Rough Seas and Morocco

The Rock of Gibraltar from my room.

The seas were very rough between Spain and Morocco, and we were unable to bunker in Gibraltar as planned. This meant we got to Morocco a day later than anticipated which threw off a lot of travel plans. It also meant that we spent two days lurching around the Straights of Gibraltar. The weather was wintry and wet, and so windy you couldn’t go outside on the deck for fear of being blown over. I can only express it this way: the sea was angry. The ship would lift up in the front, and slap down onto the surface of the water with a crack, sending the hull into a spasmodic shudder. After trying to navigate the hallways, I finally decided just to go to bed. It wasn’t that I felt ill---I didn’t. I was worried that I was going to be thrown against a wall, or down a set of stairs. Crawling into bed seemed like the safest thing to do.

As we were finally coming into the Port of Casablanca, the captain’s mellifluous British accent came over the intercom at dinner and warned us that in ten minutes, the ship would be taking a “giant dip” when we made a ninety degree turn without our stabilizers on. We were going to find ourselves in a huge wave, caught in our own “back water.” We were admonished to secure everything in our cabins, and to go to a safe spot. I ran downstairs to my cabin on the 4th deck, put my computer safely on the bed, and proceeded to watch the turn---and the giant dip---from my window. Everything flew off all surfaces in my cabin---books and course materials came crashing in a heap on the floor, the entire contents of my bathroom counter were swept into the sink, and two glasses shattered. From my window, the ship looked as if we were first headed directly into the water, then we suddenly were jerked upwards into the sky, and then came crashing down again into mouth of an eighteen foot, grey green wave. My window was suddenly covered with water, and I couldn’t see. I thought for sure: this is it, we’re going to die at the bottom of the sea. But then we righted ourselves, and it was all over.

They say things will get rough again when we go around the Cape of Good Hope.

I am trying very hard to be mature about this. No one had mentioned the need for physical courage in the Semester at Sea brochure. Physical courage is not on my list of attributes, my years on the perilous mountain roads of northern India notwithstanding.

The port of Casablanca was a tough one. Unlike Cadiz, where you could walk off the ship, cross the street, and find yourself in the middle of an elegant eighteenth century European town, the port in Casablanca is full of cranes and huge container ships---in a marginal part of a sprawling, industrial city of 13 million on the north coast of Africa. Jo and I traveled to Fez with two friends, Joan one of the ship nurses, and Lori, an administrator from the University of Virginia. We took the train, a journey of about four hours. When we got to Fez, another friend had arranged for us to have a “guide.” I had initially scoffed at the idea, believing myself to be an intrepid traveler, but when Joan---who has been around the world several times before---insisted, I relented. As it turned out: Joan was right. We could never have negotiated the medina in Fez without the protection of Abdullah. I was also glad to have Lori and Joan help me keep an eye on Johanna who is easy prey, being tall, blonde, and beautiful. Upon maternal urging, she had pulled her hair back in a bun, and dressed conservatively, but still many male eyes were upon her, at times with a degree of predation.. To no avail---she was surrounded by a trio of harpies, and Abdullah too hovered around her. I can say to her father in all honesty: Jo would not be sold into white slavery. (While she loved Fez, I think Jo was very happy to escape from the scrutiny of the matrons, to get back to the ship---and to resume her social life with the other faculty kids. She is a pack animal, this third child of mine.)

Jo modeling a headscarf.

Abdullah was a Berber, a man of about 45, well over six feet, dignified, a gentle giant, dressed in a floor length grey jellaba that made him look like a medieval monk, particularly when he put up the hood. Abdullah took very good care of us, and seemed to be a minor celebrity in the medina. He was the seventh of nine children, and his brothers still lived in their home in Fez that had been in his family for over 250 years. He was university-educated, with French, Arabic, two kinds of Berber, Italian, Spanish, and English at his command, and knowledgeable about the architecture, the history, and the culture, and helpful with our pitiful attempts at bartering. As is de rigueur with tours of this type, we were marched to and through his friend’s ceramic factory, carpeteries, both Fez and Berber, and a few other handicraft industries. At times I felt captive, particularly in the carpet store where we were served glasses of lovely, sweet fresh mint tea, and forced to listen to the story of the cooperative of orphans and divorced women who allegedly tied the hundreds of knots per square inch of the rugs that were flopped down in front of us by a small army of Moroccan men, one after the other, in a dazzling sequence of abstract patterns and lush colors, particularly the Fez blue and the Islamic mint green. I always feel so pressured by these bartering dramas, and guilty for the tea, for the labor involved in making the carpets and displaying them, for those orphans and husbandless laborers, but the fact is: I didn’t really want a carpet. Joan bought one, however, which redeemed us all. At least in the ceramic factory, I was able to bring out my credit card and buy a trivet---to cover the cost of two glasses of tea.

