To Getting Run Down By Motorbikes

Youssef and Rashid dropped us off at our New Riad, Riad Lakhdar.  It was larger and more colorful than Riad Elixir, so at first we were really excited, but then we met Jamal, its owner, who seemed a bit strange.  He didn't speak a word of English (though somehow their entire website is in perfect English), and the first thing he asked us is if we wanted to pay that night.  No beating around the bush for him.  He introduced us to his two "helpers", both young, well-dressed teenage boys.  One was named Mohammad, but we never caught the name of the other boy.  They just sort of stood there and smiled dumbly.  Strange, for an older man to be living with two teenage boys, no?

We told Jamal we'd pay him later, had some tea, and settled into our rooms (huge, gorgeous).  Starving, we walked to Djemaa el Fna for dinner and found a place that served pizza, thank God (laying eyes on another plate of tajine or cous cous would have probably made me cry at that point.  Moroccan food isn't BAD, there's just absolutely no variety to it).  Then, while we were sitting at the booth talking, I heard a loud thud and turned to my right to find that a cat had squeezed through a hole in the wall, jumped down, and landed on the bench three feet away from me.  I sort of let out a yelp and grabbed Jordyn, but when I realized it was just a cat I started laughing.  But then - omg - TWO more cats jumped down from the same hole!  They crept around under the table, by our feet.  One of them disappeared behind my legs.  These aren't cute little kittens - they're big, skinny, dirty cats.  Morocco is infested with them.  I spent the rest of the meal with my feet up on the bench.

After dinner we strolled around the square.  By now we had learned how not to be hassled - avoid all eye contact and ignore all overtures.  Miguel bought a teapot and a shisha from this awesome store full of colorful light fixtures.  Then we went home, still tired from the desert.

Had breakfast on the terrace the next morning - crepes/croissants with jams, again - and bummed around the Riad for a while.  The teenage boys were eerily looming, staring and smiling wherever we went.  Jamal spent most of his time on his computer with his microphone headset, chatting loudly in Arabic with his friends on skype.  The only time he bumped into us, he asked us again when we were going to pay.  So annoying!  We missed Said.

Miguel left (he was flying out a couple of days early), so me, M and J went to the Saadian Tombs, which were cool I guess.  Some pretty architecture and a flat, tile cemetery.  We were going to hit up the Bahia Palace next, but while we were on the way a Moroccan guy told us it was closed until 2:30 pm (how did he know where we were going?).  So we went to Cafe Glacier in the square, and enjoyed another terrace-top, panoramic view of the city.  Then we wandered through the Souks for a couple of hours (we hadn't been there since our mint "gas mask" tour, and it was nice to do some shopping by ourselves).  The guidebook said a famous art gallery called "Dar Cherifa" was nearby, so we found it after asking some people for directions and quickly walking away so we didn't have to pay them.  We found its entrance, a huge wooden door, on a deserted side street (La Medina is composed mostly of deserted side streets), and knocked loudly.  A woman opened the door and let us roam around inside and see the private terrace.  It was a beautiful exhibition space, a giant courtyard with a fountain and small paintings hanging everywhere.

Went home and I took a long, hot bath in the Riad.  Jamal was still hassling us, so afterwards we ran to the ATM and got some money to pay him.  (We had to pay in cash because their credit card machine had a "broken connection."  The guidebook warned us that many hostels and restaurants would make this claim in order to hide cash flow and thus avoid paying taxes.  Later, Jordyn took a close look at the credit card machine, and said it looked totally fine, with a green light on and everything.  Ugh.  Jamal sucks.)

That evening we went to the square and ate out of the smoky food stalls.  We were still kind of hungry afterwards so we walked over to one of the dried fruit/date stands.  Mike bought a bag of dried peaches and some pistachios, but I wasn't too hungry, so I asked the guy what the price was for just three dates.  He said 14 dirham, but I only had 10, so he agreed to take it, and then gave me FOUR dates!  I got full after the third one (I had known exactly how many I wanted) and then was walking around with this one date in my hand.  Next, we ordered some tea at a restaurant, but the service was atrocious - they made us wait for like an hour.  We finally drank the damned tea and went home.

