morocco: in retrospect by essaouira

sitting inside this capsule, i travel west towards my home.

home

i dont even know where that is anymore. the more i go on these trips the more distant everthing else becomes. morocco was such an unexpected turn in what i thought i knew. the sixth continent yet to visit and it only happens to be the tip of a big big sub-saharan iceberg. 7 years almost sailed by without giving this chunk of dirt a visit and its now that i realize i've missed so much. 

the cradle of civilization is what they call this place. maybe not morocco exactly but i'm definitely closer to it that i've ever been.  i'm not going to pretend to say that i've got this place figured out because i'm far from it. 

but what i will say is that from the minute of landing and interacting with the moroccans, i sensed something familiar. kind of like seeing that side of the family you vaguely remember as a kid

i was only in essaouira for a day and a half but things kind of clicked here. not exactly sure how or why it came to be.

i thought about the man who showed us his beautiful riads full of beautiful & magnificent hand woven rugs, i thought about magic greeting us at our hostel door in essaouira probably baked out of his mind struggling to check us in, i thought about the night i walked out of a random marrakeshi barbeshop having experienced one of the best shaves in my life while laughing and having a great time. 

all of these moments, they all congealed in essa.

to essa, the sleepy town that woke me.

a stranger: eid in marrakesh

it hasn't been but a few days since i last walked the streets of marrakesh during the holy day but the sights and smells of that day are still quite fresh in my mind. 

the day began with some tea and bread atop the hostel roof terrace. junice and i met up with stephanie and edith, two french girls we had the pleasure of befriending over the weekend. we quickly stuffed our faces with bread dipped in fresh apricot marmalade and walked downstairs. 

as we meandered through the dusty streets, i noticed something strange. the daily buzz of running children, motorcycle engines, local haggling, all of it was non-existent. the streets were all filled with an eerie calm. i looked at the time and it was 10:07am, which meant that the residents of marrakesh had already begun the slaughter. i'm not sure what exactly i was expecting, it was all just very strange.

by the time we got to souks market and medina square, we found it to be practically empty. no henna tattoo artists, no snake charmers, no monkey wranglers, all were gone for eid. we kept walking and spoke with a man we had met the previous night while i was getting my beard trimmed (an experience in it of itself). he recommended we check the tombs next to the palace walls, or something like that. we walked towards the direction he pointed us but when we got there we found it to be closed. 

it was a bummer at first, but we kept walking, aimlessly really. after a few beats though, we found ourselves in small corridors deep inside the unknown neighborhoods. this is the part where things really began to get interesting. 

as we walked through these long skinny corridors the light and mood of the place began to change. a teenager walk outside with a basket filled with freshly stripped sheep skin, wool intact; they were practically sweaters. he gave us a kind smile and quickly walked past us and headed to God knows where. i looked at the girls and even though they didn't really want to verbalize it, they knew what was up. deeper and deeper into this catacomb, we would see the same thing, but then it changed from sheepskins to stomachs, then limbs and eventually heads. 

from the corner of my eyes i would see doors opening and quickly closing as we walked past by them. "what was behind them!" was all i kept asking myself. my curiosity burned until i finally saw an opening. a little girl with mom opened a door and were about to quickly close it but i smiled, waived and yelled "salaam!" the mother slowly opened the door and returned the greeting. behind her, hanging from the roof, the fresh carcass of a naked sheep hung freely. the husband was right next to it and he waived at me with his butchers knife. i asked for permission to take a picture and he smiled and said of course. the girls were behind me the whole time and they were troopers, mostly. edith was probably the most visibly affected by the sight of the hanging carcass. 

we began to move our feet again. the streets now began to come alive as bikes quickly and sometimes dangerously zoomed by us as they carried their precious cargo of random sheep flesh - one bike actually crashed head on with a french or spanish woman. she was ok i think - outside homes teenage boys pulled out wood and old metal mattress frames and other types of metal amalgamations. soon after this was when the heads began to show up. once the fire was going, homes would bring out the heads of their former livestock and began placing them on the street fires to cook. it was definitely a sight to see. we came across a group of teenagers who were in charge of one of the many fires and asked them if we could take pictures, they said sure. 

we came across more of these as we walked and edith and stephanie's curiosity of the burning heads led us to ask a group of both teenagers and elders exactly whay they did with the heads. in a nutshell, this is what they told us: 

we cook the head, we crack the head, we eat the brains, we eat the tongue, and we eat whatever is in the middle. 

sounded wonderful to me

it was barely one in the afternoon when we got back to our hostel. everything was pretty much closed in marrakesh so i went to my room, laid in bed and reflected on the events that had just transpired. 

