Travel
May 25, 2010 Marrakech, Morocco Hope is both guiding light and cruel tool. Marrakech, an ephemeral dream of possibilities, met me at the end of a seven-hour (and delayed) train ride from Fes. Older and more crowded than every other morocco train ride so far, this one included 18MAD sandwiches (expensive at just over $2 […]
Hope is both guiding light and cruel tool. Marrakech, an ephemeral dream of possibilities, met me at the end of a seven-hour (and much delayed) train ride from Fes. Older and more crowded than every other morocco train ride so far, this one included 18MAD sandwiches (expensive at just over $2 but unnecessary for me […]
I hate being a tourist. I hate to see so many folks herded together to take the same photos and hear the same stories. To buy the same crafts and eat the same food. It is the sameness…the sameness and the impossibility of intimacy. Don’t get me wrong, I understand hustle. I know that my […]
Once I got over the naked part the rest was easy. I took off my shoes, put on my flipflops, and smiled from my perch on the blue and white benches. Women, those who worked there and those there for the hammam (bath) themselves, watched me with bemusement. One of the stewards brought over a […]
I surveyed the rolling hills. They were steeper than they looked. And in the heat of the day, afternoon call to prayer echoing over the browning grass beneath the rich blue sky. We’d already walked up a series of hills in search of Moulay Yacoub thermal spa-scoffing at the 50 MAD price the taxi drivers […]
The narrow winding streets of the medina are sheltered on both sides (and sometimes above) by shops; it is an ancient shopping mall of pretty much all things conceivable….living animals waiting to become meals, or their kin already slaughtered, silver, copper being made, rugs, tile. Whatever you need is nestled somewhere between one of the […]
Continue reading about how to lose friends and get gouged with a smile
The call to prayer chases itself from one minaret to the next – echoing its multiple births across the Place Boujeloud outside the medina gate. Sparsely populated during the day – mostly students from the adjoining college sharing the shade of a row of mulberry trees dropping ripe fruit – the paved expanse is crowded […]
“Côte d’Ivoire?” I shook my head no. “Cameroon?” I shook again. “Nigeria?” Now he was reaching; unsure but determined to figure it out. “American,” I offered with a smile. His turn to shake his head. “you are African,” he grinned at me, confident in his assessment. He wasn’t alone in noticing me or in guessing […]
The dun colored expanse below was obscured by the thin haze of clouds. But the longer I gazed down at the ground speeding by I realized that it must be sand…not just sand but the sahara. And while I experienced my first taste of the sahara’s vastness in Egypt, there it felt contained. In cairo, […]
The humid air snuck through the thin cotton of my over-washed shirt and clung to my skin like a scared child. In the distance, thunderless lightning sparked like a dying flashlight in a dark room and I pulled out my sweater, unused in the last seven months, and wrapped it against the early morning chill. […]
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