Beggary
18 - 21 May, Ian
On Wednesday evening we had dinner at La Maison
Bleue, the restaurant in Fes that seems to get talked about the most. It's
situated on the outer fringe of the medina, just round the corner from Dar Dmana
where we stayed on our first night, and inside one of the girls pointed out that
it's quite similar to Dar Dmana, with a large interior courtyard, overlooked by
side rooms at various levels and with beautiful zellij and plaster work
everywhere. (All of this is also true of Dar Bennis but on a more domestic
scale.) The food, taken in one of the side rooms off the courtyard, was
excellent. As I frequently find in nice restaurants, the first course was
probably my favourite, being about eight small tagines, each having a different
spiced vegetable dish. Next we had a great pastilla, done with quail rather
than the more usual pigeon or chicken. The main course was chicken coated in
its own liver, which was also delicious. And finally there was dessert made
from the same flaky pastry as the pastilla and a thick milk
sauce.
As we ate Gwana music was provided by two or three guys in fancy blue dress with shells sewn onto black sashes, and a guy with an oud. The oud is a twelve-stringed Arabic instrument from which the lute comes ("the oud" is "l'oud" in Arabic). The blue guys and the oud guy alternated sessions and then jammed at the end. Because the music was so good they could even get away with a twee tassel-twirling thing with their hats. And a couple of guys did a captivating rhythmic stamping shuffle in their babouches slippers, which you would never guess could work as tap shoes.
It was actually a really good meal. One point, though, that you may not see in your Fodor guide is that no one dining at the restaurant was Arabic. David's explanation, which has the ring of truth, is that there's no way that local people would pay that much money to have local food. In a previous entry I remarked that my benchmark Moroccan restaurant is Yacout in Marrakech; when we ate there the clientele all seemed to be Moroccan's. One possible reason for the difference is David's cunning try: that the diners at Yacout must have been Moroccan tourists. Could be. Or maybe it's that Yacout is better. I think it is. It's grander, and before you even think about food you get to look over Marrakech's medina from the roof top, then take a gin and tonic in your own discreet little alcove. And the central courtyard in which you dine is completely open and has got a pool in the middle. My feeling is that it's taken a foreigner (the American Bill Willis) to come in and do the Moroccan thing with a slight twist to make it really special. Based on experience to date, funky pools in the courtyard seem more Marrakech than Fes, and vice versa for the authentic traditional music.
We saw one of the musicians again the next night when we went to a Gwana music gig at the American Language Centre, where they played to about twenty of us outside a villa where some of the Centre's students reside. Although Enjoyable Dancing was pretty much compulsory at the gig (only Heidi in our party stuck to her guns and refused all solicitations) it was actually very enjoyable. We got to meet some of the people who are studying at or passing through the language centre over the mint tea and little pastries that were served during the concert. One lady, an English woman from Dorking, told us that she was researching a book on the experience of being Moroccan - this was, spookily, within hours of me posting my last entry on my desire to learn more about just this subject. Charming though she was, she was very tight-lipped about her book, giving away neither her headline findings nor any publication details such as the title.
In between these outings we continue with our routines, and every day I go walking around the medina at least once. Incidentally, the western song that I've noticed most in the stalls (in fact, the only western song I've noticed) is Candy Shop by 50 Cent. It's a very catchy song but for those of you who don't know it I should say that it's is not an exhortation to female modesty and decorous behaviour, and it seems incongruous that it's so popular here. (In fact, the first time I registered it playing I was with Zoe, and was slightly surprised that she knows it too - apparently everyone does, she tells me.) If it is a song you know next time you hear it you might care to note that it has a strong Arabic vibe to it, if you haven't already.
But in the medina one phenomenon that's even more ubiquitous than 50 Cent is begging. This takes a few different forms. Most prevalent are the people sitting on the street with a hand out in front of them. More often than not these are old women, but there are quite a few old men too, and a few young women with small children. Also I've had a number of old people come up to me personally and, hand out, make a direct appeal in Arabic. Yesterday when I was shopping for vegetables I went to a part of the medina that can be reached by the drivable roads and here I was asked for money by young guys wearing western clothes a couple of times. Disturbingly perhaps, toddlers in the street quite often come and ask me for a few Dirhams, too. Kids aside, the people who just come and ask directly generally seem to be recounting a tale of specific need, although since most of them speak only Arabic I'm never totally clear about what it is. One woman carrying a toddler was pointing to an opticians so I could guess that one. There's also a teenage boy who has come round to the Dar a couple of times with a story, recounted in broken French and hand signals, of how his mother has run out of cooking gas and can't feed the baby.
