Aleppo, Part 2

I have to admit, it was touch and go with this city for little while - the sights and sounds and people were getting a bit overwhelming. Without a doubt, the most sexually frustrated of the Syrian male population appear to live in Aleppo, and I found myself oft accompanied by men as I walked the Old City streets, or on the receiving end of Borat-esque "niiiiiice."

But, both Aleppo and I rallied, and a great time was had.

Starting the comeback of both body and spirit was meeting two German women, Manuella and Stephanie, at my hotel in the morning. We formed a bit of a mutual admiration society, since they were impressed I was traveling in Syria alone, and I was hella impressed by the much more difficult feat of driving around Syria - with two children (Manu's little girls, ages 9 and 11). Unbelievable. The women made me feel much better by confirming that traveling around Syria was, indeed, exhausting, AND by saying they had chilled out at the Sheraton Hotel pool the day before and it had done wonders. And they were right. I spent three hours there in the late afternoon and it was just quiet and cool and very restful. It's without a doubt the poshest hotel in the city, and there was no one there except a German family and a group of three young Aleppans who were dressed to impress in sparkle bikinis and sipping on champagne. It's such a weird contrast between that and the women on the street covered head to toe.

Before the Sheraton I also walked around an area of the city which had obviously once been the richest part of town and had fallen - big 19th century mansions, some parks and the Baron Hotel. Once upon a time, the Baron was the Sheraton - one of it's claims to fame is Agatha Christie wrote some of Murder on the Orient Express there (since Aleppo is actually the terminus of the line). Now it looks like a Times Square flop house, but it was great to sneak around inside and see the faded grandeur (and very bored/irate people working there).

In the evening, I reconnected with Manu and Stephanie and we sat in the courtyard of our dar talking. Turns out, the women travel with a liquor cabinet, and bottle after bottle of wine kept appearing from their seemingly endless supply. At one point, I swear, there were even gin and tonics. How? Wha? They work in TV in Germany so we had a lot to talk about. Turns out, people in Germany don't like jobs in TV either. Shocking. Also shocking, my head hurt when I woke up the next day to say goodbye.

Another thing that got me back in the groove was to just dedicate the rest of Aleppan experience to eating. I attempted to sample as much as I could with street vendors - favorites included these sesame cookie type things (although not sweet) filled with fig - and sujok - spicy sausage rolled in bread. I also ate m'hamara, which is a mezze dip of pomegranate, red peppers, walnuts and I have no idea what else. Yum. I also fell in love with a simple sugar almond cookie at a stall in the souk. Breakfast in Syria is usually just bread and lebenah or foul (and that was all that was served at my dar), but the morning after my German bacchanal I decided to try the Aleppan equivalently of Denny's Grand Slam breakfast, which is called fatteh (I think). It's a GIANT bowl filled with chick peas, hummus, tahini, and fried pieces of flatbread, topped with ground lamb and hot oil. Delicious. The family at the table next to me kept laughing and saying I would never finish it (their half-eaten bowls in front of them). They were right.

After my breakfast I attempted souk shopping - which just turned into me sitting in various stalls drinking tea and buying very little. And then packing up to start the "Roman runs" part of the trip. A company who I now curse (later for that) hired me a driver, Mohammed, who was a lovely man. I's say in his 50's with a son in the university. When we were on the road, he would stop at all the farm stands and come back with fresh apricots and bananas - it was like driving with my dad. Except he barely spoke English, just French, which was a fun challenge for me. But Mohammed really knew the history of everything and seemed to truly love seeing the ruins and showing me things, so that was great.

First up was San Simeon. In the 4th century, a dude named Simeon decided to be a monk, but decided all the monasteries around weren't harsh enough for him, so he retreated into the caves at the top of a mountain. When people heard about him, they went to visit, and Simeon, pissed at being bothered, started building giant columns for him to live on so people wouldn't bother him. The opposite happened and more people came - and eventually people from all over would come to watch Simeon on his columns where he would answer questions about faith. According to my guide book, column-sitting preaching became all the rage in Europe, thanks to Simeon. Anyway, he died, and the Romans erected a huge cathedral, the ruins of which I went to see.