The next day Mike and Jordyn went for a walk, and I stayed back to get my Hammam at the Riad.  Hammam is basically a Turkish bath.  In the old days women used to get naked and hang out and gossip in the Hammam, but in our Riad in Morocco they had a small room where you could get the spa-like treatment by yourself.  So this black woman with bleached blonde streaks in her hair (another one of Jamal's semi-sketchy employees) takes me up to the Hammam room.  We step into the vestibule and she motions for me to take off my clothes.  This involved a certain amount of bravery on my part - I'm not terribly shy, I can be naked in front of others I guess - but in general I prefer to be covered up.

She takes me into the Hammam room, which is large, hot, and made entirely of marble.  There's a little fountain on the back wall, and a marble slab bench on the right hand side.  I sit awkwardly on the bench as she starts running the water.  She prepares all these bowls of spices and explains to me what each of them are in very broken English.  As I'm sitting I realize the marble slab is heated from underneath.  She fills a pan with hot water and pours it gently over my shoulders.  The water spills onto the marble floor and seeps down a drain.  She tilts my head back and pours it over my hair, lathers me up with mud, rinses it off, and tells me to lie down.  She works for a while with a rough exfoliating glove, and then massages a wonderful smelling cream onto my skin.  By this time I'm sweating - it's basically a sauna.  She's about to rinse me off again with water, and I'm bracing myself for the hot liquid, but this time the water is cold!  It felt so good and refreshing.  Then she gave me a scalp massage and shampooed my hair.  When it was over, she put me in a robe and led me back to the vestibule.  I sat in the chair for a while with my eyes closed and then started drying off.  As I put my clothes back on, though, I heard the water running in the Hammam room, and some scrubbing.  "Great!" I thought.  "She's cleaning up!  How sanitary!"  When I was done getting dressed I figured I should say goodbye, so I cracked open the door to the Hammam room and quickly discovered that she was NOT, in fact, cleaning the room.  She was naked, crouched on the floor, exfoliating herself with what looked like the same glove she had used on me! (Gross.  I don't want to think about it.)  Shocked, I looked away, and then quickly peeked back and waved goodbye.  She smiled and waved back.  Whatever, it was a good experience.

I went up to the terrace with my journal and was relaxing when Jordyn comes up the stairs, shaking.  She and Mike had just gotten back from their walk.  "You will never guess the day we've had," she says, kind of laughing and crying at the same time.  I guess it was a good thing I stayed at the Riad, because it turns out she and Mike had been crossing Mohammad V (the busiest street in Marrakech), and some Arabic woman came out of nowhere on her motorbike and just plowed them down in the middle of the street.  Supposedly she was going full speed, knocked into Mike, who knocked into Jordyn, and they all ended up in a giant heap on the asphalt with the motorbike on top of them.  Mike was hit square in the chest and had the wind knocked out of him, and Jordyn had some pretty intense scrapes.  They said after the collision, the traffic just kept swerving around them.  A man in the street checked up on the woman on the bike, and then told Jordyn and Mike everything was okay, and that they could leave.  Then he started motioning for them to give him money for his "help."  Disgusting.  Mike was furious.  At this point, they were definitely ready to get out of Morocco.

Mike was flying out that evening (Jordyn and I still had one more night), and had made an arrangement with Jamal to be driven to the airport.  However, when we got back to the Riad Jamal was no where to be found.  We asked Mohammad and Silent Bob where he was, and they said they didn't know.  So Mike had to go out and find a cab himself.  Again:  Jamal sucks!

Jordyn and I took a cab to an upscale-ish restaurant that night (we needed it), and talked for a long time over pasta, dessert, and wine.  We toasted merrily, though her body was still aching from the accident.  We got home and paid the Riad people (in cash, of course, the assholes), and fell asleep.  The next morning we cabbed to the airport and flew home.

This trip was definitely challenging, but I'm really glad I went.  I had never seen a Muslim country before, and it's really interesting to see how the people in Morocco live.  Even after being there for a week, the place still seems a bit elusive.  I guess there's no way to really get a firm grasp on it unless you stay there for a really long time, which I don't think I would want to do.  But overall, I really really loved the time I spent there.