1001 Minus 997 Nights - Prelude and Stave the First

Prelude



It's 3 PM, local time, on Monday, May 10, 2010. My flight out of Ibn Battouta International Airport has been canceled by a natural disaster, and I'm flat out of dirhams. Why can't I still be munching on olives? And more importantly, how am I supposed to get home on time?



Stave the First - Another World



It all started out innocuously enough. We boarded our Ryanair flight bound for the northern Moroccan coastal city of Tangiers on Friday, settling comfortably into the exit row seats to take advantage of the extra leg room that they provided. My friend Nick and I's seatmate, a long-haired, environmental educator from Colorado named Andrew, spent most of the flight talking with us about our various adventures in California and our plans for the weekend. Hunger kicked in about midway through the flight, amd I succumbed to the $4 pringles being offered by Ryanair, devouring them ravenously during a rather jarring landing onto Moroccan soil. We disembarked directly onto the tarmac, descending the exterior stairs off of the plane as hot gusts of wind barreled across the airstrip, giving all of us that tastefully disheveled hair that is prone to happen under such conditions. All we needed were sunglasses and some stern looking bodyguards, and we'd be well on our way to VIP status. Our group, which consisted of Nick, Alexei, Stef, and I passed through customs along with Andrew, his brother Joe, and his sister Sarah. It turned out that they hadn’t arranged a place to stay, so they decided to follow us to the Hotel Continental, were we would be staying the weekend.



We went out in front of the airport to the area where all the taxis were lined up. A sign clearly displayed the rates charged to arrive at a certain destination, so we confidently marched up to the waiting drivers. I began in Spanish, betting that I would have better luck than resorting immediately to English. This driver would have none of it. He offered a price that was 1.5 times the listed price, and would not budge one inch. Even though we all knew that we were being gypped (a recurring theme for the rest of our trip), we were eager to just get to the hotel. We agreed to the inflated price, which still worked out to less than 15 euros, and started the drive into Tangiers. The airport is located on the outskirts of town, and all you can see for miles around it is a dry expanse of windswept shrub-land. However, as we neared Tangiers, dusty tracts of soil gave way to dozens of unfinished concrete buildings. Some of them had signs stating that construction had begun in 1995, yet there they lay, skeletons rising a hundred feet above the crowded arteries heading downtown. After visits to several large cities in the developing world, including Guatemala City, Managua, and Tangiers, I'm struck by the lack of glass and steel in the built environment, something that we take for granted in the United States. Civil engineering related musings aside, five minutes later we arrived at the sea wall by the port. Just as we stepped out of the cab, we were accosted by the first of many touts (fake guides who give unrequested tours and then expect payment at tour's end) that we would encounter during the course of weekend. Even as we waved him away in three different languages, he followed us all the way to the the Hotel Continental. We had to enter the building to finally lose him. We checked in at the front desk, taking in all the details of this favorite haunt of Kerouac, Burroughs, and Francis Ford Coppola. As intricate and beautiful as certain elements of the interior were, ripe with murals and beautiful Arab-styled sitting rooms, there was definitely something about the ambiance that suggested a glory-filled past that had now faded into a languishing present, all the while keeping watch over the bustling port from the cliffs above. As we settled into our rooms, the minarets' evening call to prayer echoed in through our open windows. There was absolutely no mistaking that we were no longer in Spain.



After a fruitless direction-getting experience at the front desk of the hotel, we decided to just head out to explore the Medina (old town). Incredibly, the guide that had followed us there was waiting for us outside of the hotel, almost an hour later! We quickly ditched him and headed out past the hotel gates. Fortunately for the directionally challenged, in the Medina, one can always arrive at the Hotel Continental or the beach by walking downhill, so it was a simple matter of trekking uphill to ensure that we made our way into the heart of the Medina. We passed by a slew of clothing stores, currency exchanges, diseased alley cats (one of which literally was curling up to die in the middle of the road), honking motorcarts, hijab-wearing women, tacky souvenir stores, and cafes. All of these cafes were filled with men enjoying a mint tea, facing outwards towards the street. Clearly, the whole institution is set up to facilitate conversation and people watching, and we would learn over the course of the weekend that this "Moroccan whiskey", as they call mint tea, is a beverage of extreme importance in Morocco. We stopped at a random cafe and went inside for our first drinks in the land of dirhams, and for the price of a tinto de verano in Madrid, we got two glasses of incredibly delicious fresh-squeezed orange juice and two shots of some pretty serious espresso. We toasted our safe arrival in Tangiers, before heading back out into the grimy streets to continue exploring our new surrounding. Several blocks later, we stumbled into an enclosed market with stands filled with fresh fruit, freshly-killed chickens, and, most importantly, mountains and mountains of olives of every variety under the sun. We stopped at the first olive stall and asked for a mixed bag of olives, which the cashier happily shook together for us. In one of the first of many adventures in language this weekend, marked by a mish-mash of varying fluidity composed of English, Spanish, French, and Arabic, we thanked him for carrying such amazing produce. That's actually a lie; all we did was stick some of the olives in our mouths and grin like idiots as we enjoyed their meaty, garlicky deliciousness. Knowing that it would come in handy, Nick somehow asked the shopkeeper how to say "thank you" in Arabic, and thus, we learned shukran. Already having sampled two stores' worth of Moroccan munchies, we barely made it another block before the smell of fresh baked pan au chocolat lured us into a boulangerie. For just 2 dirham (the equivalent of roughly a US quarter), one could enjoy a warm, flaky chocolate filled crossaint. In the name of cultural immersion, I ate three of them in as many minutes. More than content, we left the bakery and continued to munch on our olives as we made our way back down the hill that descends to the sea, the way before us drenched in the smells of nearby spice shops. Never before have I seen such piles of freshly ground turmeric, cayenne, cumin, cinnamon bark, nutmeg, and anise, all combining to yield a dizzying bouquet of smells so potent that in my rapturous enjoyment of this olfactory delight, I was almost run over by a taxicab.



