Whenever and wherever I travel in Morocco, the first thing I do is find a relatively cheap hotel where I can drop my stuff and continue on with whatever the day has in store. Then I usually find a café or a souk that I can relax or peruse at my leisure. First, we found some cheap food: some local bread and locally made goat cheese, which the North of Morocco is apparently known for. However, when we tried the cheese, I was a little disappointed because it didn’t have the salty and strong flavor that I’m used to getting with a goat cheese, but perhaps that was a good thing. Then we went on to wander around the souk, which was a very tourist-geared place in Chefchaouen. So as we’re wandering, we get the usual harassment from shopkeepers telling us to come look at what they had in their stores. One man was extremely persistent and he had some interesting things, so we decided to take him up on his demand/request. Who knew that I would be spending the next 5-6 hours of my life in this man’s shop?
How in the world did this happen, you ask? There were far too many beautiful things, and, of course, after a certain point, the Moroccan mint tea just kept coming. I think it might be physically impossible for me to decline Moroccan tea when it’s been freely offered to me. First, there were the bracelets, necklaces, pendants, rings, and earrings that we went through first. Then, there were the various Berber knives my friend saw, and then we found out that we were actually talking to a man who had previously been a nomad and was traveling around the country selling goods his tribe made. When we asked him how long he will stay in Chefchaouen since he is a nomad, and he replied that it all depended upon feeling. One day he could wake up and just decide that it was time to leave and that would be it. Case closed and bags packed. This was all a very interesting idea considering he had everything from lanterns to leather travel bags to mountains upon mountains of scarves. Naturally, my friend and I, who have almost a scary similarity in taste for everything from clothes to movies, started to look at this humongous scarves that were lining the walls. We asked our now host to tell us what those were used for, and before we knew it, we were playing Berber dress-up.
First, we tried on the long scarves, which are wrapped around your body several times to completely cover everything, very much like a toga or sari would do. Then, we got a lesson on how to wrap a Berber head scarf, which was just as long if not longer than the scarf/dress, into a turban. Finally, they put us into these very loose-fitting-to-the point-of-down-right-ridiculous size traditional Berber dresses. They were beautifully embroidered with a yellow-gold thread around the hems, and made us both look like “Berber princesses”, as one of the other customers who came into the shop remarked. During all of this we engaged in some very intense and not-so-intense cultural exchange about what people in America do in their free time and home decorating. At one point, for instance, we had taken off two of the scarves that we had liked on the wall, and realized that now it needed some color, so my friend and I were trying to pick out other colors that would work well in that same spot. The manager of the store overheard us and took out the exact colors we were talking about from a small trunk in on of the corners of the room, and puts the scarves up on the wall. He was then talking about how he wished he could capture the light through the scarves, and we both simultaneously remark that he should put two scarves in the doorway that leads out to a terrace at the back of the shop so as to provide a little screen and to better display them. He absolutely loved having our input on something he didn’t seem to have any sense of, and after a while we began to feel almost at home in his shop.
At the end of our time there, we were both so tired from nodding, smiling, and generally being agreeable for such a long period of time, and all we wanted to do was head back to the hotel and sleep! We both only ended up liking and purchasing the scarves, but having the true Moroccan experience of getting to know a shopkeeper and drinking several glasses of tea with him and his cousins, who also helped to run the shop, was quite spectacular. I’m sure this will be one of my most vivid memories of Morocco.