Birthday of the prophet part 1

There’s a time in most people’s life when they wake up shivering in an African cemetery under the full moon, on a bed of wet grass and thorns, trash bags, and a previously undetected pile of sheep dung, when

Nah, I can’t start like that.

I have fallen into an extremely rare opportunity. The kind that only presents itself in one tiny place on the globe for a few to see.

According to the lunar calendar, the celebration of the Birth of the Prophet was to fall on a Tuesday and a Wednesday. These would be the days of ceremony, when people from all over would come to Meknes’s old city (called the Medina Qadeema, or the Medina for short) to observe the holiday.

Many Mekesis are slow to talk about it with foreigners, but if they do, they explain the proceedings of the holiday at a distance.

Meknes is the Ber Ber capital of Morocco, the Ber Bers being the indigenous people of Morocco.
The Ber Bers, or Amazir, hold a very special position in world history. In a world where every last native Tasmanian has been massacred and the few remaining Native Americans are stored, doped up and drunk, in government-sponsored trailer-parks; the Amazir have successfully played out the game, getting themselves some of the local religion, and ultimately surviving the Roman, French, and Arab conquistadors, to become the accomplished ethnic majority of Morocco (although not always recognized as such by the Moroccan government).

Stick with me.

They are generally recognized, as being better Muslims that many Arabs. Though they do still they have their quirks, and these quirks sometimes include self-mutilation and eating animals alive. And if there is one day when these quirks are fully realized, it’s the big guy’s birthday.
On the holiday, country folk from all over the north of Morocco converge on Meknes to celebrate the holiday in their own way.

Here is an example of one of the Meknes traditions I heard from my art and culture professor, Dr. Nachit:
Because the Amazir come from all over, many tribes are represented. These are tribes that have been coexisting (more or less) for centuries. So, they go back a-ways. The delegations (so to speak) from each tribe, year after year, always remember to bring two things to Meknes for the celebration:

1. A poet.

Each tribe accompanies their poet to L’Hidim* and circles around him to listen to his improvisations. Each poet begins in the morning, expounding on his tribe’s past triumphs and glories. As the day goes on, he elaborates, poeticizing about his tribe’s triumphs and glories over rival tribes. By the end of the day, the epic improvs grow louder and courser, until they devolve to pure trash-talk, directed toward the tribes that make up the circles nearest to them. This brings us to …

2. Lots of hefty sticks.

Once the poetry/taunting is loud enough to be heard by the neighboring circles, each circle is obligated to defend the pride and reputation of their tribe.
What this means is, by sundown, dozens on dozens of men, ages 14 to 75, are wailing on each other with big pieces of wood.

As the day approached our expectations soared.

So, on the day before, we sat in a café near our apartment, expecting.

The glass panels. The parking lot. The personal packs of cigarettes. Nothing says affluence in Morocco like this sort of neon tubing. The nice clothes and the pretty girls were all just icing. Hell, that girls were there says something.

Most cafes are dirty brick, with a curb-side spot for mopeds at best. Why have a parking-lot if no one owns cars to park?

As for the personal packs, most Moroccans prefer/can afford to live just one cigarette at a time, dealing with the same old gray man who frequents every café at the same time, hoisting his flattened Winston-carton flag above his table to signify his fare.

Our conversation went from this café’s clientele to the other half. The beggars and the bums and the occasional fro-ed rag-man who walks in circles and foaming at the mouth.

We decided we wanted to try to empathize. Instead of going back to the apartment, we would take off to the medina direct from the cafe and go homeless for the two nights of the celebration.
This would also ensure that we wouldn’t miss a thing.

As we sat outside the café, a big Moroccan materialized and slapped Bobby on the back.

“Hey, Imad.”

“Are you guys ready to go?”

So we paid for our coffee and left.

On the walk, Imad educated us a little more on what to expect once we arrived at the medina. “Look out for the country people,” he said. He warned us about their moral questionability and there affinity for stealing. Meanwhile, Sufian, his friend, taught us all the Moroccan curses we ever wanted to know.

Down the highway, over the bridge, through the threshold and into what’s technically considered the Medina, the white-washed boxy buildings of the Ville Nouvelle were replaced by the stalls and allies of the Medina Qadeema. Cafes overflowed into the streets and the snack-shops and the patisseries, and the music shops blared Moroccan pop into the streets. The street was choked with giant diesel Mercedes in a turf war with hundreds of entitled pedestrians, bikes, and a truck stacked with a story and a half of mattresses. A man stood on top of the mattresses, tightening their ropes as it wove down the street.

The six of us made our way over the hump to L’Hadim. It was crowded, and as we made our way to the café in the back corner, several snack stand hosts ambushed us with menus and assumptions about how hungry we must be.

At the café, (cafes-Morocco, Morocco-cafes, everywhere, all the time) we sat on the high terrace, overlooking Baab Monsour, the royal palace, the Kasbah, and the north side of the Medina Qadeema, and the main street swarmed with grand taxis and the relatively tiny blue petit taxis.
It was just after dark. Tea and shit-talking ensued.

