Moroccan Travelogue, Part 2

Tuesday, March 20, 2003

It seemed that the wind had diminished a tiny bit, or was that just wishful thinking? The palm trees still seemed to be bowed in prayer, but now they would occasionally aright themselves like an interval between rakats.

The first ferry crossing of the day was scheduled to depart at 7:00. I arrived at the port at 6:30. I saw a number of weary eyed Moroccans I recognized from the previous day. They must have spent the night on benches inside the port. Two minutes after I sat down, the departure monitor flashed "CANCELLED." Algeciras just wouldn't let me go.

Jeff and Marty showed up a few minutes later and resumed their card game. I met a couple of college guys from Washington D.C., so the American contingent was growing. I decided that the moment the next ferry got canceled, I was leaving. I'd take a train to Granada, 6 hours away, and then come back after the windstorm was over.

At fifteen minutes till departure time, the boarding pass booth opened and people started lining up. I got my boarding pass and headed in the direction of the ferry. It was a relief to finally be leaving Algeciras, but I was a bit uneasy about the wild ride that was sure to come. If it was unsafe for any of the other ferries to make the crossing, why was this one being allowed to leave? Maybe there was only one ferry captain they could find who was willing to accept the bonus and attempt the crossing, or maybe this was the only ferry that was fully insured.

I started walking down a long concourse behind an old Moroccan man wearing a skullcap and walking with a cane. Behind me were about twenty other passengers. We all assumed the old Moroccan knew where he was going because he was old and Moroccan. Logical, right? After several minutes of walking, we reached the end of the concourse and the old man stopped. The rest of simultaneously froze. The old man turned around with a lost look on his face and the rest of us started laughing at ourselves. We had to retrace our steps before finding the right concourse. We didn't let the old man lead.

We found the ferry, but still were not allowed to board because they were waiting for a clear weather report. After half an hour of standing in a cold concourse, everyone returned to the waiting area that had been our home for the past two days. Now I was really stuck. My ticket had been replaced with a boarding pass that was good only for the time and date stamped on it.

At least another half-hour went by and then chaos erupted. People were walking rapidly in all directions and then seemed to divide into two groups going in opposite directions. This is when I wished I had reviewed my French notes before leaving home. I had three semesters of French in school and tested out of a fourth and now all I could remember was "Ou est la bibliotheque?" I didn't think asking where the library was would help get me on the ferry. Speaking neither Arabic nor French, I picked a group and followed it.

Luckily, I picked the right one. It turned out that since I had a boarding pass, I needed to return to the concourse by going through the exit; everyone else needed to go to the boarding pass booth. An Oriental Canadian who had just shown up, made the mistake of following me, trusting in my two days of ferry waiting experience. He wasn't able to go through the exit and I never saw him on the ferry.

The crossing to Morocco was surprisingly calm. The wind continued to blow, but the waves were barely whitecapping. There was some rocking and swaying, but no more than I would have expected had there been no wind at all.

Before docking in Tangier, I asked Jeff and Marty if I could stick with them at least until we got to the train station. After reading what Let's Go had to say about Tangier, I was feeling some anxiety about being there alone. It's no longer filled with spies and smugglers, but it's still a pretty rough town and tourists are eyed like sheep ready to be sheared. Let's Go recommends getting out as quickly as possible.

When I stepped off the gangplank in Tangier, Morocco, I stepped on African soil for the first time. The steps that followed would be quick ones. Jeff had read all of the same warnings I had and he wanted to move fast. Once we reached the port entry, the gauntlet began. We were swarmed by faux guides. These are men who want to be paid to serve as your guide, although they don't tell you that. They claim that they simply want to help you and that they don't ask for anything in return. I would learn later, however, that if you make the mistake of answering any of their friendly questions, they will immediately give you information and then expect payment for the service they have provided. "What are you looking for? The train station? It's right over here. I'll take you there. Now how about a gift for me?" These faux guides, along with other similar hustlers, would be a recurring nuisance in every town in Morocco.

In the course of a hundred yards, at least six faux guides approached us. They tried to convince us they were licensed guides by flashing what looked to me to be drivers' licenses. For all I know, they could have been their YMCA membership cards.

For some reason, most of these faux guides focused their attentions on Jeff, which was fine with me. Jeff quickened his pace, kept his head down, and repeatedly said, "No . . . No . . . No." I thought his caution crossed over into self-defeating paranoia. You would have thought the faux guides wanted to capture our very souls. One of them pointed to the port station and told us that we should visit the tourist information booth inside. That sounded like a pretty good idea to me. We could obtain a detailed map of Tangier, which none of us had, and we could have all of our questions answered pertaining to train and bus schedules; but because a faux guide suggested it, Jeff said, "No." Next, a faux guide pointed to an official money exchange office. All three of us needed to exchange money and I told Jeff I thought we should stop. "No." By this point, we were practically running.

