Fes Off The Beaten Path

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Beni Mellal sits at the foot of Mount Tassemit and is the capital city of the Tadla-Azilal region. You will pass through this area on the way to Fez from Marrakech. There is a restaurant and café on the highway which also has a mineral shop attached to it.

High on the hills overlooking the city are the Merenid Tombs. They were originally built within the walls of the old Merenid Kasbah. There are little remains of the structure and you can only reach the ruins by taking a goat path from the road. If you do make the climb, the views from the top over Fez are supposed to be well worth the effort.

As we drove through the villages I managed to take this photo of carpets belonging to a local house being left to dry after being washed. Something we would never see at home, but common place in Morocco. These carpets would be luxury items in our homes but here in Morocco are treated as common everyday items.

We actually purchased a hall runner rug in Marrakech and are yet to attempt to hand wash such a precious carpet.

Driving from Marrakech to Fes we left the lowland farming districts and climbed the Atlas Mountains which are snowcapped during winter. As it was September and the end of summer we did not see any snow, however the terrain was rugged and bare, with little grass and some some subsistance farmers with their small flocks of sheep and goats.

However we passed some large lakes, possibly dams which capture the water from the melted snow and provide irrigation for the rich farmlands which we had driven through for several hours after departing Marrakech.

On the road to Fes we passed through many towns and villages, always with the camera ready for that unusual photo, and there were many. The wall around this primary school has been put to use to help children learn their numbers.

Far better than graffiti, can we learn something from this!

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A few kilometers south of Fes by petit taxi is a excellent pottery/tile artisan area.

From my journal:

We entered their small workshop and found two rows of crouched men chipping tiles with hammers. Their ‘work stations’ were haphazard piles of rocks, blocks and tiles that had no perceptible functionality; as though their fathers’ fathers had stacked the blocks generations ago and the men saw no reason to question or improve upon their fathers’ design.

The delicate sound of clinking tile filled the air as each man carefully tapped his hammer against a fired tile, chipping off a precise triangle or a diamond or a complex geometric shape. As I noticed the bags and bags of the shapes surrounding them I imagined crouching awkwardly like this hour after hour, day after day, chipping out bag after bag of blue triangles or yellow diamonds. How uncomfortable and tedious and monotonous and dull: my knees aching and my day’s highlight coming when the boss tells me to switch from blue triangles to yellow diamonds. The guy to my left telling and re-telling the same joke about the camel and the tent maker, the guy to my right with his endless complaints about his wife’s cooking: “She can’t even boil couscous!”, the guy across from me constantly complaining “I hate these cursed yellow stars, why do I always have to make the yellow stars? How come Ahmad always gets the easy shapes?”

To me, their occupation looked like the job from hell, but the men joked and chatted, seemingly content with their careers. They were probably following their father’s lead, proud of their ability to rapidly cut the precise shapes that would one day become beautiful zelije.

As we nodded goodbye, one of the younger men smiled shyly and handed Kareen a small tile cut into the shape of a heart.

It's dark, scary and a bit dangerous.

So, cross yourself and plunge into the cave-like medina of Fes.

Anything could happen and that's what will make it fun to do at 1 in the morning.

* This is only for the fit, the bold and the reckless. Don't do it if your big idea of life is just living it.

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