Monday was my birthday, and no one in Morocco knew it. To celebrate, I took a couple of hours alone just floating through the back streets of Tangier…observing.
Looking at a window filled with photos of adorable little boys wearing fezzes and gauzy girls dressed like princesses, I realize why I like the display windows of family photographers throughout the world. They show the cultural ideals to the extreme — the way mothers dream their children might look — and provide insight.
I don’t know if men run the show here, but they outnumber women in the cafés 100 to 1. I want to take a skinny teenage girl’s photo. She giggles with her friends, shows me her wedding ring, and says her husband would have her head if she let me do that. Yesterday my local friend told me, “Moroccan men like their women meaty, not skinny. But that is changing with the young generation and television.”
Old men walk around like sages in robes with pointy hooded jellabas. It makes me wonder whether a teenager might say, “Dad, I know you wear it and Grandpa wore it, but I’m just not going to wear the pointy hood.” Seeing these old men in pointy, rough cloth hooded robes, I keep wanting to ask, “Where’s the gnome conference?”
Wandering through the market, I collect a collage of vivid images. A butcher has made a colorful curtain of entrails, creating mellow stripes of all textures. Camera-shy Berber tribeswomen are in town today selling goat cheese wrapped in palm leaves. A man lumbers through the crowd pushing a ramshackle cart laden with a huge side of beef. He makes a honking sound, and I think he’s just being funny. But it isn’t the comical beep-beep I’d make behind a wheelbarrow. Small-time shipping is his livelihood, the only horn he has is his vocal chords, and he is on a mission.
Wandering deeper into the back lanes, I see henna stencils in plastic wrap — a quick and modern way to stain the designs onto your hands. Another gnome walks by with a pointy hood and a long beard — half white and half hennaed red.
Tiny shops buzz with activity. One small place, no bigger than a small bedroom, has been divided horizontally with a second floor five feet high. It houses a rickety loom on each level, employing four men who wiggle in and out of their workstations each day… all their lives.
Around the corner, the click-click-click of a mosaic maker draws me into another tiny shop, where a man with legs collapsed under himself sits all day chiseling intentionally imperfect mosaic chips (as only Allah is perfect, the imperfection is considered beautiful) to fit a pattern for a commissioned work.
It’s pouring rain, water careens down the stepped brick lane, and, exploring on, I feel like a wet dog. Drenched, I follow a colorfully scarved women into a community bakery. She carries a platter of doughy loaves under a towel ready to be baked into bread. The baker, artfully wielding the broom-handled wooden spatula, receives her loaves. He hardly misses a beat as he pushes and pulls the neighborhood’s baked goods — fish, stews, bread, sunflowers, and cookies — into and out of his oven. After observing the baking action, I’m dry in minutes.
Spending my birthday in Tangier, barely seeing another tourist, I am struck by how the energy here just makes me happy. This Moroccan city is not pro-West or anti-West. It’s simply people making the best of their lives. This society seems to be growing more modern and affluent…and on its own terms. And it’s a joy to experience it.
Happy Birthday Rick! Mine’s on Sunday the 16th, and I wish I were in Tangier, but I just came back from Jordan and Lebanon and had just as much fun :) –djs
Happy Birthday, Rick! I hope you know how much pleasure you’ve given to so many people by teaching us the best ways to travel.
Contrasting the traditional jellibas with American fashion trends, “hoodies” seem to be all the rage now in the USA, especially in ski towns and among hip-hoppers. While a hooded sweatshirt wasn’t cool here 20 or 30 years ago, most anyone under 25 seems now to wear a hood as a fashion statement, if not as an article of protection from the elements. Fashions seem to come and go, quicker in some places than others. I wonder if jelliba “hemlines” have changed thru the centuries, although I imagine jelliba “bell-bottoms” didn’t develop in the 1960’s as they did on on pants. Happy Birthday, Rick, with wishes for a great next year!