I am not going to describe them or the other Roman or Byzantine ruins I saw because, a.) I'll show pictures later and b.) that's boring, but I will say the most amazing thing about all the places Mohammed and I went over the two days was that NO ONE was there. Tourist attractions that would be swarming with people in Europe (or Petra) I had all to myself - just me, and a lot of lizards, and an occasional turtle. Incredible.

Another incredible thing, a lot of ruins are just hanging out, part of villages. We went to one place which had a whole bunch of abandoned Byzantine buildings, many of which had been re- purposed by the villagers - like an old Stone church which was now home to one lone cow.

The final stop on the trip was Krak des Chevaliers, which is an old Crusader castle near the coast. Incredibly situated on the top of a cliff overlooking a valley - it was the only place I went that actually had tourists - although not many.

As he dropped me off at the hotel by the castle, Mohammed told me what a great time he had, and then said "I am a modern man" and asked to spend the night with me - which kind of broke my heart a bit. Sigh.

The next day, I woke up (alone), and met my new driver, who the tour company had supplied for me to drive me into Beirut. Except he didn't know that, and didn't speak any English. When we got to the border, he just wanted to drop me to find another taxi on the Lebanese side, and well, border wackiness ensued for the next few hours. Suffice to say, I do not recommend this company, since getting me to Beirut eventually required three separate taxis and a lot of exasperated hand gestures trying to explain that I had already paid for this service, so I would not be paying again. I trip that was supposed to take three hours wound up taking over six, and by the time I got to Beirut I never thought I would be so happy to see my decrepit hotel again.

And so, here I am, back in Beirut, which apparently came through their elections unscathed (and with less Hezabolah!).

Other things:

- The place I stayed in Aleppo was called Dar Kanidal, and on their postcard they say "We endeavor hardly to make your holidays the happiest..."

- Any time I have had a TV in my room (about half) there appears to always be a Turkish soap opera on which I am now in love with. I really wish I knew the name of it so I can try and keep up. All I know is, she's in the hospital, and he just got arrested (maybe for impersonating a doctor?). They both cry a LOT.

Aleppo

Aleppo... is bananas.

I will admit, I had quite heightened expectations for this place, what with the family connection and the fact that everyone I spoke to kept saying "Damascus is nice but wait until you get to Aleppo...," but man, this city is a little nuts - definitely this is the most off balance I've felt in the past few weeks.

I'll start with the train ride, which both Lonely Planet and the fabulous website seat61 (it's all about train travel all over the world) described as a treat - new, modern, air conditioned cars and really the way you want to go. Well... um, no. The train station was completely sketchy - on the outskirts of town and you had to go through a police checkpoint to get in - the whole place had a Patchogue Station at 1AM vibe, but without the architecture. And then, there's a guy with a wonky eye and a limp (we'll call him Smee) wandering around, who wound up helping me buy my ticket and show me where to go. I though he was a homeless guy and I offered him some money - to which he got a little offended. But after an hour of watching him interact, I think he might run the place.

The train was not at all modern. I'm thinking a Soviet-era train? With shattered glass windows and cracked enamel/plastic everywhere. The seat was actually pretty comfortable, except none of the windows in the car would open (every guy on the train kept trying) and did I mention it was 100 degrees? Twas a bit stuffy. And yet, even with sealed windows, every 20 minutes or so I would look down to see that I was covered with a thin layer of black dust. From where? It's a mystery. Like Stonehedge.

On the up side, the ride was only $3. And, across the aisle from me was a lovely couple who kept offering me coffee in a tiny, porcelain demitasse cup. I had chocolates I had bought in Damascus, so I kept offering those to them (sorry family and friends who were to get these chocolates as gifts) and it was a cute little back and forth. The ride itself was about six hours and the countryside a bit bleak - really dry and desert-y for a few hours with nothing to see but brush and every once and a while some guy buzzing through the landscape on a motorcycle (Georgia, at one point the whole scene remnded me of "Checkla! Checkla!"). As we went north it got greener and farmier and goat-ier, but still, not a lush landscape. When the bright lights if Aleppo finally came into view, they were certainly welcome. It was about 9pm when I got here, so, actually, seeing the city by night was really cool and very pretty.

