enough facial hair or kohl to be a Moroccan woman and they all start exclaiming "ah that's why she doesn't want a side of beef but wants to set the parrots free..." Exactly.
One thing before I leave, I have to walk past the very delicious road side sandwich stall which offers delicious spiced hache sandwiches in Moroccan bread, harissa, a cute yet aggressive ginger feline beggar and the most gorgeous chocolate smooth young African man I have seen in my life. His parting words to be were "I hope we meet again, inshallah" delivered with absolute conviction and eyeballing to stun the most hardcore feminist. Inshallah indeed.
I am going to wiggle across to Meknes, which is only a 49 minute train journey. I thought I needed to get back into the habit of carrying my pack, moving without a taxi, and getting used to life without hot water again if I was to make it back to Nador.
Fes has now grown on me a little. It was something to see the other side of life here beyond the Medina full of tourist tat. I've liked being based at one hotel so that the local shops get to know me, the newspaper man who thinks my roots are Moroccan, the mat seller who wishes me good morning, the cafe waiters, and the ineffective saleswomen at the very cool but unfortunately named accessory shop BigDil.
I walked the local market this morning, which was more meat (clean cuts of beef and still unidentifiable balls or kidney attached, no goat heads in sight) and vegetable stacks alongside cut price men's socks and sad looking exotic birds. The market sellers all talk to me in Arabic and I try to nod or shake my head appropriately by way of greeting or declining a chicken, until some smart kid realises I am French (naturally) by virtue of the fact that I don't have nearly enough facial hair or kohl to be a Moroccan woman and they all start exclaiming "ah that's why she doesn't want a side of beef but wants to set the parrots free..." Exactly.
One thing before I leave, I have to walk past the very delicious road side sandwich stall which offers delicious spiced hache sandwiches in Moroccan bread, harissa, a cute yet aggressive ginger feline beggar and the most gorgeous chocolate smooth young African man I have seen in my life. His parting words to be were "I hope we meet again, inshallah" delivered with absolute conviction and eyeballing to stun the most hardcore feminist. Inshallah indeed.
posted by Rowena at 1:26 pm
0 comments
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home