Moroccan Mosaic

As Published in Hand/Eye Magazine on August 5th, 2010

Putting the Pieces Together in Fes

For centuries, in the Imperial Moroccan city of Fes, mosaic craftsmen have chipped away at ceramic tiles, shaping the tiny pieces that comprise zellij, the art of glazed-and-cut tile pieces arranged in complex geometric patterns. The fruits of their labors can be found everywhere within the 1,200 year old Fes medina: gracing the walled city’s countless water fountains, adorning the tomb of Moulay Idriss II (the founder of Fes) and decorating the Karaouiyine Mosque and University, which vies with Al-Azhar in Cairo for the title of world’s oldest university. About a mile outside the stone walls of the medina is the Poterie De Fes factory, where pottery and mosaic craftsmen continue their work, one small piece at a time.

Late in the 8th century, Fes was founded by Moulay Idriss II, who carried out the wishes of his dying father by moving from the small ancient Roman capital of Volubilis. The new city started as a modest Berber town and grew with the influx of thousands of exiled families from Al-Andalus (southern Spain) and later from Arab families fleeing Kairouan in modern-day Tunisia. The town rose to prominence with the construction of the Karaouiyine University and it emerged as the pre-eminent city in the Maghreb, the North African region comprised by the present day countries of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania. Within Fes is the walled medina, known as the “the city of ten thousand alleys.” It is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and it is believed to be the world’s largest contiguous car-free urban area.

Just outside those ancient city walls is the Poterie De Fes cooperative. The factory is easy to find; look for the kilns producing black smoke fueled by olive pomace. This recycled fuel -- pulpy residue from the olive oil process--is what allows the furnaces to get hot enough to fire the clay. Our tour is led by Abdellah Idrissi, who points out that his name is derivative of Fes founder Moulay Idriss II. Abdellah is one of many craftsmen in the cooperative and he starts his tour by showing us large mounds of clay, all with fresh footprints from workers using their feet to work the clay to the desired consistency. We then move to the pottery wheel and watch a craftsman spin out about 7 or 8 pieces in 15 minutes. While the pottery is interesting, it is the mosaic process that is really unique. We walked over to the furmah tiles, the raw materials for the mosaic pieces and Abdellah explains that these tiles are molded from a hardy clay from nearby Jebel Ben Jelliq. Once the tiles are fired they can be scored and chiseled to break cleanly along straight lines. From here we move over to the furnaces, two large bi-level clay kilns. “The first floor is hotter–about 1,200 degrees–because that’s what terra cotta tiles need,” says Abdellah. “The second floor is about 980 degrees because that’s what the coloring and glazing require.” The tiles are fired twice; the first time in the hotter, lower furnace after being glazed and a second time in the upper level furnace after one side has been colored. The principal colors are blue from cobalt, green from copper, yellow from cadmium and red from iron oxide. The temperature is increased by feeding the kiln with more olive pomace.

From the furnace we move over to the craftsmen cutting the furmah pieces. Islamic mosaic work is characterized by geometric multiple-point star, medallion and polygonal figures. Start in the center of a multiple-point star pattern and follow one of the lines radiating outward until your eyes land upon a satellite star figure. From there follow any of its lines and you’ll find yourself in the center of yet another multiple-point star pattern and on and on. This subliminal sensation of movement is what gives the geometric designs their sense of life. Islamic art forbids figures or likenesses, so its artisans have focused on creating stunning graphic and geometric shapes and patterns. We watch craftsmen carefully chip away with hammers at tiles pieces, against an iron anvil and occasionally a terra cotta surface for the more delicate and detailed work. The men working are paid by the shape and in a good day they can churn out over a hundred mosaic pieces. Once the tiny pieces are cut and arranged into beautiful geometric patterns, they are placed face down on the ground. The flat surface keeps the faces of fountains and the tops of tables flat as the patterns are held together with a sand-lime or cement mixture and allowed to dry upside down. The cycles of creation and destruction and re-creation of zellij are time consuming and therefore make it a relatively expensive art form. From the elements of earth, water, and fire furmah tiles are created, only for craftsmen to slowly and skillfully destroy each one. From here it is the zellij designers who re-create, putting the pieces together upside down in brilliant geometric patterns. It is only when the entire process is finished –creating, destroying, re-creating –and the surface has been dried and turned over, can one appreciate the stunning work.