This city really is completely different from Damascus. Much more energy, people, and movement. Wherein Damascus, everyone was pretty chill and had a rather "whatever" attitude to my presence, here, I definitely attract attention. Shop owners really give me the hard sell, and I get comments all the time just walking on the streets.

This morning, I got up and started walking around the Old City, which is really unlike anything I've ever seem - it's amazing. Instead of wide, tall covered streets (like in Damascus) or twisty alleys (like Marrakech), Aleppo's Old City feels like a fortress. It's a bunch of long, stone pasageways covered with more stone - like a long cave. Now today is Friday, so nothing is open, which means all the stores, which supply the majority of light (there are small skylights in the stone ceiling, but they are small), are closed. So this morning, when I was walking along, it was dark - like, going to sleep, dark. And there was barely anyone on the streets - so it was really, really spooky. And the street I was walking on (Bab Antakya) goes on a really long time like this, and is like "Main Street."

Early into my walk this morning, half freaked out and half amazed, a young man fell in step with me and asked, "Hello, do you speak English?" I replied in the affirmative, to which he then asked (after obviously struggling over the words in his head) "Can I see your breast?" I declined. But then he upped the offer with "I'll show you my cock." Later, a little boy, as I was walking by, just said "passion." It's so... ick (I know, I'm so articulate). (And sorry anyone I just offended with the "c" word above).

So, I left the pervy souk and went to the Citadel, which is huge and seems to be just the kind of fortifcation you want protecting your city. Walking around, the place just dares you to pour tar and hot oil on your adversaries. And then I had some lunch, which included a cheese borek, which I thought would be like the boreks in Turkey, which are doughy baked pastries filled with cheese, but this was like wonton wrappers filled with cheese and deep fried. Delish.

For the rest of the day, I've just been wandering. I'm now in the New City, which is really amazing looking - also unlike anything I've seen - kind of half Istanbul (a lot of wood and balconies) and half decaying 60's. It's all fascinating, really, and no one has suggested something sexual to me in hours, so I feel like things are really picking up.

Damascus

Well, it's about 100 degrees in Damascus today. Yes, it's the Middle East, but come on.

And yet, this city is still amazing. I am now a huge Damascus champion - this is the oldest inhabited city in the world and I totally see why. It's just a beautiful, slightly lazybones place (at least, the Old City where I'm staying and have spent a lot of time), full of completely mellow people and something architecturally interesting to catch your eye every moment.

(Which, by the way, is a bit of a relief, because I read Robert Kaplan's Eastward to Tartary a few weeks ago and he basically described all of Syria [Damascus and Aleppo, particularly] as a giant shithole. Admittedly, he wrote the book in 2000, but still, I was getting a little worried. Kaplan kept saying how awesome Lebanon was compared to Syria, but right now, Damascus kicks Beirut's ass - even at 100 degrees. Sure, Beirut was a war zone for twenty years, but still...)

One of the (many) cool things about this place is that there are remnants of Roman Times everywhere, completely blended into the landscape, so you kind of don't notice (at least, I don't) that you're walking through a Roman arch or beside an old wall. For example, my hotel is on a street that was originally the Roman "Main Street" of Damascus - and although I read that information the first day in my guidebook, it took me two days to notice there were ruins of columns - perfectly spaced - on either side of the street.

Another really cool thing is the souks (shopping streets/areas). The largest is called souk al-Hamidiyya, and it's a gigantic, long, wide cobblestone street, lined on both sides by shops. Then, above the shops, another floor with huge, tall windows (Store keepers homes? Storerooms? I don't know). Then, the whole thing is covered by a huge, tin, arched ceiling to keep away the heat. But the ceiling was strafed by bullets during some uprising against the French in 1925, so there are bullet holes in it - meaning tiny streams of sunlight pierce through, forming tiny perfect circles on the pavement - it's magical (to me, at least).

But I think my favorite place is the Ommayyad Mosque, which although is the third most sacred place in Islam, apparently (after Mecca and Medina, according to Lonely Planet), is just like a giant chill space - like Sheeps Meadow in Central Park. You walk inside (I had to wear this big cloak - I looked like one of the Sand People from Star Wars - cool, right?) and there's a gigantic courtyard made from polished white limestone. All along the sides of the yard are steps and seats, completely shaded by second floor balconies (many covered with beautiful mosaics). Prayer rooms are off to the side, so the courtyard is just people getting out of the sun - all against the shaded walls are full of people - sitting, picnicking, sleeping, kibutzing - while in the center of the courtyard, where the sun is glaring, packs of kids are having a ball running around and sliding on the polished stones with their socks. It's so cool. For those who want to pray, there are giant indoor prayer rooms to the side, and there were people going in and out, but the general vibe was just chill, not devout - even with the constant soundtrack of prayers over the loudspeaker.

