The Wedding Reception Night!
 
 

However, before the wedding reception night there was the wedding reception day! Since Muslim countries close shops from about 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. during the day (I think for prayers), we had failed to go to the government shop on the previous day. So we went there earlier before they closed. There is actually a practical aspect to closing from 1 to 3 in North Africa, during those hours one is quite likely to die from the heat. Certainly those of us who have lived in a land that never gets hotter than 85 degrees and never gets colder than 35 degrees were grateful to have an excuse to not do anything during the worst of the heat.

The government sponsored market supports local artisans. The intention is to provide a stylish front where local craftsmen can sell their goods at a price that is fair to all sides concerned. This means that you are not generally going to succeed if you try to talk them down in price. Later we found that the government store effectively fixes the maximum prices in the street medinas. There is one other advantage to the government store though. Everything in there is assured to be of the highest quality, will be hand made, will be local, and will help benefit the artist. In the street market, it is very much caveat emptor. This place had furniture, pottery, exquisitely carved wood products, and jewelry of various types. Noreen and I bought most of our presents for our relatives here as we didn't know if we'd be given the time to go to the Rabat medina.

After that I needed to try to change a plane ticket so that we could spend more time in Fez later in the trip. I'd hoped this would mean that Noreen and I would just call a petite taxi (a very tiny car with barely enough room for two in the back as opposed to a grande taxi, which size-wise is more like what we're used to in the States, or something slighter bigger) to take us to the Royal Air Morocco office in downtown Rabat. Unfortunately, it actually meant that the whole busload had to go with us. OK, should only take us 10 minutes, so hopefully we won't ruin everyone's day ? wrong. We get there and, remember what I just said about closing hours? Well it was 10 minutes 'til 2 p.m. and they were closed. The guy inside motioned to us and indicated that they would open again at 2 p.m. OK, 10 more minutes no big deal, there was a McDonalds nearby (one world-wide constant is that McDonalds never closes during the day) so we figured we could use a drink.

Kara and I get in line. I order a large coke. I watch them making it. They put a lot of ice in the coke, very refreshing. At which point I panic. Not only did the guidebooks warn us on every other page about not getting ice and drinking only bottled water, but also ALL of Leila's relatives had been telling us the same thing. Kara was about to order so I heroically stopped her from committing the same error and she asked for hers without ice. It was so hot I decided to chance it and drank the coke anyway, as did Noreen...we were sure we'd just committed ourselves to spending the rest of the trip in the bathroom. At least Kara was spared. After Noreen, Kara, and I had finished our drinks, Kara quite logically points out that the water used in making Coca-Cola at McDonalds probably doesn't come from either a still or from bottled water. It no doubt comes straight out of the tap. We all felt doomed.

Too add insult to injury, Kara's revelation meant I wasn't even a tiny bit heroic. In addition, Kara couldn't even congratulate herself on her cleverness because it didn't occur to her until after she'd drunk hers all down. Dejected, we returned to the Royal Air Morocco building to find out that they were closed until 2:30 p.m. not 2 p.m., and we'd have to make everyone wait around even longer if we wanted to change the ticket. Occasionally, even I can see when the odds are stacked against us so we trundled everyone back to the hotel to await the re-opening of Rabat at 3 p.m. (The next day I took a taxi in to try to fix the ticket only to find out that either they couldn't change it, or wouldn't change it. So good thing we didn't force everyone to wait around that day!)

Noreen and I and Randy's Uncle and his friend had arrived late to the festivities in Rabat. (The others had been there at least a day longer.) So, we hadn't seen the medina, or the tomb of the late King Hassan II (who was the grandfather of the current King and presided over Morocco's independence from France in the 1950s) or the cool gardens. Joe wanted to try to get a leather jacket that he'd seen in the medina when he was there the other day. The gardens were right near the medina and I told Joe that I'd certainly rather accompany him to the medina rather than see more gardens. Kara found out we were on a shopping run and had to come with us. The ever-present Jamal drove us all down there. Noreen will have to add a paragraph about the garden experience. She has a story to tell there. I'll go through the medina.

This medina was pretty much what I expected. Narrow streets, hundreds of shops. You could buy almost anything. Unfortunately we only had an hour and you'd have to spend a good day there. The morning you would look, figure out where everything is, and then spend the evening after the midday prayers haggling over what you wanted to buy. Joe and Kara were trying on leather jackets, and I wandered into a place that had hand-made leather cases. The quality was what I'd call fair but I wasn't really in the mood to buy anything. The storeowner spoke some English and started the hard sell. He showed me everything in his little five square meter shop. He could tell that I was only mildly interested so he insisted that I accompany him to his warehouse to look at the good stuff. Curiosity got the better of me and I agreed.

