Away from the touristy Marrakesh to the laid-back coastal town of Essaouira, famous for its wind (for surfing) and its annual
Gnaoua Festival. Immediately upon arrival I felt that familiar beach-laziness coming over me. We thanked our lucky stars we found a room at the best cheapy hotel, Hotel Smara which has a beautiful rooftop view of the old Portuguese ramparts and the ocean. Essaouira has a very nice medina with cobble-stone streets lined with the usual bazaar finds as well as some eclectic shops and restaurants, a good portion of them owned by the many ex-patriots who call Essaouira home. Our favorite hangout was a little Italian coffee shop called Dolcefreddo right on the corner of the main square of the medina. Delicious coffee drinks and homemade gellato. True, not Moroccan, but seeing as how our cappuccinos at a Moroccan cafe turned out to be hot chocolates, we stuck with what we knew to be good.
Another thing that Essaouira is famous for is its thuya wood, from a tree of the cypress family. All around Essaouira you can find artisans busily carving and polishing their thuya-creations from boxes to bowls to bookends...you name it. The smell of the wood is a sensation in itself...and the designs created by the wood are just beautiful.
While shopping our first night in the medina, we came across a small shop with a friendly looking man sitting out front talking with a skinny, bearded, paisley scarf wearing, man inside. A classic hippie-type who I assumed was left-over from the 70s. The hippie, who introduced himself as Lazar, invited us in and soon we were sipping tea with him and the shopkeeper, Muhammad. I whispered at Jay that he being the one who accepted the tea offer, that he would be the one obliged to buy something, as the game usually goes. Lazar and Jay sat on the ground and became engulfed in some conversation about...hemp or living on the beach or something. Katie and I got to know Mohammad a bit, learning about his life as a Berber nomad exporting and importing goods from Cairo to Mauritania into Morocco with his family. He then worked as a guide in the high Atlas mountains for 6 years before opening his shop in Essaouira 10 years ago. He was a very sweet man, with kind eyes and a soft, low voice that was soothing and patient. After tea, he and his nephew who had materialized sometime in the course of our visit, invited us to meet them at the shop the following evening and join them and Lazar at their house for a fish tagine dinner. Someone accepted, with the mandatory "insha Allah" and we were off. No sooner had we left the shop then the guy who had brought us the tea from across the street, Mustafa, began walking with us, and persuaded us to come hear him and his friends play some Gnaoua at their music shop down the street. He was also of Berber origin and spoke English with near fluency. He said that he had played with Ziggy Marley at the Gnaoua Festival one year...and then he looked at me and said "I like you" and asked Jay (pretty sure he was joking) how many camels it would cost for me. Thankfully Jay said he wouldn't part with me for any number of camels. In spite of the fact, he persisted on saying oh-so original compliments like "you have beautiful eyes". The shop was small and crammed full of instruments: drums, guimbris, bendirs, tambourines, qaraqib (essential to gnaoua). He and two of his friends serenaded us for three or four songs and I actually wouldn't be surprised if this guy did sing with Ziggy Marley. He had an amazing, powerful voice and his guimbri skills were quite impressive. After a struggle to leave, he still persisted on stealing me away and invited us to dinner the next night, which we explained we already had an invitation for.
Our second day in Essaouira, Katie and I were up and ready to go wind surfing in the morning. We made arrangements to have a two hour lesson that morning from a man named Cristoph Renoir or something along those lines. First we had to put on our wetsuits, which was a bit frightening. I can't remember the last time (if ever) I have had to wear something so revealing of every bump of my body. We proceeded to learn how to carry our boards and sails out to the beach and got a quick lesson in the sand about where to stand on the board and how to manipulate the sails. Then is was out into the ocean and up on the boards. Honestly, it was one of the most enjoyable things that I have done in life. I actually managed to stay up on the board and get going pretty fast a couple times which was thrilling enough for me. Katie and I couldn't stop laughing at Christoph's enthusiastic "voilĂ "s. We had such a good time we decided to go out with him the following morning before taking the 12:00pm bus to Ourzazate.
That night we headed off, a little cautiously, to the shopkeeper's place to meet him and his nephew for dinner. I was slightly uneasy about it...but decided that I couldn't be suspicious of every stranger in my life (despite what Sesame Street taught me...) and went along. The nephew was waiting for us and we went deep into the medina to buy a few essential groceries for the dinner. Being a Sunday, the fish market was closed so we settled on a beef tagine. Nothing like passing by all those hanging carcasses in all the butcher's shops. Mmmm. Then we got a couple taxis and went off to the residential area where they lived. Once we arrived, we were a little put off by the fact that the kid's key didn't open the door which he proceeded to try and open for five minutes or so. Katie, Jay, and I were just eying each other in this dark staircase, our expressions asking each other "now what?". Finally, he realized we were in the wrong building and it was the one next door. Odd? We sure thought so, until we found out they had moved into the apartment the previous day. Once we found the right place we were greeted by Muhammad and Lazar relaxing on the Moroccan couches smoking something or other out of Lazar's magical little tin. Katie and I helped what became three nephews prepare the vegetables in the kitchen as Jay sat with Lazar and picked up right where they had left off...discussing cliché topics you would imagine and old hippie to talk about...hasheesh, materialism, etc. But here's the funny thing...Lazar wasn't just an old British hippie, he was an old British-Israeli hippie. I figured that he had kept the fact that he was an Israeli Jew from Muhammad and his family but on the contrary, he openly discussed the fact. It was a small little demonstration of coexistence in the least likely circumstance...so bizarre, yet delightful. We even got into some ridiculous discussion with Muhammad's nephew wanting to know how far away Israel was from the US. We said we weren't sure exactly, but that Morocco was much closer. He insisted that this couldn't be, and we insisted that it was...and that was that.
We stuffed ourselves Moroccan-style on the tagine and by the time we finished it was time to go. We needed our beauty sleep for more surfing in the morning. We fared them all goodbye, sending and receiving invitations on the chance that we would ever meet again. As we walked out the door, Lazar was shouting "mazeltof" to Muhammad on his new apartment. I smiled and shook my head, not believing the crazy night we had just experienced. It just goes to prove that you can never know what to expect in life.
