My Sense Diary of Morocco

New sounds and smells are some of the most exciting parts of travel for me, especially in a place like Morocco that just doesn't sound and smell anything like home. Here are some of the things I noticed:

Sounds:

Roosters crowing at all hours of the day and chickens clucking behind every fence. Poultry are everywhere here--in the souks and in the homes and even in the new parts of the cities. It makes perfect sense because if you can't afford a refrigerator, you want your chicken and eggs close by whenever you need them.

Taxis that have rigged their horns to sound like earsplitting car alarms. I find this trick absolutely hilarious, if dangerous. The first few times I heard it, I couldn't figure out whose car was being tampered with.

Storks snapping their beaks. I am not a birdwatcher, but Morocco is famous for its exotic bird populations. I saw storks almost every day, and they nest up high, particularly on the columns and walls and roofs of the ancient ruins. Maybe this is because people visit the ruins (and thus carry in some food) but the immediate vicinity is usually uninhabited, so there are fewer cats and other predators. Watching them hunt is really cool, but also a little bit scary: they are large birds, and they swoop down on their prey and snatch it up into their nests. Then, before eating, they snap their jaws for awhile, making a distinctive loud sound like applause.

Street arguments in the medina, sometimes loud and long enough to bring most of the neighbors out to see what's the matter. I saw and heard more physical altercations in Morocco in one month than I have seen living in Washington DC for the past 10 years. My friend Leslie and I saw a massive screaming match on the street below our riad in El Jadida. I happened to be on the roof reading a book when it broke out, and she was in her room overlooking the street trying to study Arabic. I could hear that something was happening downstairs because there was yelling, and it just kept getting louder and louder and louder until I peeked over the edge and saw about 20 people trying to separate a man and a woman who were in a screaming match and a physical tussle over God knows what. The thing is, though, in the medina, people never move. So whatever it was that they were fighting over could have been something that happened ten years ago or a brand new grievance, but either way, they will most likely continue to live within a stone's throw of each other for the rest of their lives. How would you like that prospect???

Children yelling and playing in the medina streets into the wee hours of the morning. It's too hot for kids to play outside when the sun is out, so they stay up very late--2 or 3 in the morning is not at all uncommon. Sadly, there aren't parks in most Moroccan medinas, so the kids have nowhere to play except the alleys and streets. And since riads are usually not air conditioned, you sleep with the windows open, and you hear every peep. But it is fun to hear that kidplay sounds alike in every language.

"Bonjour, madame! Bon soir! Ce vas?" "Marhaba! You are welcome here!" I couldn't possibly count the number of times I heard these things. Easily in the thousands. Even so, every time somebody told me I was welcome there, it felt genuine. It is almost always spoken with the hands pressed over the heart, with warm eye contact, and it is such a perfect expression of Moroccan hospitality.

Motorbikes whose tiny engines sound like lawnmowers. Way more people in Morocco drive motorbikes than cars: the streets are teeming with them. I have seen one flimsy little bike ferrying dad, mom, and three or four kids balanced acrobatically, and at a fast clip. I also love the ever-present sight of young Moroccan women with headscarves and long sleeves whizzing by on their bikes.

Ocean surf

People fanning themselves with paper. Another one of the most common sounds in all of Morocco, on buses, in storefronts, in riad courtyards, in train stations. Street hawkers do a brisk business in selling decorative fans, and Moroccans buy as many of them as tourists do because they are so practical.

Wind shifting the sand dunes in the Sahara Desert. . . and no other discernible noise at all. Spectacular--I will never forget this, or the forest of stars hanging overhead.

Wind rushing into the open windows of a car without air conditioning. Often experienced in ten and twelve hour increments.

Donkeys braying, cows mooing, and horses whinnying. Morocco's livestock are talkative and everywhere. You can't walk more than a block or two in any of the medinas without meeting a couple of donkeys and horses. The cattle and goats stay in the country (at least until their numbers are up), but the beasts of burden live everywhere.

Crickets on a hot night. One of the best sounds of summer everywhere, including Morocco.

Cats yowling at night. A less great evening soundtrack, but sometimes it's entertaining.

