The Souq in Fez - Morocco

The souq in Fez is diverse and a hub of activity, both day and night.








The Medina




Moroccan Furnishings and Architecture

Bureaucracy

Try to get a marriage license in Morocco, it might be done in a month, or six months, or a year or two years.  Same with a passport renewal or a visa.  One fellow told me a harrowing story about trying to get a renter out of his house.  The bureaucracy in Morocco was stultifying.  This soul had long ago soured on his job, but with his antiquated office, I couldn't blame him.  Behind me were line-ups of immigrants covered in mold, waiting for papers that were yellowing on dude's desk.    

View From A Balcony

The view from my balcony in Fez. Looking south down Blvd Mohammed V, then looking north.

Menace in Morocco

Almost every expat I met in Morocco related stories of attempted robbery, attempted rape or a mugging, usually some gloomy tale of felony woe, and for the first time in my years travelling, I felt uneasy in this country. In my mind, Morocco beat out Colombia for dangerous people to watch out for. 

  One weekend I went to visit my friend Jess, a woman from England who organized art exhibits and festivals and lived in Sefrou, a small town 35km southwest of Fez.   



Her house was a white stucco, lopsided block of plaster that perched on a hilltop, with the souq and its vibrant colors visible from her spacious balcony overlooking a fast-flowing river. We stopped long enough to drop our things off and collect her dogs for a walk.

On the outskirts of town, a muddy path led into a marshy, wooded area, and as we stepped around watery potholes, tins, bottles, broken glass and plastic bags filled with rotting muck, Jess chattered on about how much she loved the place. It was quiet, the people were fantastic, the souq was brilliant and there was freedom for her beloved dogs, which now stopped to sniff at the debris and wolf down soft snacks before sniffing the air and bounding off again, wagging their tails and barking. She didn’t seem to mind they were eating from this particular dung heap, nor did she seem worried they might slice open their little paws on all the broken glass and rusty tins. I gazed round, making a mental note to not let the hounds near me once we got back to her place.

As I tiptoed around the garbage, she related a horrible narrative about how she had been assaulted there, by five men who had tackled her and attempted to pull off her clothes, with every intention to rape her and perhaps kill her. She fought them off and ran away, luckily, but apparently, attempted rape, mutilation and scarification wasn’t enough to cancel her show, as she continued cheerily every day to walk the same woods alone with her dogs. She was determined they wouldn't disrupt her life.

Later, we met up with her friend Lynne, an American with the Peace Corps, to have coffee and stroll through the souq before buying wine for the evening. Angel came with us, a next door neighbor of Jess, an older man of about seventy who acted as general sidekick, go-fer and bodyguard. We bought some food and vegetables and looked at scarves and robes, but while I was looking at some items on a table, an addled gasoline sniffer locked his eyes on to mine and slowly limped over, extending a gnarly, black stick of wood to me, a hand. Hundreds of tormented addicts sniff glue, gas or shoe polish in Fez, wandering around filthy and stunned, their minds idling with the fumes, and there is little help nor hope for those living and dying on the streets of the city, including the orphan children drifting through the streets with handkerchiefs held to their noses, dirty, bare feet covered in sores and open wounds.

The spectre that now confronted me looked like he was thrown from the seventh floor of an apartment building and hit a few objects on the way down, his skin purple and distended on one side, bruised. Greasy, matted hair stuck to his scalp, his mouth a gaping black hole of broken teeth, and his clothes, torn and gummy with sweat, clung to his back. I shook my head at the extended hand, smiled, and moved quickly off to join Jess and Lynne. Seeing that Jess had some roasted peanuts, I retraced my steps to the vendor to get some of my own. I was back to where I was, searching through the various stalls for the peanut vendor, not paying attention to people as I passed, when all of a sudden...... POOF! Some enormous force hit me dead center in my chest causing me to gasp and fall backwards into the people behind me and past, my hands waving crazily in circles as I struggled to stay on my feet, winding up in a crouch beside a stairwell leading into a dress shop. Shrieks and yells rose up from the onlookers who had seen what had happened and were now gathering and forming a circle around me.

