The trip to Figeac

May 26, 2006

Figeac
Quayside for the 10:16 to Capdenac there are a gaggle of train cops blockading the exit of the stairwell. ‘Where are you going ?’ They seriously want to know.
‘Figeac’, and they let me by. Am I headed for some sensitive destination ?

We have a two car train, about one-third full of mostly young people. High school and college ages, many of them greeting friends, nobody yet playing loud music or making much noise at all. Very subdued, even. Perhaps it’s the influence of the officers who stroll up and down the aisle occassionally. It does seem more likely they’re here to catch freeloaders rather than stop trainjackers. Take this train to Beirut, now, or we’ll blow it up!
10 :14. All the forward-facing window seats are taken. I’m glad I got here early enough to snag one, and a clean one. All the seats are 2-facing-2, which can be quite annoying on a full train. You spend the whole trip trying to arrange your feet and not look straight ahead. Like spending hours in an elevator. Some people get to know one another on the train. Not me. I feel badly about that sometimes, wishing I could be more open to making friends and just talking to people at random, but no.
At 10:16 precisely we slide out of the station. I didn’t even hear the whistle, just noticed the quay starting to move slowly past. Only ten minutes later the conductors come around to collect our tickets. Very efficient. When I came back from Paris Tuesday evening they never did check my ticket.
A young man sitting opposite, facing my two rows on, passes the conductor a ticket that she punches mechanically. Then she looks at it and discovers something wrong. The guy tries to bluff her, saying he has several of something, just an accident, but she’s having none of it. Charm gets him nowhere but he doesn’t try very hard; he knows he’s caught. That will be 20.80€ to Aurillac, on the spot. About twice what a ticket bought at the station costs. I guess if you get away with it one time in two you break even.
The guy smirks and settles back to his sandwich. The conductor’s colleague has finished with the rest of the train, and they retire to the driver’s compartment at the front.
Coming into Issoire there’s a recycling depot, with heaps of twisted metal, crumpled metal, rusted metal, tangled wire. Each in its place, neatly divided. A man in orange operates a machine piling up cubes of packed metal into a small hill.
I’d love to get access to that place with my camera. All those wonderful shapes and patterns beckon. I wonder who you’d have to get permission from, and if they would grant it to a person just messing around out of personal fascination. Every time I go to Paris I pass by depot of pallets near Riom, wooden pallets stacked to the sky, acres of them, old weathered ones segregated from yellow-new ones from painted ones.
10:53. Brassac-les-Mines. A nice-looking small town, more spread-out than many, suggesting that it doesn’t go back to medieval times when town centers were all piled up around the church and fortress, the better to defend itself from marauders. Brassac is big enough to have dependable lodging, but I could still be out of town and into the countrysinde in just a few minutes’ walk. I should keep it in mind for a very nearby overnight. Or even for a day trip if there’s an evening train to get me home.
11:00. Arvant. So close to Brassac-les-Mines that there are houses and businesses all the way from one to the other, strung out in one longitudinal town along the road.
Definitely worth an overnight. I could explore both towns and also take a good hike among the rolling hills half-forested half-farmland.
People here have gardens. Huge vegetable gardens. Older people and chickens are out in the dull spring overcast tending to the young plants. That’s one of the terrible things about train travel. Every two minutes it makes me want to get out and do this or that. Hike here, explore a ruin or an old village there; now it’s gardening. Gotta get a house with some land so I can play in the dirt and grow stuff.
11:22. Massiac-Blesle. Correspondance for Saint Flour by bus in front of the station.
So this is the place where from the freeway you see a narrow valley flanked by two high, stony bluffs, each with a ruined stone chapel on top. I’ve always meant to come here and hike up to the top and see the ruins and the spectacular view. Make a note.
The cheater is snoring heavily now, one stockinged foot on the table the other on the seat. His bags are open and strewn across the seats opposite. He’s barely contained in a place for four.
My apologies for the fragmented text. The ride is too rough for writing between stations. By the time we get to the next one my daydreaming has moved on.
11:44. Neussargues.
Another small town nestled in a lush narrow valley bounded by picturesque black cliffs. Fields of cattle and sheep alternate with woods full of oak, chestnut, trees I don’t know, and stands of pine all organised in rows. No wild forest this – it’s all cultivated wood and private hunting grounds.
Two children rush past, swaying up the aisle to the rocking of the train along our twisted path. They’re looking for the bathroom, but it isn’t there. It’s in the other car. So they amuse themselves just going up and down the aisle.
11:55. Murat, with its ancient monastery alone on a slate hill overlooking the town. Note the great castle just after the town. Another destination.
The high meadows of the Cantal are still dotted with snow; we can catch glimpses of them through the peaks to our left. The town is all piled up on itself, covering the slope, a study of grey rock homes and grey slate roofs. Only the surrounding open space is not grey – there seem to be no flowers yet on the balconies.
12:10 Le Lioran
Time for lunch. I have a sandwich. An enormous sandwich of chicken touched with a hint of curry, sliced tomatos, boiled eggs, lettuce. Alas, the dryness of the chicken is not overcome by the usual french mania for excessive quantities of mayonnaise. In fact, they seem to have forgotten the mayonnaise entirely, an omission I would normally applaud were not my sandwich so very very dry.
12:25. Vic-sur-Cére.
Just after Le Lioran we passed through an exceptionally long tunnel, marking our departure from the north-flowing course of a tributary of the Allier. In the sun again we have changed watersheds and our accompanying stream flows south with us.
12:38. Aurillac. A city as big as Clermont-Ferrand, and the capital of the Cantal region. It doesn’t look like much from the train – all low-lying housing tracts and high-rise apartment blocks interspersed with light industry and the same big stores you find anywhere. Boring, but I should come here in August some year. There’s a week-long street theater festival that’s quite famous. Storytellers, puppet shows, plays. It’s a major event. And there must be an old town somewhere. It’s just hidden by the rumpled land, around a hill.
Almost everyone gets off the train here. Only a handful of people are going on after this only major stop on our route. I’ve never heard of the train’s destination, Capdenac, but it can’t be very large.
No clock at Le Rouget.
Sprouting fields. Cows. More cows. An abandoned freight train, that’s kind of interesting. Old stone houses. Slate roofs like fish backs with their shaped scales. The only differences between the houses are the colors of the shutters. Then on the other side: a modern subdivision. These tickytack houses are even more the same.
1:30. Maurs. Much the same as the other small towns. The hills here aren’t high but they’re steep. It’s what keeps the area in small, family farms. Agribusiness doesn’t go for the little pastures and fields all cut up into bits by impassable escarpments. And there are no major train lines for hauling freight, nor freeways.
1:35 Bagnac.
They’ve got a car-wrecking place here. ! Oh, the photo opprotunity ! it’s so colorful and chaotic and with a big sign that says « forbidden to the public ».
A quick look at the train schedule posted at the Figeac station shows that on Sunday morning I can in fact take an early train back to Bagnac, mess around there for 2 and a half hours, and then catch my train as it stops on the way to Clermont. Now there’s a plan.
Figeac looks fabulous. It has an extensive and pleasing old center, complete with cobblestone streets too small for car traffic, and half-timbered buildings. I can see I’m going to enjoy this weekend. I can see I’ll have to bring Dan and Liz here when they visit next, and show him that Annecy isn’t everything.
Hastening to find a room to stash my things in for the afternoon, I turn up one cheap place because it isn’t any cheaper than the much nicer place down the block. It only looks that way. Bleh. Used to be I’d just gravitate right to the least expensive digs, knowing that was all I could afford, but why, if I don’t have to ?
And then it’s time to explore. In my 20-minute search for lodging I did in fact see more than half the old town. But I didn’t look, not really. Now it’s time to get the camera out and play tourist.
At the top of the hill is Notre Dame de Puy, with a very plain, even severe façade. Interestingly, on the ground in front is a large white cross worked into the ruddier cobbles, with a large pink heart of a single peice of quartz just in the middle.
Inside is bizzare. The walls have been painted white, with all the ribs of the vaulting and around the windows done in yellow. It makes for a lighter, happier than usual church, which is fine. But the altar and all the space behind it are done in heavy black wood, intricately carved and a sink for all the light that touches them. Behind me, the organ is the same. Very strange juxtaposition.
Figeac has a spectacular medieval center, very well kept up, discreetly repaired, lived in fully (I bet a house here is astronomically expensive), and happily not too done up in modern advertising. Some, of course, you can’t avoid it, so there’s always some sign or other in any picture you take, but it isn’t too obtrusive.
Roses are in bloom. And irises, and lilacs, and some of the trees still have their flowers but not many. The gardens are oases of color where they peek around and above their high stone walls. The geraniums hanging from every balcony and windowsill are not yet in flower, though. This place will be even more cute in a month, when they are.
So I walk up and down and around and around and up and down again. And then slightly out of town, up a local road with a path beside it, but when I consult my map it doesn’t seem to go much of anywhere I want to go just now. Meaning there are no goat-tracks or hiking trails meeting up with this road any time soon.
Back at the hotel I take a hot soak and think about dinner. This region of France is well known for its fine gastronomy – the heart of foie gras territory is just to the west of us, as is the Cahors wine-making region and the ‘Black Perigord’ where the best truffles grow. I haven’t brought evening wear in my rucksack, and the top-end restaurants in town are starting their fixed-price menus at 30 € (plus wine), but I’m hoping to run across that jewel: a small place where they make good local food at a reasonable price and where I’ll be welcome in my jeans and trainers.
And as luck would have it, I find exactly that. They’re serving on the terrace upstairs tonight, and it’s warm enough for the moment, but when the sun goes down for real around nine I’ll just slip my jacket back on.
Start with the local goat-cheese on toast over salad. A favorite always, but here they’ve spread honey on the underside of the bread, and sprinkled the toasted cheese with finely chopped walnuts instead of splashing a few halves artfully around the dish. I like it this way. The honey makes it a new dish, and there are none of the traditional apple-slices you so often get (good thing, too, it being so far from apple season).
Then lean steak and roast tomato with garlic and green beans with so very very much garlic I don’t really even care that they’re from frozen. Followed by a cheese course, and topped off with crème brulée. Far too much crème brulée – I should definitely have stopped halfway. But is there ever really too much crème brulée ?

