Fez To Fez

JET LAG

Jet Lag is a no-doze haze/a misty no-man’s land between waking states/a dizzying misconbobulation of thoughts and images that get muddied into a melee of fear and loathing.  It’s a path that the weary international traveler must go down and one that no degree of preparation will allay. We are finally frighteningly tired and unable to sleep at our Riad in Rabat; it is one a.m. but it could be the Mars time zone for all I know. 

Flights all went smoothly and we arrived in Rabat at the scheduled hour and were at the car rental desk by about 12:30 p.m. Confusion ensued with rejected credit cards, extra costs, and language difficulties. Once at our car our rental agent offered to drive us into town and proceeded to weave through outrageous, erratic traffic patterns, through winding unmarked knots of boulevards and alleyways getting serially lost before abandoning us on a busy street with further directions that bore no resemblance to reality. Through all that our agent was kind and optimistic and deserved a nice tip for all of his extended efforts to assist us. I was initially nervous about taking up the driving responsibilities but found myself actually enjoying the bizarre randomness of the driving lanes; other than that, we were totally lost and had no working maps and no point of context to get us anywhere other than within the framework of the endless circuit that we were wandering in.  Eventually we were able to find a parking spot near a tea salon. Fortunately the waiter was kind, present, and helpful. I found my French language skills returning as if my fading memory had been inhabited by my alien, savant state of over stimulation. We drank a refreshing mint tea and were on our way. After a couple more miscues in our belief, the waiter’s directions proved accurate and we found ourselves being assisted into a parking space by a sweet, toothless parking guard who then accompanied us (five hours after our arrival) to our hotel. Amidst all of this craziness what remains is the proverbial "kindness of strangers," and the comfort of a place to finally call home.