The Doors

Moroccans have a unique sense of style when it comes to doors for their homes or businesses.

The scrollwork at the top of this Moroccan door is echoed in the painting at the bottom.

The grillwork on this Moroccan door is broken up by blue stone at the middle and bottom.

Businesses with their heavy, 10 foot steel doors are also receive a decorative treatment.  Few places are left unadorned.  Plain, solid-colored doors are the exception rather than the rule in Marrakech.

The black and beige steel doors in Marrakech are separated by a green and gray tile pattern.

On the Street Where You Live

Behind any given street in Marrakech, where you might expect to find back doors and alleyways, you may find instead a warren of homes and walkways.  I'm not sure how these off-street streets are designated for, say, the post office. 

Their existence does explain why taxi drivers navigate by landmarks rather than by addresses.  Of course, the foreigner who, proudly showing off her faux-Arabic with a freshly memorized destination, may be suddenly at a total loss when it comes to knowing what is considered a landmark in the area. Not that that has ever happened to me.

Nat King Cole, probably best known now for his song "Unforgettable",  might never have recorded this other classic tune had  Lerner and Loewe  lived in Marrakech.  "On the street where...behind the other street...where you make that left...."  It just doesn't sound the same.

Home Improvement

The owner of my apartment decided she wanted to add decorative trim to the outside of the interior building windows overlooking her courtyard.  Sounds nice. she's chosen brown and white ceramic tiles in an alternating diamond and triangle pattern.  Looks nice. 


The way it gets applied is that the tile guy has to first climb a ladder outside the building in order to hammer and chisle off the existing stucco. Then he taps and cements the tile to the cinderblock underneath. So what he does is this: hammer, hammer, hammer. Bang, bang, bang. Tap, tap, bang, hammer. For hours and forever every single day. Starting way too early in the morning. 

Pity the poor non-morning persons. And the mom of the 2-month old downstairs. And the rest of us, as all of this hammering, banging and tapping is a 100% guaranteed headache-maker.

Since his ladder won't reach the third floor, he's had to come inside my apartment to do my windows. Most of my windows are open, but some in the living room and kitchen have actually been removed for better access to the outside and to avoid damage. My washing machine is sitting in the middle of my kitchen floor. I can hear him now moving my stove off further to the side.

When the tile guy was working on the second floor, the baby downstairs took his naps in my aparment.  Now I'm hanging out and eating with the family downstairs.

There are a couple of differences as to the way work is done in Morocco. The tile guy takes breaks to go to the mosque for prayer. The homeowner provides him with a big home-cooked meal everyday. I am leaving fruit, juice and water on the table for him to eat as he pleases. Since he is now working inside my apartment, I have to treat him as a guest.

A Small Adobe House

A while back, I had the opportunity to visit an adobe home here in Marrakech.  The house was tiny, 4 rooms in about 400 square feet.  The was a bed room, a kitchen, and 2 salons. The rooms were spotlessly clean.The interior walls were all pale yellow.  In the bedroom there was a double bed shared by the parents  and a nine month old baby girl.  There was  an enormous, 3  door wardrobe.  The family's clothes were folded neatly inside of it, with suitcases and boxes stacked on top.

The other 3  children, a pre-school girl and elementary school-age son and daughter shared the 2 salons at night. The salons each had sectional sofas and tables for entertaining and dining. The sofas were covered in a  beautiful beige fabric with tiny lavender and yellow flowers. Carved scrollwork embellished the archway separating the two salons. 

The larger salon had a tv and opened into the kitchen. The kitchen had cabinets, a stove, refrigerator  and sink. A flower arrangement filled the display space above the kitchen doorway.

The  front  yard, another 100 square feet or so, was enclosed by a fence roughly 9 feet high. The dirt in the yard is constantly swept clean. This was a multipurpose area also. It was a play area for the children.  Clotheslines hung from side to side.   A walled off area immediately outside of and to the right of the front door  was the outhouse. Another  section of the yard  near an outer wall was partially closed off as an additonal storage and clothes washing area.

Outside of the  house and across the dirt road was a municipal tap that supplied clean  water for that house and its neighbors.

This family does not have a lot of money, but the parents and children are literate and well fed.  Their home is not an indicator of dire poverty; it reflects the housing standard of most Moroccans little more than a generation ago. As well as owning a modern cinderblock townhouse, working class families in the city live in either modern apartments or these older adobe homes.

 My companions  and I were there for a brief time, just long enough for coffee and doughnuts.  It was a little disappointing; the mom is an excellent cook, and her dinners are always memorable.