I had read earlier online that every evening, groups of Tangerines (yes, that is what you call residents from Tangiers, and yes, I did see a Tangerine eating a Tangerine) head down to the beach to play fútbol. In hopes of finding a game to join, I walked down to the seaside, only to be greeted by sand that looked like something out of a desert, undulating gently out to the port on the western horizon. The first game that I approached was a no-go, despite the fact that I used the near universal gesture for kicking a football in an attempt to communicate my desire to play. Not easily deterred, I went up to another group and asked in Spanish if they would allow me to join them. The third guy in their group spoke Spanish, and he smilingly assented to my request. Lacking anything better, they all called me "Español" as I dropped right into the fray. As I ran in my blue-jeans up and down the shore, splashing through waves, and shifting back to defense on the sand, I made a mental note to enjoy the simple pleasure that I was so lucky to be experiencing. Here I was, in a country where I didn't speak the language, playing a game of pickup with a group of guys that I had never met before, having the time of my life. We were taking part in a ritual that knows no boundaries on this earth; we pushed up field, traded passes, and set up one goal after another. Through it all the evening sun was setting in the distance, its waning rays lighting up the skyline with a warm orange glow.

Tired, sweaty, and smiling like the proverbial kid on Christmas, I rejoined the group for the walk back to the Medina. We were making our way down the beachfront boulevard when we happened upon a boiled snail stand being run out of the bed of a pickup truck. This man had two immense pots filled to the brim, one with fresh-out-of-the-pot snails, and the other with discarded shells. It was like sunflower seeds, except for the fact that instead of a kernel there was a deceased gastropod. Sensing our interest, the patron of the stand handed us a small bowl with four boiled snails, accompanied with an ebullient and soul-warming spiced broth that I imagine would ward of the combined effect of a dementor attack, a failed midterm, and a hangover. Tentatively at first, then with the gusto owed such a culinary treat, we extracted the juicy bits of meat from the shells with toothpicks. And yes, they did taste like chicken. As we finished, we moved to pay the man for such a wonderful treat, but in a simple, graceful gesture, he moved his hand to his heart and bowed his head slightly, refusing to accept any payment. We might not have had spoken language to understand one another, but such magnanimity transcends verbal communication.



As we made our way back up the hill to the Medina at dark we had a chuckle as we passed a hotel named "Pension de Detroit", and snagged a date or two from a stand on the way. The substantial medjools did not disappoint, as they joined the growing menu that we had been accumulating in our constant grazing. We wandered for a bit through the warren-like alleyways of the Medina when a man emerged from a nook and started telling us about his restaurant, which he repeated again and again as being featured in “The Planet” (likely Lonely Planet, and his restaurant, who's name I never caught, is likely Restaurant Le Kasbah). When we initially declined his offer, he started complaining about the "paranoia" that Americans appear to exhibit in their serial mistrust of anyone who offers them anything here. He very well may have a point, what with all of us tourists reading the same guide books, all of which state not to trust any Moroccan man who approaches you with an offer on the street. This is not the only handicapping effect produced by tourist guide books; another more troubling one is the tendency to mistrust or avoid any place not listed in the guide book, all out of fear or lack of knowledge. I know that there were times when our group passed by a cafe, disqualifying it solely on the grounds that it "wasn't in the guide". It was an automatic behavior, one that needed to be constantly checked in order to ever take a chance on a new place. As much wonder as there is in finding a recommended place in all its celebrated glory, there is obviously the intoxicating thrill of unearthing the proverbial diamond in the rough. All these thoughts in mind, we finally decided to go back to his restaurant and give it a try. We enjoyed a fixed price menu composed of harira (oily, thick Moroccan soup), vegetable and chicken tagine, pastilla (a triangular pastry filled with curried chicken and covered with cinnamon and powdered sugar), and of course, those little balls of semolina, couscous. We closed our meal with some unrelentingly sweet mint tea, accompanied by Andrew, Joe, and Sara, who had ended up at the same restaurant that evening. We exchanged stories of that day's adventures, then rolled back to the hotel in a pack of seven, full, happy, and ready for a well earned night of rest.



To see how the rest of the adventure unfolds, tune in again for Stave the Second - Dirhams, Nickels, and Dimes. Coming soon...