The call to prayer is supposed to kick off at the same time every day (I think) but it kind of starts whenever the guy gets up the minaret stairs. In Bosnia I got to climb up one, and I had to crawl on my hands and knees. The stairs were so old and so high. I got kind of dizzy spiraling around. It was interesting to picture that going on all over the city of Fes every morning for hundreds of years.
Including this morning; the muezzin closest to the Riad Louna must have gotten an early start, maybe a cat woke him up, because he did his religious cock-a-doodle-doo before five. Someone's always first, then you can hear the others crowing out across the skyline. It's like the opening of a market, and it's loud.
No rest for the wicked.
It's pleasant, though. Better than those lazy bells we have in Christian lands. Funny to think about bells being a kind of automation that put singing priests out of business. Good morning, Father. I'm here to call people to morning prayer. Sorry, Brother, you've been replaced by a machine. Ding dong dell, motherfucker, go learn to dig or beg.
The Call to Breakfast wouldn't be ready for a few hours and Fes is no place to be outside in before the sun is up and the cops have had their Honey Nut Cheerios, so I lounged on a giant couch in the courtyard and read more of Between Meals. Not a good idea to read about food when you're hungry, but the author is very funny.
This was going to be a day where I made everyone angry, because I had scheduled myself to see Volubilis, an old Roman town full of standing structures and original mosaics. Angry, because I'd figured out the bus and train schedules.
The riad wanted eighty to take me, and the touts outside told me the riad was a ripoff and I should let their cousin drive me for sixty, but by taking the train and two taxis, I would be paying about five dollars. And there wouldn't be any detours to any wooden spoon "museums" or rug-weaving "demonstrations."
It all made me feel like a thrifty Roman senator. Hale and well met, Bargainus! How goes the journey to Volubilis? It goes well, Cicero, but can you lend me your chisel? Mine has gone blunt from hammering out coupons from this week's tablets.
I wanted to load myself up on cheese and charred bread before I left, so I watched the dawn play backgammon with the palm leaves until everything was the color of fruit juice. Birds I never saw chirped and held high carnival above. It sounded pleasant, but I'm sure if we had translations of birdsong, it would just be: Wanna fuck? Why not? Look at my chest? You don't like it? Fucking lesbian. You? Wanna fuck? Dude, get those berries out of your fucking beak before I flutter all over your face.
I heard teapots banging around upstairs, so I washed my face in the weird little cavern they call a shower (it's one of those European-style things where they just jam a spout in the middle of the wall, so when you bathe, the toilet and sink get all wet. It's like you bring everything into the tub with you).
Went upstairs and Moha was pouring mint tea for a couple of Spaniards. They always pour really high here, so it makes that impressive long stream from pot to glass. It also makes the surface all foamy, and they have the expression, "If there are white bubbles, there is good tea."
Moha was the dude who collected me on arrival day. His name is short for Mohammad, which I guess is obvious, but it's not something I'd heard before. I reckon an American Mohammad would call himself Moe or Ham. Something not quite cricket about ending on a vowel like that. It sounds like a museum.
Sneaked a bunch of Laughing Cow cheese into my bag, drank a dram of coffee and headed for the train station. It was too far to walk, so I did the "Choo choo!" thing in a cab and got there for under a dollar. Very nice, modern train station, but the people would rather die than use the automatic ticket machines.
The line had about a hundred people in it, but I walked over to the machine and got a ticket in about thirty seconds. I think it's just a matter of the machines being unfamiliar to them. Or maybe it's the same anti-tech solidarity that keeps bells out of the minarets.
I had been tipped off to spring for a first-class ticket, a difference of about fifty cents, and I'm glad I did. It means you get a seat. Second class is like a Simpson's-style exaggeration with people crammed in, hanging on the sides of the train and farm animals looking terrified in their arms.
Really felt like a wartime evacuation from a movie, but it was just a normal commute in Fes. First class was all foreigners who'd read the same blogs I had, I reckon.
Short trip, but I finished Between Meals. The "read twenty books" goal of this trip is ahead of schedule. Really happy about it.
You get off in a town called Meknes. For some reason I had the phrase "Can I get a witness?" in my head. Is it a chorus from a pop song? I replaced witness with Meknes, so I was making myself crazy with "Can I get a Meknes?" I become my own enemy at such times. Tried to push it out by crooking my finger and calling it the Mek Ness monster.
Worked out a cab to the ruins. Dude told me he'd even drive me back to Fes after. His price was dope, so I took it. We zipped right over there passing the Holy Town of Moulay Idriss on the way. Awesomely scenic pile of colorful Lego blocks on a hill. It's apparently got some great old gates and mosques, but it was "closed" on this day.
The sheep-slaughtering part of Eid al Adha was over, but the "take a couple weeks off" part was still in effect, and this particular city was very religious. So, they're less open to some dude from the Land of Ronald McDonald flying his drone over there to snap shots of their relics. I made do with a nice view of the exterior. It's the top image on this page.
