Let Fes Be Fes

When I was a kid and I liked a particular thing, maybe a color or food or movie, and person X did not like it—more often than not person X was my brother, Adam—or when I was the disliker and person X was the liker, my mother would often remind me that it's good that we aren't all the same. She would explain that if everyone were the same it would be a very boring world.

She was right, of course, as moms often are. When I ask my mom how she got so smart she tells me something about mother school. I'm pretty sure that one is a lie. My hypothesis is that when a child comes out of the mother, it creates a vacuum and knowledge rushes in to fill it. The problem with my hypothesis is that the women who adopt children can also be maternally wise and my proposed mechanism can in no way account for that.

The Medina of Fes

Ignoring at present the question of how or what or where the wisdom comes from, I need to take the wisdom to heart. And that's why I want to talk about Fes. More specifically, the Medina of Fes. Even more specifically, Fes El Bali, but I won't limit myself only to that subsection of the city.

Let me explain what all these parts are. Fes is a city. Sometimes it is written as Fez, though I'm not sure why. The Arabic name definitely ends with a letter pronounced as s. The city is large and much of it is very modern. That's because the city has grown out from its historic beginnings. Fes, as we know it today, began in the ninth century. It was a big city for its time and place and it was a walled city. The gates were closed at night for protection.

That oldest walled precinct is today Fes El Bali, which means Old Fes. But in the fourteenth century, another walled city was added adjacent to Fes El Bali. This is Fes El J'did, meaning New Fes. That's a bit ironic since the much larger unwalled city of Fes is even newer (quite a bit newer) than New Fes, but we'll let that go. The two walled cities together comprise the Medina of Fes. (Medina is the Arabic word for city.)

Alrica and I stayed for four nights in a riad in Fes El Bali. This was a hotel of sorts in one of those ancient buildings in the narrow and labyrinthine streets of the oldest party of the city. Ryan and Michelle were in the other room on the same floor as ours.

When we arrived, Ahmed, our night host, served us mint tea (Alrica generously drank mine for me,) gave us an explanation of sites in the Medina, and carried the bags up the very steep staircase.

I had to meet a student at midnight that night, meaning I had to stay up late. Before the meeting, Ryan and I went out in the night and just got ourselves purposely lost in the twisting streets and then got ourselves purposely found again.

How brilliant is this branding?

The next morning, Alrica and Michelle wandered the Medina and did some shopping.

Ryan and I saw some of the sites. We walked to the Royal Palace. You are not allowed inside but you can go to the outer walls and see the beautiful golden gates.

The King (sometimes) lives behind those doors

Next we wandered in the Mellah, the old Jewish quarter of the city. In the days of caravans, the Jewish traders collected and traded salt and they liked to live near the palace with the theory that it was the safest part of the city. Certainly no military force would let invaders reach the home of their king.

From the Mellah, Ryan and I went to a part of Fes El J'did that isn't often visited by tourists. It was a great chance to see how the locals lived. It was here that encountered the hydrant picture that can only live in in my mind, the one that got away.

Unexpected optical illusion in the non-tourist area

There are surprisingly few fire hydrants in the Medina. But in this neighborhood I saw a beauty, shiny red, and butted right up against the wall of one of the old buildings. Why didn't I get the picture? Sitting beside the hydrant was an elderly Moroccan woman all decked out in traditional dress. The contrast of her clothing with the fountain would have made for a fantastic photograph. But I didn't know enough Arabic to ask her permission to take the picture and I didn't want to spook her or upset her. So the image will have to live on in my mind. (Maybe in Ryan's mind too.)

Next we saw the Jardin Jnan Sbil. There were some white water birds mingling with (or truthfully trying to avoid) the geese. I'm not sure what the white birds were.

I did get a hydrant picture in the Jnan Sbil Garden. You're relieved, right?

These were all in Fes El J'did. When Ryan and I reached the Blue Gate, we crossed back into Fes El Bali.

The Blue Gate is one of the ancient gates of Fes El Bali. It's name in Arabic is Bab Boujloud. Bab is pronounced close to Bob or Baab and it means door or gate. Boujloud doesn't mean blue however. It may mean Father of the troops (though there is not full consensus about this.) And originally it wasn't blue. The French built the current gate at this spot in 1913. Also the Blue Gate is only half blue. Or better to say it is only all blue on half the area. The outside, the Fes El J'did side, is decorated in blue. The inside, the Fes El Bali side, is decorated in green. But you can't call it the Blue Green Gate because none of it is in turquoise or teal or aqua or any such color. I guess it could be called the Half Blue Half Green Gate, but that's unruly. The Blue Gate will have to suffice.

The Blue Gate (the blue side)

Here we met up with Alrica and Michelle.

The afternoon found all four of us together in Old Fes. Ryan and Michelle did some shopping and Alrica assisted in the haggling process. We also visited the Nejjarine Museum of Wood Arts. It was full of lovely examples of decorative woodwork. But it also had wooden tools made for craftsmen of other arts or industries, like farming, leather working, or making music.

For dinner we had pizza, all of us needing a break from tagines after the desert tour.

Other activities included watching a football (meaning soccer) game with Ahmed at a coffee shop, eating "tacos" which are closer to shawarma than what we consider tacos at home, and enjoying the Fesness of it all.

This arch in the old city comes up to my jaw. And there are homes on the other side.

Let me explain what I mean by that. I love to travel and to experience new places, new cultures, new people, and new foods. There are so many interesting differences.

I don't know what the bottles of oil are here for, but there must be a reason, right?

But what I also see is how many of those differences are being blotted out or smudged. In some ways, big cities are big cities. Bangkok and New York City have different language, but seem so alike in so many ways. For many tourists that's good. They know what to expect. They can have similar beds to the ones at home. They can expect similar service to that of home. But if we ever reach a point that Tokyo is just another London filled with Japanese speakers (or London is just another Tokyo,) Quito is just Spanish speaking Denver, and Fes is only Montreal in Arabic, then we will have lost something. As my mom explained to me all those years ago, if every place is the same, this will be a very boring world.

I like the colorful stones leading to the door here

That's what I love about Fes El Bali. It has the same crowded streets, the same tiny shops, the same street food, and the same feel as it has for centuries. Sure, there has been some modernization: electricity and running water and sewers. But its character has remained true to itself. And I hope that no matter how much some tourists want it to become more like the other places they go or more like where they are from that it won't, but instead it will keep on being the Old part of Old Fes. It's different; that's what I appreciate most about it. Good golly, keep the Bali in Fes El Bali.