Morocco - Fes

I'm trying to remember if anyone in Fes was actually wearing a fez--- I don't think so. The sage scholars at wikipedia are apparently unsure if there's an etymological connection between the two and, since I stayed at a budget hotel, even the door man lacked a fez. Apparently higher end tourist hotels make their door men wear one.

The many artisans that populate the city's crumbling medina seem to make almost everything other than those iconic hats. We did visit a ceramics factory, where I was interested to see how the ornate tile mosaics for which Morocco is known are fabricated (I still don't really understand it). At the end of the tour we came to the gift shop, where I bought a cereal bowl. Shopping, or my total lack of interest in it, would be a common theme as I toured the medina. I would be led to some shop or workshop, where I would see someone making something in a particularly low tech and interesting fashion, and then they'd want me to buy something. Mostly I resisted, returning home with, albeit cliché, but highly succesful husband-to-wife gifts like a scarf and cereal bowl. Why just this morning Vanessa was wearing her new scarf while enjoying a heap of muesli from her moroccan crock.

Fes is famous for its tannery, with its colorful dye vats and sulphuric stink. To reach the view pictured above, I was led through one in a long series of inconsequential looking doors, up a ladder-like stairway, to a leather goods shop with open air views of the tanners at work below. It's almost as if the lack of signage in the Medina is designed to support the tour guide industry.

This is the conversation I had at the leather goods shop---leather shop doesn't seem right in this context, as there were no chaps in evidence. Also, I find the term "ass-less chaps" to be redundant:

"Sir, how about a nice leather jacket?"

"Oh, I don't think so."

"Maybe this one here." He holds up a sort of all leather, primary colored (all of them) letterman jacket. Something not unlike this.

"No, that's too hot for where I live."

"Where do you live?"

"Dubai."

"Oh no, sir. Not too hot for Dubai." Knits brow.

"Yeah, it's going to be like 42 degree centigrade there soon." That's 107.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

"No problem, jacket not too hot for 42 degrees."

So, needless to say, Vanessa wasn't sporting a new pair of Moroccan slippers, or letterman jacket, while she ate her muesli. She already has a The Abyss cast and crew letterman jacket, but it's not here with us in Dubai. Similarly, I didn't buy a rug, or one of the ornate pressed metal plates that I viewed at subsequent shops. The latter sales pitches weren't quite as reality-adverse as what I experienced at the leather goods shop, but the truth is that we have exactly the same stuff for sale in Dubai, and I'm not particularly tempted to acquire more belongings at this stage of our residency here. I suppose I could have made an exception for the puppy, but he wasn't for sale.