Next, we came upon the state-owned bus station. It offers bus service slightly nicer (and more expensive) than the private bus companies, which share a separate station. It's the bus service most tourists use. Jeff and Marty were wanting a bus to Meknes and I wanted a bus to Fèz. We went inside to check the schedule and we were again approached by a faux guide. He spoke perfect English and was asking us where we wanted to go. Jeff wouldn't even look at him; he got in line to ask the man behind the desk. I couldn't understand why Jeff was being so obstinate when this man could clearly answer all of our questions, so I decided on my own to break our silence. I told the faux guide we wanted the times for Meknes and Fèz and he told me they were the same bus and it would be leaving at 3:00. Still, Jeff refused to look at him and remained in line. When he got up to the desk, he found that the bus employee did not speak English. He spoke a little bit of Spanish, so in rough Spanish, Jeff asked him what we wanted and the man told him it was the same bus and it would leave at 3:00. The suspected faux guide stretched out his arms in exasperation as if to say, "See, why wouldn't you listen to me?" I was wondering the same thing. He never asked us for money, but he was still trying to talk to us when we shot out of the bus station, so maybe he just hadn't reached the "gift phase" yet.

We didn't want to wait for the bus, so we found a taxi driver who, after a lengthy negotiation, agreed to take us to the train station for three euros. We arrived to find that a group of foul-mouthed Brits whom we had seen on the ferry had beaten us there, which was pretty impressive. The train we wanted had just left and the next one wouldn't leave for hours. Also, they wouldn't accept euros at the train station, so we couldn't buy tickets. Hmmm . . . maybe it would have been a good idea to have gotten Moroccan money as soon we got off the ferry.

Our next move was to try the private bus station. A taxi took us there, but before going in, we walked around until we found an ATM. A Moroccan man spotted us and stopped to chat. Jeff, of course, was leery, but Marty talked to him. He didn't appear to be a faux guide, but merely wanted to be friendly. However, as we were saying good-bye, he did offer to sell us jelabas.

Although I didn't know what they were called, I had already noticed people wearing jelabas. It would be pretty hard not to. Jalabas are traditional long hooded robes worn by Moroccan men. They look identical to the robes worn by Jedi Knights. Walking down a street in Tangier and seeing men with their hoods pulled up to shield them from the rain, you would have thought you were on a Star Wars casting stage. Marty said, "The Jedis are out in force keeping the peace." The Moroccan man assured us that we would get a lot of respect from Moroccans if we would all wear jelabas. I thought, "Attention, yes. Respect? Not so much." We might as well wear signs that read, "Dumb tourist with money."

The bus station offered too many choices and too little English. There were at least eight different bus companies and eight different ticket windows. We were clueless. Again, I decided to risk talking to one of the friendly Moroccans loitering around. He took us to the right window and helped us buy tickets. Like the guy at the first bus station and the guy at the ATM, he didn't ask for anything in return. I decided Morocco wasn't a country filled with hustlers, but rather was a hospitable country filled with friendly people. I look back on this bit of naivete almost with wistful nostalgia.

We had a 45-minute wait ahead of us and we decided to spend it in the bus station café bar. Jeff suggested ordering Moroccan tea, which seemed preferable to the bottle of water and community drinking glass we saw sitting on the bar. We watched two different Moroccans fill the glass, toss it back, and then replace it for the next person. That made me thankful that our tea was served boiling hot.

Moroccan tea, sometimes referred to as Moroccan whiskey, is almost as popular as Coke in America. It is ordinary green tea served in a tall glass with lots of sugar and a massive wad of mint leaves floating at the top. I'm not a big tea drinker, but I thought it was wonderful. My first moment of enjoyment in Morocco was sitting in that café in Tangier sipping my tea. I had no idea that stuff would be poured down my throat everywhere I went in Morocco.

The room was filled with Moroccan men and we turned to see what it was they were all watching on TV with such intensity. It was a news show in Arabic and I joked that it was probably Al-Jazeera. Well, it was Al-Jazeera. Had war broken out? No, but they were flashing pictures of Bush and Colin Powell on the screen and I doubted that the commentary was flattering. The three of us agreed that if war with Iraq was starting, it would be wise to finish our tea and hop on the next ferry back to Spain.

I had originally started thinking about going to Morocco back in January, but put it off because of the impending war. In the event of war with Iraq, the last place I wanted to be was in a country that's 99% Muslim. I had originally predicted the first bombs would drop during the third week of January, but after another month went by, I decided Bush would never get off the pot. If I kept waiting for his tough talk to turn into actions, I never would get to leave. So I bought a plane ticket thinking, "What are the chances of war breaking out during the one week that I'm in Morocco?"