He led me through an even narrower alleyway off the side of the main street. The main street was just wide enough for two compact cars to pass each other if they were well greased on the outside, this alley was too small for anything bigger than a VW Golf. There are shops here too, mainly selling fresh fruits and vegetables. As we walked past a fat man sprawled on a low stool near one of these stands, my store-keeper guide shouts something loudly in Arabic at the fat man and spits on him. I was concerned about this. I was fairly confident in my ability to out-run the fat man, but less confident that I'd fare so well against his family members. Brief visions of being abducted in a dark alleyway in Rabat and sold into slavery flashed through an over-active imagination. Fortunately, the fat man seemed to take being spat on in stride; must happen a lot.

We ended up in a warehouse with the exact same stuff in it as in his main place! It even looked like the main place. I thought to myself, "you know, why does all the interesting stuff happen without the benefit of witnesses? Many of my friends are physicists. If one of them told me this story, I would not believe them. How are they ever going to believe me?" As the disappointed storekeeper led me back to the main street, I was carefully listening for the Rod Sterling voice over.

I quickly related this story to Joe and Kara, who were still trying jackets on Joe. They were polite but skeptical ? kind of like the way you treat someone who you think is crazy but are too polite to be blunt about it ? Cassandra must have felt this way.

Kara then takes off down the street to look for Jewelry at nearly a dead run. She was on The Quest for the Tiger Eye Earrings and not man nor beast could stop her, she had 15 minutes. I followed for about 200 yards and lost her somewhere, then got distracted by a bright, shiny object. Fabrics. Bolt after bolt. Store after store. Much of it was intricately patterned silk of many different colors and styles, all very North African. I did grin. I found fabric and Noreen wasn?t here. She was off looking at a bunch of dumb plants. My giving-of-the-hard-time meter went off scale. Now all I had to do was find a shop full of squirrel paraphernalia and Noreen's failure would be complete. There was only 5 minutes left before we had to go back to the bus so I looked really hard. I suffer from a medical condition of squirrel paraphernalia blindness, so The Giving of The Hard Time would have to be satisfied with the clothing souks alone.

On the way back I found a dejected and depressed Joe. Many leather jackets, many leather jackets that he liked, but not enough money to buy them, not even if he talked them down. He half-heartedly tried once but just didn't have enough even to make it interesting for the store owner. Joe didn't get a jacket that day. Our attention turned to Kara, who had vanished. We decided that if she'd gotten herself in trouble it was her own damn fault. I mentioned to Joe that Kara could probably take care of herself. Joe agreed. But we still also agreed that if she has gotten herself into trouble its still her own damn fault. Joe went off to rescue Kara from The Quest for the Tiger Eye Earrings and I went up to make sure the bus didn't leave. Kara then showed up, her quest fulfilled, and got on the bus. Joe then showed up a few minutes later complaining that he couldn't find Kara. Joe would make a great companion on a snipe hunt.

Noreen: The Rabat Gardens Tale: Never, never believe what the locals tell you ? especially when you don't speak their language! I was really torn when we got off the bus as to whether I wanted to shop in the media with Todd, Joe and Kara or go see these gardens. The Gardens won simply because I thought I might have another shot somewhere else to go to a medina, but this garden was only here. So I take the camera and go off with Randy's Uncle Stewart and his friend Gary. Joe pointed out the entrance to the garden (since he'd been with the group that saw all this stuff the day we arrived) and everything seemed pretty simple. But just as we crossed under this archway and starting looking for the garden entrance we were mobbed by several local men, speaking very broken English ? ``No, no, you go that way ? follow me ? I show you ? go that way!'' So, after attempting to make sure that they understood we wanted to see the gardens (the `jardina' I believe it was called), we followed the narrow alleyway they pointed out.

Never, never believe what the locals tell you ? we ended up at a T-intersection in what looked like merely more residential surroundings. One of the guys showed up and started babbling on about ``go all the way up ? see great view ? see the casba ? '' I think all three of us got pretty nervous about then and Uncle Stewart followed Abbie's advice. He said "No." And back we went toward the place we came in. The man and his friend got a bit distressed and insisted that we had to go through this snack bar-like area to get to the gardens and, of course, demanded money for showing us the way. Uncle Stewart gave him a mere dirham, I believe, just to get him to go away.

Anyway, the gardens were nice and cool with lots of shady areas -- all filled with locals. Many of the younger ones were studying (we later learned it was the exam season in Morocco, so students were all busily cramming). The plants themselves weren't all that spectacular (nothing I haven't seen elsewhere), but the walkways were beautifully done with the pebbles creating mosaic designs.

