ALIF’s guided tour of المدينة القديمة (the Old Medina) began around 10:00am on Saturday. It was actually supposed to begin about an hour earlier, but it seems everyone else had switched to Maghrebi time (i.e., show up whenever you want… it seems to be the norm in Morocco. Or maybe it’s just the norm for American students in Morocco). The tour started outside the Old Medina with a visit to a monument that had something to do with Moroccan independence. I couldn’t hear what our tour guide was saying, but I’m guessing it’s the manifesto drafted by the Istiqlal Party in 1944, since Morocco didn’t gain its independence from France until 1956.

Much of the Old Medina is surrounded by very old walls. The more iconic entryways are marked by intricate gateways, such as this one. I believe it’s called the Blue Gate (why wouldn’t it be?).

Once you pass through the gate, you’re in the Old Medina!

The place is truly a maze, in the best possible use of the term. You never know what’s around the next corner. You might be walking through a large, open area flanked by cafés, then suddenly find yourself in the shade of a covered market, or سوق.

I was instantly reminded of Istanbul. The covered market really is ingenious—it gives you protection from the sun, while still allowing the natural light to seep through so you can see.

Our next stop was a historic مدرسة (school) that doubled as a mosque… I think (this was all a couple weeks ago, so my memory’s a bit fuzzy). I know there were prayer rooms and a fountain for cleansing, so at the very least students could use it as a mosque. Apparently students could live on-campus, and wooden screens covered their study areas so they could see what was going on in the courtyard without being seen themselves.

Of course, the entire school is completely covered in intricate Arabic calligraphy. Driss was able to read some of the Classical Arabic text, which is no easy feat.

If you’re not paying attention while walking down the streets of the medina, it’s very easy to miss some interesting sights, such as this beautiful fountain.

The sheer amount and diversity of goods for sale in the medina is mind-boggling. Many streets are lined by shops offering trinkets and necessities side-by-side.

There are narrow streets, and then there are narrow streets. As our group navigated a street of the latter category, I turned around and got a shot of Cody illustrating just how narrow the alleyways in the medina can get.

One of the most confusing things about the Old Medina is figuring out whether an alleyway actually goes somewhere, or whether it will simply end at someone’s front door, which would be an awkward situation. The good thing about going with a guided group is that you don’t have to worry about where you’re going, you can just soak in the scenery, which is what I did that first weekend. As you’re walking down the street, all you need to do is look to the left or the right and you’re guaranteed to see something interesting, be it a shop, a street, or an entryway to someone’s house.

Looking straight ahead, you’re guaranteed to get some interesting shots as well. Also, there’s Ahmed (in the pink shirt) and Driss.

Okay, pretty much anywhere you point your camera in the Old Medina, you’re gonna get a fantastic picture.

We eventually wound up on this covered street where craftsmen make wedding… carriages? I’m not sure what to call them. Newly-wed brides sit on these fancy white seats and people carry them around for a while. One of the artisans whipped out a photo book and showed us some wedding pictures, which was interesting (and kind of funny). I mostly was just interested in the way these thin bendy trees had grown alongside the buildings, twisting upwards towards the wooden street covering.

Like I said, when you walk through the Old Medina, you never know what’s around the corner. There’s just so many wildly different things packed into the city, all connected by thin, winding streets. After walking through the wedding carriage street, suddenly we were out in another open area with a madrasa and some shops, as well as another awesome fountain. Also, there’s Driss again in the left-hand corner.

Here’s another fun fact. If I’m not mistaken, the fez (as in the small, red hat) originated in—you guessed it—the city of Fes, before being adopted by the Ottomans. But I have never seen anyone in Morocco wearing a fez, apart from people on billboards and TV shows… and this hat merchant who tried to sell a fez to one of the girls in our tour group.

Here’s another shot of a typical street in the Old Medina.

I gotta point out the ingenuity of the medina’s design. All those tall buildings and narrow streets pretty much guarantee shade from the sun, which is a must in this heat. Also, because there’s so much shade, there’s very little reflection of sunlight from the ground. The Old Medina feels several degrees cooler than the Ville Nouvelle, to me. The people who built these crazy cities knew what they were doing.

Some time into the tour, our guide led us into a funduq, a walled off courtyard where artisans of a specific craft gather to work their magic.

This particular funduq was filled with scarves. I wound up buying a pretty cool-looking gray/black/white scarf for 50 dirhams (about 5 dollars). I also got a nice shot of one of those… cloth… thingies. I forget what they’re called.