It was a five-hour bus ride to Meknes. (Although I had originally planned on going directly to Fèz and bypassing Meknes, I decided I'd prefer to stick with Jeff and Marty rather than arrive in Fèz late at night.) Every seat was filled and there was only one other non-Moroccan; he was a Chinese guy I recognized from the ferry.

For a Muslim country, Morocco is relatively liberal in its religious attitudes and this could be seen in the variety of dress I saw among the female passengers. There were women wearing long dresses and hijabs that completely hid their hair; there were other women wearing scarves that partially obscured their heads; and there was an attractive college student wearing make-up, styled hair, and Western clothing. Earlier, I had seen women wearing black burkas that covered their entire bodies except for a small slit for their eyes.

Although everyone could plainly see that I was a foreigner, no one stared, which was refreshing. What really struck me as odd, however, was the silence. There were over forty people on that bus, and not a single person was talking. That was too much even for me. I tried to strike up a conversation with Marty, who was sitting beside me, but he was extremely tense and seemed to be afraid of breaking the silence. He would only give one-word responses to my questions and then he pressed his lips together and would only shake or nod his head.

The view out the window was nice, almost tranquil. For the first hour, we tracked the beach as we headed west. It was a struggle to stay awake on that silent bus as I watched the waves roll in and out over the sand and I savored the aroma of mint still on my breath. When I wasn't looking at sand, I was looking at lush green fields. That's not what I expected to find in Morocco. I didn't expect the entire country to be desert, but knowing that it was the site for the filming of Lawrence of Arabia, I guess I did buy into a stereotype of nomads, sand dunes, and camels. How ironic that I was now looking at flooded rice paddies. I did see cacti, however. There were yards fenced in entirely by cacti that were thick enough to keep coop livestock. Clearly, some very patient people had planted those cacti for that purpose.

Less attractive were the fields of plastic bags. At first, I thought I was seeing hundreds of small flags like the prayer flags I saw everywhere in Tibet, but when I got closer, I realized they were plastic grocery bags. There was one caught on every bush, flapping in the breeze--testimony to the waste disposal problem that seems to plague every third-world country. It was almost enough to turn me into an environmentalist. Those bags marred an otherwise beautiful countryside for miles.

The silence ended only when an imam rose at the front of the bus and started a very loud and very animated Islamic sermon. I was already wondering whether the bus would stop for prayer time and this was the answer. It wouldn't be the only time I would be treated to a sermon during a bus ride. Of course, it was all in Arabic, but surprisingly, I was able to catch a word here and there that I recognized from my studies of Islam. At the end of his sermon, he walked down the aisle collecting contributions. Anyone who gave him some coins would receive a kiss upon the shoulder as thanks. My shoulder went unloved.

After four hours on the road, we stopped in a town I couldn't find on the map and a bunch of people got off the bus. That's when the attractive college student, who hadn't looked at us throughout the entire trip, suddenly turned around and asked us where we were from. Her name was Fleweetsia (that's how it sounded, anyway) and she was attending school in Tangier. She was on her way home to Fèz. She was all smiles and didn't stop talking to us for the next hour. Well, let me be more precise--she didn't stop talking to Marty for the next hour. She lost interest in me real quick. I think she got frustrated with me asking her to repeat herself after every broken sentence.

She told Marty that he looked Moroccan and she seemed skeptical of his claim to not speak Arabic. (Actually, his dark complexion comes from his father, who is part Portuguese.) By the end of the trip, he had gotten her phone number. It was completely useless since they had already determined that they were not going to be in the same city at the same time, but I was extremely impressed, nonetheless. He probably bugged Jeff to death the rest of the week trying to convince him to alter their vacation itinerary.

In Meknes, we checked into the Hotel Touring, which was recommended by both our guidebooks. Jeff and Marty got a double room and I got a single for 87 dirham, which is equal to $8.70. It turned out to be the biggest room I would have during my entire trip. It was probably twice the size of my bedroom at home.

After we had settled in, Jeff and Marty invited me have dinner with them. We found a small restaurant that kept its offerings in the window so that we could point to what we wanted. I made sure I didn't point at what looked like cow brains. We all had the brochette, which is cubes of grilled beef (I hope) on a skewer. It's served with a saucer of something resembling fresh Mexican salsa for dipping your bread in. We washed it down with bottles of Coke with Coca-Cola written in Arabic script. It was good food and good company.

Back at the hotel, we said what I thought would be our final good-bye. They were going to spend all of the next day in Meknes and I was planning on hitting the main attractions and then catching a bus to Fèz in the afternoon.

