Mood Indigo in Chefchaouen

Instead of "once upon a time," Arabic fairy tales begin with: "There was, and there was not." I read a very funny one about a man whose wife gave him the coins sewn into her hat so he could make one last shot at respectability. He pays it all to a mean man to stop him from hurting animals. Later, the animals make him rich.

Early in the morning, very early, before even the call the prayer, the sound of BBC Radio woke me up. It was super loud, and a tiny vent between my room and another made the perfect conduit for the sound to travel through.

I had gotten some decent sleep, so I didn't quite mind, but it wasn't amazing. I've been happy to avoid news of the US election, which has been hijacked by polls and ratings and advertising, so it was a little annoying to hear about one candidate's health and another's tax returns. But, I wasn't in my own home.

Fatima, the maid, had bused in from parts unknown and was staggering around in the kitchen muttering and tsking. Super old lady in a "peasant" dress. Maggie is from the last generation who remember The Raj and other mighty colonies, and this fit right in.

 

She was not, however, behind the loud radio.  That was Nigel, a dotty deaf British lodger in his 70s who wore a kimono and kept announcing he wanted coffee but was never seen drinking any. He would ask Fatima to pour it, walk away, let it grow cold, and come back to say he was ready for his coffee now after it had been cleared.

I drank my coffee alone and ate a croissant with butter and marmalade while I waited for Fatima to soft-boil my egg. Maggie had to wake up early to time the egg for Fatima. She came down the stairs with a kind of aggrieved majesty, and they bickered in French while I poured myself some hot milk.

The egg was wonderful, and I felt like a Sir John Tenniel illustration while I ate it. Had a little trouble breaking the shell, but I was being kind of fancy about it. Maggie picked up my spoon and smacked the egg. "This type of operation requires brute force," she said.

God, that rolled Scottish r. Swoon.

Egg was delicious. I dipped a little toast in there. Swoon. When I tried to clear my own plate, Fatima shrieked like I had threatened her with a knife.

 

Nigel was lounging on a chaise, and he asked me where I was from and where was I going. I told him I was from Seattle, "Ah, yes, there are airplanes there, yes?" and that I was here for another day and would be moving on to Fes and Marrakech.

"Yes, Marrakech. Of course, I owned a home in Marrakech for twenty-two years. Do you know Judith [Something]? She takes on lodgers in Marrakech. She's expensive, of course, but her home is ten times the size of this one."

I said the loud radio and the large house could both use a "volume discount," but the joke made no impression on him, and I wished him a good morning.

Dressed, packed the camera up, grabbed a book in case I got stuck somewhere, and headed out.

Maggie called after me. "When you're there, try and eat at Cafe Hassan. There's nothing nice to eat in Chefchaouen, and Cafe Hassan is the only thing decent."

"You're saying there's no chef in Chefchouan?" I asked her. These are the jokes, people. She grimaced and told me she would see me tonight "unless that very rude Spaniard changes his plans again, and I am free to answer the calls of the cafe."

 

The taxi situation in Tangier, and I would soon discover in all of Morocco, is hilarious. The distance a taxi is allowed to travel is determined by its color, and the color is different in each city. In Tangier, you take a blue "petit taxi" for short hops, say to the bus station, and white "grande taxis" on longer excursions. Say, to the airport or another city. 

Chefchaouen was about a three-hour drive away and there is some kind of "zoning" law that forbids them from going too too far. 

So, to get there I had to take a blue cab to the taxi station, a white cab to someplace an hour away called Tetouan, exit, walk across the street, hire a BLUE taxi, because that color means "long distance" in Tetouan, and take it to Chefchaouen.

Additionally, these are "taxi collectivos" which means you share them with four other people. So, when I got my grande taxi in Tangier it was with two girls and a massive harem guard.  Another dude was in the front.

When the driver beckoned for me to enter what looked like an already-full back seat, I cracked up and crammed in. 

We all just kind of waited for it to be over.  I closed my eyes and thought of The Raj.

 

In Tetouan, it was a mad scene with groups of bearded dudes yelling out the names of towns and squabbling. Arabic sounds like someone ordering sweet coffee and asking you to keep it a secret. It's all: "Cafe sucre shhh sucre shhh, cafe!" 

But somewhere in that, I heard "chaouen," and I was again the fifth in a cab. Chefchaouen? They outta call it Cabsharin'.

They pushed me in and off we went. So far, I'd spent a total of five dollars. So thrifty!!  Read a slight Paul Bowles book called Points in Time on the way. Kind of felt like something he owed the publisher and stapled together, but there was a funny extended section about a con man that I quite liked. 

The roads are in decent condition but full of abandoned wheelbarrows, donkeys laden with propane tanks, and sometimes weirdos on bicycles. Video game hazards. The driver just gunned it and assumed we'd be fine as long as we went as fast as possible.

