Fez and Food

I like Fez, but after nearly a month, I think I'm getting a little burned out on Morocco. Yesterday was stifling hot, and unlike Meknes, Fez is wedged under a set of hills and doesn't get much of a cooling breeze. I'm staying in the medina, which is the best preserved ancient Muslim city in the world, and also the largest urban area in the world closed to cars. It's undeniably cool, but I do feel like I've seen it many times before, in Meknes, Rabat, Marrakesh, Essaouira, etc. It's not a novelty for me anymore. The chief attraction of Fez is its souk, and apart from being larger, it's substantially the same as all the other cities' souks. And since I'm not really shopping while I'm here (since I would have to carry everything I buy for another two months), there's only so much time you want to spend walking around in still, 100+ degree weather, up and down steep cobblestone paths getting hit up by hawkers and unofficial tour guides. Furthermore, many of Fez's most interesting buildings are religious in nature and closed to non-Muslims. So apart from the souk and a famous Koranic school open to tourists, there aren't many specific attractions to seek out here--visiting Fez is mostly about absorbing its ambience.

Plus, yesterday I got sidelined with my first bout of travel-related puking. Eating hasn't been easy or particularly enjoyable here at any point--Morocca is definitely *not* food destination. Everywhere you go, from cheap cafes to nicer sit-down restaurants, the menu is almost exactly the same. There's a Moroccan salad, a delicious concoction of tomatoes, cucumber, ground green olives, onion, green pepper, lemon, fresh parsley, and olive oil--but sometimes it's inexplicably topped with a wet egg the consistency of jelly or melting cream cheese. With or without the egg, I usually get a little sick for a couple of days after eating it, so as much as I enjoy it, I now avoid it. (But I will definitely be making it at home when I return.)

The main course options are usually meat, chicken, or veggie tagines, which are stews cooked in a traditional pot; or a pile of mostly tasteless couscous topped with mostly unseasoned meat or chicken. Sometimes they attempt pizza or spaghetti, but it's usually only okay and occasionally disastrous. I tried the spaghetti in Meknes the other day, and the "red" in the red sauce was tabasco (no tomatoes), and it was covered in cheese and baked, then served with a bottle of tabasco and and a bottle of ketchup. The meat was fatty and hadn't been drained, so the noodles sat in a big shiny pool of grease. The worst part is, it wasn't a tagine, so I actually ate most of it just because I was so desperate for variety. This hasn't happened to me, but one of my friends was once served pizza and the sauce was ketchup!

Besides not being so tasty, the food handling processes in this country are appalling--though I understand that it's at least partly for lack of resources. Meat sits out on uncovered dirty wood counters in the stall, inches from everybody who walks past, so people are breathing, coughing, and sneezing on it and flies are crawling all over it for as long as it takes to sell. It's not set behind glass or set on clean paper or covered or kept cool in any way, even when it's so hot out. Plus, sellers have no facilities to wash their hands, but they are constantly touching the food and money and everything else. I bought a small loaf of bread for dinner the other day when I couldn't face yet another tagine, and the clerk handed it to me without any kind of wrapper or napkin, with visibly dirty hands. I couldn't bring myself to eat it. Meat and chicken are handled in the same way. Yesterday I walked through a market that was selling veggies and baked sweets and it was like a blizzard of flies. I walked halfway down the aisle and kept getting slapped in the face with flies, so I left. It's not at all surprising that food-borne illness and discomfort are commonplace among visitors here.

My diet in Morocco has been completely monotonous. Every riad serves the same breakfast: white baguette bread, with marmalade or butter. I eat it dry because I'm not fond of marmalade, and I'm pretty confident that the butter would get me sick. Sometimes they offer a carton of unrefrigerated yogurt, which I also avoid because it makes me sick. And then later in the day I eat a vegetable tagine or spaghetti or pizza (except on rare occasions, I don't eat meat or chicken because of the food handling practices). Occasionally I'll pick up a candy bar or find someplace that serves ice cream or a pastry. But for a month now, eating has been almost exclusively a necessity, not a pleasure. The heat has contributed to the lack of pleasure in eating, too, I'm sure, but I usually eat my dry bread in the morning and then don't care to have anything else again until after the sun goes down. I drink lots of lemon soda to stay hydrated and keep up my blood sugar, but usually soda and water are all I consume during the day. I love to cook, and I wish I could just go buy some vegetables, scrub them to death, and cook my own food here. It would add considerably to the pleasure of the trip.

Anyway, for as frequently as I've had a rumbling, upset stomach and GI issues, though, yesterday afternoon was the first time that I spent a couple of hours throwing up. I'm not sure what caused it, and I'm feeling much better now. But the sickness and the heat and the sense yesterday of being in a new place but not seeing anything different is suggesting to me that it's time for a change of scenery. Tomorrow I'll head to Chefchaouen by way of Tangier and Tetouan. Then I'll be ready to move on from Morocco.

I want to stress that, despite the food and the hawkers and some really obnoxious men, I have had a great time here. It's been an amazing learning experience for me, and I've made some fantastic friends and had conversations with people from all walks of life here. It's been a rich, rewarding month. But it's just about time to go. I'm hungry, and I hear Italy can help me with that. :)