Coming downstairs in the morning I see it’s 8:20 already. How’d it get so late? knowing it would be light by six I did roll over a couple of times and wait for noise of life to start up outside, but it’s Saturday so I thought I’d get street noise earlier than this. Or maybe I did, but just slept through it. Either way I start out with a feeling of having missed something already.
The market is in full swing in the covered main square just around the corner from the hotel. Here it’s all fruit and veg, with scattered stands of bread or sausages. If there’s a wine vendor I’d love to pick up something local to take home.
The market continues down the street and fills a second square with mostly clothing and fabric and basket vendors. And it goes on and on, up another street and one more.
In the high season, the last of June through the end of August, I bet I would see many more artisans selling knickacks and carved doodads and little paintings or pen&inks of the region, and wine of course, because there will be crowds of tourists here then. The bus-parking by the cathedral is not likely really meant for church-goers, after all.
I pick up a sandwich, a bottle of water, and a pain au chocolat to supplement my generous breakfast of cafe au lait and tartine (bread and jam)(really good bread with ordinary jam) and debate stopping back at the hotel to drop off my jeans and just wear shorts all day. Nah, too far to go back, and it won’t be shorts-weather for an hour anyway.
Then it’s off on the GR65 east toward Montredon.
Thing # 1 that I notice: there’s an awful lot of asphalt on this GR. I hate that. For one, it tires your feet out three times faster as walking on dirt, and for two these are pretty popular roads for cars.
Thing # 2 that I notice: there are plenty of those nifty structures described in my little Figeac book (picked up for reading material last night and as a present for my folks) : ancient dovecotes and shepherds’ shelters randomly set out in the fields. They are really cool. I take pix.
One thing about farmers near Clermont-Ferrand is they’re poor, and their houses reflect this, with old cars hanging around, unrepaired outbuildings, piles of old machinery. Nothing is gotten rid of. Discarded perhaps, if that means just putting it out back to become one with the landscape.
A thing about farmers around Figeac, or at least people who live on farms around Figeac: they aren’t poor. Their houses are manors, impeccably restored, impeccably neat and landscaped. It makes me wonder who does the farming. The fields are mostly wheat or millet, the livestock cattle. Or goats – there are goats in batches, and signs for fresh goat cheese sold here. I don’t see more vineyard than would correspond to personal use. Often there are horses.
At a guess, I’d say one real farmer cultivates the land that meerly appears to be attached to half a dozen houses. And the rest of the residents don’t work around here at all; these are trophy homes for the retired, for Parisians and Londoners who spend their summers here.
Hiking steadily east through farmland, leaving the dovecotes behind, walking half the time on dirt paths, half the time along small roads, I take a detour to see a stone village around a medieval church, St Jean Mirabelle. The church is locked, and everybody but the dogs seems to have gone to town for market day. But there’s a tap of drinking water, nice and cold.
Back on the trail I pass some more hikers on their way to Figeac, and think too late I should ask them the time. And as if on demand the next local church starts ringing out the hour. Noon. And then another church finds noon, and another farther off, and they all ring it twice in case you lost the count the first time.
In just a few minutes I’m strolling into St Felix, where there is an auberge set with tables to handle 50, and with no business at all, and then three picnic tables in the shady yard by the church. The sunny table is taken by a group of three hikers in their 60’s sharing a copious banquet.
They are on the Route of St Jacques de Compostelle. They signal this, like most of the hikers I’ve seen today heading west, by hanging a painted scallop shell off the back of their pack. Scallops in France are St Jacques. St Jacques in medieval times made a famous pilgrimage from Belgium across France to Compostella in Spain. His route is now integrated into the vast system of GR (Grande Randonnée) trails that crisscross the country. The official route passes not far from here, but Figeac is not actually on the StJC trail. What scallop-clad people are doing here is a variant route. For those who find the one true trail too crowded (and it is crowded, from what I’ve heard) or already visited. Places to eat or to stay along the Compostelle cater to the pilgrims, often using Jacques or St Jacques in a name, and hanging the seashell by the door. What I don’t get is why do the holy route if you don’t do the holy route?
While I’m eating my chicken sandwich and cherries, two other pairs of hikers come in, also heading west, also in their 60’s. They each carry two sticks, like ski poles, a common thing to accompany more mature hikers. Younger people tend to use only one.
The woman at the sunny table calls out to her fellow pilgrims, the last to arrive, pointing out that her party is just leaving, look how they’re clearing up. But monsieur prefers shade, and he and his companion join my table.
They’re German, though his french is such that I wouldn’t have guessed he wasn’t French until the pair started conversing in german. They’ve come from Montredon, and he’s relieved to see that St Felix here is just over half the distance to Figeac. They’re only going as far as Cahors this time – they’ll make it there on Sunday.
Even more convenient than the picnic tables and a trash can for a lunch stop, St Felix is blessed (or rather blesses us) with a sparkling clean public bathroom. Ah, the convenience of modern life. I long ago took advantage of a secluded spot to change into my shorts, but it’s been so open and populated most of the way that finding a secure women’s room has been a problem.
I decide to turn around. I’ve come 9 km, according to the pilgrims, and on the way back I’ve decided to detour through Capdenac. I’ve worked out a way to get there without much backtracking; I’ll just have to consult the map more to not get lost. And once I get there there will surely be ice cream or ice cold soda available on a Saturday, and I can pick up the GR6 to get back to Figeac in a loop.
That works almost as planned, except for my climbing down a gorge to an 11th century church I expressly meant to avoid (not because I have anything against 11th century chuches, but because it’s rather a dead-end at the bottom of a ravine). Fortunately, there’s a dirt track back up to the plateau in the direction I want to go. The church was in fact not worth the visit, being dark and smelly inside and not particularly interesting architecturally.
Capdenac Haut is astounding.
The town of Capdenac proper is way down below, across the river, spread out on the plain. This part of Capdenac is the old gaulish fortress on the pointed bluff overlooking a large bight of river. Now a place of chic houses with fabulous views, a single 13th century tower and an obligatory church, in the 1st century B.C. this was the last Gaulish holdout against the Romans. Apparently they lasted a couple of years longer here than at the more famous Plateau of Gergovie, where local Clermont-boy Vercingetorix made his now mythical stand.