When I could finally stand up, I searched the crowd and saw the crazy glue snuffer I had rebuffed; his eyes burned at me with hatred as he stood defiantly with his fist locked in the air, as if claiming victory, mocking me with the hateful glare in his black eyes. I backed up and the bastard started to come at me, albeit in slow motion because the gas that he'd been sniffing thrust him into a lower gear. Two men pushed him back and clasped his arms. I stood in shock. Lynne, Jess and Angel came back when they saw the commotion and when they saw it involved me, Jess took my arm and led me away, telling me I would be okay and let's just go and get a bowl of soup at a great place around the corner. You'll love it.

My arms and legs were shaking and my heart felt like it was going to explode, as if separating from its moorings. If he had hit me inches further down I would have had numerous ribs broken, or lost my spleen. As I struggled to comprehend what happened, I spotted him again further off, craning his neck towards me, over the others who were restraining him and leading him away, craning his neck and looking back in order to glare at me and let me know he'd do it again. If he could. His eyes sent shivers down my back.

Jess, Lynne and I moved off and the crowd dispersed, but I couldn’t stop looking around as we had our soup, wondering if he was returning and when and from what direction. Later, while we drank wine at the house, Angel went back to the souq to discover that the madman who had attacked me had been arrested and would stay in jail for one month for busting up a tourist, and remarked that the police advised it would be best if we didn’t come down to the station and give our names. The devil may want to retaliate once released.

Teaching English in Morocco

After bunking in cozy hostels, wandering in parks, getting drunk in small barritas, taking notes and pictures, and winking at the guapos on the streets of Barcelona, I boarded the ferry to Morocco, arriving in Tangier, an exotic, grungy seaside city made famous for its neurotic denizens of yesteryear – the writer Paul Bowles, Betty Hutton and Mick Jagger, to name a few. Soon after, I began a search for another language school in need of an ESL instructor as my resources were getting scarce, particularly after the strafing my pocketbook had taken in sunny Spain.

The American Language Institute is a chain of schools located in ten cities in Morocco, so while in Fez, I decided to apply for a teaching position. Any positions available? I asked the Director. No, sorry, perhaps for the next semester. But days later, the Director phoned me at the Casablanca Youth Hostel. Would you fill in at the school? We’re short a teacher all of a sudden. An emergency. I returned to Fez the next day.

Upon touring the school, I liked it, an exotic compound filled with gnarly trees and plants, a kiosk selling small meals run by a Moroccan man who was a knockoff for Elvis and inside the building, tiled floors, a winding central staircase, and some spectacularly mirrored classrooms interfaced with mosaic white tile. The usual assortment of discombobulated expats worked there, teachers from America, Morocco, England, Australia and me, the only Canuck.

The classrooms within the main school were large enough and worked; however, the port-a-potties erected out back in order to cram more names onto the student register, didn’t. I sometimes had 17 students in a room the size of a San Quentin jail cell, and with no escape from the intermittent hell of the students, it felt like jail. The desks were arranged in a U-shape, making it easier for the kids to sit and goof with one another and in my experience, there is always, always, one student who is a ruination to the class and whose personality must be dissected and put on ice straightaway.

After getting to know the Director, I was given a room cross the street from the school in the students’ quarters, a ten by twelve foot affair with a single bed, warm blankie, a table, two chairs, and a balcony overlooking a garden. I bolted myself in the room, not wanting to get involved in all the drama that accompanies people sharing communal refrigerators and bathrooms. Except for the bone-chilling weather and the shower room, I could have stayed there forever. After unpacking my small suitcase and settling in, I was met again by the Director, who then asked me to observe another teacher’s class for a week so I could ‘learn the ropes.’ It was the first time I had ever been asked to sit in on a class in order to get started.