Wednesday, March 21, 2003

All of the cities I visited in Morocco were divided into a ville nouvelle (new city) and a medina. The ville nouvelle was always indistinguishable from any of the other many modern cities I've seen in third-world countries. The medina is the original city, usually still enclosed within ancient city walls, where most of the old madrassas and mosques are located. The medina is also where the faux guides and hustlers are concentrated because that's where the tourists are. Outside of the walls of the medina, I was seldom bothered.

Hotel Touring is located in Meknes's ville nouvelle. It was a long walk to the medina, where I began my sightseeing. The moment I stepped past the medina walls, I was lost. To understand why, you need to understand how the typical medina is laid out. Medinas often date back to the 10th century or earlier, when there were few urban planning committees. The "roads" are actually narrow pedestrian paths that seldom go straight for more than twenty yards. Some of the roads might have names, but none of them are posted anywhere. The map in my Let's Go book for the medina in Meknes was nothing but a useless page of squiggles. Every tenth squiggle would be named or would have the name of a mosque beside it. When lost, Let's Go suggests finding a child and paying him two dirhams to lead you out of the medina. I always chose the alternative, which was to wander aimlessly, wasting time instead of money. I would blindly take multiple turns as my path became narrower; invariably, someone would poke their head out from their door and look at me as if to ask, "What could you possibly want?" I would then hit a dead end and have to reverse all my turns to get back to where I started, passing the same person along the way, now looking at me as if to say, "I could have told you not to go down there." All the while, one must listen for the cry of "Balat!", which means, "Watch out!" It's a warning that coming up from behind is a donkey loaded down with grain, dates, or Coca-Cola.

My aim was to find the Madrassa Bou Inania. Built in the 14th century, it served as a college of theology and Muslim law. It's no longer in use, so it has been opened to tourists. I had become so lost that I had given up on finding it and simply wanted to find a way out of the medina. I walked down a path that took me past a beautiful Merenid wooden door overhang that must have been centuries old. Directly opposite was a day school with a somewhat less ornate entrance decorated with images of Mickey and Minnie Mouse. A few steps further, a seated Moroccan man called out in English, "Here, this is what you are looking for." He pointed to a small sign beside a doorway that read, "Madrassa Bou Inania." Amazing.

Except for some stray cats, I had the madrassa all to myself. The courtyard was a beautiful blend of carved cedar, stucco, and mosaic tiles depicting Koranic passages and intricate Muslim designs. There was a fountain in the center, no longer in operation. Around the edge of the courtyard were tiny rooms that once housed the madrassa students. Now they contain nothing but cat poop.

Near Madrassa Bou Inania was the Great Mosque, but only Muslims are allowed to enter. When I was in Istanbul, mosques were open to everyone, so I was surprised and disappointed to learn that us Kafirs are barred from almost all mosques in Morocco. I had to be satisfied with looking at the minaret.

Minaret design in Morocco was also a surprise. I expected to see thin round minarets like what I saw in Turkey, but instead, all the minarets were square towers, often reminding me of the Phillips Tower back home. From a distance, they might be mistaken for grain silos.

I was still inside the medina when I was approached by a man in his late 40's who spoke very good English and who introduced himself as Mohammed. He invited me to follow him to where I could see some craftsmen at work. I was still gullible enough at this point to think that he was just one more of those exceedingly friendly Moroccans, so I followed him. It wasn't long, however, until I concluded that he must be a faux guide and that he would eventually expect to be compensated. But I thought, "How bad can a faux guide really be?" I knew Jeff would be horrified, but I decided to just go with it. Mohammed would probably show me things I would never have found otherwise and I wouldn't waste anymore time being lost.

Mohammed stuck with me for two hours. He took me to a silversmith, where I was given a demonstration of how silver vessels are decorated by hand; the inside of an ornate private home that is rented out for weddings; a restaurant inside a very old Berber home (we didn't eat); several furniture makers, one of whom made me a little wooden spindle using a lathe; a jalaba maker; a silk dress maker; a baker who bakes the dough brought to him by women in the neighborhood; and a maker of giant straw mats used to cover the floors of mosques. We went to a sauna that is reserved for women in the mornings and men in the afternoon. We then went next door where I saw a thin old man with haunched shoulders sitting all alone in a dark little room. He spends his days feeding the fire that serves the sauna. Mohammed pointed out a Christian school, although we didn't go inside. But we did go inside a school for young children where only Arabic and the Koran are taught. Class came to a halt and the kids all stared at me as Mohammed described what they were doing.

I knew that faux guides get paid commissions for any sales made in the shops they take people too, so I was relieved that Mohammed hadn't pressured me to buy anything. But my guided tour ended in a carpet shop and that's when I got hit with the hard sale. I couldn't believe it--it was Istanbul all over again, but with inferior carpets. The carpet salesman even used the same lines. When I told him I don't even own a home, he told me that a carpet is more important than a home. Just like in Istanbul, he told me that a carpet comes first and then a home. I'm an expert at saying no to carpet salesmen, so it didn't take long before he surrendered to my volley of "no's". Mohammed joined in by telling me I should buy a carpet to help the Moroccan people, but I wasn't swayed.