Vercingetorix is better known because at Gergovia he actually beat off Ceasar, and wasn’t captured by the Romans for another year, at an ill-considered defence of some town. Vercingetorix as a Roman captive was paraded around and humiliated to death. At Capdenac there was no such singular hero to sieze the day – the fortress garrison was worn down gradually and capitulated without the capture of any charismatic figures.
I have an orange soda, then walk around with a chocolate ice cream. The clock is tolling three as I make my way down the GR6 to Figeac. I never did see where the GR6 went in the other direction. I think it must end here. There’s no trace of it continuing on the map.
I keep an eye out for more dovecotes, now I’m nearing Figeac and it was only nearby that I saw them on my way out. But I see not a one. Darn. Should have made a couple of detours earlier. I do see a sign marking Capdenac, 7 km, and according to the map I’m just over halfway along the GR6. That will make 29 km for the day, then. Plus the wandering about town this morning. A 20-miler. And my feet are holding up fine, in spite of the continued road-walking. I am quite pleased.
In Figeac at 5 the market stalls are just packing up. I am minutes too late to score some good cherries for tomorrow’s train ride, and half an hour too late for the guided tour of the historic city. That’s ok. I hate to have a hike stressed by some deadline. I couldn’t have walked any faster the last leg anyway.
After a good long soak in the tub – it is so worth the extra for a tub and not just a shower! and a nap it’s time for a little aperitif, a spot of writing, and dinner.
A woman huffs into the bar where I’m having a kir (too sweet – why do bars always add too much crème de cassis?) and starts complaining to the bartender. She’s not accusing, she swears, no need to take offense, she directs. It seems that some passing kid picked her sunglasses up off the ground and walked off with them. And apparently the barkeep saw this kid with sunglasses and was supposed to know somehow who they really belonged to, and should have stopped the thief.
Theft? says the exasperated barkeep. Theft is he took it from your purse, your pocket, off your table.
Oh don’t get upset. I’m not accusing. But the woman with no sunglasses is standing around as if waiting for justice to be rendered from behind the bar, muttering under her breath. What is she doing in here? – some kid picked her glasses off the ground – why didn’t she herself do something, why is she waiting for the barkeep to turn cop, or detective, or hound? Another tense few minutes and she flounces out into the street, where the kid is obviously not to be found.
The bar fills up and becomes too smoky for me, so I head off in search of dinner. The place on the market square is serving rabbit with mustard, which I love, but it turns out to be meerly edible. No dessert – I’ve got a craving for a crepe and there’s a creperie down by the river. Better stroll down there than risk more mediocrity here.
It’s early yet and I know from last night that my room is quite noisy from the restaurant across the way and the bar downstairs. No point in turning in too early, so I take my time.
A slow stroll around the rolled-up town reveals cats. Cats everywhere; they’ve had their dinners and now they’re out on stoops and balconies and garden walls taking in the cool evening air.
Many cats and secret alleyways and a walk up the river to the next bridge and back later, I discover the creperie is packing it in. It’s barely ten! Damn; who’d’a thought! I wander back to my hotel’s square considering desserts, and sit at an empty table across the street from my own window. Nobody comes out to check on the terrace customers. Understood, they don’t want to start a whole dinner now for someone at this hour, not outside the big cities, but I only want a dish of fromage frais with honey. Just a teeny little dessert.
Oh never mind.
I’m breakfasted, paid up, and out the door before anything is open to sell me my picnic lunch, so I make the rounds in the early light. New angles of shadows. Nobody much about, not even the cats, not a one.
At 9:30 I can finally pack up some cherries and some pastry and wander up to the station where the schedule promises an 11:18 train to Bagnac. I just want to make sure I don’t need an extra ticket to get on and off the train an extra time.
Good thing I checked, because the 11:18 train isn’t actually running.
So now I’ve got five hours to kill in a town I’ve seen and seen again. It’s a nice town, sure, but I’ve seen it. I was so looking forward to climbing around the junkyard;
Ok, ok.
How about trying to get to one of the old dovecotes I saw in the distance early in yesterday’s hike. Yeah.
It’s hot today. And I’ve got all my stuff with me too, thank goodness I passed on buying a couple bottles of local wine. I can’t even change into my shorts because my jeans won’t fit into my pack. Overloaded.
It’s a frustrating first hour as I labor up the road, sweating, muttering, determined not to spend five hours in the train station or on some park bench. I spot the remembered dovecote, but it isn’t easy to get to. People around here seem much more concerned about random hikers crossing their land, and they don’t give the access there is where I live.
After a lot more walking on asphalt I come to where the road turns to dirt, away from the upper middle-class suburbia of eastern Figeac. The dovecote is on the south side of this road, frustratingly hidden be a ditch and a treacherous dry stone wall overgrown with weeds and small trees. It is a wall not to be breached. To the north it’s open, but there’s nothing interesting there. Just more gentlemens’ farms. I go on, hoping for a break in the hedge and there isn’t one but eventually I see something better.
A field of poppies in full bloom.
A carpet of red, dotted with white Queen Anne’s lace and yellow buttercups.
It was certainly poppy season along the train tracks to Paris on Tuesday, but here I’ve only seen them a few here and there along fences and paths. They aren’t really wild flowers; they get sown for looks and occassionally cultivated in fields for their seeds, but you rarely see the hills covered in red depicted in paintings.
These are the first I’ve seen this season, and they’re magnificent. The junkyard will be there all year round but flower season is short.
Oh, and here’s a picturesquely ruined shepherd’s shelter, and there an old-fashioned fortress farm compound. And now a herd of perfect blond cows and their calves, one lone blackie in the group just to be different.
And lastly, just before my circle takes me back to the big road and more modern cinderblock housing: a dovecote in a freshly mown field. The hay is still lying about in sinuous rows, waiting to dry before bailing.
The dovecote sits there as it has for centuries, cared for, empty of doves now. Somebody makes sure to keep the weeds from taking hold between the grey stones piled one on the other with no mortar, only expertise to keep them together all this time. Let it go, and in just a decade it would be reduced to a shapeless heap under the growth of vines and roots.
I don’t enter the field to get the best angle of sun – the family seems to be home down the way and I’m not one to go knocking and asking. Perhaps I should be, but that’s not a step I’ll be taking today.

