Women who run with the camels

That is what co-owner Miranda Innes calls women who show up in at her Moroc­can B&B alone.

Yet I would not rec­om­mend it for the fem­i­nine faint of heart.  A woman alone in a souk with her own pock­et­book in tow throws Moroc­can male con­cepts of where a woman should be into high dis­ar­ray and makes the polit­i­cally incor­rect Amer­i­can male con­struc­tion work­ers look like priests.  “Lus­cious Lips!”  “Hello Money!”  “Thank you;  no thank you; damn you!”  And the one epi­taph which I took as a com­ple­ment, though I do not fully under­stand it: “Berber woman!”

Click to lis­ten or down­load my audio.

These sassy souk say­ers are no more rep­re­sen­ta­tive of all Moroc­can men than were those tee-shirted hard-hatted las­civ­i­ous whistling work­ers on Amer­i­can streets of their US coun­ter­parts.  Col­or­ful, yes; mem­o­rable, cer­tainly.  But not the voice of all Moroc­can men, thank good­ness.  And just like in Amer­ica, if you are walk­ing on their souk streets with a man, or with some­one they know, you are far less likely to receive the comments.

Hosts Miranda Innes and her hus­band Dan Pearce intro­duced me to Jamal, who has a shop in the souks.  When I met Jamal, he shook my hand, then touched it to his heart—a ges­ture I would see repeated over and over.  Lovely that ges­ture, acknowl­edg­ing tak­ing this stranger into your heart.  Then, after ask­ing where I was from, Jamal offered me a “Big wel­come” look­ing straight and deeply into my eyes.  I felt very wel­comed indeed.

The other sound on the streets which took some get­ting used to was the Call to Prayer five times a day, with a warm-up call before the first one—sort of a snooze alarm sys­tem.  I had looked for­ward to expe­ri­enc­ing the days’ cycles of prayer, and planned to par­tic­i­pate with my own silent prayers in my own eclec­tic fashion.

The Call to Prayer is ampli­fied from all of the mosques’ loud­speak­ers.  Mosques are Marrakesh’s anchors which pin the streets down, keep­ing them from get­ting hope­lessly tan­gled up.  You can always look up and locate your­self rel­a­tive to a mosque, tow­er­ing benev­o­lently and gen­tly over the ancient camel-wide streets—until Call to Prayers.  Then the mosques all come audi­bly alive simultaneously—and loudly, with multi-decibel amplification.

The Call to Prayer is pri­mal and deep, like a wild animal’s vis­ceral long­ing, yearn­ing for its mate, or like a warn­ing, a human air raid sound:  “Take cover!  Take cover!  Go find the pro­tec­tion of the Divine now, save your­self.  Hurry!”  I wanted to duck under my desk the way we were taught in ele­men­tary school, in case of an attack, dur­ing the Cold War.

And then silence.  Prayer.  Still­ness.   Or so I thought.  Sit­ting in a restau­rant in Dje­maa el Fna when a Call to Prayer came, I was sur­prised to see peo­ple still bustling around on their errands.   I had expected peo­ple to stop in their tracks wher­ever they were, for at least a moment of silence.

So I asked Jamal about this.  He explained that one can­not just start pray­ing.  Prepa­ra­tion, abso­lu­tion, must be offered first before pray­ing.  There are two types:  full abso­lu­tion includes wash­ing most all of the body in rit­ual prepa­ra­tion for prayer, and the abridged ver­sion includes a smaller body geog­ra­phy to wash.  If abso­lu­tion has not been accom­plished, then you may not prop­erly offer prayer.  So the peo­ple in the square kept going about their life.  And, he told me rather sadly, not every­one, just like in Amer­ica, observes their faith.

I con­fessed to Jamal that I was using the Calls to Prayer to offer my own up, in my way.  I felt sud­denly very sul­lied, not hav­ing rit­u­ally pre­pared, just blurt­ing out my prayers wher­ever I was.  The idea of prepar­ing to pray I quite like, and I wished there were some easy-to-pack version.

Jamal explained that they observe two kinds of prayer:  the kind I was doing, which was between a per­son and their god, and the kind that peo­ple were observ­ing in the mosques, pray­ing together.   In the pri­vate prayers, between per­son and the divine, this is when one “sur­prises God,” Jamal said.   I love this concept—to sur­prise an all-knowing deity.  Kind of like show­ing up unan­nounced, or maybe throw­ing a sur­prise party.  I won­dered how I could sur­prise God—perhaps by pray­ing with­out an appoint­ment?  I know that I have often been sur­prised by God—and delighted.  It is intrigu­ing to hope that per­haps the favor could be returned.

Jamal went on.  The prayers in the mosque are the sec­ond kind of prayer, stronger, dif­fer­ent.  Usu­ally these prayers are led, and the peo­ple lis­ten prayer­fully, adding Amen’s where needed.   Yes, I agreed that many reli­gions also have this kind of prayer.   And when more peo­ple are gath­ered, it is stronger prayer, dif­fer­ent prayer.  I thought of the scene in the movie Avatar where the natives of Pan­dora, the Na’vi, prayed together, join­ing their focus and wills to a sin­gle pur­pose.  That’s this sec­ond kind of prayer.