Happy birthday, Rick! Here’s hoping you’ll have many more years travelling, exploring, and blogging about your experiences. And thanks for the many years of travel joy you’ve spread across the earth!
Since Rick ventures into non European, yet European influenced countries such as Morocco and Turkey, why not also Israel and Western Russia?
Wonderful account of your special day!
It is less that Morocco and Turkey were influenced by Europe, but more the other way around. Study your history books. Look at the architecture of Spain, or the oriental onion domes of the churches in Austria and remember that these countries were part of the Moorisch and Ottoman Empires. Even the Croissant owes itself to this. I like that the King of Morocco banned marriage until both partners were 18. Good move, and one the US could consider.
What a beautiful way to spend your birthday — filled with beautiful and memorable imagery. Thanks for sharing that gift with us.
Happy birthday, Rick. Your post was a birthday present to us all.
Happy Birthday. Glad you’re enjoying Morocco – how about going further south?
Rick did you notice that the men wearing the pointy hooded jellabas, were also wearing ‘Grocs’ on their feet. The ‘Grocs’ just didn’t seem right to me..
Or, walking through a crowded 1,000 year old market in Fes, everyone was wearing jellabas …but they were also all talking on their cell phones. Happy Birthday, Rick!
I hope you had a VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Thanks for the great detail of your trips.
I would rather not study Al Qaeda propaganda history books about the greatness of the Muslim Caliphate that ruled over Europe and will be re established by homicide bombers.
Glad you had such a happy birthday, Rick. And thanks for sharing it with us. Your blog is the first site I visit every day.
Good Golly Miss Molly!! Rick’s fans seem to outnumber his detractors 10 to 1. But if all you get are accolades, can you learn anything?
Happy birthday, my dear brother-in-law. Hope you are well and the sights are forever meaty.
The weather is good. People are friendly. Tangier is somewhat exotic. Where are the tourists? Is it the volcano? The tour? The economy? How about it Rick? Was the Spain/Portugal tour concept better than the Spain/Tangier trip?
Happy b-day Rick. Morocco, I wouldn’t travelling there one day. Food’s supposed to be really good.
Wouldn’t “mind” travelling there one day, that is.
As they say in Arabic: Eid milad sa’id, Rick. Tangier is an amazing city; I was there on a day trip from Tarifa during my journey through Spain back in October ’08. It was quite a blessing for you to wander the streets without constant harrasment from salesmen and beggers (I needed a guide to sheld me from that). As always your prose really paints the picture. Thanks!
Rick….great description of Tangier…I love the comment of feeling like a wet dog…I have been drenched doing your AMS walking tour with all the book pages soaked and falling to bits…walking at night in Paris one night….and I know the feeling…my waterproof jacket on and soaked to the skin…but I will soldier on as you did…..you have changed quite a bit on Tangier…..when I was there in 1998 your Spain book was suggesting pass on Tangier but go if you have to then go….I noticed in the last years you now like Tangiers..I was never going back after a tough day tour there (nice city but constant selling pressure) but now I would return ….no tour just on my own and wander and observe as you did on your birthday…good post Rick….Happy Birthday …
That was a nice point back there, Jo. It’s always good to attain some knowledge (and read history) before purporting to espouse thought. Whether or not people will heed your counsel is anyone’s guess….
Happy Birtday Rick. My birthday was also last Monday and it was spent in Salzburg on your Germany, Austria, and Switzerland tour.
Happy Belated Birthday Rick and many happy returns of the day!!!
Not really sure where “thinker” went to school, but my history books in Ohio back in the 1970’s, certainly weren’t presenting Al Queda agendas for Moslem domination of Europe. They simply presented the facts of history as it occurred. Methinks “thinker” needs to go back to school. :-))
Hi, Rick! Happppy belated birthday! Hope it was wonderful. Wish you many more. Happppy travels!:)
Happy Birthday Rick!. Mine’s on the 7th! I’ve been so inspired by your podcasts and book (europe through the backdoor) that I’ve decided to Europe Sept.