Back at the station with two hours to go. A long wait, but not long enough to do any more exploring, burdened as I am in the heat. When the empty 4-car train slides in from Capdenac I score a window that’s cleaner than most and settle in to finish the pretzels. Every stop, people get on. And more. At Aurillac we’re delayed by another train, half of whose passengers run across the quay to join us.
People are heading back to school and work in Clermont and Paris, having spent the long weekend with the folks in the country. The students all have very serious luggage full of clean laundry.
Another delay. Every seat is taken. People start to worry about catching the 6:51 to Paris. They miss it. The 7:27 will be very full tonight ! I walk home to my waiting cats.

Marrakech, 2007

So I’m all ready to leave the house on my way to Marrakech for the week; the cats have plenty of food and water and clean litter, the openings off the porch that they like to jump down from rather than taking the stairs have been closed off with a cut-up cardboard box. I get my luggage out there and am closing the door on Natalie’s nose when –zip- Bandersnatch leaps out and away.
Great.
I’ve got a few extra minutes, but Bander just loves to play chase. She can keep that up all morning. She’ll let you get right up to her before leaping away and around the corner of the house. Or she’ll run up the huge pine in the front yard. Or she’ll squeeze into the under-the-stairs and through the duct to the basement where the mice live. It’s fun!
Bad cat.
Fortunately, this morning she lets me catch her without too much trouble. She makes me miss the bus that would have let me catch the airport shuttle, but there are taxis from the train station and it’s no problem.

I hope this is a fun trip. We’ve got until Saturday morning, so there must be plenty of free time for shopping and exploring. I just hope we avoid endless situations of waiting around at the hotel for some meeting or someone to call for us. The other thing is my boss is here, and he’s bringing his wife and daughter (who’s 4) – it isn’t clear how much they intend to go their own way and how much I’m invited or half-expected to hang around with them. It’s not that I mind going shopping or sight-seeing with Yves-Jean and Edith. That might even be nice if Edith arranges tours while Yves-Jean and I are occupied with our hosts. I don’t mind going around on my own, either, not at all. I just don’t want it to be awkward.
It’s the middle of Ramadan. Makes me wonder what that will mean for lunch. Too bad I didn’t bring any snackage. At the lab, our Afghan technician, Lydia, is observing Ramadan. It’s visibly hard for her to skip lunch when the rest of us are gathering and guessing what’s on for today at the cafeteria and wishing each other Bon Appetit. Even harder is coffee time when somebody has brought croissants. Last week it was the battle of the best home-made pear tarts.
Once Ramadan is over, Lydia promises to catch up on one particular French tradition, that of bringing in goodies to celebrate one’s birthday. We’re all eager to taste her Afghani treats.

Takeoff. How is it I always get stuck with a seat over the wing? It’s not as if the plane is full. I could move back a few rows, though that would require climbing over Yves-Jean, and he’s already got three dossiers full of paper spread out over his tray, his lap, his wife’s tray. Looks like I’m stuck.
I do have a limited view, of a pillowy field of clouds stretching in all directions. It looks nice in the low sun, all shadows and reliefs. No trainspotting through that, or identifying towns and rivers below us. Not really much point in having a window, once the sun is higher and the softness of the morning light turns into hard glare.

We’re off to see N., and her bosses and colleagues. A year ago, N. contacted us in what was apparently a sort of fishing trip looking for a French partner to respond to a franco-moroccan cooperative grant call. She wants to set up a BRCA gene testing lab in Marrakech. The point would be to offer genetic testing for women at risk, only the Moroccans have neither the expertise nor the means to start up such a lab. Nor does the population yet see any need for such testing.
Enter N., who wants to do this, and the CJP, as the mentor. This is right up our alley. Our friends in Tunisia set up their own lab and send us whatever work they have trouble with; our friends in Algeria just send us their samples.
A lab in Rabat, Morocco, is up and running with our help, but there doesn’t seem to be any spirit of cooperation between groups in the same country. It’s like that in Tunisia too: the Tunis group is practically at war with the Monastir faction over who “does” BRCA testing for their country, in spite of the lack of overlap in the regional populations they test. Publication of the “Tunisian” BRCA1 mutations was held up for a year because the groups separately didn’t have enough cases to publish and together couldn’t agree on authorship issues.

N. was in Clermont-Ferrand for a month early this summer, to learn How To Do It. It was hard to believe that this timid, lukewarm woman was the driving force behind the Moroccan side of the collaboration. By mail she controlled everything, even access to her boss, the official director on her side, and was quite firm in her decisions. After a week with us, barely daring to take a stool by the bench, not asking any questions, she announced to me that she was going to go home early. She was so discouraged to see our high-throughput, high-tech, highly-financed operation, she despaired of ever getting anything going at home. Useless to stay and learn things she could never do. It took some convincing to get her to see that you can do a lot with lesser means; that learning how to do the work in principle would serve her under many circumstances. DNA is DNA, after all, it’s only the scale of processing it that needs be adapted. To cut and run so early was just to give up.
So she stayed, but even to the end of her four weeks, N. remained a mystery. She spent her weekends visiting her sister in Paris, so we did not have much social time together. She refused to have lunch with the rest of us in the cafeteria. She would disappear at around 4 in the afternoon, precluding any after-work hanging around. It didn’t help that I was in the process of moving, and had little free time to spare her. I took her out to dinner once, with a couple of friends, but other than that she kept away from us as much as possible. At work, she would sit quietly in a corner all day unless you took her by the hand and insisted she do or watch something. It’s natural enough to tell her to come learn something once or twice, but to have to keep at it, every day, the technicians have their own work to do, they’re not babysitters. N. didn’t even show an interest in her own results. She had arrived with a dozen samples to test; we trained her on her own samples, but still we had to push her at every step to go on. When the sequence was ready she didn’t care to look at it.

Who knows what our visit to her territory will be like. I couldn’t get any kind of schedule out of her. I don’t know what sort of talk she wants me to give nor what sort of audience there will be for it. I don’t know where or when we’re expected to show up tomorrow morning. All I have are directions to our hotel, nothing else.

Arrrr! I can’t believe it. For the first time, I am traveling with my portable computer and I’m all worried about setting it down and walking off without it because I’m not in the habit of being thus encumbered. And here I am settling into the plane from Paris to Marrakech, and there’s my bag, good, there’s my computer kit, good: where’s my jacket? Hanging over a chair at the airport café.
Shit.
I really liked that jacket. It’s the cool black-on-black one I got on Catalina Island years ago at Tim’s office party excursion. And while I may not need a jacket much in Morocco, coming home Saturday I might get rather shivery.
Arrr! No going back for it now. They put us on a bus to take us to a plane ironically parked at a different gate of the same terminal, so it’s not simple to hop off, go through security, and get back. Bye, jacket.

The clouds stop at the Pyrenees. Beyond, Spain looks very dry and bare. Spain always looks dry and bare from above. At the coast, low clouds and fog are loitering, stacked up against the hills barring them from the interior. It looks like the sea is sloshing over onto the land. Farther south the low cumulous are lined up in rows, like some kind of orderly cotton crop.
A hint of northern Morocco looks much like Spain, red bare dirt, some folded hills with sparse coverage, pines on the upper north slopes, small towns and winding roads. Then the clouds are back and the interior is hidden.

We’re met at the airport be two young doctors whose connections to N., and to breast cancer more generally, aren’t clear. Surely they explain, but like their names, which I do ask them to repeat, it just goes by in a rapid, accented blur. I really hope to have their names down be the end of the trip.
Once we’re settled into the hotel, our host B. Belaabidia, N.’s boss, comes around to welcome us and give us presents of Moroccan pastries, then have us fill out the forms to be reimbursed for the trip, and to lay out the plan for the visit.
We have the rest of today free. She recommends a garden not far from here to visit, and some of the major landmarks. Tomorrow we’ll give our talks and have a discussion with the department, maybe take a tour of the different labs and patient care areas. Friday we’re invited to dinner but otherwise have the day free, then Saturday we go home.
Yes! This is a paid vacation.
I wonder if anyone from our welcome committee will go shopping with me. Just to find the really good places, and to not get too ripped off as foreigners.

The hotel is new, built two years ago, but I can see it may go the way of the fabulous hotel in Algiers, the expensive one that was at once luxurious and run-down, a hotel where they cleaned but never fixed anything.
Here, the bathroom looks great. But the shower door doesn’t keep all the water in, so the whole floor gets wet. The sliding door to the balcony is supposed to lock, but doesn’t. The safe in the closet has no lock at all, and the closet door has one but the bolt is so short all you have to do is pull both doors at once and they open.
Stop nitpicking.
It’s not nitpicking. I’ve got my brand new laptop with me, and nowhere secure to put it.
There’s time to go out for a walk before meeting up with Yves-Jean and Edith for dinner at 6:30. We may not find much open yet at that hour, but with two hours time difference we’ll be hungry. And with little Odèlia along they won’t want to stay up late.