When I arrived I found, as many of you probably would, the people that come up and ask for money more disturbing than the beggars who sit on the street and look at you was you walk past. This is, I suppose, mainly because they're more intrusive, but it's also, I think, because it just seems ruder. We were talking about this over our fancy foreigners-only Moroccan dinner the other night and David confirmed that it's indeed quite common for people here simply to come and ask for money if they need it. Thinking about it, maybe that's okay - it makes sense in a way, doesn't it.
When we were in southern Africa the most common way that needy people tried to extract money from us was by offering services with associated tips that we didn't necessarily want (which is only what people say about New York). Since this was usually benign, we went along with it and once you've got into the swing of chucking out a few low denomination notes to people who usually smile and are marginally helpful you have a nicer time. I recall a marked contrast in forms of begging at one town (one of the few that we didn't like) that we passed through in Namibia. We were parked at the kerb outside a Spar, where Paula and the girls were picking up some shopping; I was sitting in the car, in the baking heat, cutting a DVD back-up of our photo's to post to Adi for safe keeping. As I sat there a number of the local poor came up to the car window and asked meekly for cash. Somehow I felt like a priest in a confessional. Well, none of them got any, but we did throw a bit to the guy who insisted on walking us - as we drove - round to the internet cafe that we were after, rather than just telling us to Go straight on and take the first left.
Here in the medina the "unwanted services" line takes the form of kids kicking around our heels wanting to guide us around. As I've recounted before, I'm not troubled as much as I expected to be by this and it's proved easy to get rid of the faux guides by asserting that we live here. Yesterday, though, we weakened. We've been meaning since we arrived to visit the tanneries here and yesterday was the day when we finally did. Despite being large when you find them, they're tucked away behind walls on the other side of the Quaraouine Mosque from us, and not visible from the streets. I had, though, scouted them out before and knew more or less where to go. As we were walking along we went more slowly than usual and Zoe was also taking photographs. We were also answering questions about where we come from and so forth more openly and truthfully than normal. Quite suddenly, so it seemed to me, we were in a cloud of people who wanted to show us their lamps or carpets, show us round their houses and/or guide us to the tanneries or anywhere else we liked; it was almost overwhelming. The thing is that many of these people are genuine and friendly, and even if there was a clear line dividing those who wanted to help from those who wanted to make a little money from us (which is very doubtful) we couldn't have found it. So we ended up with a local kid in an England shirt walking in front of us, leading us along a route that we already knew.
The tanneries, as I'd previously determined, are best seen by going into one of the adjacent leather shops and walking out over the rooftops from their upstairs terrace. The smell is acrid, arising from the pigeon lime that's used to cure the leather. (Here pigeons thus serve two roles in the local economy, the other being as a pastilla ingredient.) As you survey the tanneries there are two sets of stone vats arrayed below you. First, there's an area of rectangular vats with grey/green liquid (I have a hunch where the colour comes from) where the hides are softened. Then there's an even larger area of round vats containing dyes of various colours, with most in shades of red, yellow and brown. According to Lonely Planet, this craft stretches back at least 7,000 years, and I can believe that the tannery in Fes dates back many centuries.
After seeing the tanneries we bought a couple of poufs from the leather shop. (I'm wondering what word Americans use for pouf? Footstool is too imprecise - maybe the more correct ottoman? Or maybe it's one of those words, like anti-macassar, that doesn't exist in the US?) Since we bought the poufs unstuffed they'll pack up quite well and will be easily absorbed at home. Inevitably, we did the negotiation thing. In this case it was quite easy as we quickly decided how much we were prepared to pay and, since we're here a month, there was no urgency to buy. Of course, we only got our price as we were leaving the shop.
As with the whole beggary thing, you can easily find yourself arguing about an amount of money that at home would seem inconsequential. But then you can look on these amounts in more than one way. The gas bottle kid returned last night and, partly because we were about to sit down for dinner and partly because I'm in two minds about the whole beggary thing here now, I gave him his money. I've been thinking that my instinctive preference for tipping people offering redundant services over people expressing a raw need is a residue of a puritanical view of life that isn't really my own. Isn't it better to give the kid money when he needs new gas? And even if he's lying, he still needs money to live and who's to criticise him? He claimed he needed 40 Dirhams for the gas and I only had a 100 Dirham note so I gave him that and he promised, in suddenly improving French, to bring me change. Now a 100 Dirham note is big business here. Usually if we give money to the hand-out ladies it's just a few coins. One Dirham buys a round loaf of bread. 3 Dirhams buys us 4 oranges. Even a litre of bottled water, for those of us too tender to drink from the fountains, costs only 5 Dirhams. So 100 Dirhams is worth having. And the shops and even taxis hate dealing in notes that large. But it's only £6! I had a similar "value disconnect" when we were walking round the Sinde village in Zambia and heard that the money they're trying to raise to pay the teacher for a year is about the same as I'd recently paid for the camera with which I took her photo. (It wasn't even a very fancy camera.)
