Morocco - day three
Sunday 4th June
We have a rather dry �continental’ breakfast in the hotel restaurant with two Congolese gentlemen (at least, that is what their shirts said) and an Arab accompanied by two women in full black veils. I wonder, could they both be his wives? The pastries taste synthetic, and as they hit my stomach provoke a flurry cramps. Oh gawd, I have the shits!
Not to worry, today is the day we hit the Medina or Old Town properly, this is the old town and the bit that most people come to see. It is meant to be one of the most perfectly preserved medieval Arabic towns. We take another 70 pence �petit-taxi’ to Bata, where we got the tickets for the gig yesterday. After getting the tickets for tonight’s concert we walk round the corner to Bab Boujoud, the main gate into the Medina. Through the gate there is an open area lined with tea shops, then which narrows into a two metre wide lane, with buildings stretching up three or four stories.
Street in the Medina, and my thumb
The walls are lined with small shops selling tourist bits and bobs – Fez china, lights, curly toed shoes, jewellery, lamps and carpets. Yes, carpets. It is my aim to take a carpet home with me – without getting ripped off. A lofty aim indeed. I’m not going to get even a mint tea unless I find an ATM. Such are the limits of the material world. Having said that, it occurs to me that having no money is an ideal way to visit a carpet shop. �Sir, you want a carpet.� �Yes, just looking though.�
We are ushered into the shop and offered tea or coffee: �Sir every carpet tell a story… Berber girls, they make carpets for their husbands, for their wedding� I look at the beautiful geometric designs, but can’t make head or tale of any story. It’s either very abstract or they must use some hidden symbolism.
We head off back in to the Medina. Ah, there’s a barbers – an hour later we’re out and I have a Moroccan hairdo. Perhaps I will be taken for a wandering Paul Bowles-style existentialist. I certainly feel a bit like Port Moresby, the character who dies of a gippy tummy in The Sheltering Sky. We find a dusty museum down a series of empty streets and I immediately find the loo. Back into the narrow streets and we run into a restaurant sign, and then the restaurant itself.
Alastair somehow remembers the name of a museum he had visited on his first trip to Morocco. The Musee Nejjarine des Arts et Metiers du Bois, a restored merchant’s house is indeed filled up with beautiful wooden arts and crafts. Now, it’s time to go back to the room for a rest, before heading off for supper and tonight’s show.
The gig – Za Ondekoza, Tambours de Tokyo �Running, beating and dancing on the earth.� – is great. The team of about 10 have some great sounding drums, some huge ones sound like thunder whilst the smaller ones can sure pound out an insistent beat. The hypnotic and solemn rhythms are a punctuated with some clowning with pop guns and catching balls with a stick. Ah ha, don’t get too stuck into your �musique sacree’ guys – a bit of levity is good too, they seem to be saying. Later one of the women members of the troop plays the �koto’, the Japanese zither. The generous space between the notes once again allows us to rest before the high energy finale. Somewhere in the middle of the concert, some of the men return to the stage having taken off their pyjama uniform and continue to perform in sumo-style pants made from a length of cloth. Two women in headscarf’s sitting near me leave soon after this. I wonder if their propriety has been offended.
The Tokyo Drummers
Back at the hotel, we decide to go for a beer in the hotel bar. The room is smoky and half filled with local revellers, we are the only tourists. From the back wall a keyboard is blasting our loud Arabic music. We move into the quieter half of the bar. Opposite me, in the corner, a grey haired man is entertaining two plump ladies in revealing, sparkly costumes. Half way though our second beer the music becomes incredibly loud and people start dancing in the main room. Almost as suddenly as it started, the music stops and the bar is closing. The women in the corner pull out black djbellas and pull them over their sequinned dresses. I look up and notice a small video camera in the corner of the room – it must overshoot the party immediately below. Behind the pillar next two me two men sidle up and start making deals – also out of the view of the camera. Alastair says �This place is a genuine �den of iniquity’.� It’s hard to disagree.