Right off, it’s obvious that Morocco is a much more prosperous place than its Maghrebian brethren in Tunisia and Algeria. It’s far cleaner, for one, and it isn’t afflicted with unfinished-building syndrome. Some blocks are falling into ruin, it’s true, but when they build, at least they finish the job.
This is not to say that Morocco is anything as prosperous as Europe. Cars are on average 20 years old and most people are on motorized bikes and scooters, also rather venerable ones. People are sleeping on park benches and in corners, and begging in the streets.
From the hotel to the main square of this city of some two million people, you just follow the main boulevard. My rough guide says that the city’s upscale shopping is right along here. Um, I don’t see it. There are a couple of shops, and a boutique gallery is advertised next to the large hotel across the street. Not that I’m interested in “upscale shopping” – I’d rather find treasures in the souks. It’s just surprising there isn’t more than a couple of shoe shops and two antique dealers here on the new European tourist row. Marrakech is becoming a popular tourist destination, but it looks, fortunately for me, that it has a ways to go along that road before becoming a homogenized, could be anywhere, kind of place.

In this warm and humid afternoon with the thick smoggy air hanging close to the ground it seems everybody is out on the streets, going somewhere. Cars, buses, trucks, taxis, motorbikes, 2-horse calèches hauling tourists.
In the Medina, the old walled city center, I turn north to go around the perimeter clockwise, with the idea of photographing the old ornate gates in the late sun. Unfortunately, the really pretty gates must be around the other way and I’ll have to get to them later. Right now I’ll just concentrate on getting through this poor, non-tourist section of the Medina. People are packed elbow to motorbike tire, buying their dinners from the fresh foods laid out on carpets on the ground or piled in shopfronts. In an hour they’ll be allowed to eat.

I wish I had some change in my pockets, and were less conspicuous with my white skin and western dress. Apparently if you photograph someone, you need their permission, and their permission comes with a tip. The smallest I have is a 100-dirham bill, enough for dinner in a nice restaurant. I can hardly ask for change.
There are so many interesting portraits to take here. Guys selling dried fish. A woman begging with her two children, a spicemonger with a tattooed face colorful as his wares. Even a cat posing among baskets of prickly pears.
I tried to get change along the boulevard close to the hotel, but it was too awkward to buy a handful of ratty postcards for a few dirhams just to break a large bill. I thought I would find a larger tourist shop closer to the main square where I could add a small knicknack to my postcards and make the sale worth it, but there was nothing. Maybe I turned off the main street too soon. Nobody round here but the natives.
And dust. God, there’s dust and gravel and it’s all up in the air in the swirling wind. I keep my sunglasses on in spite of the dim light now that the sky has seriously clouded over, but I keep getting eyefuls just the same. I go scowling down the alleys looking mean, but I’m only trying to keep the grit out of my eyes.

Suddenly among the hordes of people and motorbikes and plastered buildings covered with dust, a green oasis opens up to my left. A garden. Benches, palm trees, jacaranda, hibiscus, old women talking to each other, old men napping, a couple of stray dogs. It’s quiet. Even the swarming dust stops at the gate.
In the street again, some people are fighting the dust in front of their shops by watering the ground. This particular corner of the Medina seems to be devoted to motorbike repair (though given the antiquity of most of the bikes in use, they may just require these shops every few yards all over the city, not just in this neighborhood). The grease monkeys don’t try to battle the blowing dust – it just sticks to the grease anyway, better than water.
For dinner, there is pizza everywhere, at least on the main boulevard and around our hotel. Pizza and tagine. We have tagine and it’s delicious. For me chicken with apricots, for Yves-Jean camel with plums. Odèlia swears she doesn’t like camel.

Wednesday morning it’s time for work. B. picks us up at the hotel to take us out to the new university hospital. She seems to be a very nice person, someone you can really discuss things with. N. always made her out to be some inaccessible ogress. Perhaps she is an inaccessible ogress when you’re not a French bigwig come to visit, and perhaps also an ogress to those below her in the hierarchy. Hard to know.
I learn from B. in the car that N. is no longer working with them. No money to fund her position; B. says N. comes in to work at her whim. It’s like a reproach, to not come in more than that when you have no job. There’s something here I’m not getting. Yves-Jean says later that if they wanted N. on the project, funding would be found for her. He’s right.
In the half-constructed hospital we’re guided to an open wing of barely furnished offices and to a conference room. B. herself has never been to these new facilities. There are no curtains or blinds to dim the abundant sunlight for the slides we’ve prepared, but no matter.
We’re a dozen for the presentations, B. and a surgeon, both in their 50’s, plus a collection of young people including the graduate student who will be on the project, the rest all medical students or new doctors. Most of the younger people are women. They all have scarves but most keep them handy, not covering their hair all the time. After enticing the student ranks to fill the chairs at the table, another big head comes in and they flee to the bleachers like a school of minnows. Two put their scarves over their heads. No casual western protocol here.

After discussing medico-scientific topics, during which the problems of money and know-how on the part of the Moroccans never comes up, we visit with the dean of the medical school. This guy wants to know only about money. How much will it cost and where to get the funds. It’s quite a contrast to the insouciance of the previous group. Getting going is always the hardest part, but they have most of the equipment necessary so it’s really a matter of consumables. A small grant should get them started. 20,000€ should be relatively easy to get. At the very least they can spend just 1000 to make their own DNAs and then send them to us for analysis. Results from our lab will prove to their granting agencies that there are mutations to find, this is a public health issue, there are women to help, and thus get the granting circle started.
This hospital is months away from being open yet, so we tour the old one. It’s a less scary place than the hospital in Algiers, but it’s still a far, far cry from anything you’ll find in the States or France.

Dr. Abassi’s office is the old pathology lab, two rooms piled high with folders and books, a tile workbench running the length of the inner office, sinks recalling the room’s ancient function. Across a central light-well where patients or family members or random people are milling slowly around, the Ob-Gyn wing stretches off to the east.
An archive room is filled to the ceiling with cardboard folders. I can’t tell if the arabic writing on them is legible, but possibly it is not. Anything before 2003 is in deep, inaccessible storage elsewhere and may as well not exist. The room is so crammed they will have difficulty adding 2008. Unless that means rotating out 2003. Medical histories don’t go back very far here.
The rest of the corridor is the ward, with double rooms to each side and 10-bed rooms at the end. Every bed is occupied. The floor in the hallway stinks of urine. The ceilings are high and there’s plenty of light where the curtains are pulled back, and aside from the smell it all looks reasonably clean.

The walls are bare of any decoration, and there is a small cabinet for personal belongings, no other furnishings but beds and now and then a chair. The women are lying down, sleeping or talking quietly or nursing newborns. They are not all here for giving birth, but for various gynecological issues, including, here, breast cancer. They’re dressed in their own pyjamas and gowns or street clothes. They’ve brought their own pillows and extra blankets. Not many are veiled. Some are startled to see a man in their ward other than their doctor, and reach to cover themselves.
There are no IVs, no trays of medical supplies, no monitors, nothing that goes ‘beep’, no phones or tvs or bedside lamps. The women have brought a fair amount of stuff with them, which is sitting on the floor in bags and suitcases and piled in heaps. The 10-bed rooms are so full it’s hard to make your way to the back. I don’t notice where the bathrooms are, and I doubt there’s a shower at all.