That's when Mohammed said, "I've shown you all over the medina, so now how about a gift for me?" So there it was. I intended to pay him, but I decided to jerk his chain a little first. "I appreciate your hospitality and to show you my gratitude, I'd like to take you to lunch with me," I said. No, he didn't want lunch--he wanted payment. I told him I wouldn't pay him any money because he failed to tell me up-front that I would be charged.

"But I spent TWO HOURS showing you around! I should be paid for all of that time."

"Then you should have told me you'd expect to be paid before you started showing me around. That's dishonest to wait until the very end and then ask for money."

"Maybe I should have mentioned it in the beginning, but when someone spends so much time showing you around, it is reasonable to give a gift."

We went back and forth like this and then Mohammed said, "If you don't want to pay me anything, you don't have to. You can leave." He then puffed up and wouldn't look at me. The defeated carpet salesman then said, "Come on, just give him 50 dirham. That's only $5." I decided Mohammed was hot enough, so I let out a heavy sigh and opened up my wallet and paid him. Considering all that he had shown me, none of which I would have seen on my own, I thought it was well worth $5.

The smile returned to his face, but he wasn't done. "I have children. How about something for my children?" He then turned into Yoda, reaching inside my grocery bag and grabbing my box of cookies. I took it away from him and gave him a single package of cookies. "You also have chocolates. Give me some chocolate." I don't know what he saw, but I told him I didn't have any chocolate. He didn't seem to believe me, but he said good-bye and I left.

I headed for the Imperial City by way of Bab el-Mansour, which is considered to be Morocco's finest gate. On the sidewalk outside of Salle des Ambassadeurs, I ran into Jeff and Marty. We were quite a ways from the hotel, so this was a much bigger coincidence than seeing them in a grocery store in Algeciras. We updated each other on what we had seen that morning and Jeff seemed almost envious of all that I had been shown by my faux guide. Jeff and Marty were about to take a day trip to Volubilis, which is a site of substantial Roman ruins 33 Km outside of town. They invited me along, but my recent trip to Italy had already ruined me (ha, ha), so I declined.

Salle des Ambassadeurs is where Sultan Moulay Ismail conducted affairs of state in the 17th century. According to Let's Go, it contains a dungeon that once housed as many as 100,000 Christian prisoners, but I didn't get to see it. I did, however, get to see Ismail's tomb and the attached mosque, which is one of the few that non-Muslims are allowed to enter.

Outside of the Medina walls, a Moroccan in his twenties called out to me. He started taunting me when he thought I was ignoring him, so I stopped to show him I wasn't afraid of him. Since we were outside of the medina and he had two friends with him, I thought it unlikely that he was a faux guide.

I told him that I didn't know he was talking to me and that I wasn't ignoring him. He wiped the sneer from his face and decided to be friendly. Like almost every Moroccan I met, once he learned that I was American, he wanted to talk about 9/11. He led up to it by asking me what Americans think of Morocco. He assured me that there was no reason for Americans to be afraid of visiting Morocco.

"We are nothing like the people who destroyed the World Trade Center. Those people are far away from Morocco. Such people are not following true Islam. The Koran forbids such actions."

"Yes, I know. It especially condemns the killing of innocents such as women and children. I've read the Koran."

"You have read the Koran?"

"Yes. Well, an English translation."

As I anticipated, he informed me that I hadn't truly read the Koran since it can only be understood in Arabic. "Yes," I said, "I understand that's because it is believed that Allah revealed the Koran to Mohammed in Arabic."

He was getting excited. "So do you believe Mohammed was the prophet of Allah?"

It was time to change the subject. Returning to 9/11, I told him that I thought that Americans understood that Moroccans are different from the men who hit the World Trade Center.

"So who do you think it was who destroyed the World Trade Center?" he asked.

"I think it was a group of Muslims of the Wahhabi sect, primarily from Saudi Arabia. I know that they are very different from most of the Muslims in Morocco."

He didn't agree or disagree, but before saying good-bye, he shook my hand and told me that communication is very important and that it was good talking to an American who was so knowledgeable.

I would have essentially the same conversation with a number of other Moroccans. They realize that their country is hurting as a result of a sharp drop-off in the number of Western tourists and they know it's the result of 9/11. It has made them extremely sensitive to the opinions of Americans. I was repeatedly questioned as to Americans' opinion of Morocco and I would usually claim that Americans like Morocco. Sometimes I would be more honest and say that most Americans have no opinion of Morocco because they have no idea what it is or where it is.