Question of the day here is will the gas bottle kid return with the 60 Dirhams change. What do you think?
As we ate Gwana music was provided by two or three guys in fancy blue dress with shells sewn onto black sashes, and a guy with an oud. The oud is a twelve-stringed Arabic instrument from which the lute comes ("the oud" is "l'oud" in Arabic). The blue guys and the oud guy alternated sessions and then jammed at the end. Because the music was so good they could even get away with a twee tassel-twirling thing with their hats. And a couple of guys did a captivating rhythmic stamping shuffle in their babouches slippers, which you would never guess could work as tap shoes.
It was actually a really good meal. One point, though, that you may not see in your Fodor guide is that no one dining at the restaurant was Arabic. David's explanation, which has the ring of truth, is that there's no way that local people would pay that much money to have local food. In a previous entry I remarked that my benchmark Moroccan restaurant is Yacout in Marrakech; when we ate there the clientele all seemed to be Moroccan's. One possible reason for the difference is David's cunning try: that the diners at Yacout must have been Moroccan tourists. Could be. Or maybe it's that Yacout is better. I think it is. It's grander, and before you even think about food you get to look over Marrakech's medina from the roof top, then take a gin and tonic in your own discreet little alcove. And the central courtyard in which you dine is completely open and has got a pool in the middle. My feeling is that it's taken a foreigner (the American Bill Willis) to come in and do the Moroccan thing with a slight twist to make it really special. Based on experience to date, funky pools in the courtyard seem more Marrakech than Fes, and vice versa for the authentic traditional music.
We saw one of the musicians again the next night when we went to a Gwana music gig at the American Language Centre, where they played to about twenty of us outside a villa where some of the Centre's students reside. Although Enjoyable Dancing was pretty much compulsory at the gig (only Heidi in our party stuck to her guns and refused all solicitations) it was actually very enjoyable. We got to meet some of the people who are studying at or passing through the language centre over the mint tea and little pastries that were served during the concert. One lady, an English woman from Dorking, told us that she was researching a book on the experience of being Moroccan - this was, spookily, within hours of me posting my last entry on my desire to learn more about just this subject. Charming though she was, she was very tight-lipped about her book, giving away neither her headline findings nor any publication details such as the title.
In between these outings we continue with our routines, and every day I go walking around the medina at least once. Incidentally, the western song that I've noticed most in the stalls (in fact, the only western song I've noticed) is Candy Shop by 50 Cent. It's a very catchy song but for those of you who don't know it I should say that it's is not an exhortation to female modesty and decorous behaviour, and it seems incongruous that it's so popular here. (In fact, the first time I registered it playing I was with Zoe, and was slightly surprised that she knows it too - apparently everyone does, she tells me.) If it is a song you know next time you hear it you might care to note that it has a strong Arabic vibe to it, if you haven't already.
But in the medina one phenomenon that's even more ubiquitous than 50 Cent is begging. This takes a few different forms. Most prevalent are the people sitting on the street with a hand out in front of them. More often than not these are old women, but there are quite a few old men too, and a few young women with small children. Also I've had a number of old people come up to me personally and, hand out, make a direct appeal in Arabic. Yesterday when I was shopping for vegetables I went to a part of the medina that can be reached by the drivable roads and here I was asked for money by young guys wearing western clothes a couple of times. Disturbingly perhaps, toddlers in the street quite often come and ask me for a few Dirhams, too. Kids aside, the people who just come and ask directly generally seem to be recounting a tale of specific need, although since most of them speak only Arabic I'm never totally clear about what it is. One woman carrying a toddler was pointing to an opticians so I could guess that one. There's also a teenage boy who has come round to the Dar a couple of times with a story, recounted in broken French and hand signals, of how his mother has run out of cooking gas and can't feed the baby.
When I arrived I found, as many of you probably would, the people that come up and ask for money more disturbing than the beggars who sit on the street and look at you was you walk past. This is, I suppose, mainly because they're more intrusive, but it's also, I think, because it just seems ruder. We were talking about this over our fancy foreigners-only Moroccan dinner the other night and David confirmed that it's indeed quite common for people here simply to come and ask for money if they need it. Thinking about it, maybe that's okay - it makes sense in a way, doesn't it.