Downstairs, the pathology department occupies several rooms, and is properly equipped with microscopes and centrifuges and incubators and all the trappings of a pathology laboratory. But they are lacking in archive space. A room with unspeakable air is filled floor to ceiling with jars of specimens. Because here they often diagnose cancer so late (because the patients just don't come in until they can't possibly help it), the specimens are sometimes huge. Another room, floor to ceiling with slides. Another, empty, waiting.
Nearby is the complex housing the classrooms and other spaces of the medical school. It’s a pretty place, new and clean, with a long central courtyard full of trees and roses and benches where students are studying or chatting. There is no water in the fountains, and several stray cats wander among the dry planters.
At the med school, several rooms are set up as molecular biology labs. Sort of. Nobody actually does anything here. With the setup of the building, they apparently had a good-sized budget for large equipment, and somebody went through a catalog and ordered a bunch of stuff. They have stuff they don’t even know what it’s for, like an apparatus for the first dimension of a 2-D gel (with the apparatus for the second dimension not thought of). They’ve got two PCR machines, great, but not good ones. And they have a one-lane capillary sequencer similar to our 16-lane version. All of this is gathering dust.
What they don’t have is any kind of money at all for consumables. No plasticware, no enzymes, not even basic chemicals. It’s as if they bought a nice car, and they certainly have people keen to learn to drive, but there’s no gas.
Well...

I think it’s going to work like this: money will be found, enough to get them extracting their own DNA. I’ll analyze these DNAs, including them in our annual count as if they were French so we’ll be reimbursed for the work, then once we publish some results they’ll be able to point to that success for more significant funding. The grad student will come for a month to learn benchwork, and I will come back to Marrakech to get their lab running once they’re ready for something more complex than DNA extraction. Once there’s some gas to run on.

While B. waits in line at the bank to get our stipend for the trip in cash, Yves-Jean and I relax at a café on the main boulevard. It’s well after 1, maybe almost 2, and we hesitate to have more than a soda because Edith might be waiting for Y-J to have her lunch. We order vanilla orange juice, expecting a shot of flavor added to juice. What we get is orange juice over vanilla ice cream. It’s wonderful.

Back at the hotel I snarf a couple of sweets from my welcome present and head out to wander in Marrakech.
There’s a whole list of things I’d like to find in the souks of the Medina – a good silver bracelet, some cheap metal bangles, Dan’s hats and jacket that he ordered, a small piece of pottery for my collection, a rug, and whatever knicknacks catch my fancy.
Today I enter the Medina at the ‘main’ entrance, where a hundred horses attached in pairs to carriages stand shifting from foot to foot waiting for tourists to hire them. Wow, does it stink of horse piss.

The main square, Jemaa el Fna, is pretty empty just now, though it’s supposed to be the center of Marrakech life. Where are all the promised fruit stands and jugglers and fire-eaters? Heading off the square toward the souks, the first row of shops are all for tourists. I wonder just how many real Moroccans have this ironwork and that ornate mirror in their homes. I wonder how real that image of “typical” Moroccan domestic comfort is. Perhaps it’s exactly real, only I’ll never get into a typical Moroccan home to find out.
I start looking at jewelry, just the cheap gaudy stuff they put out on the street. I do want some, so I’m really looking. I’m not going to buy this, though, and when the kid asks me if I like it I heft what’s in my hand to indicate it’s junk.
So he says do I want to look at real silver, and since yes, I do want to look at real silver, I let myself be led to the shop across the way. The real silver is in locked display cases and they do have some bracelets that would look fabulous on my arm. And thus I am doomed.

It is understood, better by the merchants than by the tourists, that opening a discussion will end in a sale. If you’re not going to buy at some price, DO NOT open your mouth. Don’t ask to see anything. Don’t try anything on. Above all, never ask How much unless you know your own personal answer to the question.
All silver here is sold by weight, as if the craftsmanship that went into making something nice-looking to wear is nothing. My never-let-them-go host weighs my favorite, calculates its price under my eyes but too quickly for me to follow, and shows me the result. I never did get a good look at the scale and I don’t know the going rate per gram anyway. All I have to go on is how much am I willing to part with in order to have it.
We haggle. I take a break and look around at the rest of the 3-storey shop. We haggle some more, and I spend about 70€ on two large, beautiful bracelets, with a free crocheted hat thrown in. It’s way more than I should spend on them, but I’m new at this.

And now for the embarrassment. My suspicion of having been had probably shows on my face, but it’s absolutely true that I don’t have 800 dirhams in my pocket. I left the envelope of cash at the hotel; I’ve only got 500 on me. No way I’m using my credit card: any dirhams left on Saturday will be just so much play money once I get on that plane.
So the guy wraps the silver in the hat, hands it to me and says his son here will accompany me to the hotel. No reneging on the deal, no ‘coming back later’. He’s heard that one before.

It’s hot, and it’s a 3km walk back to the hotel so once I get rid of my escort I hide my treasure in my unsecured room and decide to check out the pool on the roof. Pretty enough, but the pool is in the shade and the water is too cold for me. Maurice and I hang out on a lounge chair writing postcards, determined not to be chased away from our relaxing spot by the honeymooners a few chairs away. Eventually it’s time for a shower and a nap before meeting the others for dinner.
MacDonald’s is our meeting point, halfway to the Medina. Edith would like to dine in the Medina rather than the tame tourist places along the boulevard, but it’s too far to go – in particular too far to walk back afterward – with the little one. We end up at the same place Yves-Jean and I had our vanilla-orange at, and the food is great. I have pastilla, which is chicken and almonds and spices wrapped in thin brik pastry and served on a bed of mint. There are orange slices dusted with cinnamon for dessert.

Thursday we have the entire day free. We decide to meet in the main square at 8 pm, at the post office, to have dinner amidst the ‘real’ Marrakech nightlife. So I have just enough companionship but am also free to wander as my whim takes me, and linger writing over boiling mint tea.
I’m out of the hotel as soon as I’ve had my breakfast, with a plan to not take the grand boulevard once again but to pass around the northern tip of the Medina, enter there, and follow the perimeter around to the Jemaa el Fna. That way I’ll see all the gates into the Medina. According to my guide book, some of them are quite impressive. The early start will let me cover plenty of ground before the oppressive smoggy heat of afternoon comes on.
But I immediately get lost. I have a very nice walk through some of the nicer residential neighborhoods, but my map has little detail and it’s hard to catch a glimpse of the tall Khoutoubia mosque to reorient. Plus, there’s another mosque sporting a very similar tower. Finally way down a rare straight street I spy the pockmarked Medina wall. It’s in exactly the wrong direction, but at least I found it.
Finding myself at a southwest corner of the walled city, I decide to go counterclockwise around the prince’s palace and enter by the south gate. I’m flexible.

Oddly for a city so large, of which the walled Medina is the original construction, to the south and west there’s not much. From downtown to countryside in a blink. There’s a huge olive grove and barren open space. It looks like part of this was once, or is, a vast parking lot. Nobody is parked, except for a small group of camels and their handlers waiting to be hired out to tourists.
Here’s the south entrance to the Medina at last. The prince’s palace is closed to the public, I knew, but you can’t get even the least glimpse of it behind adobe walls three stories tall. And don’t try unless you want to get shot.
Here’s the major Muslim cemetery, again surrounded by high adobe walls. As I approach the open gate to look in, a guard gets agitated. I try to explain I’m not going in; I just want to look from here, but looking is not allowed. It’s very pretty in there. Everything is white. The tombs are white marble, the ground is covered in white dust, the visitors are all wearing white. Even the sky is drained of color.

And now the main Medina gate. Huge and ornate, it’s falling into ruin. It looks far nicer in the guidebooks and postcards, taken in just the right light. It is true that storks are nesting on the higher battlements and chimneys. The first nest I thought was a put-on, the stork made of plaster for the tourists, but then it moved, and I started to see all the others. And the droppings.
Nearby are the Saadite tombs, one of the major attractions of the Medina. It’s only 2 € entry, so why not?
One why not is the crowd, but I see they are all attached to their guides, sticking close, and it’s possible with patience to wait for a break between waves to enjoy the lush gardens and elaborate indoor tombs in quiet.
It is a sight to see. The garden is about the size of my yard, half filled in with ordinary graves of notable Muslims, their feet toward Mecca (or is it their heads?). A lone Jewish counselor is placed sideways. Then the sheltered tombs of kings and queens, incredibly elaborate, tiled on the floor and up the walls to ten feet, then sculpted and inlaid plaster rising to the cathedral ceilings. Color everywhere.
Of much interest to a couple of Germans is a tortoise crossing a path to a more promising bed of flowers. They pursue it with their cameras until it is out of sight under a hydrangea. Shucks; it would have been fun to photograph it with Maurice. Tortoise and pink Hare. Probably just as well, it seems disrespectful to come to this solemn and holy place and take joke pictures anyway.