Many people would assure me that they love Americans, but they would usually add a caveat, telling me they disagree with America's government and they absolutely hate George W. Bush. I'm sure this attitude is due in part to America's close relationship with Israel, but it is America's policy towards Iraq that is the irritant of the moment. The anti-war sentiment in Morocco runs even deeper than it does in Spain, even though the pro-American autocratic government prevents it from being as visible.

I experienced very little hostility directed towards me for being American, but I nonetheless have to question the claimed ability of Moroccans to separate the American government from the American people when it comes to the Iraqi question. After all, a clear majority of the American people support their government's policy towards Iraq.

Moroccans might not dislike Americans, but they do currently have a great fondness for the French and that is due in part to France's intransigence towards America regarding Iraq. I see some irony in this love for France while simultaneously condemning America for supposed imperialistic aims in the Middle East. Morocco became a French protectorate in 1911. In 1937, the French crushed a nationalistic revolt and they did so with a pretty heavy hand. Several of the historical buildings I visited had been restored after being torched by the French. During WWII, an independence party, the Istiqlal, was formed. When Morocco's beloved sultan, Sidi Muhammad, began supporting the party, the French booted him out of the country and outlawed the party. The nationalists didn't give up and in 1956, France relinquished control of Morocco. 1956 isn't all that long ago, but I guess all is forgiven since France is willing to stand up to those greedy American imperialists.

I found the private bus station in Meknes and hopped on a bus to Fèz that was already pulling away from the curb. This time, the person who helped me find the correct bus made sure to ask for payment. I told him I didn't have any coins, which was true, and left him standing there with his hand out. An hour later, I arrived in Fèz just as it stopped raining.

Seeing Fèz was my main objective in traveling to Morocco. A year ago, I couldn't have told you where it was located. I first became curious when Rory, on Gilmore Girls, said that her dream was to travel to Fèz after graduating from high school. (That's right, I said it--I watch Gilmore Girls.) "Where's Fèz and why would anyone want to see it?" I wondered. I then started catching references to Fèz in other places and finally decided I had to see it for myself. So now you know the slacker reasoning behind my trip to Morocco.

Founded in the 8th century, Fèz became prominent as the home of the Qarouine, a university-mosque complex, which was one of the world's first universities. The medina is the most impressive medina in Morocco and was the impetus for UNESCO designating the city a World Heritage Site. I was impressed the moment I exited the bus station at the bottom of a hill outside the medina wall. It was a view of the town that must have looked much the same over 500 years ago.

I passed through one of the medina gates and began searching for the Hotel du Commerce, which was supposed to be near the sprawling modern palace of King Mohammed VI. In front of the seven ornate bronze palace gates installed by King Hassan II in 1968, I was approached by a short, balding, Moroccan man. He looked to be in his early fifties and had a lazy eye and a pouched lower lip. He told me he was an official guide and showed me a license from the tourist bureau to prove it. It looked like the real deal to me; besides, since faux guides are illegal, I doubted he'd be trolling for customers right in front of the king's palace within earshot of a Moroccan soldier. But in case I wasn't convinced, he also showed me a business card from the U.S. ambassador, which impressed me less than the license. Next, he told me that he had once served as the official guide for Lilly Tomlin. Well, why didn't he tell me that to begin with?! I was sold.

Because Fèz was to be the focal point of my whole trip, I had already intended to hire an official guide. Hiring Mohammed would save me a trip to the tourist office. That's right--this guide was also named Mohammed. I think all the guides must be named Mohammed. I'll call this one M2.

I told M2 that I wouldn't need a guide until in the morning, but I asked him to show me to the hotel. It turned out that I had walked right past it twice. I got a single room for 50 dirhams ($5). According to Let's Go, it's an extremely popular hotel and fills up fast, but it appeared I had an entire floor all to myself. It was good timing. It started raining just as I got to my room.

After the rain stopped, I found M2 to set up a meeting time for the following day. He told me that he would go ahead and show me some sights that evening at no extra charge since there were few tourists and he had nothing else to do.

One of the reasons why I wanted to hire a guide was because it would allow me the opportunity to have extended conversations with a native Moroccan. On that score, I certainly got my money's worth with M2. As we walked through the old Jewish quarter, he asked me why Americans are afraid to travel to Morocco. I told him that to some Americans, Morocco doesn't look like a welcoming place when they see massive war protests like the one held two weeks earlier in Casablanca. He didn't seem to be aware of the protest in Casablanca, but he said, "Ah, but there have also been war protests throughout Europe. Does that mean Americans are afraid to go there as well?"

"No, but when they see anti-American sentiment in a Muslim country like Morocco, it has more significance because that's the same kind of hostility that led to the attack on the World Trade Center."

"There are things about the attack on the World Trade Center that Americans do not know."

"And you do?"

"Yes, I know some things."

"Such as?"