Afterward we decided to get the classic Moroccan moveable meal: Milwee (flat pastry-type bread, Ber Ber bread.) with cheese and honey. Then we sat on the step of Baab Monsour, eating, smoking terrible cigarillos, and sharing a coke between the ten of us. In Meknes, being with people ensures that you will soon be with more people. It’s a small city, with lots of friends. These new guys were friends of Imad’s, one of them purportedly the best joint-roller in Meknes. The sixth one I’ve been introduced to, to date.

After they left us, we set about trying to find a reasonable place to spend the night. The Big Pool maybe. It used to be 14 meters deep, used for training soldiers to swim in the days of the sultanate. It lies just on the other side of the palace.
Around 11:00 we took off, through Baab Monsour, winding through the Kasbah walls, skirting the royal golf course.

In a country where the power is regularly cut off at night in many neighborhoods, you can be sure the Kasbah and palace avenues are always lit. This makes for good late night soccer. We passed three games on our way. The players all took regular breaks to reinflate their balls, which were constantly being kicked flat. They all had decent crowds of spectators.
We passed the booths with guards pacing, carbines in hand. They said, “no one’s sacking the king’s golf course. Not tonight. Not on my watch.”

We passed the rural oasis, right in the middle of the city, an overgrown depression where city people raise crops and livestock.

We arrived at the pool, a perfect rectangle about half a mile in perimeter, surrounded by ancient walls and aqueducts on two sides that supported a gardens worth of green in the parts where they had crumbled.

We killed some time there. But the night was too new to think about sleeping. So after harassing some Akon-reciting park bench surfers (via Bobby’s own yodeling rendition) and finishing our milwee, we made back for the souk, or market, back behind l’Hadim.

This time we took another route: residential, where tourists don’t go, so that during the day being white earns you more stares than usual. No one to stare then though.

There are always plenty of shadow lurkers at night, no matter where you go. But they’re no trouble (for guys at any rate) and are just hanging out. Most of them said hi. Or, in one case: “HEEEELLLLLLLOOOOOOO! Hello elloello! Hellllo lo lo. Hello a-lo a-lo!”

We stopped on a ridge next to a mosque. Next to the mosque was a parking lot where all the hard-working vehicles of the city were kept. Taxis, carriages, cherry-pickers, trucks… all crammed in.

From the ridge we could see the Ville Nouvelle, in all its generic modern beauty, the low dome of the cultural center, the river that splits the city, and then the bulk of the old city, chipped and curvy. Both sides of the city were taped together by the rooftop theme of satellite dishes on satellite dishes on satellite dishes.

Then the time came to move, since we still weren’t ready to sleep. We decided to seek out the country Ber Ber encampment.

It was around 2 or 3 when we made it back to l’Hadim. Some people were still around. We stopped at a snack tent for a drink. We sat in the back, behind a few men who were watching an Arab sitcom. The guy there couldn’t find the keys to his refrigerator so he disappeared into the dark, and came back ten minutes later, drinks procured from the all-providing souk.
From there we left to cross the dead souk (market place). Some men in blue jumpsuits sweeping the streets with giant palm branches asked us if we were lost.

Out the other side of the souk, we came to the mosque which held the tomb of a saint that was the icon for the Esawa brotherhood, the hosts of the proceedings to come. We figured we were close, picked a street we had never been down before, and started descending. At the bottom of the street we encountered the most horrific mixture of smells I have ever experienced. Meat-packing experience included.

We were focused on the smell, and by the time we had recovered we found ourselves on the edge of a massive quilt-work of tents that were collected into a makeshift town. The visitors had brought everything from the countryside: cafes, butcher-shops, restaurants, sweet shops, and homes, all in tent form, jamming it into an empty lot on the edge of the Medina. We walked around the perimeter.

For a minute we considered sleeping in an abandoned building on the edge of the lot, but we walked on. All the tents were bustling. Four o’clock was approaching. Meat was grilling, tea was boiling, kids were running around. In every tent lamps were burning.

As we came to the end of our loop around the camp, we were stopped by a “Hello?”
We turned around, but no one was there. That’s because we were looking too high. A boy of about ten was walking behind us, holding a carton of cigarettes.

“Hello Monsieurs. Gharro?” He extended the carton.
No thanks we said. Matt said “suppe! suppe!” which is what waiters say to shoo cats from under the feet of patrons in a restaurant. The kid laughed and took up a spot walking beside us.

He walked with us for a while, talking about where he had learned the English words he knew. He didn’t go to school, just worked. He split from us at his tent of residence.

Soon we came to a park with benches, and decided to spend the night. We chewed on some sort of nut taffy, in brown, neon green and pink varieties, that we had picked up, and watched people passing through. Traffic was high in the park, but we were tired, so we each grabbed a bench, pulled our jackets over our faces, and tried to sleep.

*L’Hidim is the main square of the Medina that lies at the foot of Baab Monsour. Baab Monsour is recognized as the biggest most beautiful city gate in North Africa. “L’Hidim” is a derivation from the Arabic word for destruction. This is because when the sultan at the time built the gate, he recognized the absolute need to have a good area from which to view such a beautiful piece of architecture. So, without delay, he had all the homes and businesses of the neighborhood directly in front of the gate razed to the ground and buried under cobblestones. Problem solved. Today tourists from all over the world view Baab Monsour from this handy square.