marrakech may have decided my role here is lab rat. i run the medina mazes in the morning and early afternoon, and i get my cheese reward in moroccan hash each night. i’ve found that my body reaches some point of wanting to stop after 2 & a half hours of walking the maze… unfortunately these experiments tend to come in 4 hour segments. monday we’re going to go see a camel. the old cigarette commercials said they’d walk a mile for a camel. well, we’ve traveled 12,000 miles to see ours. i even wrote a camel joke in france: It is easier for a Camus to pass through the eye of the needle than for a Republican to get into Heaven. i’d definitely walk a mile for a Camus.
the souks are a millenium old million meter mall made into a minotaurian maze. the only way to find your way back out is to buy small trinkets and drop them behind you as you go in, then follow your trail of stuff back out… or drop poisoned breadcrumbs and follow the dead birds back. we saw a cat eating a dead mouse in the souks today… hope it wasn’t part of anyone’s back trail.
at today’s lamb lunch in the old city, we ate from one plate with our fingers and pieces of bread. so far my stomach’s okay. they sent a plate of meat down to the women, and lady ate with us 5 men. this was the house with the rooster crowing in the next room.
if you’re not in the new city, the toilet is a hole in the ground, and toilet paper is a bucket of water and your hand. i dread the day i have to use them. i took a cookie with my left hand and our host said that was socially unacceptable because the left hand is for wiping your ass. it is okay to hold a drink with your left hand though.
each mosque’s minaret tower starts it amplified prayer chants by its own clock, and each clock differs, so there’s a wave of chants caressing the city over a 10 minute period. you can stand on the roof and hear the prayers revolve around you.
this city is hard on one’s soul – someone’s always asking you for money, or to let them do something for you for money, or please just come into my shop and look because looking is free even though you need to buy something from me. it is all about money and stuff.if you have a decent soul and a decent level of politenes, this city will tear at you, pick little pieces of your niceness away.
