Gulch

The Kindest of Cuts

The room was not so much dirty as it was dingy. It was a small space, the walls appeared to be made out of mud or some sort of clay. Random chairs and pieces of furniture were scattered along one wall, across the other was a counter and a mirror. An exposed incandescent bulb bathed the room in a dim, cozy glow; the yellow light could have just as easily come from a flickering candle flame. A man stood behind me and it wasn't until he applied the razor blade to my neck that I had a moment of panic.

It was night out and I was deep inside one of the labrythine souks or markets of Marrakesh. Jen and I had met an Arab couple on the train from Tangiers and they had stopped by our hotel earlier and invited us to go for dinner. We were staying in the medina and Abdul and Fatima suggested we go for a walk through the nearby market before we ate.

The entrance to the market, a covered hole between two buildings, looked like the mouth of a dark cave. Jen and I had spent most of the day walking around the covered alleys and narrow corridors of the same market. At night it was a different, more exotic place. Most of the tourists were gone and the folks shopping were locals buying common-place goods. Electric lights gave the little shops and bakeries a warm glow and threw dark shadows along the walls.

Jen and I strolled along comfortably with Abdul and Fatima. Abdul stopped here and there to joke with the shop owners about an upcoming soccer match or to give a few clinking coins to beggars.

“I need to get a haircut,” he told us at one point.

“You're joking,” I said. His hair was crew cut – it was no more than 5 millimeters long. He looked like he had just stepped out of a military barber. The last time I had gotten my own hair cut, on the other hand, had been a couple of months and a few continents ago in Mexico. I was looking every bit the shaggy backpacker that I was.

“No, no, I like it very short,” he replied.

“I've been thinking about getting a haircut too,” I said. Abdul looked at me and I could tell he approved of the idea. He led us farther into the souk and into a tiny shop.

The man inside looked surprised to see anyone coming in so late. Abdul exchanged a few words in Arabic with the man. “You go first,” Abdul said.

I sat down in a chair and held my thumb and index finger a half inch apart in the universal sign of how long I'd like my hair. The man picked up a pair of scissors and began snipping.

I have to confess that I love getting my haircut in foreign countries. I've gotten my haircut in Spain, Mexico, Morocco and Guatemala this year and the barbers in these places do a much better job than any place I've gone to in the States. In the little hole in the wall shops of these countries, being a barber is a real profession. The shops are populated with older and stern looking men who take their job seriously. I always sit in the chair silently while they take a half-hour to forty-five minutes to snip at my hair with real scissors. The skill and dedication that they exhibit show that, to them, it is not so much a job as it is an art. This idea has been lost in the States, or at least in the clipper-happy places that I go that cost under $15 dollars.

That night in Morocco, I felt a small bit of panic when the barber took his straight-edged razor blade out and began to shave my neck. I looked around the small room but could not see any sort of disinfectant. In fact, as I peered into the dimmer corners, I realized I couldn't see any sign of running water or any other way to clean the blade. I worried for a minute or two about rusty and dirty blades but when my neck was bare, I noticed the barber snapped the blade out of the handle and threw it away and replaced it. I reassured myself that he did that every time between customers.

Usually, this is my favorite moment. It is an exotic and yet familiar feeling as warm lather is applied to my neck and the cold edge of a blade scrapes it off. Afterward, the barber puts alcohol on my neck and it burns in places where the skin has been nicked.

Abdul gave his approval with a hearty laugh and said that it still looked too long. I paid for my haircut, about $3 USD.

* * *

Tonight, I find myself walking into one of the McFranchise haircut places in Southwest Portland. It is brightly lit and a McFranchise Top 40 radio station is playing in the background. As I sit in the chair, the perky blonde “stylist”, as her plastic name tag states, asks me the inevitable question:

“So what would you like?”

I think it's obvious - I would like a haircut. I think about holding my thumb and index finger a half inch apart and pretending that I do not speak English. That way I could also avoid the small talk that goes along with the whole process.

“Just shorter on the sides and top,” I reply.

“So what is that, a three or four on the clippers?”

I'm not sure if she is speaking metric or some other measurement system.

“Oh, about this long,” I say and hold my fingers apart.

Seven minutes, fourteen dollars, and one conversation about the weather later, I leave with shorter hair and a yearning for an old barber in a dingy, dim lit shop.

Funky Cold Medina

In the center of the medina of Marrakech is the Djema’a el Fna, the assembly of the dead. It is said that in this large plaza, the sultan used to behead people. Today, the plaza is a large asphalt square that borders the souk market places and is the heart of the city. Although the place is filled with marvels, the charm is that the marvels are not there for the benefit of the tourists but for the benefit of the locals.

These then, are the noises of the Djema’a el Fna:

-the haunting and somehow sad sounding calls to prayer issued from the nearby mosques
-the completely exotic yet familiar shrill music played by the snake charmers on their black pipes
-the callings of food vendors and shop owners (in French) to come look at their wares
-the banging of cups as the men in extravagant traditional Berber clothes sell water from hairy flasks and pose for pictures
-the passionate voices of old men telling stories or jokes in Arabic to appreciative crowds
-the murmuring laughter of a crowd of men gathered around two young boys with boxing gloves taking the occasional nervous yet gentle swing at each other as the promoter urges them on
-the electric twang of banjos and guitar like instruments that are hooked to small amplifiers and form the foundation of little bands that play traditional music. Men beat hand drums and sing and the audiences seem to always know all the words
-the soft thump of shoes striking the asphalt as young acrobats do flips
-the screeching of monkeys kept on leashes and used to entertain adults and children alike
-the hiss of cooking food that fills the sky at night with smoke from hundreds of different food carts that sell everything from lambs heads to couscous
-the loud and constant oceanic swelling of conversations

Marrakesh Express

The ferry to Tangiers is late.

