The first city we visited after leaving Tangier was Chefchaouen, the Blue City. Founded in the late 15th Century, it was home to many Muslim and Jewish people who were expelled from Spain and Portugal around that time.
One theory about why the buildings are this distinctive blue buildings is that it is the traditional color of Judaism (in other cities, we saw buildings with green or white walls or roofs, which relate to Islam). However, there’s scholarly debate on that question.
Very few Jewish people live in Morocco at all now; none, as far as Hmad knew, in Chefchaouen. This was a theme that we would experience over and over again in our time in Morocco—people would point out the historical treasures that came from the Jewish communities that made their homes in Morocco historically, but there was also a suspicion of Jews (everyone told us this was much worse 30 years ago), casual antisemitism in the form of stereotypes about Jews working in financial trades because of greed, and a general idea that Jewish people had chosen to emigrate to Israel “because they would be more comfortable there.” These comments and attitudes were among the very few things about Moroccan culture that made me uncomfortable. I hadn’t thought about or expected that this would be so prevalent.
Chefchaouen was the first place where we got a real taste of the way that Moroccans live cheek by jowl with their history. Their buildings are mostly made of adobe, which, it turns out, tends to last for a long time. Where European cities have been leveled by fires and forced to rebuild, many Moroccan cities have never experienced the kind of disaster that would flatten them. There was a flood in one area, and an earthquake in another, but most of the places we visited had cities that had persisted unmolested for centuries. This had the fascinating effect of making history deeply present. One of the buildings we saw in Chefchaouen had a plaque on its wall noting that it had been built in the 1700s—and it was right next to a building that was only 50 years old. They looked the same. I would never have guessed.
Walking around the medina, we found lots of handcrafts—textiles, paintings, ceramics.
One carry-over from the things we loved about Lisbon was the abundance of street art. Everywhere we turned, there were murals and graffiti, making us pause to smile or contemplate.
We also experienced people placing clothing on us and pulling us into (paid, of course) photo ops before we fully knew what was going on. I wasn’t a fan of these experiences—although I did love the many opportunities to pay someone a few coins to interact with a parrot or monkey (yes, I know, it’s probably terrible, but…)
We visited the Kasbah, climbing steps up and up to get a view over the city. One thing I hadn’t ever thought about before was how lush and green it was inside the walls. The courtyard was full of trees and flowers. It’s a military structure, built for defense, but it felt warm and vibrant.
One happy discovery for Petra is that her favorite food—clementines—comes from Morocco! The “tanger-” part of “tangerine” is for…Tangier. I had no idea. So citrus was plentiful and inexpensive, and she ate as much of it as she could possibly desire, including one straight off the tree, tossed down to her by a gardener in the kasbah!
Be First to Comment