(no subject)
More thoughts on Morocco.
Morocco insists on you being an uber-consumer, hell-bent on acquisition. If you want to spend spend spend, you'll be in heaven. If you want art, museums or cinemas you'll be disappointed. Looking at something for sheer pleasure is just not done - you look at something because you wish to acquire it. And even looking costs - there are signs everywhere offering rooftop views for a small fee, turning the city into a peepshow. I mentioned before how they like beauty to be hidden away - women with their covered faces and shapeless burqas, gorgeous tiled courtyards invisible from the street. The rules of visual engagement are all different here.
Shopkeepers beckon you in saying 'Looking is free' and shops have 'Free entrance' notices on the door, which never failed to elicit a silent retort of 'I should bloody well think so' from me. But in Morocco nothing is free and it feels like everyone is on the make. I've never been anywhere where the drive to separate you from your dirhams is so intense.
The interiors of mosques and restaurants and all sorts of places are lavishly ornamented, with every surface and fixture decorated with elaborate carving or mosaic or painted patterns. Buildings in the old part of Marrakesh are all painted in similar shades of dusky pinky brown, while Fes favours yellow ochre and brown. Visually these are incredibly rich cities, and after rain the colours in the streets are amazing. But the lavishness bothered me. I kept thinking of all the millions of monotonous hours spent carving wood and chiselling stone and painting decorations, and feeling a nagging sense of futility about it all. Take doors. There is a standard design for Moroccan doors which involves an ornamented carved, arched, scallop-edged frame within the frame proper. The doors are mounted on poles rather than hinges and there are little carved pointy housings to cover the tops of the poles. The utter unneccessariness of the miniature temples for the pole-tops really irked me - maybe it's something about the wastefulness of it all, combined with the dubious urge to decorate absolutely everything, in an adolescent-girl's-bedroom kind of design policy.
One more thing about decoration - there are pictures of the king absolutely everywhere. Every shop and cafe will have a framed photo of him hanging somewhere, often with a small vase of flowers, or trinkets, or in one case a goldfish in a bowl next to it, like a little shrine. His face is also on giant billboards on every street. I don't know exactly how spontaneous and voluntary all this is but he is everywhere. We were walking down one of the main highways into Marrakesh one afternoon and noticed that police and crowds with flags and pictures of the king were starting to line the route. Further on we came across a group of men playing instruments and drumming so we stopped to enjoy the scene. Even better, a small rival group of women with drums and bits of metal started up as well, with some wild dancing and raucous laughter. A royal procession was evidently due later, so they had arrived early to get the best spots and were keeping themselves entertained while they waited. But all the excitement and noise and flags and posters of the king seemed to be a genuine outpouring of loyalty and affection, which despite my staunchly anti-monarchist principles, was quite touching. Hard to imagine the parasitic inbred half-wits we're lumbered with inspiring such devotion.
Finally, I have to say I've never seen so many miserable, mistreated animals. Maybe caring about animal welfare is a western luxury, but the sheer volume of unhappy creatures was too much for me. Bony, overloaded donkeys; filthy cats everywhere and tatty kittens cowering underneath carts and food stalls, living on scraps; chickens crushed in cages; drugged snakes, and the worst, the abject performing monkeys in the main square in Marrakesh. I stopped eating animals about thirty years ago; I'm not sentimental about them but it makes me angry to see deliberate cruelty and callousness. I realise I'm not really bigging Morocco up here. There was a lot to like about it, honestly - the bustle and energy, the incredible labyrinths of impossibly narrow streets, never knowing what's round the next corner, the smells of spices and incense, friendly inquisitive children, the music. And it was definitely thought-provoking and made me consider some different perspectives, which is all good. I didn't quite get Morocco though. We're destined to always be acquaintances, never really friends.
There are several thousand photos on my flickr but to save you the trouble of wading through all those, here are the highlights.
Morocco insists on you being an uber-consumer, hell-bent on acquisition. If you want to spend spend spend, you'll be in heaven. If you want art, museums or cinemas you'll be disappointed. Looking at something for sheer pleasure is just not done - you look at something because you wish to acquire it. And even looking costs - there are signs everywhere offering rooftop views for a small fee, turning the city into a peepshow. I mentioned before how they like beauty to be hidden away - women with their covered faces and shapeless burqas, gorgeous tiled courtyards invisible from the street. The rules of visual engagement are all different here.
Shopkeepers beckon you in saying 'Looking is free' and shops have 'Free entrance' notices on the door, which never failed to elicit a silent retort of 'I should bloody well think so' from me. But in Morocco nothing is free and it feels like everyone is on the make. I've never been anywhere where the drive to separate you from your dirhams is so intense.
The interiors of mosques and restaurants and all sorts of places are lavishly ornamented, with every surface and fixture decorated with elaborate carving or mosaic or painted patterns. Buildings in the old part of Marrakesh are all painted in similar shades of dusky pinky brown, while Fes favours yellow ochre and brown. Visually these are incredibly rich cities, and after rain the colours in the streets are amazing. But the lavishness bothered me. I kept thinking of all the millions of monotonous hours spent carving wood and chiselling stone and painting decorations, and feeling a nagging sense of futility about it all. Take doors. There is a standard design for Moroccan doors which involves an ornamented carved, arched, scallop-edged frame within the frame proper. The doors are mounted on poles rather than hinges and there are little carved pointy housings to cover the tops of the poles. The utter unneccessariness of the miniature temples for the pole-tops really irked me - maybe it's something about the wastefulness of it all, combined with the dubious urge to decorate absolutely everything, in an adolescent-girl's-bedroom kind of design policy.
One more thing about decoration - there are pictures of the king absolutely everywhere. Every shop and cafe will have a framed photo of him hanging somewhere, often with a small vase of flowers, or trinkets, or in one case a goldfish in a bowl next to it, like a little shrine. His face is also on giant billboards on every street. I don't know exactly how spontaneous and voluntary all this is but he is everywhere. We were walking down one of the main highways into Marrakesh one afternoon and noticed that police and crowds with flags and pictures of the king were starting to line the route. Further on we came across a group of men playing instruments and drumming so we stopped to enjoy the scene. Even better, a small rival group of women with drums and bits of metal started up as well, with some wild dancing and raucous laughter. A royal procession was evidently due later, so they had arrived early to get the best spots and were keeping themselves entertained while they waited. But all the excitement and noise and flags and posters of the king seemed to be a genuine outpouring of loyalty and affection, which despite my staunchly anti-monarchist principles, was quite touching. Hard to imagine the parasitic inbred half-wits we're lumbered with inspiring such devotion.
Finally, I have to say I've never seen so many miserable, mistreated animals. Maybe caring about animal welfare is a western luxury, but the sheer volume of unhappy creatures was too much for me. Bony, overloaded donkeys; filthy cats everywhere and tatty kittens cowering underneath carts and food stalls, living on scraps; chickens crushed in cages; drugged snakes, and the worst, the abject performing monkeys in the main square in Marrakesh. I stopped eating animals about thirty years ago; I'm not sentimental about them but it makes me angry to see deliberate cruelty and callousness. I realise I'm not really bigging Morocco up here. There was a lot to like about it, honestly - the bustle and energy, the incredible labyrinths of impossibly narrow streets, never knowing what's round the next corner, the smells of spices and incense, friendly inquisitive children, the music. And it was definitely thought-provoking and made me consider some different perspectives, which is all good. I didn't quite get Morocco though. We're destined to always be acquaintances, never really friends.
There are several thousand photos on my flickr but to save you the trouble of wading through all those, here are the highlights.