Fez To Fez

THE RIAD

The head starts to spin after a while in the souks and markets of Marrakech. The whirling colors, smells, people offering the best of everything, a million images lodging themselves in distant memory. One needs some quiet amidst the epic din. That is where the riad enters the fray. Riads are generally palatial homes converted into guest houses. The tradition is to build a quiet environment centered around a courtyard. Rooms thus face inward and encourage the guest to do the same. Hosts are available to assist with meeting the needs of the visitor and provide breakfast and other delights such as afternoon mint tea and pastries. The proprietor also arranges for tickets, massages, laundry, dinners, directions or other advice about the local area.

Today we spoke with Ank, our Dutch hostess at the Chambres d’Amis riad in Marrakech. She recommended a few places to visit this morning. We started by heading South from the main square along some slightly less intensely populated streets until we found the Musee Tiskiwin, a house that has been converted into a small museum of Berber art collected by an 83 year old Dutch man named Bert Flint. His artifacts include masks, textiles, carpets, carvings, headdresses, ritual objects, maps and photographs that he has gathered over many years of travel in the Saharan region.

From there we carried on to the El Badi Palace which dates back to the 16^th century. Nowadays one must imagine the grandeur of a place that once boasted 360 rooms and if you allow yourself to do so it is possible to conjure elephants and camels, bejeweled royalty, and lavish entertainment of the grandest standards in the world. Nowadays, the palace is inhabited by storks nesting on the walls. 

We viewed a magnificent photographic exhibit of the work of Don McCullin. I was looking at one photograph, which happened to be of a homeless man in the seventies in the East End of London, and recognized the location as being quite close to where I grew up. At that moment the man next to me was viewing anther photograph and identified that he grew up very close to the place pictured in that photo, also in London’s East End.

It is now that I relax at the riad drinking tea and resting my tired feet. I am able to reflect on the journey so far and to allow myself to more fully feel the loss of the presence of my friend Jonathan as he is currently heading back to England. It was a sad goodbye but a wondrous warm time spent together. As Cindy remarked: “Jonathan is really a part of our family.” Thank you Jonathan for flying a thousand miles to see us, and for being such a lovely, flexible travel companion as well as a true friend.