SERENDIPITY—ENTERING AN OPEN DOOR
Yesterday we explored the Fez Medina market. We didn’t have a plan except for places to eat because the Khmiss Restaurant, right in the center of the chaotic tourist area, owned by the man who rented us the Airbnb above the carpet shop that he also owns, was so loud when we ate there the first night.
So we searched for the Clock restaurant which was highly recommended for lunch. It was almost impossible to find, even with GPS.
It was off a narrow main alley in an alley so narrow two people had trouble passing each other and even then when we got there we missed the narrow door and ended up in what appeared to be a beautiful carpet shop entered through another narrow doorway. But it was more than a carpet shop. It was a craft cooperative which we had happened upon by accident which guaranteed that 80% of the price of a carpet would go to the women who made the carpets and 20% to the cooperative for overhead with fixed prices. This unexpectedly solved two problems for me. One was that in the hundreds of carpet shops in the Fez Medina I would be in the hands of con men and would have to bargain without knowing what anything was worth and knowing that the women who made the carpets were also at the mercy of the of the shop owners and were lucky to get even 20% for themselves. So whatever I pay at Craft Cooperative, even if it was more than I would pay bargaining on the street, would go to the makers of the rug rather than the shop owner.
So that was the first serendipitous thing that happened on Tuesday.
The other things that happened were when we turned left and found ourselves in alley after alley of blank walls with suddenly no tourists and no one else as well. Here we happened on a Spanish woman with a Moroccan husband, both artists, with all kinds of inexpensive earrings for sale. She spoke English and made us feel comfortable as Susie picked out earrings.
But the serendipitous surprise of the day was when we happened on the gateway to the Fez Cafe which was on Susie’s list of must visit eating places. We went in and walked through the garden and to the cafe. It was a beautiful place. We stopped at the boutique shop where we found beautiful things and were reminded that the most beautiful things end up in the most expensive shops in either India or Morocco. If you have only a few days in a place, an expensive shop is where you should look first.
And then on the way out we glanced down through the doorway to the outdoor seating area of the connected hotel where three older people were seated. They recognized us as Americans and asked where we were from. “Asheville,” we said. One of the women had lived in Durham, North Carolina.
The man, Gabe Mansky, who we learned was executive Vice President of BPL Global, said he had gone to college at the little town of Swannanoa, Warren Wilson College, it turned out, where I taught for 45 years, and was there at the same time 1976, that he was. He was married to a different woman then and was admitted to Warren Wilson from Israel without speaking English and remembered Father Rowell who taught a class on Japanese literature with great affection because Father Rowell helped him a great deal to learn English. He also remembered Miss Scarborough, in admissions, who admitted him to Warren Wilson, he believes by mistake, and Coach DeVries under whom he worked in the work program.
We had a nice conversation which led them to be astonished at the simple way Susie lives in the country in a one room cabin with an outdoor shower, an outhouse up the hill and spring fed running water and how I was traveling at 85 and were astonished that Susie’s cousin, Maria Schrader, had directed Unorthodox, a film they liked so much and were surprised by how much understanding Maria showed of Jewishness as a non Jew German.
It wasn’t a long conversation but we were astonished on both sides that this connection would appear in the garden of the Fez Cafe in Fez, Morocco.
This human connection with people you meet on a trip, people who are open and have interesting lives, maybe because they are travelers as Gabe was when he showed up at Warren Wilson, is one of the serendipitous things that can happen on a trip that turns out to be a high point.
Somehow I skipped over our getting to know Adel La Tief who owned the Airbnb in Taroudant where we spent a night a few days ago. His hands were rough because he earned a living as a gardener and had a walled garden in the courtyard of his Airbnb. The Airbnb was an ordinary, awkward combination of rooms, but Adel made our visit to Taroudant a memorable one. Our first night he escorted us to his favorite outdoor restaurant on the main square before he rushed off to his passion, working on a photography exhibit. The next morning he went out to breakfast with us and, at our urging, showed us his photographs on his cell phone. Photography was his passion and his photographs of Morocco and the people of Taroudant were beautiful. After breakfast he arranged a horse carriage for us to tour the city for an hour and a half and left for work. These were two brief encounters but made our visit to Taroudant one to remember.
And this reminds me of how Efi, the owner of the Airbnb in Naoussa, Greece and Wolfgang, a fellow guest, from Germany who was also attached to her, became a friends of mine and made the visit to Naoussa, special by bringing daily baking to my room and collecting a pail of snails in the mountains and sharing them at a sumptuous feast in her kitchen that her sea captain brother joined.
It is the connections to people that in the end make a trip special and yesterday was a good day as was the evening we sat on a rooftop looking over the fort wall in Essaouira and met a couple of older American women travelers who had been everywhere over the years, usually leaving their husbands behind.
People make a trip memorable.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 