Many of the sights in the Old Medina feel like they come straight out of a dream. Something about the way the sunlight falls upon the walls brings with it a sort of déjà vu, and many times I felt like I had been here before, a distant memory of a forgotten dream gurgling forth from the recesses of my mind. Here’s a picture of one such sight.

At one point in our tour, we stopped by a spice shop. The walls were lined with innumerable jars of spices, some labeled in English, most in Arabic. The shopkeeper explained the nature and purposes of several different herbs, spices, perfumes and colognes as his wife came around to each of us with samples. There was this one… thing, I’m not even sure what it was, but you’re meant to plug one nostril and breathe it in as deeply as possible with the other. Whatever it was I sniffed, I felt it gripping the nerves of my spinal chord in the back of my neck, if that makes any sense. Afterwards, I felt like my head had been cleared. It was an odd experience.

As some of the students in our group purchased some spices, I took a picture of an interesting array of tools and bowls full of… stuff, all laid out on the ground.

I’ve seen those stone grinders all over Morocco. They look positively ancient… It’s pretty awesome that something like that is still in use.

Finally we arrived at one of the most distinctive sights in Fes: the tannery.

We were each given a mint leaf twig for the smell as we ascended the stairs of one of the many leather stores surrounding the tannery. We wound up in a breezy room high above the ground, with an awesome view.

I’ve always heard about how horrible the tannery is supposed to smell, but I didn’t think it was bad at all. Maybe I just have a stunted sense of smell, but in all the travelogues I’ve read of Fes, people seem to blow the smells of the city way out of proportion. Or maybe since I went in expecting a full-on “assault on the senses”, I was more prepared, and so it hasn’t bothered me as much? No idea.

I also got some great camera shots of the surrounding buildings and countryside. I’m so used to cable TV that the army of satellite dishes perched atop peoples’ houses really stuck out. Driss made a humorous remark that even if a family in the Old Medina might not have access to water, they’ll still have a satellite dish.

At last our grand tour of the medina came to an end. We arrived at another little plaza, our journey at an end. You can sort of make out a donkey being saddled with a massive load of… something in the right-hand side of this picture.

That’s another thing I should mention. All the stuff that people are selling in the Old Medina has to get there somehow, right? But the streets are way too small for any cars or trucks. The answer: donkeys. There are some horses as well, but it’s mostly just donkeys, carrying burdens of epic proportions. When one of these donkeys is heading down the street you’re walking on, you have to squeeze yourself up against the walls to make room. It can actually be quite shocking if you’re not expecting it—there were times when I was walking through masses of people and was suddenly startled by a donkey head popping out of the crowd as the beast walks past me.

As our tour ended, individuals within our group peeled off. Cody, Ahmed, Driss and myself headed towards the outskirts of the Old Medina to find a taxi back to Batha.

And so we wound up at a very busy street. While we waited for a cab, Ahmed and I bought some home-made straw hats from an elderly man on the street, in preparation for our excursion to Volubilis, where we expected long hours with little shade. The last picture I took before we scrambled for our taxis was this building that Cody pointed out because it had a funny-looking muscle man on it.

And that wraps up my (and your) tour of the Old Medina. The flow of life in the Old Medina is definitely a lot different from anything I’m used to, but at the same time, it doesn’t feel entirely alien. Not sure what to make of that. Anyways, that does it for this entry. Until next time!

So after I arrived in Fes, I met my AHA associates: Ahmed and Cody, both 500-level Arabic students from Portland, and Driss Marjane, the program director. I also met Jenna (sorry if I misspell your name), an AHA employee… I’m actually not sure what exactly her job is, but regardless she’s a very kind woman. My first weekend in Morocco was spent hanging out with the motley AHA crew. I can’t quite remember the order of events from week one, as the first two days felt like a whole week just on their own, but I’ll try to recall.

Saturday night (June 15), we ate out at an Italian restaurant. Our whole first weekend was completely covered financially by AHA, which was awesome. Jenna wanted to eat traditional Moroccan food, but Driss told us that since most Moroccans eat “traditional Moroccan food” for everyday meals at home, when they go out to eat, they prefer different national foods. I got a delicious pizza, and to my joy I learned that people in Morocco eat pizza with their hands, not with silverware (the one and only drawback of ordering pizza in Europe, in my opinion).

