Second stage

We left Ouijda by the overnight sleeper train ("couchette") for Rabat, and upon arrival, had to board another train for the small seaside village where I had been able to find accommodations. While we waited for our room at La Felouqua to be ready, we rested on the beach. Ghazi proved once again that his complexion genes are all Irish. Reham worked on her tan and read, and I wandered around the reef marveling at the variety of life forms and habitats.

We spent a very short time in Rabat itself, but liked the medina, especially the Rue des Consuls. After a very good discussion with officials at AMIDEAST about a study abroad program in Rabat, we left for Casablanca, where we stayed a couple of days at the Hotel Bellerive on the corniche. Here too, we stayed so little time that we couldn't do the city justice. We spent a little time in the souq, found a terrific restaurant near the central market called Le Buffet, lounged on the beach a little, and had a memorably nasty meal at Pizza Hut, whose latest feature was Pizza Shawarma.




Before leaving, we visited the enormous mosque built by and named after the late King Hassan II. It is apparently the largest mosque in Africa, indeed the largest in the world outside Mecca. It was certainly very lavish. We were there on a Friday , and so decided not to tour the inside. The steep price of admission contributed to our reasoning, but I suppose the government is trying to recover some of the construction and maintenance costs for this gigantic facility.

 


From Rabat we took a CTM bus south to Essouira, the place Reham most wanted to see. Along the road, through beautiful countryside, we passed groves of the argan tree, and I saw a variation on the ubiquitous stone fences: these had brambles planted on top of them, and sometimes cactus. Using an online hostel site, we had booked a room at the Dar el Bahar ("House of the Sea"). We made our way from the bus station past the Jewish cemetery and the beautiful new French-designed housing project to the medina, which is something of a maze. The place was immaculate and beautifully appointed, each room furnished with local artisanal blankets and bedspreads and with paintings by local artists.



It was a lovely place, though I can't say we were entirely comfortable there. The proprietor was gracious, but she and her staff manifested a certain je ne sais quoi that I ascribe to the French and to those most thoroughly colonized by the French. Let us simply say that it was not a customer-centered establishment. The views of the ramparts, however, were breathtaking.

The light at Essouira is apparently always mysterious. Perhaps for this reason Orson Welles chose the city as the location for his production of Othello. Something about the hot wind blowing off the desert encountering the cold Atlantic water... it was very appealing. The souqs were fun to explore, and in the spice market, we received the first offer for Reham's hand of this year's travels.





The suitor owned a shop which sold various culinary and medicinal herbs and potions where we had gone searching for the special black soap needed for the hammams. He and his girlfriend (?) made us something they called thé royal which included five ingredients: anis, and four others that I forget. He professed to find Reham the most beautiful girl he had ever seen and the only one he could love. He let us know that his portfolio was quite diversified: he had properties in the old city for sale, and offered to demonstrate how quickly he could sell our credit card numbers. I believe that he dabbled in other questionable industries as well, but we did not press him for further information. As tea was being prepared, I ducked out of the shop to go get Ghazi, whom Reham and I had left on the beach playing hacky sack with two local kids. When we reached the shop, the owner produced a document in Arabic -- an engagement contract -- as earnest of his intentions. Reham had been finding this whole campaign very entertaining -- she had negotiated her own car and domestic help -- but all three of us felt the game edging towards a point where we could tire of it. We alleged group dinner plans and rose to take our leave, responding to the suitor's query that we were staying at the Casa del Mar -- technically not a lie -- and left the neighborhood, puzzling over what had been the intended outcome of the scam, or whether the shopowner had simply been having fun, as we had been.