Today, I walked around the New City to go to the museum and check it out. A slightly creepy/sad (unmarried) lawyer "picked me up" in front of the old Hejaz train station (a gorgeous terminal built during the Ottoman Empire that was supposed to ferry pilgrims to Mecca - the line was never completed so when I walked in they were just holding a book fair). Mohammed then accompanied me all the way to the National Museum, and even bought a ticket and was going to keep going, but I said my "husband" was meeting me inside so he finally left. Totally not threatening - just a little sad. He kept saying he needed a visa for the US, and do I think he could practice law there? Dad, I gave him your number (joke).

After the museum, I walked to the swish Four Seasons Hotel, which has the best restaurant in town, and had lunch. When I arrived, I was the only person in the dining room, so the overwhelmingly kind and large staff decided I was to be Queen for the Day, and just kept bringing me food - kibbeh in pomegranate sauce, hummus, circasson salad, eggplants, really spicy pickles, roasted lamb cubes, bread, more bread, fresh veggies, tiny pastries - it was so much and so good. And the whole thing? $20. Really wonderful.

My drive to Damascus was also an adventure. To use a phrase I don't so much enjoy using, it was a sausage fest - eleven dudes in a minivan and me (the bus, although supposed to leave every hour, apparently wasn't leaving until 7:30pm, so I jumped in a service taxi) - with the radio blasting Black Eyed Peas and Kelly Clarkson (my guess is I was the only one truly understanding the lyric "my life would suck without you."). The whole thing was fine, if a bit tight (come on random Syrian/Lebanese guy - this is my dance space, this is your dance space) and I had a window, so no car sickness (my big fear, actually). The driver was a true character. He looked like a swarthier Liev Schreiber and had a voice like Tom Waits (Sean Woods). On the Lebanese side, where I guess driving rules are stricter (although, there are no lane dividers on, like, a four lane highway, so "strict" is a relative term, here) he drove pretty cautiously. But on the Syrian side, it was like Steve McQueen in Le Mans (Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder? Vin Deisel in Fast in the Furious? Trying to cover the whole audience with this analogy, here.)

Aside from a touch and go moment when he's on his (NOT hands free) cell phone, screaming at someone, it was fine. The only worrisome part, actually, was at the border crossing, where I was, again, taken out of line for being American and filled with deadly swine flu bile and brought to the doctor. This time, however, I was actually kind of sick - my nose was all red and running and I had (have) a hacking cough and I sound like Bea Arthur - so it was a slight struggle convincing the skeptical medical ladies that I was porcine-free.

Other observations about Syria:

- the coins have no numbers on them (at least, not in the roman alphabet), so for days I have had no idea how much money I have every time someone gives me change.

- Arabic music videos are awesome. Last night I watched a woman dressed like an extra from Mad Max (or The Postman) - lotta leather, fringe, chaps (natch) playing a violin on a mountain top with great intensity. Then she put on a mask, saw a goat (I think) and it was over. I'd like to see McG do that.

- At dinner last night (again, I was the only person in the restaurant - people here don't eat until, like 10pm) the soundtrack was, among others, "Endless Love," "Careless Whisper," "Dust in the Wind," and "Against All Odds." It was like a K-Tell "80's Soft Rock Love Songs."

I'm off to Aleppo tomorrow which is where my grandmother Sophie was born and I think that is pretty great.

And, I have successfully avoided the hottest part of the day in this nice, air-conditioned internet cafe.

Beirut, Part 2

Okay, so here's my attempt at explaining what Beirut is like. The neighborhood I'm in is called Hamra. Think 14th Street - cheesy clothes shops, schwarma stands, fast food joints (including Krispy Kreme, drug stores, bodegas (although, not run by Puerto Ricans, I'm pretty sure). To keep the analogy going, there's even an Apple store (my brother-in-law's heart just skipped a beat). Then, at the end of the neighborhood, instead of the Hudson River and faux-lebrities in the Meat Packing District, you're high above the beautiful Mediterranean Sea, and there's a gorgeous stone college campus blooming with flowers and greenery built into the cliffside. So, that's Hamra, and everyone here speaks English.