Ganawa music and drums in the streets. Music is part of the fabric of Morocco--in the souk there's always some kind of music being played through a stereo or performed live, formally or informally. In Marrakesh, late at night on the main square, the traditional musicians form drum circles that you can hear from a distance. I will never forget that sound floating over the city at midnight.

The call to prayer punctuating the hours, five times each day. "aLLLLLAAAAAAAAhu akbar!. . . . " Nothing but nothing makes me feel the thrill of being someplace interesting like the call to prayer. Doesn't matter if it's in Egypt, Turkey, or Morocco. I find it haunting every time.

Water splashing from ablution fountains outside mosques

"Where you from? Amureeka? I LOVE Amureeka! Obama!" Repeat endlessly, from one end of the souk to the next, accompanied by huge smiles. :)

Smells

Aerated mint leaves when somebody pours a cup of mint tea. This smell is absolutely delicious and ubiquitous. You smell it walking through the souk, in restaurants, in guesthouses and hotels, walking past a cafe on the sidewalk past the tables of men holding court. This is the defining fragrance of Morocco, without doubt.

Oranges on an open air orange juice cart starting to smell like the sun is cooking them

Sugary dough--they sell sweet breads and cookies everywhere, and the smell of these treats hangs in the air outside patisseries and cafes.

Exhaust. Sometimes it's thick and choking, sometimes it's just a whiff. But it's always there, from one corner of the country to the other. Traffic generally isn't bad here, but they don't regulate exhaust, so most of the cars spew a stream of stinky, oily black smoke from their mufflers, and the motor bikes are even worse.

A cart of garlic sitting in the sun. In the late afternoon, you can smell this a block away, seriously. It's so strong. And it's usually parked next to:

A cart of white onions sitting in the sun.

Tanneries. Ugh. One of the "must-do" items on every tourist's agenda in Fez is to go to the top of buildings surrounding Fez's tanneries and take pictures of the animal hides being treated (in urine and pigeon shit) and then colored in pools of electrically colored dyes. When I did this, I went to the roof deck of an artisan's cooperative, and there was a guy who manned the door, handing all comers a handful of fresh mint leaves to help them cope with the stench. It definitely helped, but it couldn't come close to masking it. It was awful. But it's a tannery--what do you expect?

Perfume of all kinds emanating from storefronts. Happily, though, in the whole country, I haven't met a single person offensively doused in perfume.

Carts of sardines and shrimp sitting in the sun. And the merchants who sells them regularly pour buckets of water over them to keep them fresh. The water ends up on the road, and the runoff bakes into the asphalt. This odor rivals the tanneries. It actually made me retch, and the tannery didn't quite.

Overripe vegetables rotting in the hot sun.

Incense burning in the riad courtyards. I love this smell. I've never actually explained this, I guess, but you can't really see Moroccan homes from the outside. Most of the time, you just see fences, or the walls of the home look like fences because the windows point towards the interior courtyard, not the street. So when you step through the massive antique arched door with the big ancient steel locks, you transition from the hustle and bustle and dirt and noise of the street to a whole, self-contained world inside that is calm, beautiful, and pleasing to all the senses. Sometimes there's an orange tree growing in the courtyard. Sometimes there are fresh flowers or herbs working their magic. Often riads burn incense, and it took me awhile to figure out why riads were reminding me of church! The incense smells exactly like the chrism used during special occasions in the Catholic Church! :)

Handmade soaps made with lemon and orange. Some of the riads offered handmade soaps that smelled of lemons or orange blossoms. Gorgeous.

Fresh bread baking. Bread is the staple food in Morocco--not rice or corn or tortillas or beans. It's bread. And we're not talking about mass-produced Wonderbread, just ordinary bread cooked by families and small bakeries every day in every city. Most of the medinas in Morocco have one central oven where everybody takes their bread to bake. It's a really smart system--it would overheat homes to do it there, and it takes a lot of wood to keep a fire going long enough to bake bread. So they have a communal oven and somebody takes care of the fire, and everybody carries their bread dough on trays to the oven for cooking each day. And if you happen to be headed anywhere near the oven, you always offer to take somebody's tray for them. :)