When we were in southern Africa the most common way that needy people tried to extract money from us was by offering services with associated tips that we didn't necessarily want (which is only what people say about New York). Since this was usually benign, we went along with it and once you've got into the swing of chucking out a few low denomination notes to people who usually smile and are marginally helpful you have a nicer time. I recall a marked contrast in forms of begging at one town (one of the few that we didn't like) that we passed through in Namibia. We were parked at the kerb outside a Spar, where Paula and the girls were picking up some shopping; I was sitting in the car, in the baking heat, cutting a DVD back-up of our photo's to post to Adi for safe keeping. As I sat there a number of the local poor came up to the car window and asked meekly for cash. Somehow I felt like a priest in a confessional. Well, none of them got any, but we did throw a bit to the guy who insisted on walking us - as we drove - round to the internet cafe that we were after, rather than just telling us to Go straight on and take the first left.
Here in the medina the "unwanted services" line takes the form of kids kicking around our heels wanting to guide us around. As I've recounted before, I'm not troubled as much as I expected to be by this and it's proved easy to get rid of the faux guides by asserting that we live here. Yesterday, though, we weakened. We've been meaning since we arrived to visit the tanneries here and yesterday was the day when we finally did. Despite being large when you find them, they're tucked away behind walls on the other side of the Quaraouine Mosque from us, and not visible from the streets. I had, though, scouted them out before and knew more or less where to go. As we were walking along we went more slowly than usual and Zoe was also taking photographs. We were also answering questions about where we come from and so forth more openly and truthfully than normal. Quite suddenly, so it seemed to me, we were in a cloud of people who wanted to show us their lamps or carpets, show us round their houses and/or guide us to the tanneries or anywhere else we liked; it was almost overwhelming. The thing is that many of these people are genuine and friendly, and even if there was a clear line dividing those who wanted to help from those who wanted to make a little money from us (which is very doubtful) we couldn't have found it. So we ended up with a local kid in an England shirt walking in front of us, leading us along a route that we already knew.
The tanneries, as I'd previously determined, are best seen by going into one of the adjacent leather shops and walking out over the rooftops from their upstairs terrace. The smell is acrid, arising from the pigeon lime that's used to cure the leather. (Here pigeons thus serve two roles in the local economy, the other being as a pastilla ingredient.) As you survey the tanneries there are two sets of stone vats arrayed below you. First, there's an area of rectangular vats with grey/green liquid (I have a hunch where the colour comes from) where the hides are softened. Then there's an even larger area of round vats containing dyes of various colours, with most in shades of red, yellow and brown. According to Lonely Planet, this craft stretches back at least 7,000 years, and I can believe that the tannery in Fes dates back many centuries.
After seeing the tanneries we bought a couple of poufs from the leather shop. (I'm wondering what word Americans use for pouf? Footstool is too imprecise - maybe the more correct ottoman? Or maybe it's one of those words, like anti-macassar, that doesn't exist in the US?) Since we bought the poufs unstuffed they'll pack up quite well and will be easily absorbed at home. Inevitably, we did the negotiation thing. In this case it was quite easy as we quickly decided how much we were prepared to pay and, since we're here a month, there was no urgency to buy. Of course, we only got our price as we were leaving the shop.
As with the whole beggary thing, you can easily find yourself arguing about an amount of money that at home would seem inconsequential. But then you can look on these amounts in more than one way. The gas bottle kid returned last night and, partly because we were about to sit down for dinner and partly because I'm in two minds about the whole beggary thing here now, I gave him his money. I've been thinking that my instinctive preference for tipping people offering redundant services over people expressing a raw need is a residue of a puritanical view of life that isn't really my own. Isn't it better to give the kid money when he needs new gas? And even if he's lying, he still needs money to live and who's to criticise him? He claimed he needed 40 Dirhams for the gas and I only had a 100 Dirham note so I gave him that and he promised, in suddenly improving French, to bring me change. Now a 100 Dirham note is big business here. Usually if we give money to the hand-out ladies it's just a few coins. One Dirham buys a round loaf of bread. 3 Dirhams buys us 4 oranges. Even a litre of bottled water, for those of us too tender to drink from the fountains, costs only 5 Dirhams. So 100 Dirhams is worth having. And the shops and even taxis hate dealing in notes that large. But it's only £6! I had a similar "value disconnect" when we were walking round the Sinde village in Zambia and heard that the money they're trying to raise to pay the teacher for a year is about the same as I'd recently paid for the camera with which I took her photo. (It wasn't even a very fancy camera.)
Question of the day here is will the gas bottle kid return with the 60 Dirhams change. What do you think?
Posted: Sun - May 22, 2005 at 07:32 AM
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Published On: Feb 08, 2006 06:20 PM
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Published On: Feb 08, 2006 06:20 PM