Outside, I’ve just reaffirmed my Stranger status by buying and drinking a bottle of water when I hear my name being called. It’s Yves-Jean. N. has hired a guide to take us around the Medina, if I would like to join them.
Well sure, that would be nice.

And it is nice.
We head straight for the tombs, and this time I get all the commentary because it isn’t in Spanish or Dutch. The 16th century rulers, the Muslims facing Mecca, the Jew buried crossways, the women apart. I see a lot less, because now it really is crowded and there are no breaks between groups, but it’s interesting.
Then on to a palace. Dating from the 19th century, it looks like it might be much older simply because the architecture hadn’t changed. Two fireplaces had been added by the French, but otherwise it was all open rooms facing courtyard gardens, benches previously covered with cushions. Light from the sky. Heat from wool carpets and shawls. Coolness from thick walls and shade and strategically placed doors. Every surface is decorated, from the mosaic floors to the carved and painted ceilings.

Next, the souks. We are taken to learn about carpets, but also to buy carpets. Seated comfortably on a bank of cushions, the shopowner has his boys roll out carpet after carpet, explaining their virtues, the traditions, the dyes used. At the end of a good thirty carpets he wants to know which ones we’ll take. No question of whether we actually want to buy a carpet – if we’re in the shop it’s understood we’re here to buy. Um... I thought I was on a tour...
He does have some nice items, and with our guide and N. along we’re not likely to get too ripped off. It’s a quality shop, and it’s time for me to choose my rug if I’m getting one at all. They bring us tea, though with it still Ramadan only we Europeans are served. We’re invited to take off our shoes and walk on the carpets. Like at home. Come.
The proprietor has got a gorgeous red carpet out, one with no annoying design, just waves of hand-dyed red. I’m sold the moment I sink my toes into it.
I know that if I ask how much he wants for it, I’m committed to giving a counteroffer I must stick to if he agrees. I can afford 500€, tops. I figure this one, with no complicated design, can’t be out of range.
Numbers are not spoken aloud in the nice shops. On his big calculator he types out 26,000 dirhams as the price he would normally charge tourists. But seeing as we’re here with local friends, he’ll cut that in half. For friends, and for Ramadan, which works out to about 1200 €. Gulp.
Edith wants a carpet too, a kilim with lots of orange colors and complex patterning, so they pull out and fold away carpet after carpet. They pull out plain red wool ones for me, too, in different sizes.
Edith finds what she likes, but Yves-Jean is not convinced. He doesn’t really want a carpet at all, which is a good thing for negotiating because he won’t come down from 500 for the relatively cheaper cotton kilim. They go off to pay, leaving me with my beautiful red wool berber. I point to a smaller one, and off we go.
The shop owner wants a number, any number. Whatever I can, he says, when I correct his impression that we are all doctors. Not me; I’m a poor goodhearted scientist. I’m embarrassed to say. He wants to know. I say 500 (being too shy to go lower and give myself bargaining room – the carpet really does seem worth 800 or so, for its size and what I’ve seen elsewhere). 500 pains him. It is too low. We discuss. I offer 600 and I know that is all I can do. He says I can pay on my credit card, spread it out – I say sure but that still means paying. His number creeps down. I stand firm.
600€ it is. They wrap it up in a bundle I can check directly on the plane and deliver it to the hotel. I feel strange – at once like I’ve spent far too much and also that I got a really good deal. Did I? Both are possible.

If you don’t want to buy, you’ve got to just never open your mouth. Not even once.
Next stop is next door, a huge cavern full of dusty, junky stuff, mostly metalwork. Edith wants a traditional silver teapot, and eventually finds one to her liking.
If we visit the souk one shop at a time, we’ll be here till New Year’s. But now we walk quickly through them. Our guide walks more quickly than Odèlia can manage, and he often has to wait for us. It would be too easy to lose him in the crowds if he weren’t so tall and so brightly clad in a yellow djellaba.

We’re headed for the spice quarter, where upstairs at a ‘pharmacy’ we’re given a private sales pitch for diverse local products. Quick shoulder massage 2€, all products 3-for-2, special for Ramadan. We buy, but not very much, not knowing how many more shops are on the tour. I get 35-spice mix for tagines, and a bottle of some strange nut oil for salads that smells a lot like hazelnut but not quite. No cosmetics or medicinal products, thank you.
Then a little more walking and explaining and we’re dropped off at the hotel around 2. It was really nice of N. to organize this for us, and very lucky to have found me at random in the Medina. She says she thought B. had something planned for us today, or she would have contacted us earlier. As it was, only Yves-Jean’s wanting to work for an hour before going out in the morning saved her from missing us entirely.
She’d so much like to invite us to her home, but she can’t do that with her husband away on the Haj. I suspect that it’s specifically Yves-Jean she can’t invite to her home: I don’t think it’s against any rule for her to have women over. Society here would stop if women couldn’t visit.
I lighten my bag, scarf some more sweets and drink plenty of water, then go right back out to shop in the souks for cheap stuff and Dan’s hats.

I’m wandering around not finding hats when one of the innumerable would-be guides asks me what I’m looking for. If I tell him, I’ll have hired him to guide me, so I almost blow it off like all the others but what the heck, it’ll only cost me a euro.
We’re not in the covered souks, but on the edge where shops are more scattered. He leads me off down a residential side street toward the main square where all the shopping is. Then down a couple more quiet residential streets. I stop to photograph a doorway and a cat, and he keeps asking me what do I want, what do I want. In a couple of places he turns away from what looks like a wider street, saying it’s closed that way. Knowing how these people value their privacy and consider tourists wandering into their personal space a real affront, I follow him down another disaffected alleyway. That’s all there is in the Medina, alleys. Even so, it looks like my “guide” doesn’t know the area any better than I do.

At an opening to a covered passage he makes it known that he wants to show me a riad, a garden. Perhaps that’s what he’s been looking for. I know these small gardens are green oases in the dusty city and they’re mostly private. It would be a real treat to get a picture of one.
At the turn in the passage, my guide turns on me suddenly, bumping up against me in a clumsy way. It’s shocking he would touch me. Then he steps back, hand behind his back as if holding a knife he doesn’t want to have to threaten me openly with, and demands money.
Startled and afraid not of any pretended knife but of his strength (the posture is just too ridiculous for there to be a real knife), I give him the small bill I keep handy in my pocket. He demands more, crouching and gesturing like he might lunge and stab me even though I saw his empty hands. I say firmly ‘No’. He keeps demanding and making threatening gestures but I start shouting No. NO. NO.
People are near. We haven’t seen many, but they are all around. Right upstairs, and on the other side of the wall, and around the corner. People are everywhere. NO! The guy flees.
I turn two corners and I’m in an open, sun-filled square filled with merchants, among them a number of hat sellers squatting on their heels among their wares.

What an idiot. I know better than to accept to be led down deserted streets by a stranger. He was risking a lot for five bucks, though. The police take any aggression of tourists very seriously. The reputation of Marrakech as a tourist destination depends on it, along with a good and growing chunk of the economy. Getting taken for a ride here is common, but being attacked is not.

The hats are disappointing. Dan wants bright ones, but the only bright ones with multiple colors have stupid llama motifs all around. Llamas?? The only hats I’ve seen the local people wear are either white or beige, rarely with a design in light blue. Men’s fashion in Marrakech these days is very subdued. Nothing flashy. Colorful hats like Dan wants are hard to find: the bright flashy jacket he saw on the internet simply does not exist. Men in the streets are wearing either jeans and t-shirts, pants and shirts like you’d find anywhere in the world, or plain kaftans or djellabas in neutral colors.
Sorry, Dan.

