Postcard of Morocco: Regarding the Arena of the Sensory faculties
Fez try all of our first genuine contact with a good Moroccan medina – the old walled area
I drive for approximately an hour, the latest Jeeps crisscrossing routes in both competition or even to end for every single other’s soil tracks, until we reach just what will become all of our go camping towards nights. Around i change the 4x4s for a good 6?4 – a good caravan away from half dozen five-legged camels taking me to the latest crest of one’s Erg Chebbi sand dunes, the greatest throughout the Moroccan Sahara.
Little locations – nothing more than stands – provides gift suggestions scaling their wall space, holding from the roof, streaming off the open blinds
We hold off on dunes before sunrays falls underneath the clouds with the western opinions, following remount the camels to own a trip returning to go camping. We spend night in a complicated camp – good tent-for example design made with tarpaulins, Berber carpets and you will forest limbs to own posts – replete that have toilets, shower curtains, sinks and you will electricity in virtually any “space.” And that i find, far on my shock, that there is going to be mosquitoes throughout the wilderness!
When you look at the Fez, there’s two: the existing medina dates back into nine th millennium and you can the fresh new “new” one on 14 th . I go into from Blue Gate to your former Jewish quarter or mellah.
The new medina reminds me personally off Venice in certain indicates – narrow, labyrinthine roads and you will peculiar adjustment in the transport, business and you may almost every element of daily life for this. Items go by handcart or donkey, brand new blast of human base visitors parting to let them as a result of immediately after which rejoining within wake. We have witnessed running drinking water and sewers for years and years; now, there can be without a doubt fuel, plus cable tv, cellular phone reception additionally the websites.
Someone discuss the nerve exposure to Morocco. No place is-it significantly more the situation compared to the fresh new souks or commercial avenue of one’s medina. The fresh landscapes and smells hit all over both – no photo will do justice so you’re able to it. The fresh welder try next to the baker who’s near to the fresh liven vendor while the butcher who is next to the gowns shop therefore the electronic devices shop.
We have been advised you to Fez is the social and you may spiritual heart off Morocco. Among the many higher stores off understanding of your Arab business in which mathematics and sciences was basically kept real time while you are medieval Europe slumbered from the Old – the latest University regarding Al-Karaouine – and the very first college all over the world will be here. I head to a former madrassa otherwise 
spiritual school. Having its highest unlock courtyard to a fountain, it is a welcome compare to the tincture, the new tightness and the compression of the roadways of your medina.
Morocco is famous for their leather-based goods, plus the tanneries of Fez medina was in fact dyeing hides from the same suggestions for centuries. We enter a leather shop, where we’re handed an excellent sprig from new perfect – defense against the fresh scent from pigeon poop, one of the first foods of passing away process. We move across a great amount of bedroom, up and down steps – cave-like with ceilings and you can walls full of alot more fabric presents than simply I have ever noticed in one to lay just before – and you will emerge to a patio disregarding the new dyeing vats.
That evening for lunch we get-off the existing part of urban area that’s home to this new medinas and make all of our answer to the brand new “European” point based by French and you can in which progressive innovation continues. The brand new broad boulevards, new discover room, the fashionable French eatery in which i’ve filet mignon can be found in eg higher contrast towards medina – I might almost lost this world existed.