Abdullah.

Following Abdullah through the medina.

What can I ever say to properly describe the medina in Fez? It lived up to my memories from 1969. Indeed, little has changed except for perhaps there was less hashish and in places, better pavement on the winding, precipitous streets, and maybe slightly fewer donkeys. But the donkeys are still carrying most of the cargo in Fez, and they stop for no one. At one point, I had to grab Joan to keep her from being plowed over by a donkey who was hurtling down the cobblestones, his cargo swinging wildly from right to left, touching either side of the narrow alley way. His owner was barking out, “Balak, balak,” which triggered no response in us, but later we learned it meant, “Watch out! Watch out!” in Arabic. As Abdullah put it, “Donkeys don’t have brakes.” They do, however, wear special shoes made of car tires to give their hooves some grip.

The donkeys of Fez.

The Berber carpet store.

For centuries, Fez has been the cultural and spiritual capital of Morocco. It has a twelfth century mosque that can accommodate 20,000 people at prayer. (As non-Muslims, we could only peak inside.) Fez also claims to have the world’s oldest university, the Medersa Bou Inania, and you can still visit the courtyard of its main theological college. Built in the 1350s, the building is an exquisite combination of tile work, plasterwork, and elaborate cedar wood carvings, all pieced together in elegant Islamic style. (I love the symmetry and simplicity of this architecture, even when being ornate.) We also went to the famous tanneries where the super soft leather of Fez is processed and dyed, and it’s possible to lean over the terraces of the leather shops and watch the workers knee-deep in red or green dye vats, coloring the animal skins just as their predecessors did in the fourteenth century. The tanneries really stink, by the way, as does the poofy, green leather footstool I purchased for my new little house in Northport. My cabin currently is redolent of dead goat.

The Medersa Bou Inania.

The tanneries of Fez.

It rained off and on all the time we were in Fez, magnifying all the senses. The smells and sounds of Fez reminded me very much of being in the lower bazaar in Shimla, and the puddles of water and mud and donkey dung and slick vegetable peels on the semi-paved alleys reminded us of walking through McLeod Gang in Dharamsala during the monsoon. Everywhere the smell of burning cedar was in the air, and devotional and pop music poured out of stalls. The smell of fresh bread would assail your nose every block or so from the large, communal bakeries that baked all the bread for the neighborhood. (Abdullah introduced us to a delicious, anise-flavored bread that we picked right off the hot baking tray.) Hawkers peddled their wares. Women were filling large brass vessels with water at the brilliantly tiled public fountains, leaning under canopies of intricately carved wood to seek respite from the rain. In a public square, the metal workers pound, pounded, pounded brass plates with their anvils right through the rain. Chickens about to be killed on the spot were singing their last songs, and every hour or so, there would be that eerie, evocative call to prayer. My favorite thing: everywhere there were cats, some sleek and happy, some not. I had not remembered the cats of Morocco, but they were in every shop, on doorsteps, and huddled in the corners of the alleyways. I’ve since learned that in Islam, the cat holds a place of reverence. Muhammad loved cats, and believed them to be more highly evolved than dogs. It’s almost enough to make me convert.

As you might have guessed, I loved Fez. This is my kind of travel.

Coming out of port in Casablanca was actually worse than going in except that we were emotionally prepared. The students all went up to the large open reception hall which had been cleared for the dip, and lay down shoulder to shoulder so that when the boat dipped, they rolled together en masse. Others were in the Union, and the stage fell on two boys, breaking two arms. (Both are now splinted and drugged up until we get into port in Namibia in seven days.) Another student may have broken a hip falling from the lurch in his room. One adult passenger split his head open on the bathroom step when he foolishly tried to get up from his bed; another has a displaced shoulder. Jo did the dip with her friends in the reception hall, and I went up to the faculty lounge and did the dip with mine. I figured if I was going to die and sink to the bottom of the sea, I’d just as soon have company.

Some have asked: doesn’t the ship have stabilizers? And the answer is yes, it does, but she is built for speed and capable of doing 30 knots per hour. Furthermore, she has a shallow draft. So we pay for the speed with the rocking and rolling. I don’t think the folks at Semester at Sea can do much to make things better---we are, after all, in a tin can bobbing up and down on the surface of a deep and capricious sea. Usually I can tolerate the bobbing, but the dips are truly terrifying. I noticed when I staggered up to the lounge that some faculty were already draped over the screwed-to-the-floor tables, and had obviously been drinking for awhile. I was one of the few foolish enough to be sober.

I’m thinking of doing the Cape of Good Hope looped. If I’m going to die anyway, why not go out giddy?

LH