Moulay Idriss was built with material from the Roman town of Volubilis, a few minutes away. I mean, why not? The Romans left all this marble and stone laying around when they fucked off back to fountain-town. They, the Romans, had mostly been here to gather wild animals to ship back to Rome to be killed in the Colosseum.
And I'm sure they had plans for taxing the locals, but they proved unruly. That's been something about this place, the invaders don't stick around too long. The Romans were only here for about two-hundred years, that's an eye-blink, or just enough time for a foamy cup of mint tea. The French were here for less than fifty. The only one that stuck was the Islamic invasion when the dudes came over from Syria and stayed forever.
Really the only thing the Romans did here was give the indigenous people the nickname of 'Berber' which means, of course, barbarians.
In any case, since nobody gave a shit about them, the town was left alone, (when the useful building material wasn't being hauled away), and there are some incredible standing structures and mind-blowing mosaics. I was very moved by them, because they were, what do you call it, in situ.
Like, they haven't been restored or recolored or anything. They're just where they were two thousand years ago. It was awesome. They have a little rope to suggest you not stomp on them, but it would have been easy to just snap off one of the tiles and make an earring out of it or something. Or to spill your raspberry Jamba Juice on it and fuck it up forever.
Something about the sort of permanent impermanence of them affected me. It made me think of all the poets and painters and historians over the centuries who loved to sit in ruins and be inspired by the grandeur of man's ambitions. John Ruskin and the Stones of Venice. Wordsworth and Tinturn Abbey. That kind of thing.
Maybe it was because there was almost no one there and I was free to sit and experience them all day if I wanted to without a guide bossing me around or picnic people harshing my mellow.
It was, however, blazing hot, and I thought of the bit in Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" where the rhyme goes, "Two little Indian boys sitting in the sun. One got frizzled up, and then there was one." Except there was just me, so if I got frizzled up, there'd be no one to pay the taxi. So, I headed back there.
He was having a high old time with the guys at the pay station, but he threw back his tea and clapped them all on the shoulder and took me back to Fes. His English was poor, but he was able to help me understand that all the crooked, stunted little trees around were olives.
Roman ruins on a hill surrounded by olive groves. The stuff of Catullus.
That's a joke. He's the porny one, I think.
The stuff of Ovid.
The stuff of Ovid.
Easy ride back, about half an hour of speeding through some winding roads and dodging the fuzz. When we got close to the medina, he asked for more money. They all do this. They agree to take you to X, but when they get to V, they're like, "Yikes, I didn't know traffic would be this bad. We're close, but the price I quoted you isn't going to get us there."
They usually make this appeal in a place inconvenient for walking. They kind of blackmail you. I don't appreciate it. It makes you not want to trust anyone. I usually pay it, since it's like, "Big deal, you're extorting an extra thirty cents out of me," but for some reason I was sort of fed up. I just got out on the highway and started walking.
I could kiiind of see a minaret in the distance that kiiind of looked like the one near the one near one close to the Bab Boujloud.
The side of the road was defined by a giant wall, so I hugged it and walked minaret-ward. He was trying to get me to get back in the cab, but I ignored him. He was a dirty rotter. Though, I suppose it's cultural. Like, in the "West," it's awful to change the deal after you've agreed on a price, but here I think it's just part of the deal. Like, everything is "ish" and there's no shame or harm in trying to squeeze a few more cents out at the end. It's expected and not rude. I think. I was just over it.
I ducked into the first crack in the wall, and it revealed this amazing open plaza with stone arches and gateways. People were setting up some kind of local market, the kind of thing where someone puts down a sheet and dumps all the stuff they've found on the side of the road and hopes they have just what someone needs.
It kind of felt like the stuff that's in homeless people's shopping carts back home. It was like hoarders being ordered by the court to clean out the last decade's collections. Broken tools and dirty trays and wires and the keypad half of a flip phone.
One guy had his stuff arranged as meticulously as an I Spy puzzle. There was no way he was going to let me take a picture, so I didn't try. I loved that I got to see it. It was an interesting contrast to have seen a dead civilization and then this "living" one.
Followed a donkey loaded with Evian to an area I recognized and found the Blue Gate and the Corridor of Herbs and the Riad Louna. Once you have a sense of direction, the city is pretty thrilling.
Moha was on his phone in the street, and he gave me a high five without looking at me. It was really sweet. Dropped off my camera and books and went over to the Cafe Clock for dinner.
There, in the sitting room, a band of five old fat ladies played the drums and shook these crazy metal spoon-looking things. It was awesome. People stood up and clapped and sang. The cafe has four floors, and people were hanging over the balconies to shout and cheer. They danced and threw their straw wrappers in the air.
It was like the debauchery of Ancient Rome.
Heart shots
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