World of Handicrafts

We are now staying in the imperial city of Fes, the spiritual and cultural capital of Morocco.  It is home to the world’s first university, and its medina is currently the world’s largest living medieval Islamic city.  What’s cool about this medina is that it is also car free, so the donkey is basically the only form of transport allowed apart from your own feet.  And in the heart of this madness is where we are staying.

Though the medina has an impressive resume, you can smell donkey pee and poop everywhere.  Flies, wasps, and dead rats are not uncommon sights.  After about four hours of losing ourselves in the 9000 streets of the medina, we were pretty much medina’ed out.

It was an eye-opening four hours though.  We met a guy on the train from Tangier who’s doing his masters at U of T, and his brother was nice enough to treat us to a local sheesha hang out.   He in turn introduced us to a Fes university professor who likes to show tourists around the medina for free just to practice his English.  This professor reminded me of my grandpa who’s also a teacher; gentle and soft spoken.  We both really enjoyed his company.  At first we were wary of these strangers, but they wouldn’t let us pay for anything and were extremely gracious.  We were very lucky to have them as hosts.  It was obvious they wanted us to have a good view of Morocco and its people, and they did a very good job of that.

The medina has many cultural, historic, and downright beautiful sights that the prof took us to.  There is much history here, and going into the mosques, palaces, and medersas (theological schools) were moments of zen in the hectic market.  He asked us in the end if we wanted to see why Fes was the capital of handicrafts in Morocco, and that is how we finished our tour.  Unfortunately when you see how they make their crafts, you also have to deal with the sales pitch that goes with each type of product.  The two most interesting were the leather tanneries and the beautiful Moroccan carpets.

The leather tanneries were interesting in that the process of fabrication has basically not changed since medieval times.  This means that the leather is still treated in vats of pigeon poo and cow pee.  Nice.  The dying vats are cool though, filled with indigo and saffron and poppy for colour.  Many people say that the leather (they do cow, goat, camel and sheep) fabricated here is among the most prized in the world.  The textures and prices are amazing, and I would have been tempted to buy a jacket or purse.  Unfortunately the styles are straight out of 1986!  I’ll stick with the LV’s and future Chanel’s.

Hands down the most convincing was the carpet seller though.  He was like your stereotypical Arab salesman straight out of an Aladdin movie, and we almost buckled.  The sales pitch is definitely carefully orchestrated, and the carpets are spectacular to boot.  He has an answer for every single time you decline to buy.  Even when we told him we were traveling for a year and we had no way of carrying carpets, he said he would hold them for us and deliver them in one year.  And it’s not allowed in Islamic law to charge interest so we just had to put down a credit card and nothing would be charged until delivery.  And since our year long trip would be sooo expensive, we could buy five carpets and sell them at home for an amazing price and pay for our whole trip!  We went to the only government endorsed carpet house in the medina, so if I was to buy one it would be from here (no haggling allowed, government certificates, and gorgeous product).  But if anyone is sure they don’t want to buy a carpet, maybe the best advice is to admire them from the windows and to not even set foot in the shop.

The way to end the perfect stay at the Fes medina was this seven year old kid grabbing my butt.  Ugh.  He first started talking to us but once he heard us speaking Mandarin, he backed off and just started following us.  He then tripped I guess and fell onto my back.  His dad must’ve saw and asked him to apologize to us, after one turn into the quiet medina alley, him and his ten year old brother came up to shake Eugene’s hand and mine.  We happily accepted his apology, but they kept on following us into even darker alleys (our riad was very deep in the medina).  Then before you know it, he touched my butt and sprinted into the darkness.  Nice one KID!