M2 slowly tilted his head from side to side and took a long pause before saying, "George Bush knew it was going to happen."

"What's your evidence for this?"

"My evidence is that he was traveling on 9/11."

Laughter. "He's always traveling! It would have been more unusual had he not been traveling on 9/11."

"Buy why that day?"

"Well, like I said . . . "

M2 waved me off and said that we should not be talking politics when there was so much for me to see. He stopped to buy a small bowl of boiled gorbonzo beans from a street vendor and then we resumed our walk as we were pelted by occasional raindrops.

We walked through Boujeloud Gardens, containing lots of sugar cane and orange trees. As we neared Bab Boujeloud, the main entrance to the medina, the rain became heavy and we retreated inside the office of a food wholesaler owned by M2's brother. M2's nephew had a nearby café bring us some hot tea while we dried off.

M2 lit a cigarette and the smoke soon mixed with the aroma of mint wafting off our tea. He explained to me that he used to smoke two packs a day, but now he allows himself the occasional cigarette only when drinking tea. "My doctor told me that whenever I smoke, I should have a glass of tea. You see, the tea counteracts the nicotine in the tobacco, and so makes it safe to smoke."

I had learned by now that M2 considered himself a reservoir of knowledge unknown to the common man and was a philosopher, to boot. I had also learned that it was fun to shoot spitballs at the houses of cards he constructed for himself. "But it's not the nicotine that irritates your lungs and causes cancer," I said. "That tea does nothing for that." No, he was certain that nicotine was the danger that needed to be countered.

I continued. "You know, I'm surprised to see so many people smoking in Morocco, it being a Muslim country. I thought Muslims considered smoking forbidden."

M2 shrugged. "Well, I guess if you want to read it like that, but I see things differently."

"How about not doing things that are harmful to your body? That's a religious principle."

"Okay, so there's a contradiction." He smiled and swirled his cigarette in the air. "But that's what life is--contradiction."

Next, he explained to me his theory of friendship. He told me that he had been trying to make his daughter understand this that very morning. There are three types of friendship. One friendship is built on money. Maybe a woman likes money and she likes her man because he has money, but once the money is gone, the friendship will be gone and the woman will find another man who has money. Another type of friendship is built on sex. Maybe a woman likes what her man can do for her in bed, but once the sex is gone, the friendship is gone and the woman will find another man who can satisfy her. The third type of friendship is built on love. Real love is forever and it never goes away, so the friendship lasts. He told his daughter that is the type of friendship to be searched for.

This might not sound any more insightful than a mediocre installment of Dr. Phil, but M2 acted as though he had come up with the formula for cold fusion. He concluded by telling me that love was the answer to the world's problems. "We must know that we are all brothers and we must love one another!" I nodded and said, "I think everyone agrees with that. Doing it is another matter."

The rain stopped and we resumed our walk. He took me to a shop that sells decorative metal plates and saucers. I was shown pictures of Ronald Reagan and Bush the Elder visiting the same shop, but that wasn't enough to make me a buyer.

Next, we visited another limb of the M2 tree. We went to a Moroccan "antique" (i.e. tourist junk) shop owned by M2's cousin. It was a restored Berber home and I was taken upstairs and shown the impressive Berber interiors. I was expecting a sales pitch, but it never came. Instead, I was fed flat bread and goat cheese.

We walked some more and the rain resumed. I asked M2 to find us a place to eat supper, but made the mistake of failing to specify the type of establishment I had in mind. Thinking he was escorting a rich American, he took me to what must be one of the most expensive restaurants in Fèz. I was wanting something with a few less stars--like the street vendor selling boiled gorbonzo beans.

I knew I was in the wrong place as soon as I stepped through the door. The place looked like a Hollywood version of a sultan's palace. There was a high ceiling of carved wood; walls covered with lattice work and stucco designs; marble columns; and lots of throw pillows. I expected belly dancers to emerge at any moment. M2 told me that he had eaten a meal in this same restaurant with Michael Douglas and Danny Devito when they were in Morocco filming Romancing the Stone. (Kathleen Turner must have filled up on gorbonzo beans.)

As in Spain, people don't start showing up at restaurants in Morocco until 9 PM, so the place was completely empty. It would have been easy to make a hasty retreat, but since I wanted to eat at least one nice Moroccan meal on my trip, I decided to at least check out the menu.

It was bad. It was a set menu with a price of 170 dirhams covering all courses. In Morocco, that's a small fortune. I told M2 there was no way I could afford that. He talked to the waiter/owner and he brought out a different menu that had prices for individual items. The first menu must have been the sucker menu. I ordered the cous cous containing sweetened vegetables and a small chunk of meat. M2 asked me if I was buying his meal and I told him no. (I had originally planned to do so--although I hadn't told him that--but I changed my mine once I saw the prices.) He became grumpy after that. He ordered a plate of cooked prunes, which matched his mood. When my cous cous came, it looked like it was enough for four people. I told M2 he could have all he wanted, but he declined.