The American University of Beirut is absolutely stunning. Built in the 1860's by American missionaries (the book Power, Faith and Fantasy explains how and why) it looks like Conn or Williams but built on a cliff facing the Sea. It's so hard to imagine that Dr. Malcolm Kerr (who the rest of us know as the dad of NBA white guy Malcolm Kerr) was gunned down on the campus in the 80's when he was college president. A bit unnervingly, anyone can just walk on to the campus - the whole place is completely open to the public - which I guess is a nice sign of how far everything has come.

So, if you walk down from the heights of Hamra, you're in Downtown, which has two modes of presentation: either a giant construction site or a pristine series of gorgeous streets, monuments, churches and mosques.

Now, I haven't been to many "recently war torn" places, but compared to Sarajevo or Mostar - which were just wrecks - like the war ended yesterday - Beirut seems like it is doing everything in its power to erase traces of the civil war. In the Downtown (also called Soldiere, which is the name of ex-Prime Minister Hariri's construction company - a billionaire, he basically re-built all of Downtown - like if Bloomberg decided to just say "fuck it" and rebuild all of Ground Zero and name is Bloomberg News Service), you can see plaster o the sides of buildings where bullet holes used to be, or buildings that are new plastered, or just brand new buildings all together. The one exception is the old Holiday Inn Hotel, which looms huge in the middle of Downtown, completely bombed out and bullet-ridden. I thought this might be on purpose - like a reminder - but someone told me yesterday there are plans to tear it down, they just haven't gotten to it yet.

(N.B. I haven't been in South Beirut, which is the Hezzbollah neighborhood which Israel bombed the shit out of in 2006. My guess is that place doesn't look too good).

So, if you walk around sparkling Downtown, you get to the Place de L'Etoile, which is a square (well, a circle, technically, but you get the idea) with a big clock tower in the middle and fancy cafes all around - it almost has a Rodeo Drive feel. Walking around Downtown, you also notice the place is crawling with army soldiers and Paul Blart Mall Cop security guards who don't seem to be doing much except stopping me from taking pictures. I asked one guy why I couldn't and he just shrugged and smiled, but the next guy I asked said Hariri (the son) was in town for the elections and security was even tighter than usual. This was also the guy who stopped me from taking a picture of the ruined synagogue which sits smack in the middle of a construction site - the only thing visible in a giant pit - so take from that what you will (I, however, choose to believe him, since he actually did look like Klinger). Some of you (Yuval) will be happy to read that I threw caution to the wind and sneaked a picture of the synagogue anyway.

So, there are many streets that lead away from the Place de L'Etoile (that's the "L'Etoile" part) and they go to the following:

1. Roman ruins, just chillin', with grass and wildflowers growing all around. My guidebook says this is the Cardo Maximus, and will soon be made into a public space called "The Garden of Forgiveness." Okay. I like Cardo Maximus. Sounds like a porn star, or the guy who trains the fat people on The Biggest Loser.

2. The Grand Serail - a giant Ottoman era building which is now government offices so you can't get near at all, although there are more Roman ruins (baths) which you can see from a pretty overlook.

3. The Rue Foch. I don't know who Foch was, but I'm pretending it's Nina Foch, because this street is swank - totally like Beverly Hills; rich shops in beautifully restored buildings and everyone there was dressed to kill.

4. The Place des Marytrs. I'm not sure which martyrs we're honoring here. I'm not asking. Apparently there's a Palestinian refugee camp at the south end - I stayed to the north - near the Virgin Megastore.

So, if you cross the Place des Martyrs you're in the twin neighborhoods of Ashrafieh and Gemmayzeh, which, income and funkiness level, are like the West and East Village, respectively. Appearance-wise, however, imagine New Orleans crossed with San Francisco. The NO vibe is a lot of old, beautiful decaying buildings (although, not as old at the French Quarter) with creeping foliage and balconies and that hint of seediness. The SF part is a lot of it is hilly with stairways and winding streets. This is where the upscale bar and restaurant scene is and everyone here speaks French.

