Welcome to the Fes Médina, which means the ‘walled city of a North African town’. This area is the oldest part of Fez which was first established in 800ad.
As you walk through the gates prepare to be transported back over a thousand years in time. The alley ways are narrow, there are no cars. Donkeys and push carts transport all goods around the labyrinth of 9,500 alleyways in the Medina which is about 2.8 km in diameter, making it the largest pedestrianized commercial area in the world.
Yes, the Medina is huge and as Rosie said previously there are no Google maps or mappings of any kind in this area to be able to self navigate. At our request the Riad we are staying in has organised a personal guide for the day to take us around the jumble of streets and alleys to show us the sights.
Walking through the inner gates into the Medina proper, the gates that Rosie was so apprehensive to enter yesterday the change is immediate. Everything closes in and around on you, the light dims as you enter the covered alleys where the buildings are so tall overhead they start to block the light.
The ground is tightly packed dirt or large stone slabs worn with time and footsteps into a shiny hard packed surface. We shuffle along single file down one side of the wall following our guide Mohammed as people and donkeys push past in the opposite direction.
The sounds of the street, talking, banging, donkeys braying, babies crying seems to be either amplified by the narrowness or completely deadened in some areas. It feels quite intense in the confining alley ways with solid walls and no windows and only the occasional shut doorway breaking the solid stretches of wall that wind before us.
We have only been walking for about five minutes, and mostly taking back alleys away from the hustle and bustle but with all the turns and weaving and sameness of the lanes… Rosie and The Operator would be completely lost already if we were left to find our way home.
The closed doors around us are either workshops, houses or public buildings. 156,000 still live in the Médina. The population of this old town is one of the only ancient towns worldwide whose population is not dropping due to tourism forcing them out.
We are heading to the Street of the Dyers. These folk dye newly made clothing, or will rejuvenate or change the colors of your existing clothes. Some of the clothes require boiling in the dye then the color is set in cold water.
Steaming hot wet clothing is then drippingly transferred to water buckets on a stick. Each of these buckets contains a different cold color dye and has some kind of cloth soaking in it. Hands would then be plunged into the buckets and the cloth stirred and pulled out, another man held up a pair of shoes next to the cloth and were looking for a colour match….they were nearly there.
Back into the bucket the cloth went, the man with teal hands and arms colored to the elbow waited with a practiced eye, poking and mixing the cloth in the bucket to ensure the color matched the shoes perfectly.
Just prepare to be amazed at the trades still hand making everyday objects as a way of life in tiny workshops. As you walk past you catch a snatch of what they are up to as you fleetingly pass the door.
Everything that is made is for sale here. Most workshops have amazing shops incorporated or are next door. This boy is a brass apprentice and he is practicing cutting the designs into brass……..one day he will make these lamps that his father makes and sell them in the family shop. We passed by this kid again about three hours later…he was still tapping away in exactly the same position.
These guys are knife and tool sharpeners. They had just finished sharpening a sharp ‘shank’ like tool with a wooden handle for a man who used it to make leather slippers.
This guy is making wedding furniture…the brides sit in these contraptions behind him, either on a stage at the ceremonies or are carried to their ceremonies in them.
Out of the alleys we burst into a beautiful small square with a huge tree growing in the middle of it. This is the street of copper workers. The sound of pounding hammers on copper on anvils rings in the air and the multiple strikes from different workshops makes this area quite lively….and noisy.
They sell from their workshops and each piece is so beautiful with every shaping blow being seen as a unique fingerprint on the surface of their work.
Work in this Médina is sold all over Morocco as well as locally. Wandering around the square looking at the pots and pans they made as well as the multi towered rosewater distilling pots was like stepping back in time. Especially when a chicken ran squawking past Rosie to hide under a pushcart from an angry cat. Fat cats are everywhere in the Medina, they keep the vermin down that would otherwise be rampant and Rosie must say, they all look very content and well fed.
Wait a second, we have entered a building and our guide Mohammed pauses and says he wants to show us one of the trades this country is famous for.
Our wily guide has taken us to a carpet showroom! To only show us the beauty of the handmade rugs that this country makes. No pressure, we do not expect you to buy anything, just appreciate the beauty of them and the manufacturing quality.
Next minute Rosie and The Operator are sitting with a mint tea in our hand as rug after rug is unfurled in front of us. Did you say you were from New Zealand? Yes! We had a famous visitor that came here and bought 6 rugs from us, I will show you the order book and then you will know it is true….then he sang a song for us, he was lovely, just like you and all people from New Zealand.
…sure enough, there was Dave Dobbyns name and Grey Lynn villa address in their order book! And….yes, next minute Rosie too was buying a carpet….a big carpet. That they somehow rolled, folded and wrapped up into a large tote bag size with a handle and said they would deliver it to our Riad tonight….after we paid, yes, credit card is fine, thank you very much.
This woman was making a carpet from dyed NZ Merino wool….She is hand knotting each strand, the carpet will be completely reversible when finished for summer and winter…it takes her 1 month of work to make 1 meter and the quickness she worked at and the intricate pattern she was replicating, Rosie can say she never faulted, it was incredible. Apparently the ladies that make the carpets for the showrooms make them in their own homes. They get paid a weekly wage and a bonus when their carpet sells. Some of the large, really fine ones made out of knotted silk take up to 6 years to make!
These were some of the only ladies we saw working in the Medina, they are on a production line removing the husks from argon seeds and exposing the white seed inside that contains the elusive oil that is only found here in Morocco. The oils are then made into moisturizers and hair products that are sold internationally and are one of the main export money makers of this country.
Our guide thought Rosie was a total sucker for buying a carpet, he thought he was onto a commission windfall and then took us to a scarf making workshop….so we could appreciate the fine craftsmanship of the products and if, only if, we wanted to, we could buy something.
Mohammed also said that he knew Rosie liked fine things after the purchase of the stunning carpet…The Operator rolled his eyes and next minute we were wrapped up in turban style headscarves all set for a journey into the desert they said. The Operator did look very Lawrence of Arabia and very handsome, plus he was offered 5 camels for Rosie who was told she looked like a fine wife…this was getting a bit bizarre so, Rosie bought a beautiful dip dyed cotton scarf and off we went.
The men mainly do the weaving in this country as it is ‘complicated to use the machines’ the guide said….beautiful fabrics, scarves, bedspreads, curtains etc are made this way from cotton, aloe leaves and silk.
Small shops thrive here too amongst the tradesman in the alleyways. Remember a city lives in these narrow streets and they need services just like we do.
The sights the smells and the sounds in the Medina were amazing. It is a place of sensory overload and deprivation all rolled into one. Image how small your world becomes sitting in your workshop, day after day in your tiny dim alleyway working away.
The Medina is such a big place with everything you can imagine in it for a small city to survive and thrive as it has done over the last twelve hundred years. So, Rosie has broken the Medina down into a series of posts.
Stay tuned for the Food of the Medina, The Buildings in the Medina and of course the Famous Fes Tanneries. More of our big day in the Medina tomorrow.
