We went past the royal palace which is right next to the New (ie Old) Town and admired a handsome door. This door is recent (I hesitate to say “new”) and was a gift to the king from the city of Fes. He spent a couple of years here while Covid was at its height. Now things have died down a little he’s out and about showing the royal visage in other cities of Morocco.
Once the palace had been appropriately gawped at we were taken to a pottery. Fes produces a fine grey clay which when baked becomes a brilliant white. We were given instruction on how the journey from clay to souvenir shop took place picking up mosaics on the way.
Loaded down with crockery we stumbled on.
It is the Medina or “old town” (that’s a name that just keeps getting more accurate) of Fes that we’ve really come to see. Parts of it date to the eighth century (the fourteenth is looking pretty new now I bet) and it is the largest non car urban environment in the world. There are fifteen thousand streets in the Medina not one of them wide enough to drive a car down. Still each of those streets has a name, receives mail and, more impressively, has plumbing, electricity and internet connections.
The Medina has mosques, markets, what claims to be the world’s first university, workshops and a tannery. We visited the tannery because there’s nothing like the pervasive odour of pigeon shit to make you feel properly medieval. The fact that you could purchase the tannery’s products on your credit card did spoil the illusion a little.
On our way in we were handed sprigs of mint to hold to our nose like a seventeenth century nobleman. This was to make sure that the pigeon shit didn’t quite overcome us. We were not I hasten to assure my readers down amongst the vats ourselves. We gazed down from on high as the labourers toiled among the filth below. If this is inequality them I’m all for it. In actual fact most people are in favour of inequality as long as they’re on the right side of the ledger.
From our eyrie we watched the toiling masses (about a dozen guys actually) and held mint delicately to our noses when some faint trace of the odour of labour came our way. Then we turned our attention to buying the products of said labour.
So in essence they take an animal hide, soak it in limestone and pigeon shit for about twenty days, beat the crap out of it , soak it in various vegetable and mineral dyes and then persuade someone to drape the finished product over their person. Despite the fact that we saw all this happening some people did indeed make purchases. The camel belly leather was absolutely beautiful and not for the first time I regretted the fact that I tend to fill a bag before I go on holidays. I should really just take an empty bag and fill it as I go.
In addition to the tannery we went to a fabric makers where we were shown exactly how much repetitive, gruelling work it takes to make something we can toss lightly about our shoulders. I did buy something there.
Then we retired for lunch before we got on with some serious sightseeing. In truth the Medina was a little too much of a good thing. I love the medieval streetscape and the incredible amount of activity that happens here but it’s just too big. We had a local guide as our regular guide frankly admitted that he got lost every time he went in there. If I had gone in by myself you would never have seen me again and this blog entry would have been scratched on a Medina wall next to my withered corpse.
Loved Fez. If you survive a day in the Fez Medina and come out of it with a half dozen successful purchases, then the Medina in Marrakesh will seem like kindergarten. Seriously though, Fez is wonderous. So much to see and feel - and of course smell, with or without a sprig of mint.
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