The final exam on Friday morning (July 24th) was more difficult than past exams for the class, but manageable. After it was over, I ate my (thankfully) last meal at the AUI "mat'am", checked out of my room, and headed off with only a small backpack and tote bag in hand.
The First Weekend: Martil, Tetouan, & Ceuta
Sara, Sebastien, Noor, Lars, and I took the train from Meknes to Tangier, and then a grand taxi to Martil, arriving around midnight. Martil is a seaside resort town on the Mediterranean, but largely unvisited by foreign tourists. Sara's beach apartments were just a block up from the beach -- as we stood on her rooftop balcony, we could see the water to our left and the city Tetouan to our right. At night, the lights of Tetouan appeared as a patch of flickering candlelight hovering amidst the hills. Sara's parents met us with freshly-made flan and cookies. Neither spoke English, but we managed reasonably in Arabic.
The next morning we slept in, then experienced a "light" Moroccan breakfast -- heaps of melwi pancakes and corncakes, fresh soft, white cheese that is a regional specialty, fresh honey, and warm butter -- before going for a walk along the beach. It was already very crowded by late morning, papered with cheery parasols. We stopped in at a bookshop with piles and piles of $1 books outside, and I managed to find an old Arabic reader and a "Learn Tamazigh in 10 Days" (from Arabic) book, and a book of poems by Mahmoud Darwish. Inside, almost possible to overlook, was a section of somewhat surprising books (for Morocco), including something like "The Real Story of the American Horrors at Guantanamo" and an uncomfortably heroic packaging of "Mein Kampf."
That afternoon, we were invited to lunch at Sara's main home in Tetouan. Like many of the homes I've seen in Morocco, you couldn't tell much from the outside, but the interior of the living/dining room was exquisitely decorated in royal blue and gold. We watched Al Jazeera a bit with her father before the first course was served -- couscous with boiled vegetables and leben, a yogurty milk drink. Then we had a phenomenal kofta tajine with eggs, as it is often prepared.
Afterward, Sara's high school friend Chaimae met us and brought us around the old medina of Tetouan. Tourists tend to flock to nearby Tangier, so Tetouan was calm and breezy. We wound up in one corner of the medina in the midst of the shops selling fur throw rugs made from animal hides. Behind the stalls was the workshop where they are made, and the proprietor explained to us how it is done, by soaking the hides in large pools of water, brushing, fluffing, etc. We emerged from the medina near the forest green and white royal palace (the colors of the whole city, really). Mohamed VI has a palace in just about every city in Morocco, but he would be celebrating the 10th anniversary of his accession in Tetouan just a few days hence. For this reason, the grand Spanish buildings along the main boulevards were strung with red and green flags and lights. We soon began to notice the festive spirit throughout the country.
That night, we returned to the beach after dark, when it was more empty but not too chilly, to chat.
On Sunday, we finally donned our bathing suits and went to frolic in the water. The color of the water was medium turquoise, the waves were high, and the undertow a bit too strong, but it was the perfect temperature. Eventually we roused ourselves from the sun and sand and hopped in a grand taxi for Ceuta (Sebta), the Spanish-owned city farther up the coast.
The highway to Ceuta ran right along the Mediterranean, and the scene was made even more dramatic by the lines of waving red Moroccan flags every few feet on both sides. We walked across the border (after filling out numerous forms on the Moroccan side, since Morocco is bitter about the continued Spanish possession of the city.) Since it was Sunday, everything was dead... except for the beach, as we later saw. Ceuta feels self-consciously Spanish, with wide boulevards, insistent church bells, and neatly-groomed parks with distinctly European-looking monuments. Mostly we just strolled around and enjoyed the scenic views (and visited a fancy McDonald's, actually, where I had my first real salad in awhile.) But we also went to the old fort. There has been a city on the site for over two thousand years, but it went Portuguese in the early 15th century, the period from which the fort originally dates, and Spanish in the late 16th. The interior courtyard has been populated by upscale cafes and palm trees, with a tiny museum tucked away in the corner. The best views were to be had from the ramparts, where old cannons were stationed, the Spanish flag was flapping, and one could see out to the other major hill of the city and out into the sea. Just outside, some teenage guys were cannonballing off a high bridge into the fort's moat.
Arabic class picture
Salt mines outside the train to the North
Flags waving in Tetouan
At the beach in Martil
On the street in Ceuta
The beach in Ceuta
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