I do get a collection of hats. I do find hats in gaudy colors, but they’re made of nasty, scratchy wool. Crocheted cotton hats I buy in twos and threes; the ones said to be handmade are more expensive, but the machine-made ones contain too much acrylic yarn.
Bargaining becomes more fun as I get the hang of it. You just have to be serious about walking away instead of caving in to a higher price, even if the merchant does get mad -or appears to. They will always come down to something you’re willing to pay. By the end of the day I regret not starting my bids even lower. What are they going to do? Say no? Let them – the next shop over has exactly the same merchandise for sale.

At 6 I sit down for tea. My bag is getting quite heavy. There’s just enough time to make it back to the hotel and back to drop it off, but what’s the point in that. I watch people go by and write in my journal until it’s time to meet Edith and Yves-Jean for dinner.
It’s threatening rain and putting on a fair lightening show, so we scrap our idea of eating at one of the stands set up in the square and go for a covered terrace overlooking the Jemaa el Fna instead. Traditional food, good, cheap, not excessive piles of it. One thing we’ve kept seeing on menus is avocado juice. That seems too bizarre, so we try one. It’s like an avocado smoothie, mostly milk, true avocado taste. But why? We don’t mind it, but nobody really likes it either.

Friday. I try again to go around the Medina and see all the gates. Only, the Medina is a big place, and only the area to the south and west, where I’ve already been, is at all nice. The northern peninsula is very run-down and ratty and not used to tourists at all. When I enter, what shops there are are just starting to think of opening, though there are people out and about. I feel very conspicuous as I walk down the narrow streets. Like a voyeur, which in a way I am.
Going around the outside of the wall, the neighborhood was just too nasty and smelly, so I try to go around the inside, only the streets don’t do that. Along the wall it’s built up, with cul de sacs and walled-off areas and mosques where people stare at me like a suspected terrorist for getting near.
So I give up on that, and head south more or less at random. Twice, young men try to ‘help’ me find my way. They want to know what I’m looking for, where I’m heading, where I’m from. They refuse to accept this is none of their business. They tell me come this way, leading. I turn another. They get angry that I do not want their ‘services’. When I will not tell them what I am looking for, they decide for me that I want to see the coppersmith, or the leatherworkers. I say no, no, I am just looking around. I am not lost.

Really, that’s all I want to do, look around and see what it’s like here. And I would be happy to stop and chat with someone who doesn’t see me as a mark, but that’s not these guys.
I stumble into the touristy zone, where the Marrakech Museum is open.
Open? We were told yesterday that all the monuments and museums would be closed today, the last day of Ramadan. That was the reason given why, when N. arrived unannounced at the hotel yesterday with the guide and his van, that they could not come back the next day when we would all be there.

Yes, it’s open. Everything is open. People are lined up to go in the Bahia Palace we toured yesterday. I come across the Badii Palace, a huge ruin, and explore it for 1 €. It’s peaceful and bare, with a dozen storks nesting on the higher remaining ramparts.
Back in the souks, fully open by noon, I’d like to find an inexpensive scarf or two. Mostly I love to wander in this great bazaar, and having a goal makes it more fun.
Looking at scarves I’m confronted again with the petty dishonesty of people from the Maghreb. The guy swears all his stock is made in Morocco. He doesn’t bother to claim it’s made by hand, but at least it is made locally. I pick out a blue cotton wrap and am about to bid 10 dirhams when I notice the Made in China tag. Now, I don’t actually mind that the thing is made in China. It’s a nice sarong and the price will be right. So I point out the tag and say ‘hey, this says made in China’.
Oh no. No, no no. All made in Morocco.
I show him the tag. Made. In. China. Fabriqué en Chine.
When the guy continues to deny that any item made anywhere else than in Morocco, and now by hand at that, could ever, ever be in his shop, I laugh and toss the length of fabric at him before going on my way.

Eventually I decide on a much nicer scarf in shades of red and orange, and make my lowest bid yet. Percentagewise, not in absolute numbers. The guy wants 160. I offer 50. Maybe I could have gone lower, but that’s only a couple bucks as it is. It’s a scarf. It isn’t worth more. 150 from the young merchant under the eye of an older man, perhaps his father, certainly his boss.
Fifty.
One hundred.
Sixty.
He has to confer. He looks nervous. He can see, or the older man can, that I’ve ceased to be a pushover. We conclude at 65.
It’s a pretty scarf, and a large one. I hope it’s warm enough to replace the jacket I lost changing planes in Paris, at least long enough to get me home. I consider buying a leather jacket from one of the great many leatherworkers, but I don’t have the energy for it and I really should stop spending. I have a good leather jacket already.

Even after stopping for a leisurely lunch (alas, only tourist places open in this holy season) and mint tea I’m still very tired. Better hike back to the hotel (only 4 km) and shower (no hot water this morning and my hair is getting far too nasty in this polluted air to go to dinner at Professor and Director Belaabidia’s house tonight), and then just rest.
I slightly regret not detouring to the fabulous Marjorelle Garden, but it’s just too much effort in the oppressive afternoon heat. Besides it might be closed for the holiday supposedly going on today.
An afternoon of relaxation is in order. Not that I’ve been exactly hard at work all week, but it’s been a nonstop few days with all that walking.

Dinner is our taste of Moroccan luxury. I was hoping for dinner at her house, as I thought she indicated in the invitation, but B. and her husband Omar take us out to The Red House, a restaurant/hotel in the rich residential district I got lost in on Thursday. I almost stopped then to photograph the ornate mosaic and carved plasterwork façade, set in its well-watered and shady garden.
Inside it’s equally opulent. In the foyer they have a bar set up with all sorts of liqueurs, letting us know right off that whatever non-Muslim libations we wish to partake of, we have only to say so.
The main dining area has thick carpets on the mosaic floor, mosaics on every wall in a colorful and repeating geometric starburst and rosette pattern, then above seven feet or so, like in many places, just high enough to be out of reach, it’s the carved white plaster in traditional designs up to the high ceiling that is entirely covered in sculpted and painted wood. There is color and intricate design on every surface. The tables and chairs are western, in deference to creaky western limbs, but I see an alcove decorated differently, with poufs and couches, unfortunately finished with heavy red velvet draperies too garish to be nice.

Over a delicious dinner I learn a little more about N., and it’s clear why she’s no longer really part of the team. Well, she could be part of it if she would only come be part of it. That’s the problem; she doesn’t work as a team member. She keeps entirely to herself. In her time with us, we put this down to shyness and being a stranger quite out of her depth. Apparently she’s always like that.
She’s kept the information about this collaboration as much to herself as possible. When she got back from her month-long stay with us, she went home and stayed there. She never told me that her position at the university had not gone through, so I didn’t know I needed another contact person. She never made any kind of report to B. or the rest of the young students and doctors that participate in the breast cancer project in Marrakech. It was only after much harassment that she finally presented some of her experience, and that on Monday, just one day before our arrival.
I don’t get this girl, and neither does B.. What is clear is that this collaboration will go exactly nowhere if we try to keep her in the center of it. As of now, B. and I will just communicate directly.

Saturday it’s time to leave. Between a growing sore throat and the filling of the hotel (which makes for an awful racket as the too-tightly fitting doors have to be slammed shut, making shot-like bangs echoing up and down the tiled spaces), I sleep poorly. The morning being overcast doesn’t help at all, failing to cue me in that the morning is well on. When I finally boot my computer –an elaborate clock once I finished my slides days ago- I’m shocked to find I’ve got 54 minutes to get done in the bathroom, have breakfast, and check out.
Then the day is just boring transit. Wait here, wait there. I spend my last dirhams on packets of Moroccan sweets to share at work. What’s fun on the trip back is flying over Spain and recognizing not meerly Madrid but sights that I have visited there and the intersection near my hotel from 2002. Hey, I’ve been there!

Till next time,
Nancy