After Fez, we went to a city called Bhalil, where some people live in caves. I was picturing something very different from what it actually was. I think I was imagining caves in the side of a cliff or something. These caves were right in the city—essentially like basements.
Some of the caves are for storage or livestock, but a significant number of people make their homes in them. Our guide, Kareem Abdul (“Yes, I like basketball”), took us on a walking tour of the city. Practically all of the women who live in this city make their living creating decorative buttons out of agave silk, by hand. They were beautiful pieces of intricate craft, and the women who made them were proud of their work. I had to wonder, though, what would it be like to grow up in a place like this if you were bad at making buttons, or just didn’t like it?
After leading us around the neighborhood, Kareem Abdul took us to his house (cave). It had whitewashed walls, a window for light and ventilation, decorations, comfortable couches. He poured us some tea, holding the teapot high above the cups to make foam on the top. Everywhere we went, people served us this tea—I think it’s essentially green tea with mint in it, but I’m not sure. Hmad told us that as we traveled south, we would see the foam on the tea get taller, the tea would be sweeter, and men’s turbans would be higher as well. This turned out to track perfectly. It kind of cracked me up, because it made me think about how tea gets sweeter the farther south one goes in the US as well.
One thing I found over and over again in Morocco was how proud people are of their culture, and how excited they are to share about it with tourists. Some people kind of put on a show, offering what they thought we might want to see, but others, like Kareem Abdul, just shared their lives in a kind and authentic way.
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