Okay. So those are the main areas I've been wandering around in. Now imagine walking around these places, and everyone is trying to kill you - either by running you over with a car (my guess is the Lebanese government awards prizes on a point system?), or by putting you into a diabetic coma with the amount of sugar Beirutis put in their drinks.

A few other random observations:

- All around are adorable children being tended to by Asian women dressed like Alice from the Brady Bunch.

- People here like to dust things, outside, with giant feather dusters -like car hoods and bomb/vehicle barriers.

- Many of the older ladies around here look like my grandmother Sophie, which makes me think I'm getting closer to the (maternal) ancestral homelands.

- The hotel I'm staying at is kind of fantastically decrepit. The website shows renovated rooms, but my guess is there is one, and that is being occupied by the nice man I met in the elevator hauling a giant cart of soap (?!) with his son. There is, however, a nice rooftop deck, with cushy wicker seats called Moon on the Rocks (huh?), where I sit and write every night - alone - because no one has ever been up there - not even a bartender - the entire time I've been there.

Okay, that's enough for now. If I have the time I'll write about my great cooking class I took yesterday with the most fabulous gay couple in Beirut. If not, I'm off to Damascus tomorrow - on the road to it, as it were.

Beirut

I'm in Beirut. Everyone looks like Tony Shaloub and Klinger from M*A*S*H*.

Not really, everyone looks like Tariq.

The internet place I'm at (with an American keyboard - yay!) won't let me download pictures, but imagine Tel Aviv with a lot more trees, a lot more construction cranes, and a few destroyed/bullet pocked buildings, and you might get the idea. Also, posters for the upcoming elections are everywhere.

So far, the whole place is cool, if a little eerie. I expected a lot more hustle and bustle, and instead, it's all a tad sleepy. Of course, it's (I've read) a late-night party town, so maybe everyone is actually asleep. When I got in yesterday afternoon, I took a nice long walk around the neighborhood I'm staying in (it's called Hamra - right around the American University of Beirut) and got a feel for things. Everyone just looks like regular American college kids (albeit without dumb baseball caps and darker hair - and so far, I've heard no one yell "Dude! Gooch!"), or mellow adults doing their business. Everyone speaks English, more or less (because of the University, I imagine) and all of the signs are in English - except, unfortunately, the street signs, which, although have English on them, so not actually tell you what street you're on. Instead, they tell you the neighborhood you're in ("Hamra" - which, um, thanks, I already knew that) and the the block #, which so far corresponds to nothing I know. So, yeah. Confusing.

Not confusing, is the Corniche, which I strolled along yesterday afternoon. It is the long promenade all along the waterfront. Really nice - like the Hudson River path - tons of joggers (gay and not gay), families with kids (and their South Asian nannies), couples and dudes with fishing poles.

Also, since I can not write one of thee without mentioning food - I ate the national street food of Beirut, which is a pita type bread wrapped around a fliing with lots of vegetables and olives. My filling was a zatar spice spread and lebenah. It was delicious. I think I will go get another one for breakfast.

Okay, I'm off to explore other areas of the city. Prediction: I will get lost. But don't worry - I will walk in the opposite direction of the yellow flags.

The Middle Atlas

No, that is not a picture of the Middle Atlas Mountains; it is a portrait of the macaroons I was told by many to eat in Paris.  I did.  They are delicious.

So, after three really incredible days in Fes wandering the streets and learning how to avoid being trampled by donkeys (no cars in the Old City - the donleys even take out the trash), we left for the Middle Atlas, a big mountain range that lies between Fes and Marrakech.  We had booked a driver/guide for three days through a British company, telling them we wanted pretty scenery and places to hike.  We planned to spend the first night in a town called Midelt, which was near this nunnery/women's collective place Rachel wanted to see, and the second night in a town called Ouzoud (which is home to the second tallest waterfall in Africa, after Victoria Falls) and then drive to Marrakech on the third day.  And we had mapped out a few of the roads we wanted to drive, because the guidebook said they looked pretty.

And then Jamal showed up.  