You can purchase zellij tile work and pottery from the Poterie De Fes factory, in the Quartier de Poterie in Fes, Morocco. Their French-language web site is at http://www.poteriefes.ma/

Searching The Souk For The Hand Of Fatima

“Bien sûr, j'ai une main de Fatima pour vous. Venez,” said the young man as he motioned us to follow him. We’d been searching for a Hand of Fatima door ornament in the Fez medina for a few days and we remained hopeful as we followed him through several narrow, shady alleys. It takes no more than ten seconds to get completely and utterly lost in the medina, so I carefully noted landmarks along the way: wood scaffolding holding up an archway, powerful stench of urine down a dead-end alley, woman breastfeeding in front of her home. We arrived at the shop and a man showed us a 3-fingered hand of Fatima, unfortunately not the 5-fingered one that we’d admired on several Fes doors in the medina. Our search would have to continue.

The Hand of Fatima is a flat, decorative iron or brass door ornament and it’s thought that the stylized open hand is a good luck charm and wards off the evil eye. It is also known as Khamsa, which is Arabic for five, referring to the number of fingers of the hand. Archaeological evidence suggests that a downward pointing Khamsa has been used as a protective amulet in the North African region prior to its use by Muslims and Jews. It is also thought to have been associated with Tanit, the supreme deity of the Phoenician client state of Carthage (present day Tunisia), whose hand was used to ward off the evil eye.

Fatima herself was the youngest daughter of the Prophet Mohammed and Muslims regard her as a loving daughter, mother and wife as well as a role model for all Muslim women. Because of her moral purity she is to Islam what the Virgin Mary is to Christianity and she is commonly referred to as “az-Zahra” which means “The Shining One.”

On one of our many rambles through the medina, we passed a Hand of Fatima adorning a large thick cedar door and I made the casual comment “We should get one of those.” For the next few days this idle statement became a quest and we did not leave a shop without asking about a Hand of Fatima. My wife and daughter love nothing better than to spend hours shopping in souks, comparing features, benefits and prices. They enjoy the hunt as much as the prize. My daughter's occasional nickname is "Soukie", a reflection of her enthusiasm for Middle Eastern and North African markets and bazaars. My son and I have a much shorter attention span and we will tire out after about an hour, so the driving force behind this particular quest was the female side of the family. The last couple days in Fes, they asked in dozens of places, but had no luck. I was skeptical.

When my son and I gave up the hunt and retreated to our cool massreiya apartment, the girls continued their mission. On our last full day in Fes, they returned to a shop where they had already purchased glass perfume sprinklers (to be used as oil and vinegar cruets). Realizing that they had not yet asked this particular shopkeeper, they inquired and he ran off saying “Une minute.” He came back shortly with a five fingered Hand of Fatima that was half the cost (after a little bargaining) of the three-fingered one referred to above. When they walked into our massreiya, they couldn't conceal their smiles as they showed off the fruit of their labors. It was a win-win situation; we got to relax in our nice apartment and they had the thrill of the chase...and we all got our Hand of Fatima.

Morocco Impressions

Prior to visiting Morocco my perception of the country was filtered by movies (Casablanca, Babel, The Wind and the Lion) and by music (Crosby, Stills and Nash’ “Marrakech Express”, the Moroccan influence on the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Donovan and others). Now that we are here, it is our experiences in other Muslim countries, particularly Egypt, that have influenced our first impressions of Morocco. We spent 5 weeks in Egypt earlier this year and it’s fitting that the two countries that bookend North Africa are our comparison points.

Even though one of the first Moroccans I met – a taxi driver at the Nador border – had a bruise on his forehead, we saw very few of these “piousness indicators” while in Morocco. In Egypt, many men had these bruises, clearly the result of vigorous prayer when pressing their foreheads to the ground. According to a 2007 New York Times article, “The zebibah, Arabic for raisin, is a dark circle of callused skin, or in some cases a protruding bump, between the hairline and the eyebrows. It emerges on the spot where worshipers press their foreheads into the ground during their daily prayers.” The Moroccans with their blemish-free foreheads could have been from anywhere in the non-Muslim world. The decibel levels of the call to prayer are also lower in Morocco than in Egypt. We were in the heart of the Fes Medina for 2 full days before I heard the muezzin’s call. In Cairo and other Egyptian cities, the call to prayer could be heard from anywhere at full volume. One would think that with a more fervent outlook on Islam, that access to mosques would be tighter in Egypt than in Morocco, but this is not true. Ironically, mosques are closed to non-Muslims in Morocco yet open in Egypt.