I’m silently cursing the slow unloading process in which a small eternity seems to pass between the time the ferry docks and the moment when the right men arrive to lower a ramp so the walk-on passengers can leave. Jen and I had planned to catch an 11pm overnight train to Marrakech but when the ferry arrives into port slightly after 11, we worry that we might have to come up with another plan. The man who checks our passport stamps moves at a very slow, glacial pace and I wonder if we will have to spend the night in this bordertown port city. It feels very late and although there is a small group of people lined up to get off the boat with us, the ship and the port are mostly empty.

When we are finally cleared through customs and can leave the port, a small crowd emerges from the shadows. Taxi drivers immediately besiege us and point to their vehicles. Other men yell out to us that they are ‘official’ guides and can help us find our way.

“We are just going to the train station,” I say to mass of people pushing for our attention as I try to angle for the line of small taxis on the street.

"The train has left," they tell us. "There is no train at this hour, we know a good hotel for you. Very cheap."

These men (and it's always men) are a slightly more aggressive and numerous version of the typical hustlers that we have met at train stations and border towns in every country that we have visited so far on this trip. Here in Morocco, we discover quickly that they are very persuasive and speak in fluent English.

We spend several minutes bargaining for the size of the taxi we need and then for the price of a ride to the train station. Everyone informs us is that what we really need is a hotel, preferably one run by their cousin, friend, or brother. We finally catch a petit taxi to the train station (about 6km away) and one of the guides hops in the car with us. Jen and I are quiet because we do not want his services.

"What is with all the paranoia?" the man asks us, making me feel that much more paranoid. "You are here on holiday."

After a five-minute ride through empty streets, the taxi pulls up at a brand new train station, which resembles more of a glowing marble palace than a transportation center. It looks deserted. The train should have left 20 minutes ago.

"You go look, see no train, come back, and I will take you to a nice hotel," The guide tells us.

Jen and I go into the station and are relieved to find that the train has also been delayed but that it's expected to leave immediately. We quickly buy a ticket and run out to the train. Seconds after we get on board, the train pulls away from the station and into a nine hour trip through the dark Moroccan landscape.

So, I again meet a stranger on the train to Marrakech. Nine years ago, the last time I took this exact train, my friends and I met a Moroccan man who claimed to live in Switzerland but was home for a vacation. On the advice of this man, my friends and I got off the train and spent a hellish three hours in a rug dealer shop in the middle of nowhere.

This time, I'm a little older, a little better traveled, and (debatably) a little wiser, so when I hear Jen talking to a man in the hall of our cabin, I am at first suspicious. However, when I hear his wife talking, I relax a bit. The man introduces himself as Abdul and as Fatima. They are, he explain, Spanish Arabs via Morocco and Jordan. We talk for a while in Spanish and then they surprise us by switching to perfect English. They are both very friendly and after we ask, admit that they both speak English, French, Spanish, Arabic and several dialects. We stay up talking to them for a while (opting for English) and then go back to our separate cabins to sleep.

The next morning, we wake up early as the sun rises and the train pulls into the Marrakech station. We share a taxi with Abdul and Fatima to a hotel in the medina, the old part of the city. We drink some mint tea with them and then they go to check into a different hotel but tell us that they will stop by our hotel around dinner if we want to eat dinner together.

Jen and I spend the day wandering around Marrakech. We visit the amazing markets, watch snake charmers in the main plaza, and stroll down narrow maze-like streets. We listen to the prayers being sung from the minaret towers of mosques. They entire town seems to be built out of pink sand and it feels more foreign than anyplace we have visited in a while since we came to this side of the world.

When we return to our hotel, the phone immediately rings. Abdul and Fatima invite us for a stroll and dinner. They go out of their way to show us different things and I slowly realize that they have taken it upon themselves to watch out for us and to educate us a little about the Arab world.

Although we never talk about it explicitly, the context of 9/11 is behind some of our conversations. Abdul has two brothers living in Miami and used to live there himself.

"American have a bad opinion of Arabs," he tells us. “I have not visited my brothers for five years and now it is about impossible to get a visa” he says sadly.

They are on a mission to show a couple of Americans that Arabs are not so bad, which corresponds nicely with Jen and my unspoken mission to show them that Americans are not so bad.

Abdul is about ten years older then either Jen or I and he is they type of person that looks comfortable in any situation. Where Jen and I are cautious and on-guard in the market crowds, Abdul speaks loudly and emphatically with everyone around him. He tells loud jokes to the people around him in Arabic and quieter ones to us in English. Fatima is our age and although she is not quite as out-going as her husband, she is very comfortable and easy to talk to.

I notice that they are constantly giving money to the older beggars in the souks. He and Fatima tell us never to give money to young boys because they will not go to school if the begging works. A minute after they tell us this, though, I see Abdul buy a loaf of bread for a small boy that asked him for money.

Abdul constantly remarks about what nice people Moroccans are. In his way of breaking down the barriers that exist between the local and the tourist, he shows us a charmingly different side of Morocco that we might not have seen if we did not talk to them on the train.

After dinner, we share another mint tea with them, talk a little about our different religions and cultures, and say goodnight and goodbye to them. The next day, we are again on our own but we explore a different Marrakech than the one we saw day before and we again marvel at the kindness of strangers.