Sometimes people ask me what it's like to live in Fez. They want to know if it's always like being in an exotic new place or if I ever get bored due to the lack of shopping malls, theatres and clubs. Actually, it's a cross between the two because Fez is really just like any other place people live. The city has its own rhythm, its own habits and routines. If you live here, you adapt - or you leave.
On a typical weekday morning, I am walking from my house to the city gate for a taxi that will take me to work in the newer part of the city. I live in the oldest part of Fez, a city with roots that go back a thousand years. Although I make my daily trek through the narrow streets of the upper medina, I am not always aware that I live in an exotic and foreign country. Where I come from, women do not wash clothes in a public fountain or carry buckets of water home for the daily cooking and cleaning. However, I pass the neighborhood women as they chatter in groups at the fountain on the corner of my street each morning and sometimes wonder if they have time to do anything else besides fetch water. But they are always there, perhaps once or twice already, before I get there, and we greet each other daily, then go about our business.
On either side of the main street, ancient buildings stand in crumbling disrepair, some scaffolded for extra support, others whitewashed to hide the centuries of use. The street is narrow and crowded with people, animals, wares for sale, and the occasional motorscooter or mini-truck. Early in the morning, the shop owners greet each other as they open storefronts and set up awnings. Carts of bread and mint rush past me, those people who recognize me call out 'sbah el khir' or 'bonjour' and include me in the start of the new day. It's assuring to know they see me each day and miss me when they don't and ask me where I have been and if my family is well. I am not anonymous here and that does remind me that I am in a different kind of place from where I come.
On a typical walk down a medina street through the souks, you are likely to encounter all kinds of unusual obstacles - trussed live chickens laid out for sale; carts of fruit and vegetables; a woman's small table of specialty breads; a cloth laid out on the street to sell the latest pirated videos or Rayban ripoffs; a young woman displaying a box of teaglasses. You can find anything and everything in the streets. After a bit of practice, one weaves in and out, avoiding the mules laden with Coca Cola or the donkey brigades speeding down the hill with their burdens of brick or cement sacks. You might forget yourself for a moment and stop a peddlar and haggle for long underwear right in the middle of the street.
One can't ignore the smells and the aromas swirling in the air. Baking bread. Simmering stews and bubbling soups. Woodsmoke from the public oven early in the morning. Spices. Grilling meat. Raw fish. Horse sweat. Coriander and mint. Meat markets and chicken stalls. Engage in the simple act of breathing and you are thrown back in time to an era before supermarket hygiene and plastic packaging. There is something indescribably fun and exciting about shopping for fresh food, dirt and all.
Intense, riotous color splashed everywhere in the markets and in people's homes and in the landscapes of the country imprints an indelible image of Moroccco in the mind. Nothing subtle about color here. And no rules about what matches or clashes. A green star on the red field of the Moroccan flag. Bright Fez-blue plates hanging on a yellow wall. Brilliant caftans and scarves and carpets displayed along the street walls in reds, blues, blacks, yellows and more.
As I approach the blue gate called Bab Boujloud, big groups of tourists are entering with their cameras ready. They surround me and push past me without seeing me, their gazes intently drawn to the minarets and the elaborate mosaics and the waiting markets. I can tell by their excited chatter they are enthralled by this ancient walled city and barely listening to their guide. They are excited by the prospect of exploring its twisted alleys and hidden monuments. The tourists will spend too much money, take lots of photos without asking their subjects' permission and move on to their next destination with their own interpretation of what they experience inside the walls. They are simply a part of the ebb and flow of a millenia's worth of people in the medina.
When I step into the open square beyond the gate, a taxi approaches and a nearby policeman waves me on, wanting to keep the traffic moving and away from the areas where foreigners congregate. At moments like this, I am reminded that I am just another foreigner, nothing about me sets me apart from the others. Just as I weave in and out of the obstacles in my path from home to work, I weave between the place where I live now and place from where I came. I, too, am just one of thousands before me who came to Morocco seeking something, but in an odd sort of way, this reminds me that I am privileged.