The next day (June 16), Driss took us on a mini personal tour of the Old Medina. I didn’t take any pictures for most of the first weekend because the last thing on my mind while trying to adapt and soak in my new environment was stopping to pull out my highly steal-able camera (but don’t worry, I got plenty of pictures of the Old Medina the following weekend). Before our journey into the medina, Driss had made arrangements for us to meet our host families (we were to officially move in on Monday). I learned that the neighborhood in which I was to live was called Batha, and I would be sharing my room with a Duke University student from the first summer session (there are multiple waves of students attending ALIF, and I’m in Summer II). Ahmed and Cody would be rooming together with a homestay family just outside of Batha, right next to the fountain where all the taxis congregate.

My host father, Abderahman, met us at a kiosk near the Batha fountain. From there, he led us through the winding streets of the medina to what was to be my house for the next six weeks. There he invited us in for coffee. I’m not a coffee person, but this particular coffee was delicious, almost like hot chocolate. Once in the house we also met my host mother, Najia, and my host brother, Si Mohamed (he is around the same age as me). Si Mohamed wound up accompanying us on our tour of the Old Medina.

Driss basically led Ahmed, Cody, Jenna and myself through the maze of the Old Medina, walking us through the souqs (marketplaces) and showing us a riad (traditional Moroccan house featuring an interior courtyard/garden) that had been converted into a guesthouse. We finished our tour with lunch at Café Clock, a very cool restaurant/café run by a former ALIF student who enjoyed Morocco so much that he decided to stay. Incidentally, his name was also Mike. Ahmed and Cody both ordered a camel burger, which apparently was really good. I ordered some tasty sweet couscous with chicken, raisins, nuts, and apricots.

After lunch, we met Ahmed and Cody’s host family, who seem to be quite posh despite living right on the edge of the Old Medina. We then traveled to the Ville Nouvelle and bought cheap cell phones (roughly $20 American dollars) to use for communication while in Morocco. After that, Driss shoved us in a cab and next thing we knew we were at an extremely fancy hotel overlooking the whole city of Fes. We walked through the lobby and found ourselves on a balcony with a fantastic view of the Old Medina. This is where I took my very first picture in Morocco!

If I remember correctly, the mosque marked by the large, green minaret is near Café Clock, where we ate lunch earlier in the day.

We sat and enjoyed the balcony for quite some time, with some very interesting conversation. Driss talked at length about the absurdity of nationalism and borders, and demonstrated on paper how you could trace the similarities of various letters within different alphabets, as well as the history of how those letters evolved, showing how all of humanity is connected. I have since learned that Driss has a PhD in linguistics and sometimes teaches classes at ALIF, which answers a lot of the questions that were floating around in my head for that first week or so.

After our time on the balcony, Driss left our company, and Ahmed, Cody, Jenna, and myself all decided to have dinner at the Broadway Café, the same café that Ahmed, Cody and I met on Day 1. As we sat there, we remarked how incredible it was that we had only been in Morocco for two days—it seriously felt like it had been ages ago that after first arriving in Fes I had wandered by the same café that Ahmed and Cody happened to be sitting at. As we were eating our food, Driss showed up out of nowhere to inform us that he had taken care of the bill for us behind our backs, which elicited much complaining as he had been taking care of everything for us, it seemed. I must admit, though, it feels pretty good to know we have a guardian angel in Morocco… a guardian angel with a PhD.

The next day (Monday, June 17), I packed all my bags, checked out of the hotel where we were staying for the first weekend, and got ready for my first day of Arabic. Both Driss and Jenna met me at the hotel, and Driss got my textbooks for me (he also showed me where I could buy a notebook for class). I met my amazing teacher, Moustafa, who also happens to be a professor at Dartmouth, as well as my classmates. After the morning class, I met my host father Aberahman in the ALIF garden, and we took a cab to Batha so I could officially move in to my new home.

The first week went by really fast. We’re supposed to have two different Arabic teachers, one for the morning (10:00am—12:00pm) and one for the afternoon (4:00pm—6:00pm), but for the first week our morning teacher, Mohamed, wasn’t available, so Moustafa simply taught both classes. I also met my roommate from Duke, Dylan. He’s in the 500 level Arabic, plus he’s already been here for several weeks, so he showed me the ropes and has been helping me communicate with my host family. I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to survive once he leaves on July 5, heh.

At the end of the first week, I went on two excursions provided by ALIF. On Saturday, June 22, we went on an almost all-day guided tour of the Old Medina (basically a more comprehensive version of the previous weekend… only this time, I had my camera at the ready!). Then, on Sunday, June 23, we took a trip to the Roman ruins at Volubilis, then toured the imperial city of Meknes. And the following weekend was the trip to the Sahara. Of course, those trips require blog entries of their own, so I’m gonna have to stop here for now. I’m almost all caught up!