There was also a small museum attached which housed some general Moroccan historical antiquities, from clothing to jewelry to pots to an old Koran. I couldn't read the information plaques since they were, naturally, in French or Arabic, but Uncle Stewart and Gary could puzzle out enough of the French to figure out what most things were.

We wrapped up our visit well before our hour was up, so we wandered up the road a ways and found a small art exhibit. I can't remember where the artist was from, but he wasn't Moroccan, he just had a studio somewhere in Rabat. It was fairly modern painting of seashores and plants, all done primarily in blue (it took some getting used to see banana plants planted blue!) Anyway, we finished out the hour and leisurely strolled back to the bus, only to find the rest of the group hadn't shown up yet ? and didn't for the next 25 minutes (of course, we were muttering to ourselves about leaving the three of them at the medina, served them right for not getting back to the bus on time!) And now, back to Todd's tale:

Having spent too much time at the medina and the gardens we were only able to just see the inside of the King's tomb (where there is always one holy man praying over the king's grandfather's remains) and see the honor guard take down the flag. It was a really neat place, but not much in the way of human interest stories went on there. We had to get back to the hotel to dress for the main event, Leila and Randy's wedding reception.
 
 

The Main Event:
 
 

We had about 3 hours to rest and get ready for the reception, which was formal dress by the way. By this time we had learned a valuable lesson and did not eat anything even though we were pretty hungry. We left around 7:30 p.m. to attend the festivities.

This relative had a nice big back yard/garden where7-8 tables were set up. There was a live band. A small army of servants brought around the hors d'oeuvres. After the usual introductions (and re-introductions), the band started playing and more hors d'oeuvres and drinks (including wine for those who wanted any) were served. We were introduced to Abbie's good friend, the newly appointed foreign minister of Morocco. I was impressed. I think most of us felt a bit out of our league. Ask yourself this question, how would you feel if you went to a friend's wedding reception and Madeline Albright or Robin Cook showed up and was introduced to you?

The music got louder and the dancing commenced again. Kara, now an established authority in the field, continued helping Leila with her belly dancing. After about 2 hours of this the food tables mysteriously appeared. Again almost all of it different than the two previous nights except for the 'envelopy things' (I think it was generally known by Leila's relatives that she just loves the envelopy things.) and the refried beans that really weren't refried beans. The real star of the food show though was the wedding cake. It was in fact 7 different cakes all arranged on different pedestals in different angles. Each cake was a different flavor and it made the whole assembly look like a sculpture. Randy and Leila cut one cake, did the one western thing that night and fed each other. The piece of cake I had was delicious. The cakes were gone in no time flat.

The band played several songs that were obviously traditional for this kind of ceremony, but wholly unfamiliar to us. Randy and Leila disappeared for a time. Then the pace picked up and four fez-wearing white-uniformed men danced into the garden with a platter on their shoulders. In the platter was Leila in full regalia, shining like a princess in a silver and gold outfit. The men danced and shifted to the driving drum beats of the music. Leila looked like she was moving to the music as well, but it might have been that they were throwing her around inside the platter so as to make it look like she was moving to the music. Leila's knuckles were suspiciously white. They jiggled Leila around in the platter for about 10 minutes and then released her.

Leila Under Glass

Next was Randy's turn. Those guys weren't too big. And as you all know, Randy isn't the smallest of men. We were curious how well they would do. Randy climbed into the platter and the four bearers performed admirably. They were aided by the fact that they didn't feel constrained to be as polite to Randy as they were to Leila. Randy really knew how to move to that music! Then they had him stand up in the platter while they sort of threw him up and down and spun him around in it. To Randy's credit, he did not fall out. I won't comment on the condition of one of the bearer's shoulders though. In general the bearers acquitted themselves admirably. The general comment of Leila's relatives about Randy was that when he was decked out in Moroccan dress, he could pass off as a man from Fez or Fassi. Apparently there were quite a few fair skinned people who escaped with the Muslims to Morocco from Spain when the Spanish Christians took over. Many of them settled in what is now Fez. He did look native in it really. Sometime he'll have to wear it again back in Illinois and charge admission for viewing.

Randy horsing around with the natives.
<Doesn't he look just like a man from Fez?>

Dancing and conversation continued until the very early hours of the morning when we left. This time we weren't the first to leave either. We were also given the full morning to recover the next day. This was most welcome. But you know, as astonishing and terrific the events were so far, we were not yet done. The next day we were due to go see the Hassan II mosque in Casablanca and we'd been invited out to another relatives 'farm' for another dinner celebration.