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Mohamed, the cat, and the shawl

I have two starkly different impressions of the Fez medina, one magical and one exhausting. As we entered the vast walled city from the train station, with its 9,400 narrow alleyways, dusty and dark and winding and cool, I felt like I had been transported back into a medieval world, full of people in traditional Arab clothing, pushing their handcarts, working on their crafts, leading the occasional donkey, selling their wares. It was impossible not to get lost, but it was quiet, and the air was good as motorcycles are not allowed, and there was ventilation above our heads.


Howard had arranged for a guide for a few hours on our first full day. His name is Arabe, and he is a very knowledgeable, kind and patient older man who became an invaluable friend to us during our stay. He has a wife from a marriage arranged by his older sister that he says, with a smile, “worked out well.” They have two sons in university and one 12-year-old daughter. One of the sons is studying medicine and will become a doctor, inshallah.

He explained that there are many neighborhoods in the seeming disarray of the medina, each one of which has a bakery, a mosque, a madrassa, a water source and a rudimentary public hamman. It is usually organized around an open space where a specific craft material is being used -  copper, leather, wood. He said that behind the crumbling walls could be poverty or a very sumptuous home. It’s impossible to tell from the outside. It is incredible that they have been able to bring plumbing and electricity into this world. He warned us, however, how Moroccans are having to leave the medina because they can no longer afford the rents. Properties are being bought up by wealthy Europeans and North Americans and Middle Easterners.

He showed us the still functioning university, founded by a wealthy woman in the 8th century as a means of assuring herself a place in paradise. It still attracts students and visiting professors from all over the world. 

We visited a large tannery and watched young men lower themselves into vats of vinegar, water and pigeon poo to stomp on the hides to soften them. In the boiling sun, the pigeon poo smells overwhelming and stays in your nose long after the tannery is left behind.

Arabe showed us a building that was a typical inn during the Middle Ages. The ground floor was where the animals were stabled, and the upper floors were where the travellers stayed. As Fez was an important centre of commerce for traders from Timbuktu to the Andalusian peninsula, it welcomed people of many cultures and nationalities -Roman, Asian, Arab, African. It was a vibrant and diverse environment full of many languages and customs.

He showed us one of many ancient cedar doors still in use, but designed for a time when women were secluded in their homes. There were two iron knockers with different sounds, one for someone who she could allow to enter (her father, husband, uncle), and one that she wouldn’t answer. Women’s lives took place on the roofs, where they did domestic chores and chatted with other women across the rooftops. They only went out on the streets in the company of a male family member, including a son. Even today, women seem to socialize mainly with women and men with men. The cafes are always full of men only. The children are almost always with the women.

Arabe told us a story about Mohamed and a cat. Apparently while Mohamed was sleeping, the cat gave birth to a litter of kittens on his shawl. Rather than allow a servant to move the cat, he cut away the part of the shawl she was using and moved himself away so as not to disturb her. Therefore, cats are everywhere here in Fez, like elsewhere in Morocco. They are clean and healthy and allowed to roam all over. It is also worth noting that in all the laneways we trod through, full of garbage as the day progressed, we never saw a rodent.

On the second day that we arranged for Arabe to be with us, he took us to a number of workshops where people are still making beautiful things by hand with skills passed down through families for hundreds of years. Silver, wood, leather, rug weaving, embroidery, jewelry, furniture. Spaces where several people are creating art, hidden behind nondescript doorways. Walking past, we would never realize what was happening in there. A little cave where a man is baking round loaves of Moroccan bread in an open charcoal oven. 

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