Oops! Are We Missing Something?

The train to Meknès is efficient, clean, on-time, cheap, easy, and quick. It's pretty much everything a person wants in a train, other than the fact that it is hard for us to understand the announcement for our stop. We realize rather last minute we've arrived, and grab our luggage and, like salmon swimming upstream, we run out the door as the rush of people storms on looking for seats. Most of the fault is our own, since we are a bit late getting off, but there are other Moroccans caught in the two-way crush as well. After fighting our way out, we put our luggage down and breathe a sigh of relief. Then I look over at Anthony, who is the only one tall enough to put up or get down our things from the overhead rack, and notice something is missing.

 

"Anthony! Where is the camera bag?"

 

His eyes and mouth get wide and round like perfect letter Os. He looks exactly like an overly hammy actor -- think William Shatner -- auditioning for a deoderant commercial where he is supposed to look surprised. He runs back onto the train and starts up the stairs after the train has already started pulling out of the station. Now he looks exactly like an overly hammy actor -- think David Hasselhoff -- in a made-for-TV-movie scene of a man escaping the law, one last time. The train is, as I have said, efficient, and it is going at full speed in a matter of moments.

In Paris, we have a full family contingency plan for the almost-invetible day when we are running for a subway and either one or both of the girls makes it on, but I am left behind, or visa versa. Our plan is simple: Whoever is on the train gets off at the very next station and stays on the platform in that same spot. Whoever is left behind gets on the next train at the same spot and gets off at the next station, and voila!, we are reunited, with only about 2-3 minutes of controlled panic in between. However, this seems like a really stupid move here in Morocco, so I just scream up to Anthony as he is running onto the train, "We'll wait here!," and hope to hell he hears it and does not enact Paris emergency procedures.

Gigi starts to cry as Anthony goes speeding off on the train, nervous and afraid that somehow she will lose her father in the wilds of Morocco. Hard-hearted, grown-up, and travel-jaded as I am, the only thing I fear losing is the camera. Of course, if I had known what else Anthony has stashed in the camera bag, I would also be afraid of losing all four of our passports.

Thanks to common sense, a kind Moroccan man who wants to practice English and helps Anthony out, his cell phone's miraculous coverage, and somebody at the station telling us the schedule of the next train back, we are able to go deposit our luggage and come back for him a couple hours later. Anthony, and the camera bag in his hand.

It's a good thing we don't lose the camera, not only because I would have a heart attack and have to re-visit Fez, but also because it turns out that Meknès is extraordinarily photogenic. I suppose it's a good thing we don't lose Anthony, either, just to be clear. He's pretty photogenic, too.

Meknès is a formerly royal city, whose heyday was under Moulay Ismaïl, who was proclaimed Sultan in 1672 and then went on to found a dynasty. Moulay is a source of much discussion. Gigi wants us to pigeon-hole him: "But was he good or bad?" Well, if you were one of the Berber tribes revolting against him and got mass executed and had your decapitated heads put up on spikes on the palace crenelations, then I'm guessing you'd say he's bad. Or one of the 20-30,000 enslaved Christians or Berbers forced to build his monumental projects, also bad. One of his 500 wives/concubines in his harem, or the over 1,000 children he sired? (No this is not an exaggeration.) Also not so hot. So he was bloodthirsty and cruel, but he also was the only one who could unify the country, he built many great works, and at least he treated the Black Guard -- his special forces -- well. We cover an astonishing number of such topics per day, sometimes almost breathlessly interrupting one deep conversation about Moulay Ismaïl to segue into Darwin's theory of evolution which somehow leads us to World War II, and then, of course, the Wright brothers, and the demise of the silent film and the advent of the talkies, and back to Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination..... Really, it's dizzying, and the biggest problem is that neither Anthony nor I know everything about everything, despite what we may ever have tried to insist.

Your assignment: Moulay Ismaïl -- Tyrant or Hero? Or, Moulay vs. Empereror Qin Shi Huang Di of China in 249BC. Compare and contrast in 2,000 words. Don't forget to use supporting examples.

Photogenic Meknès:

Moulay Ismaïl Mausoleum: Resting place of a hero/leader/tyrant/statesman (take your pick). This is one of the only mosques or mausoleums (in this case, both) that allows non-Muslims to enter, thanks to a ruling by Mohamed V, who as leaders go, seems to be pretty enlightened and solidly on the "good" side. There is one portion of the building that is closed off to us, but we get to see the lion's share, and it is just stunningly beautiful.

 

I think all the next few photos are taken ever-so-slightly crooked, and it's like a horrible optical illusion when you see them next to each other. But the places themselves are beautiful (and not tilted). They are various cemetaries and public buildings from -- you guessed it -- the era of Moulay Ismaïl.

 

Meknès is a great place to take a calèche -- a horse-drawn carriage (known in Oklahoma! terms as a "surrey with the fringe on top").

 

What I love most about this view of the palace is that we aren't allowed to take photos of the king's entrance, so this is just the entrance for the servants.

 

Dar El Ma (House of Water): stables and cavernous granaries ordered built by Moulay Ismaïl, who apparently had a pathalogical fear of being beseiged. Probably because he had so many enemies. When filled, it could have fed Meknès at that time for twenty years. The longest siege in Moulay's reign was, however, one week. One portion of the Dar El Ma lost its roof in shock waves from the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and is now a ruin --  but a very photogenic one.

The market in the old medina: Frankly, I have many more photos I love from this market of the food and spices, but I think I'll save them for another posting. But for now, I have to include at least one shot of olives. We buy a huge bag as a house-gift, since we are staying with a Moroccan family tonight. After he pays, Anthony turns to me and says, "I think we should also get something else..;" it has cost him 6 dirham -- about 75 cents. So, we buy a huge cookie box, too. Luckily, we have chocolates we brought in our luggage from Paris -- a microscopic bag that cost us almost $40.