Jamal was our driver.  First he told us he couldn't read maps.  Then he said "yes, yes," those are pretty places, but he has better places and a better plan.  It involved mountains, desserts, camels, people living in caves - perhaps dragoons - I can't remember - and he insisted it could be done in three days.  Having never been to Morocco, Rachel and I took his word for it, and called the agency to try and change our hotel reservations.  The woman on the phone was sort of taken aback, said that was way too much to be done in three days, and that we couldn't cancel our hotel reservations anyway.  We told this to Jamal, and said we should go to Midelt as planned, and think during the day on if we wanted to abandon the reservation for the second night.  He seemed okay with that, at first...

For the rest of the day, Jamal, the passive-aggressive driver, would mention the following day, and how we should really, really do his plan.  When we were still non-committal, he would try bullying, then over-flattery, and then guilt ("well, if you don't trust me...") all the while driving us to some places we wanted to see, some places we didn't.  For example, the "people living in caves," were not, like, the Anasazi, but some really, really poor people living in a trash-strewn hole in a Berber village.  We were brought there for tea, and then listened to Jamal lecture for twenty minutes how in his philosophy, "people should help people."  Now, I have no problem giving money to some people living in a freakin' cave, for chirst sakes, but this really wasn't what we signed up for.  The whole things was just... unfortunate.

Then there were the monkeys - barbary apes, technically, but "monkeys" is more fun to say.  (Pop quiz:  what's the difference between a monkey and an ape?  Answer at the bottom of this post).  We wanted to drive through the famed cedar forest where the monkeys live, maybe hike around and see us some monkeys.  Who wouldn't?  Jamal drove us into some forest, and pulled over at a rest stop where there was a family of monkeys waiting.  Because all these monkeys do is wait for tourists.  Because they live off the trash the tourists bring them.  They're tourist trash monkeys.  And tourist trash monkeys... are sad monkeys indeed.

Suffice to say, by the time we got to Midelt, Rachel and I had decided to stick to our own plan and told Jamal this, who proceeded to then pout the rest of the day and into the next.  But all that kind of paled in comparison to Midelt, which is kind of like the Barstow of Morocco. Dusty, ugly, in the middle of nowhere, with no real purpose except as a rest stop between other places (which, obviously, is an exaggeration and an insult to the real population of Midelt, who I'm sure have many reasons for being there.), Midelt was, after our long day arguing with Jamal, not the oasis we were looking for.  Although, the scenery around the town was very similar to that of southern colorado - lots of sage and tumbleweeds and badlands-type rock formations.  

Our accommodations for the night was a combination of the hotel in The Shining, the Bates Motel and Kasbah!  Kasbah! on the Vegas strip (if it doesn't exist, I'm building it).  The place was either still under contruction, or being rebuilt after the "unfortunate incident" with the last innkeeper.  It was so weird and eerie and just, off.  Because Jamal had never stopped for us during the day, we took a hike into the countryside outside the hotel (there's no way we were staying in that room) and that was very calming.  Then we sat on the front patio, sipping mint tea, and watching the reaction of all the guests pulling up and seeing where they were.  It was entertaining.

Day 2, once we decided to completely ignore Jamal, was much better (even though we drove about 9 hours - we think Jamal didn't actually know how to get to Ouzoud, which was why he was so insistent on doing his own itinerary), and we spent the night in the sweetest rustic riad right over the waterfall.

The next morning, we spent a couple of hours hiking around - saw real monkeys who live around the falls, and then drove the the final three hours to Marrakech.

After Fes, Marrakech was a little bit of a shock.  It's much bigger and more modern.  Even the "Old City" or Marrakech is more modern.  The whole Old City is oriented around a huge square called the Djamma El Fna (everyone go watch The Man Who Knew Too Much so you can situate yourself) and it's incredible - food stalls, snake charmers (for tourists, but still), storytellers, performers, vendors, more tourist trash monkeys, and tons and tons of people. We went there a bunch (it's hard to avoid), but one evening we just sat in a balcony overlooking the square and watched it all for about an hour.  It's really incredible.  We also visited the food stalls and had snails (middling), a mushy lentil soup (comforting and good), merguez sausages (sooo good) and a weird chocolate mousse-y thing that was just fabulous:

The other highlight was a cooking class we took at a swanky riad hotel where I learned to make this:

It's good.