and i continue to still do so 

tight connections

friday, october 3rd, noon-ish. 

i'm currently on my third and final leg of my journey to marrakech, morocco and its been nothing but hail mary moves to get to where i'm at right now. yesterday began with me snoozing through all of my alarms and finally waking at around 8am for my 8:25am flight to philly; needless to say, i missed my flight. 

the panic light inside my head began to blink as i aimlessly scrambled through my room. i opened the laptop and began to lookup all east coast cities i could fly to that could take me to madrid with enough connection time to hop on my flight to marrakech. i began to loose hope until i saw an iberia flight from jfk to mad leaving at 8:55pm EST. and wouldn't you know it, there just so happened to be a flight with virgin america to jfk leaving at 10:30am. 

i burned through almost an hour on my web quest so by the time i showered and had all of my gear ready, it was 9:10am. pasadena to lax at that time is not the prettiest drive but luckily i bought myself a fastrak transponder from costco a few months ago so i was able to get to lax by 10:00am. another smart investment i made a few months ago was getting global entry, which included tsa pre-check and had me in and out of security in under 5 minutes; worth every penny! i got to gate 36 by 10:15am and just in time for final call. 

a few hours and several sam adams later, i landed at jfk and hit the ground running. we landed in terminal 4 and iberia was at terminal 7, by the time i got on the airtrain it was almost 7:20pm. i didn't have much cash on me and i knew there was a chase atm in jetblue's terminal 5. it was going to be tight but i quickly got off and made the long walk across the sky-walk towards terminal 5. i spotted the atm but not before also noticing the dunkin donuts halfway down the ticket counter. precious seconds ticked away as i contemplated my decision, but in reality it wasn't even one, deep down i knew i was going to get myself a coffee and bagel, how could i not.

i raced back up the ramp and hopped on the airtrain towards terminal 7. i finally reached the iberia counter and all i can think of is the warm round gooey goodness that's inside my bag. i inhale my bagel in seconds and dashed towards the iberia counter: it was 8:06pm and jose, the iberia agent told me the flight was closed for check-in. i took a long sip from my delicious dunkin donuts coffee and made my case. he must've felt sorry for me because next thing i know, he's calling the gates and after a few spanish exchanges with his supervisor, he gives me a boarding pass with a row all to myself. i thank him and again i'm off to the races, get through security and get to gate 4: it is 8:35pm. 

once boarded, all good, mellow was what i thought up until we began our taxi to the runway. the ground traffic in jfk was bananas so we spent an hour in a conga line waiting to take-off, which ate away at my tight connection in madrid. when we finally landed and deplaned, the time was 11:10am and the flight out to marrakech left at 12pm. i didn't have a boarding pass for my flight, which usually means you have to go past security and re-check at the ticket counter; i definitely did not have time for that. just my luck, i came across an iberia full service counter and spoke with a kind agent who helped me out and was able to print me my boarding pass and also give me a seat assignment. i thanked her very much and sped walk towards gate s23. it was 11:30 by the time i reached the gate and not only did i get there with enough time but my two friends were there waiting for me.

so now i'm back, here, where i first began flying across the straight of gilbratar unsure of what will happen in the next few moments and looking forward to the next set of tight connections. cheers

 

marrakesh impression

atop the roof terrace of the equity point hostel in marrakesh, morocco, the ladies of the kitchen staff bicker amongst each other and hurriedly shuffle across to get breakfast started. it was supposed to have been ready 40 minutes ago but apparently someone took the terrace keys last night and forgot to drop them off at the downstairs lobby. 

it hasn't been a full 24 hours since i made landfall but marrakesh's charm has already begun to take a strong hold. 

i'm not quite sure when it started

maybe it happened during our drop off, when our taxi left us on the outskirts of the medina and a gentle giant appeared pushing a crate on wheels. he asked us where we were going and offered to carry our roller bags and lead the way. 

it probably happened during our walk around the market square as a man approached me and had a snake wrapped around my neck while somehow making me feel safe next to a pair of lethal moroccon cobras.

also, the man with the toothless smile and shriveled hand might've played a big part if only he didn't tell me that he had leprosy in the hand i that i just shook.

nah, it must've been when we rolled up to one of the many food shacks outside souks market and literally came head to head with goats and lambs, and shortly after their tongues and brains.

to tell you the truth, my head is still spinning by marrakesh's hustle and flow. there is no denying that the people of this city are hustling, and they're doing it hard. but underneath all of that, the human element is very much so alive in the sense that the smile and kind eyes that first approached you never fade; they remain. even when they try and insist that you really need, YOU NEED to buy a black rock that can only found in the atlas mountains.