Day 154: Marrakech

Marrakech was considerably more touristy than the previous Moroccan cities and towns we visited. The kind of touristy when you know they must have dropped a small fortune to be there. Lots of European vacationers. Lots of older couples. Lots of money. We walked through Jemaa el-Fnaa in the morning and had an entirely different experience than we had at night. Circles were formed around snake charmers, fortune tellers, monkey handlers, and even a magician.

It sounds exotic, but it felt anything but. It felt dirty. Snakes were often laying on hot stones, monkeys were dressed up with cuffs they held onto to as if to try to keep it off of their necks. Everyone asked for money. You want a picture? You have to pay. You want your fortune read, henna on your hands, the opportunity to hold an imprisoned monkey? You have to pay. The magician was friendly enough to invite me to do some of his tricks myself, but I was clueless, and more likely the butt of his jokes in lieu of being a fabulous assistant. Which, maybe, in his eyes, made me a fabulous assistant. That is, until he handed over his stage to the man missing a leg to ask for his own share of money.

We walked around the square (Jemaa el-Fnaa), the mosque, the El Badi Palace and then went back to the square for dinner at the stalls. My favorite part of the day was probably listening to the storks chatter on the walls of the El Badi Palace. I’m not usually one for bird watching, but I could have watched these giant birds all day long. There were huge nests on the walls and they were so loud, it sounded like someone was taking a more colorful sounding jack-hammer to the walls of the ruins.

Day 145: Casablanca

Waking up to french toast after the day of travel it took to get from Tel Aviv to Casablanca was unbelievable. Our couchsurfer hosts, Catherine and Bryan, were already proving to be the most amazing hosts. ever. We had breakfast with them, got some directions for our first day in Casablanca, and set out in the direction of the Hassan II Mosque on the shore of the Atlantic.

We arrived too late to go in for a tour of the interior, but both of us enjoyed walking around the mosque and people watching. Women lounged in the sun with their shoes off, girls rollerskated through the columns, families posed for pictures. It felt more like a Saturday at the park, than it did outside of a mosque!

I’m constantly amazed at the size of the mosques we’ve been through around the world. This mosque holds roughly 25,000 people inside its main hall. I always think of my hometown’s population of (roughly) 10,000 and compare.

It’s eye-opening for a girl who grew up surrounded by Christian denominations. There are simply SO many followers of other faiths out there! I sometimes wonder how someone who worships at a huge mosque like this one would feel about the multitude of small churches and parishes in the states. This is just some of what I ponder when sitting outside of something so beautiful and unlike anything you’d find in Northern Kentucky. Is there even one small mosque in NKY? I just googled ‘mosque in Northern Kentucky’ and the results are unsettling. They consist of one for the Islamic Association of Northern Kentucky and the rest revolving around protests in Florence over the construction of a mosque in 2010. Apparently in 2011, the Islamic Association instead sold the property to developers, making 750,000 on the sale. Seriously.

It seems a little coincidental that the sale was ”too good to be true” resulting in them selling the property instead of building a mosque. Next time they should pick a parcel of land near the Creation Museum. I bet the Creationists would shell out some serious cash to not have a beautiful minaret obstruct the view of dinosaurs mingling with Adam and Eve on their museum grounds. The longer we are on this trip, the more I see, and the more people I meet… it becomes increasingly difficult to digest insular thinking.

In the book, “Shantaram” the main character, Lin, says:

“Fanaticism is the opposite of love. A wise man once told me – he’s a muslim by the way – that he has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded jew than he does with a fanatic from his own religion. Winston Churchill once defined a fanatic as someone who won’t change his mind and can’t change the subject.”

I couldn’t agree more.

I digress. I’m sorry if some of my posts go down the road of being a religious rant. Sometimes- like today, like in the Old City in Jerusalem, like in the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, like in the churches of Old Goa… our days seem to revolve around one religion or the other. It’s incredibly interesting, but as always, reminds me of how little I know of other religions and how much I want to learn about them.

After we wandered around the mosque, we tried to walk through the medina. Every time I hear the word medina, I start singing (to myself in my head, or to Andrew out-loud) “Funky Cold Medina! Bamp. Bamp. Bamp Bamp.” But then I started wondering what a medina is exactly and if the song is related. A ‘medina’ is Arabic for ”city.” Usually it refers to the ‘old city’ and it is comparable to a walled maze of narrow streets, houses, shops, restaurants, fountains, palaces, mosques, etc. Cars are too big for the streets, so it’s quieter, but upon first visit can be rather confusing and makes me think of what it would be like (only way more challenging) if I were to participate in a corn maze.

It’s completely unrelated to ancient walled in cities, yet I cannot stop singing it. Walking through the medina in Casablanca was a bit impossible because the walkways were covered in a thick layer of mud and I’m still stuck with my barefoot ‘water’ shoes with holes on the bottom letting mud seep in.

We walked back through the streets of Casa towards Catherine and Bryan’s apartment. Casablanca doesn’t feel anything like what I thought Morocco would feel like, but then again, we hear it’s the city you stop through getting from Fes to Marrakech, or where you get into Morocco.