No Crystal Stairway to Heaven

The beautiful tile staircase where I live

Stairs like these are common. They are quite lovely.  They are also steep and long.  Moroccan architecture isn't always big on conveniently spaced landings.  

I have to go up 2 of these to get to my apartment.

This is not a crystal stair, nor is it the stairway to heaven.  But if you're coming to Morocco, you can leave your StairMaster behind.

The Ultimate Multi-Purpose Room

The living room in Morocco is an entertaining, dining and sleeping space.

The salon in a Moroccan home is the ultimate multi-purpose room.  It is a living room/dining room/guest room/kids bedroom. As a living room, family and friends gather hereto talk or relax.  When it is time to eat, the low, sofa-height table turns this into the dining room.  When guests arrive for weddings and other such family events, the couches (and floor space) can  accomodate them.

The nesting tables provide places for extra dinner guests

The salon is also a kids' room.  Some homes have only one bedroom, the parent's room.  The babies sleep in the parent's room.  Older kids sleep on the couches at night and put the covers away in the morning. 

Often homes, even 1 bedroom homes,  will have 2 living rooms so that children or guests can be separated by gender.

Where is Paradise?

I'm sure scholars, philosophers, and perhaps architects have written about the link between our view of the horizon and our awareness of the spiritual world around us.  I have seen a vast ocean, and I have looked upward at the limitless night sky. Always my idiosyncratic perception of the heavens was that Allah's paradise was "up there" or "out there" somewhere.  City skyscrapers always made paradise seem, to me at least, even further away, as if the height of the buildings themselves demaracated the material and spiritual worlds.

The single-story compound I visited in the Moroccan countryside had an unexpected effect on my own perception of paradise.  I  stayed in a family compound.  On all four sides of me, there were 10-foot high walls.  Beyond those walls, I could see nothing of the level farmlands,  other nearby structures of similiar height, nor the mountains in the distance.  As far as I could see, the material world stopped at the top of those walls. 

In this circumscribed world, it seemed to my spiritual self as if the breadth and height of paradise began at the top of those compound walls.  Paradise was sitting just above my head.  I could almost touch it, or I could be crushed by the weight of it.

I had not thought, when I went to  visit a family in rural Morocco, that the trip would have such a profound effect on my own  spirituality.  But even the passage of time there was affecting as night came, and the midnight blue of the sky was highlighted by stars.  Then fajr came, and the sky was cobalt blue, backlit from the rays of a sun still too far away to bring the colors of the dawn.  Shades of paradise just above my head.

A Country House

 I went with a family here to see other family members  who live in the countryside. Their home is about 2 hours outside of Marrakech. We were going to take a bus, but the busses were crowded, the rates had gone up, and we ended up taking a taxi for about the same price.

The trip on the highway was nice.  Hills in the background. Flat farmland in the foreground. The occasional flock of sheep. Finally we turned off the highway onto a white gravel road that was bordered on both sides by fields of low greenery and followed it about a mile or two to its end. There was a single story modern building with lots of window and a low wall to our right--an elementary school. To our left was a single story adobe style compound . The wall around it extended down to the edge of the road. Sitting on the ground were  grandparents and a great-grand mother. They had just been sitting there, waiting for us to arrive. Hugs and kisses all around.

Inside the walls were several adobe buildings. One was the outhouse, which was in a corner and faced the rear wall of the compound. It will never be mentioned again. But there was a light, so you could go at night. Enough of that. There were two corral areas. The small one was for the chickens, rooster, and one very large turkey. Next to that was a much larger corral for the donkey. There were a couple of cats.

There were three buildings, one was a store that belonged to an uncle. One was just a large room, long and narrow--about 8 ft by 20 ft. The third was about 7ft by 30 ft. and was divided into 2 rooms with two separate entrances.  The left side was the kitchen that measured about 7ft by 12 ft. The right side of building was the living area. In both the living room and the other large room, which was used to sleep guests, the floors were carpeted and the the walls were lined with cushions, blankets and pillows for seating. The living room also had a low table for eating and a televison with great reception in the corner.

First we had the traditional tea, bread, and cookies. This little meal is not to be dismissed. They don't begin cooking the evening meal until after the guests arrive. They would never insult anyone with leftovers or cold food.  That means it will be a long while before dinner with every element prepared from scratch. So the tea service is an important little meal.