Arrived at my destination just as I was getting a little motion sick. The medina I was there to see is famous for everything being painted blue. It's the only reason people go there. Hilariously (or not), I had to take another cab, a petit one, from where I got dropped off.

 

Very peaceful, quiet little medina with simple shops and cactus fruit and cats galore. I'd read that Muslims don't like dogs (though, I have to imagine a lot of that has to do with the economy. Dogs are expensive, another mouth to feed. Cats are better at scrounging and need less), but they sure love cats.

I saw one with a badly infected eye, and a man stopped to play with it, teased it with a sprig of mint while it batted at the air. I took a picture of it, but it's too gross-looking to post. But, god, that sweet cat seemed not even to know how bad its eye was. It jumped and napped and did all the normal cat stuff. I sat in a courtyard and drank a coffee and read The Prophet and watched it (and all the others).

A quiet little afternoon in a very beautiful place. The blue walls and doors are, I suppose, a gimmick now. At one point, sayeth the guide book, the color was used to demarcate that it was the Jewish neighborhood, but though they are long gone, the blue remains.

 

Refreshed from the coffee and the rest, my ribs back to their normal position (the harem guard's weight now a memory), I took another sweep of the area, blueing down a few corridors I hadn't tried yet. A nice dude in his 50s told me I was a good photographer, he could tell. He has seen many, but he knows I am a rare one and would I like to see something very very nice to photograph?

I was hoping it was his daughter's boobs, so I followed him. It was rugs. 

I had no intention to buy them, but he told me I had "the face of youth" and a "good heart" and that I was someone who loved his mother, and he kept hugging me and laughing, and he pulled out about twenty rugs.

That shit really works. You don't want or need a rug, but you start thinking, "Well, I do have wooden floors, and when will I ever have a chance to buy a Berber rug again, and these people could really use the money."

You get warned about this, and I was ready and prepared to walk away, but the price being low was something I wasn't prepared for. They were dirt cheap. I bargained anyway, which seemed to make him happy, and I bought two, which made him very happy.  

So, there it was. The knife went in so professionally, I never felt it. His name was "Honest Abraham" and he tore the packing tape with his teeth when he wrapped up my purchase. May the lord bless and keep him. Now I have to make room for them and carry them for another week. 

They outta call it Chumpchaouen.

 

Instead of cabbing it back to the cabs that take you to the cabs, I walked. Sweet little impoverished town with a brisk tourist trade. It reminded me a little bit of similarly-sized places in Vietnam. You don't see too much religious iconography anywhere but the skyline (minarets), and it's kind of nice not to have a bunch of Christs in your face like in Europe, like in Spain where I'd just been. 

Here, the Michelin Man is Jesus. You see him on the sides of buildings and at the ends of alleys. He's sort of everywhere. 

 

Rinse-repeated the cab-dance to get back. I got the front seat one time! Tried to read Edith Wharton's guide to Morocco, but didn't have the patience for it.  

Even with the rugs, doing it this way saved me money a guided tour would have cost me. I'm a fucking genius, a carpet-carrying genius. 

Back home, the "Polish girl" had arrived, but she was really Ukrainian. Gorgeous artist who travels the world painting "ground that has been impacted by war." That means rich father. She knew her stuff, and she's been all over. Maggie asked her if she'd painted Nagasaki, and she told us the bombs in WWII exploded over the cities which means as devastating as they were, people can still live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki today. 

Nobody will live in Chernobyl or Fukushima again.

She had just read Svetlana Alexievich's book, and so had I, so we were in immediate love. The cabs we could have shared together! The books we could have left on buses. I didn't see her again after that. 

Maggie said for dinner, I should have the "Gratin Crevette" at the Hotel Continental, and I asked if that meant "cheese with neckties." She called me a fool, and I left. Nice quiet dinner alone on the terrace overlooking the sea. A large moon in the sky. 

It's very easy to see why famous people used to hide out here. The Rolling Stones, all the gay Beats, the dude who played Rocky in the Rocky Horror Picture Show.  Enjoyed a "tajine" of chicken and olives. Thought about saving some of the olives to scare away beggars with, but I ate them. 

Back home, the elusive Spaniard had at last arrived. He was an artist and was with two more artists. They all make "mixed digital design" with "nature reflected in technology." So, rich parents. One was from Finland, the other from Canada. 

The Spaniard told an amazing story about meeting some of his countrymen on the plane here. On their phones, they were sharing pictures of cadavers with drugs in their bodies. Mule corpses. They wanted him to look, but he said he didn't like it. 

When they landed, they asked him to share a car with him, so he did, but instead of the hotel, they took him out to the countryside where they bought a giant brick of hashish (does it come in bricks?) and got high and drove suicidally. 

Then, he said, they took him here. Which is why he was so late. 

I told him I thought the story was going to end with him opening his jacket to show they had sewn hashish into his stomach. We all cracked up, and I went to bed. Finally someone laughed at one of my jokes! 

Traveler's Tales! There was, and there was not.  

Tomorrow, Fes!