Okay, there's more, but I'm tired, and I have an early flight in the morning.  I'll be back in the land of weird keyboards, so this might be it for blogging for a bit.  I know, I know, it's going to be tough not knowing what I'm eating every day.

Answer:  monkeys have tails.  Apes do not.

Fes

So.  I went to Morocco.  

I took a Royal Air Maroc flight - which, not being an American airline - still serves a complete lunch even for a three hour flight to Fes (a wee chicken tangine with raisins and potatoes) and landed on African soil for the first time, which was pretty cool.  Just like Alex Haley in Roots.  No difference.  

At the Fes airport, I was whisked out of line (after the metal detector - which you go through after the flight lands in Morocco, which doesn't speak well for French airport security) and taken to two different offices where I, being American, was given extra paperwork in case I infect the entire country with grippe de porcine.  After running the passport control/health inspection gauntlet, I was literally the last person left in the tiny airport, since my flight was the only one that had landed in the amount of time I was there.  Luckily, my nice taxi driver, Ishan, waited for me.  A chatty Cathy (a national trait, I would soon learn), Ishan and I had a nice conversation into the city while he told me he watches Oprah and "the other one... black... long...," which we eventually ascertained was Tyra.

Instead of staying at a hotel, Rachel and I rented a private dar, Dar Ben Safi, which is a house with an inside courtyard (kind of like a riad, but smaller.  As I learned, a riad means it has a garden in the middle, a dar does not).  I booked the place off the interwebs (the owner is a Californian), so it was really a toss up what we were going to find, but truly, the place was amazing.  Three floors, with five bedrooms (at least), huge bathrooms everywhere, a modern kitchen, Moroccan tilework covering everything, simple but super comfortable beds, and a private roof deck with a view of the entire Old City.   The picture at the top of this post is the view from my bedroom looking out across the courtyard to Rachel's parlor.  And this is Rachel on the roof deck:

In addition to the fabulous house, we got a guy named SiMohammed, who would show up every morning around nine to bring us breakfast, of which we would partake in a very civilized manner upon the roof deck.  Moroccan breakfast consists of a bunch of bread products, the weirdest and tastiest being a spongy pancake type thing that looked like a crepe on one side and a sea anemone on the other. There was also a polenta/cornbread type of thing - which I think was made from semolina flour since I never saw any corn in Morocco, but who knows. Anyway, all really interesting and good, and we would chat with SiMohammed for an hour and tell each other about what we did the day before (he, among other things, was helping fix up another dar for a British guy, who, one day took SiMohammed out to lunch at Fes's one and only McDonald's.  He had never been.  He wasn't so impressed.  Weird.).  It was really lovely.

And it wasn't just SiMohammed, we got the whole Dar Ben Safi family (who, really were all related, it was just hard to remember how).  Myriam, Hafid's wife, (Who's Hafid?  Does it matter?) came to cook us a pastilla one night (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastilla), which was so fucking good - and huge - we were happily eating it for days, and then Myriam's sister, Hakima, and her friend came another day to take us to a seriously just-for-the-locals hamman, which involved a lot of nakedness, a lot of fat Moroccan ladies, and a lot of scrubbing.  The place had the visual charm of a public school bathroom, but it was really great, and involved about three different soap cycles (one is a really cool olive oil soap), henna in the hair, and a rape-y massage by one of the aforementioned fat Moroccan ladies.  I loved it.  Rachel also enjoyed herself, but silently feared she may have contracted the hammam syph.  Anyway, it really was like a magical Moroccan family adopted us for a couple of days.

In addition to eating, bathing and making new friends, we wandered around the Old City souks a lot, and got a tour from a guy who knows Rachel's boyfriend's parents, Hakim.  Hakim has a graduate degree in Moroccan music and culture, and showed us (seemingly) every nook and cranny of the Old City.  Knowing we were good Jewish girls, he even took us to one of the two surviving synagogues in Fes that aren't normally opened to the public.  This is the view from the roof of the synagogue - in the left corner you'll see the Jewish synagogue, and in the distance is the New City, which the French built when they showed up in 1912.

Okay.  I'm going to go get dinner.  I'll try and wrap this up tonight or tomorrow since I'm leaving for Beirut on Thursday.

I'm so bloggy.