This expe­ri­ence reminded me of grow­ing up with daily prayer in our US schools, and I was sad that my children’s gen­er­a­tion grew up with­out either daily method, silently alone or led together.  The Pledge of Alle­giance is long gone from US school morn­ings, also, because it con­tained “one nation under God,” which is still good enough for print­ing on our money, but not for the pro­tec­tion of free­dom of speech and wor­ship in the schools.

Yet, here in this Moroc­can coun­try whose tra­di­tions are so laced with wor­ship, the air­waves five times a day are filled with that pri­mal call to prayer:  “Take cover, take shel­ter, get safe and square with your divine—now!”   I envied the Moroc­cans this ritual.

There was one other cycle-of-the-day rit­ual, which hap­pened at Riad Maizie where I was stay­ing ( www.riadmaizie.eu ).  A riad is a tra­di­tional Moroc­can house with an inte­rior gar­den; the term comes from the Arab word “ryad” which means gar­den.  The house has two entrances:  one for peo­ple, to enter from the street.  And one for the divine, open to the sky, in the garden.

Riad Maizie is a beau­ti­ful 200 year-old build­ing which Miranda Innes and Dan Pearce had com­pletely restored in tra­di­tional Marakchi dec­o­ra­tion. Both Miranda and Dan are artists:  Dan is an artist work­ing in oils and comics, Miranda is a author, hav­ing pub­lished many books on dec­o­rat­ing, and one on their adven­ture of restor­ing Maizie:  Cin­na­mon City (Black Swan, 2006).  So the col­ors and beauty of Maizie are quite spec­tac­u­lar.  Each of the guests felt vaguely guilty since we each believed we had the best room in the house; all are so special.

At Riad Maizie, every morn­ing and every evening, there is a rit­ual in the court­yard at pre­cisely sun­rise and exactly sun­set.   Approx­i­mately 87 small dark birds with humungous lungs come to the upper north east cor­ner of the court­yard, which was right out­side my win­dow, nest­ing in a spe­cific tree, and they tem­pes­tu­ously sing the sun up into the city, then in the evening tumul­tuously sing the sun back down into the earth.  It is a loud cacoph­o­nous rau­cous noise, pri­mal like the Call to Prayers, but in a high-pitched bird way—as pri­mal as these lit­tle birds can be.   They make a glo­ri­ous rac­quet.  And when the birds are sure that the sun’s pas­sage is com­plete, they dis­ap­pear as quickly as they showed up.

This reminded me of Carl Jung’s encounter with Chief Moun­tain Lake.  Moun­tain Lake was an Amer­i­can Indian med­i­cine man, and every morn­ing Moun­tain Lake awoke before the sun, and went to sing the day into being.  He had done this almost all his life.  It was his job.   Carl Jung wrote of Moun­tain Lake, “I envied him the cer­tainty of his purpose.”

Not every­thing works on time or in proper cycles, how­ever.  The day of my departure, the taxi which had been ordered the night before did not show up.  So Abdul, an achingly hand­some young Islam boy who is indis­pens­able to Miranda and Dan at Riad Maizie, turned to me and said, “We must go find another taxi now,” and he ges­tured to his motor­cy­cle.  I remem­ber think­ing, “But I’m 62. It has been at least 20 years since I’ve been on a motorcycle.”

Abdul ges­tured again, with the look of, “Let’s get on with this, the flight may leave.”  I thought, “For­tu­nately I’m wear­ing slacks.”  He got on his motor­cyle, swing­ing my carry-on lug­gage up onto his lap. I hopped on the back of the cycle behind Abdul, and held on to my lug­gage (with my arms around him of course).  Then we flew thru the streets of the souks at 7 in the morn­ing, pass­ing hooded men and horses and carts, with inches to go on either side.  Amaz­ing.   Wish I had pulled out my video cam­era.  Must get a repeat…

Abdul found me a taxi, which drove me through the city as it was wak­ing up.  Very beau­ti­ful in the early morn­ing fog.   A time­less­ness and ancient feel­ing, in the cen­ter of Mar­rakesh.  It has been there for cen­turies, with its cycles of call­ing in the day, the divine, the shop­pers.   The moun­tains wit­nessed the day begin, and the calls started up once more.

Moun­tain Lake had told Carl Jung that he thought that white peo­ple were a bit crazy, because they think with their heads.  When Jung asked Moun­tain Lake how he thought, the chief touched his heart with his hand, the same way Jamal had done when he gave me a “Big wel­come,” and said, “We think here.”

GALLERY:

Tags: Camels, Carl Jung, Dan Pearce, Jill Hackett, Marakeesh, Miranda Innes, Morroco, Riad Maizie, Travel