Morocco Hitch Live

I was standing at the Merenid Tombs overlooking Fes, gazing down at the ancient 13th century city spread out below me. Viewed from the surrounding hills, Fes' crowded, jumbled buildings merge into a sea of white sandstone, broken up in spots by the green of the mosques and the medersas (known in Southeast asia as madrasahs). I was reminded of a scene in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indy walks out onto a rooftop terrace, ostensibly in Cairo but actually in Tunisia, and the camera pans over a medieval city in the late afternoon. It's the summer of 1936. There is a stillness in the air, as if the city has paused to catch its breath, and a heaviness caused by the heat of the afternoon that has not yet dissipated. Indy stands there, pondering his future and making plans for the upcoming archaeological excursion to find the Grail.

To shoot that scene, Steven Spielberg had to have every single television antenna in sight removed from the top of the square buildings. Beneath my feet, as I stood above another medieval city, like a mottled growth upon the fondouks, were hundreds of satellite dishes, their smooth, white plates provided texture to the white buildings they adorned.

That image helps give one an idea of what Fes actually is: a living, breathing, medieval city, where many people today live and work amidst the exact same buildings which were used by their ancestors 700 years ago. In fact, the internet cafe where I'm writing this is located in a building inside the Medina. Several hundred years ago, it was probably a residence of some artisan and his family, but the same building today connects me with the modern world. Outside, donkeys and mules continue to be used to move goods around within the cramped streets of the city (no more than a metre or two wide), and an extensive and ancient network of public fountains continues to bring drinking water to the residents. Inside, people are watching Al-Jazeera via satellite and sipping tea imported from China mixed with mint and sugar. I saw the interior of one such home- all the modern conveniences had to be retrofitted onto the walls. Exposed wiring and piping was everywhere. A traditional structure had been reconverted into a modern home, but the family continued to live around a central courtyard, eating the same couscous and stew of their tradition. Outside, the air in the labyrinthine streets is thick with spices, oil, smoke, the smell of manure and dust. I've never seen such a juxtaposition of old and new, and I continue to marvel as every turn introduces a new piece of living history.

If there's a downside, it's that the extremely cramped nature of the city means that you can't appreciate anything at a distance. High walls block your view of the interior of many interesting buildings, and as they are usually right up against all the buildings around it, you can never see the full extent of any building. Since they are usually of religious significance, you can't go in, or are restricted to a few areas.

Xin Hui and I had dinner last night on the rooftop terrace of our budget hotel, located near Bab Boujeloud (one of the gates to the Medina), above one of the most touristy areas of the Medina; a place crammed with food stalls and backpacker hotels. The Hotel Cascade, where we are staying, has the excellent advantage of having a high roof, and so it's great to sit up there and eat or drink, as you can gaze at the city stretching away beyond the gate. A cold wind was blowing in from the North, and traditional music wafted up from the street as we sat there with our glasses of hot Moroccan tea, looking down at the bustling street below, tourists and hawkers and locals and hustlers, and lights dotting the city, and we felt a small bit of connection with a world far removed in time but intimately present in space.