His attitude improved once he dried off and had some wine. It didn't take much to get him talking again. I asked him whether he had ever been outside of Morocco and he happily told me about being a hippie during the 60's, traveling throughout Europe, enjoying free love and consuming copious amounts of drugs. How did a Moroccan hippie afford such a lifestyle?

"I was quite the ladies' man in my day. Wealthy older women would give me gifts and cash because I knew how to give them a good f***."

"So you were a gigolo."

"Yes, I was a gigolo."

I wondered what the "Prophet" Mohammed would have thought of the smoking, drinking, drug-induced, gigolo lifestyle of his namesake, but I didn't ask. I took another tact by asking M2, "What would you think if your daughter came to you tomorrow and informed you that she had decided to take up the same hippie lifestyle you once led?"

"I would be fine with that," he said with defiance.

"Even after telling her this morning that she should pursue the type of friendship based on love?"

"Yes. I give my children advice, but I want them to make their own decisions. Whatever they ultimately decide is fine with me." He explained that he wants his children to think of him as their friend. Because he doesn't criticize them or tell them what to do, they treat him as a friend with whom they can share anything.

I continued the conversation between bights of cous cous. "Being a friend is good, but sometimes a child needs to hear things they would never be told by a friend." He was quick to agree with me, but I don't think he fully understood what I meant.

M2 continued telling me about his years, sometimes becoming wistful as though he were looking back over a resplendent life now dulled into mere existence. How can we not be envious of a life highlighted by being a boy toy for wrinkled Euro-trash; smoking hash in the drug dins of Sweden; and serving as the fetch-it boy for star of screen and television, Lilly Tomlin? Glory days, glory days.

Yes, Lilly Tomlin. I hadn't forgotten her. I asked him whether he was familiar with her movies. "Yehhhhhhs, of course I am familiar with her movies." He seemed offended that I would dare intimate that he's so lacking in culture as not to have a thorough knowledge of the movies of Laugh-In star, Lilly Tomlin.

He then recounted a conversation he had with the Great One, herself. She asked him whether he believed in reincarnation. "I told her, 'No, I do not. A human would never return as an animal, because animals cannot smile.'" She laughed and told him that she didn't believe in reincarnation either, and that she liked his reasoning. She said she would use that argument on some of her Hollywood friends when she returned home.

I told M2 that an animal's inability to smile wouldn't prevent a lower form of animal from returning as a higher form of animal, but he just said, "No, no, no," and waved my objection away. I then said, "You know, Lilly Tomlin's movie, All of Me dealt with reincarnation." His eyes widened and he said, "Yes! You are right, it did!"

But who was I kidding? Didn't I know that all conversation must ultimately lead to 9/11? "Why did the United States have to go to Afghanistan?" he asked. "They just decided to take it, so they took it."

"Yes, we did," I said. "Because people who were doing us harm were using Afghanistan as their base of operation."

"Do you believe Osama bin Laden was responsible for attacking the World Trade Center?"

"Yes I do."

M2 gave a helpless shrug. "Americans will believe whatever their media tell them."

"But it wasn't just the media telling me this, it was bin Laden, himself. He all but confessed in his own words. I watched the tapes with my own eyes."

"In today's age, you can do anything with video images. You can make anything seem real that you want to."

"But it wasn't just CNN showing those tapes--Al-Jazeera showed them as well."

"Do you know who owns Al-Jazeera?"

"No, I do not," I confessed. At this, M2 raised his palms as if to say, "See? You are a naïve American."

At last, I was seeing up-close the conspiratorial nuttiness that has come to characterize the Arab world. It was like going to Mexico and hearing a Federali tell you, "We don't need no stinkin' badges." I had hit the mother lode and I wouldn't let it go.

"Are you saying you don't trust Al-Jazeera?"

"Nooooooooooo, I do not trust Al-Jazeera."

"So if you don't trust CNN and you don't trust Al-Jazeera, where do you go to get your facts?"

"I have a brain and I can form opinions on my own."

"But opinions are formed based on facts. If you don't trust any givers of facts, then you have no facts and you are living in a state of ignorance."

"Not at all. It's just like if you were to tell me that you have been to Morocco. I would say, 'Oh, really?' But then once I see your passport, I say, 'Yes, there's a stamp,' and I see your plane ticket, so then I say, 'Yes, you have been to Morocco.'"

At this point, our inter-cultural dialogue came to a close. We had been talking for two hours. It was around 8:30 and M2 said his family would be expecting him. We left the empty restaurant, both of us slightly agitated at the other. M2 put me in a taxi and sent me back to my hotel.