Dinner was chicken with lentils served over a bed of thin breads that had been rolled, flatened, layered, cooked, then torn into shreds and tasted like dumplings.  Four women helped prepare the dumplings. One to roll, one to cook, one or two to separate and tear. One of the woman also cooked the chicken and lentils. We ate with two tables at either end of the living room, one for grandfather and uncles, one near the tv for the women. The food was delicious. We also had large bowls of fruit--apples, bananas, oranges.

After dinner, the men left and the women had the tv. It was Saturday night and a variety music/comedy show came on. We danced playfully making fun of each other's style, or in my case, the lack thereof.  Everyone was dying laughing. I had just got going with an old fashioned, one-leg-up-in-the-air Chubby Checker twist when the grandmother and great grandmothers, practically on their sides laughing now, asked me to stop. I can't imagine why.

First Impressions

It was night when I arrived in Marrakech for the first time.  Tired and trying to peer into the darkness around all the luggage, I wasn't sure that I was processing the images correctly inside my head. The architecture was strange and alien. It seemed as if I had fallen into a Dr. Suess book. 

Note the awnings on the building to the left.

I discovered later that windows here are generally square instead of rectangular, and most of them are topped with concrete awnings for protection from the sun.  Beautiful wrought-iron grillwork covers most of them.  Some rooflines appeared crenelated.  All-in-all, my first impression was that I wasn't in Kansas anymore.

Small Businesses

A common arrangement for home is design is for the first floor to be a commercial space, and the family or familes live above it.  Many tiny businesses are no bigger than the bedroom space of a house and the owner simply opens a door and to enter the rest of the house. No commutes.

The commercial spaces can be anything-- tiny grocery stores, beauty salons, mechanics' shops, cyber cafes, school supply shops, pharmacies, bakeries, appliance stores. Small businesses are everywhere. Much of what you need on a daily basis is in walking distance.  There must be a dozen tiny grocery stores within 4 blocks of my house.

 I think the reason they can coexist is the fact that they are so tiny.The dimensions for these shops must be about 10' wide by 12' or 15'deep. The "big" stores are doublewides. Since the stores are so limited by space as to the amount of goods or services they can offer, none can really take over any given area. Everybody wins--customers and shop owners alike.

The guy in the red shirt is standing by the tall steel shutter-type doors that are typical of businesses all over. This tiny pool hall is just large enough for 2 tables and a little room to maneuver on each side.

The Neighborhood

So when I told someone about the roosters, the donkey and the sheep (did I mention the sheep?), she said, "where are you living again?" Ok. So I really am in Marrakech, also called the Red City because the buildings and the houses traditionally were all the same color--not red, really, more of a salmon color. But let's not split hairs.

Much of Marrakesh is new construction from a building boom that has been going on for some few years now. The new residential construction is mostly 3 or 4 stories. (It also makes for a nice, low skyline.) In the  houses I've been in, there is one apartment per floor. Often different couples within the same family will occupy the whole building.  In my case, my extended family and I have the 2nd and 3rd floors, the unrelated property owner has the 1st floor.

I live right on the edge of an old section of the city that is about 2 or 3 miles not-so-square miles and is bounded on all sides, I think, by new housing construction. By old section, I mean single-story, adobe-style dwellings and dirt roads. When I first saw those houses, I thought they were abandoned. Then I noticed that quite a few of them have satellite dishes on the rooftops. Some, I'm told, are very well appointed on the inside. I think the satellite dishes would bear that out.  Some are poor and use tarps held down with cinderblocks for their roofs and a plastic bamboo fencing for a wall or door. I've heard that some folks are holding out for big bucks from developers or individual perspective new-home builders.

There is a paved road runs past my corner.  I live 2 doors down from the corner and while the building on my side street has sidewalks, the roadway itself is the beginning of a dirt road that extends throughout this old section of town.  (The dirt road, by the way, has street lights just like the rest of the city.) At the corner to my right starts the paved streets. And just to complete the picture, two blocks away to the right is a wide boulevard lined with trees.

So what's up with all the livestock in my neighborhood?  To my left is the old Marrakech. A donkey cart owner parks his donkey directly across from me. Ahh, the braying I've come to know and love. I'm not sure who has the rooster nearby, but someone else has another one a few blocks away and they sometimes talk to each other.

There's also the guy with the small flock of about 20 sheep. I don't know where he lives, but I discovered that there's a small field in this old section of town, and he takes them there to graze. I discovered the field when I looked out of an upstairs window of an old, adobe mosque about 2 blocks away at the end of the dirt road  that runs by my house.