My first day on the observation deck, I met my new ESL mentor, Ricky, along with another assortment of the teaching contingent. We then went to a classroom on the third floor of a building which was beside my bunker. What we were now doing until the next term started was called ‘team teaching,’ in other words, I would observe Ricky, then Ricky would observe me and give the Director the thumbs up or the thumbs down on my ability. Basically, they did the team teaching because many of the new teachers had never taught before, being fresh out of college or off their CELTA program. But for my first day on the job, I was just observing.

Except for one or two, most of the classrooms consisted of long tables set up in a U-shape, which I've never found congenial to teaching because of the close proximity of all the students, and such was the case now. While discussing the lesson plan with Ricky, the kids filed in, twenty of them, most of whom were teenage girls with the word trouble stamped on their hijabs.

Once the class started, the girls who were seated in front talked and talked and talked and never came up for even a gulp of air, in particular, two girls who argued, whined, complained, and rolled their eyes for most of the class. Ricky is pleasant, he said ‘ssssh’ and ‘ladies stop talking’ about twenty times, but those wenches just kept talking and re-wrapping their hijabs and over their incessant interruptions, Ricky taught his class. After the class was over, one girl approached him and complained ad nauseum about a low mark she received on one of her assignments and he commiserated with her. After she left I said, 'it's probably because she never shuts up' whereby he answered, 'yeah, I know. None of them do.' I could see it was going to be tough.

I finally got my own classes and knew what Ricky had been up against. It was awful, a viper's nest of teenagers sitting around a made-for-failure arrangement of bad ideas. One smart ass kept saying things in Arabic and the class kept laughing, so I sent him to the office when he refused to quit. It was the first time I ever sent a kid to the office. When his parents were called and he got a knock on the head and he apologized to me, he wasn’t quite so witty when he returned. Another time I returned a quiz to one girl from whose test I had deducted marks for cheating and she stood up, balled up her quiz, threw it in the corner, screamed she was never coming back and stamped out of the classroom, wailing. I looked at the kids. ‘Whew,’ I said, ‘I hope that’s a promise.’ She did, in half an hour, with the administrator, and she was all quivering tears and heartbreak. I was so over her the first class, a real first class pain in the ass. Not all the students were like this, of course, I had some brilliant times with some interested and interesting students But those dullards who were cuffed in the head, dragged in and forced to learn English by wealthy parents who carped on about the great advantages to learning English, lost on these kids, would have been better served at a charm school.

Come final exams seven months later, I was pretty much over teaching feral teenagers. For the invigilation, and in case I got bored watching the kids trying to cheat, I brought a newspaper, a book, a crossword puzzle I hadn't finished, a little snack and my coffee. I told the kids I'd rip up their papers along with their heads and throw them in the garbage no questions asked if I caught anyone cheating, then proceeded to do my crossword. Suddenly, the door swung open and the Assistant Director came in to check my class and wasn't too impressed with half the contents of my room on my desk and he rushed off. The Director then came in and whispered in my ear that I wasn't to be doing anything while the kids were writing their exams. So I put away all my stuff, yawned and watched the kids waffle through their exams. Afterwards, I told one of the teachers what had happened.  'Oh, the last time David saw someone reading while invigilating, he fired him.' The next day I was called in to meet with the Director in his office.

What happened to the teacher I had replaced? Apparently, in the early morning hours of a summer’s weekend, the wretched bloke ran naked and screaming down the street with his frantic co-workers in pursuit, was loaded kicking and screaming into a taxi and committed to the nearest mental hospital, where he was refitted with a new personality before being sent home to his parents. But after living in Fez, and teaching at the American Language Institute Fez for nine months, I was pretty clear as to why dude had lost his mind and done an 80-yard dash towards his homeland.




Things aren't always what they seem and here are some of the fantastic students I had at American Language School Fez.