Another thing that stood out for us was clothing. In Egypt, men typically wore gray gowns and almost every woman we saw in public wore a black or gray gown and veil and many had their faces covered. In the traditional Moroccan cities of Fes and Marrakech there were definitely some older women dressed that way, but most of the women wore jeans and dresses and did not have their heads covered. The young trendy Moroccans walking through the Medina wearing designer clothing could have just as easily been in New York or Paris.

Perhaps Egypt’s proximity to the Middle East and to Mecca explains why they seemed more intense to us. One thing that Morocco does share with Egypt is the intensity of bargaining inside the souks. The Moroccans may be more laid back when it comes to Islam, but step inside a carpet or leather goods shop and you’ll be lucky to leave without a purchase.

Essaouria: Of Dung, Goats and Argan Trees

We’d never heard of Essaouria until we started planning our trip to Morocco but the walled medina, a UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site, with waves from the Atlantic ocean crashing against its ramparts, sounded too good to pass up. We also learned that this arid region around Essaouria was where goats routinely climbed trees looking for food. The bizarre video (below) shows 16 goats munching argan tree fruit 20 feet in the air. As we learned about where to see the goats, we also learned about the very versatile and useful fruit that they eat. We decided to hire a taxi from Essaouria and visit an argan oil cooperative and perhaps along the way see some goats climbing trees.



After negotiating a taxi for the four of us to visit the Marjana cooperative, we sped along the highway to Marrakech keeping an eye out for goats. The argan tree, which only grows in this part of Morocco, clicks all the right boxes when it comes to trendiness, health & beauty, women’s rights and the environment. It’s drizzled on salads in hip, cosmopolitan restaurants and it’s routinely sold in Provence markets alongside designer olive oils. It is high in vitamin E and essential fatty acids and is believed to help all sorts of skin conditions, such as acne, psoriasis, eczema and wrinkles and medical evidence suggests that the oil may help reduce cholesterol and prevent arteriosclerosis. The cooperatives are run almost exclusively by women; usually older women cracking, roasting and grinding the seed-nuts and younger bilingual women leading the tours. The tree is extremely hardy and helps prevent desertification of the region and virtually all the by-products of the production process are recycled (nut shells fuel the roasting process, discarded pith fed to goats, etc.). And if that resume isn’t impressive enough for you, local Berbers also mix it with ground almonds and honey to make amlou, a sweet delicacy reputed to be an aphrodisiac.

We arrived and asked for Fatima, the sister of a man we met near our small riad guesthouse. Fatima took us over to the work area where we were greeted by a loud ululation from one of the older women. The women wore headscarves and sat against the wall, all of them holding a smooth rock between their legs while working at separating pits from almond-like seed-nuts. Fatima explained that the pit must first be separated from the pulpy fruit matter, and then the "almonds" must be extracted by chipping away at the pit. It was at this point I asked about the goat dung. I’d read that as the goats climb the argan trees and ingest the fruit, they poop it out and the nuts are recovered from the goat dung. The goat’s strong digestive juices act to eat away the tough elastic coating over the pit. Fatima smiled and told us that this is the old process and they no longer do it that way.

The sound of rocks chipping away at the hard pits served as our syncopated soundtrack while Fatima continued. “Now, if you are making oil for eating, the almonds must be roasted.” she said. We watched two women in another room fanning the nut-shell-fueled fire to slowly roast the almonds. From there, we walked back to the first work area and watched a woman slowly grinding a roasted almond-and-water mixture until oil started pouring from her stone pestle into a plastic container. From here it was simply a matter of filtering the liquid so that all that is left is a clear golden oil. To make one liter of argan oil it takes 36-40 kilos of fruit, which produce 2.5 kilos of almonds. Fatima tells us that this process takes one woman three days to complete.

At the end of our tour we bought some argan shampoo, olive oil, wrinkle cream and amlou and headed back to Essaouria along the same road. About halfway back I did see a goat standing on a branch about 8 feet off the ground, but nothing like the video I’ve posted above. I’ve since read that there is a concerted effort to keep the goats from eating the increasingly valuable argan fruit. Next time we’ll stop the car and fork over a few dirhams to the goatherd boys and watch them climb up the trees.

Chillin' In The Moroccan Heat: The Fes Medina

Our entry into Morocco was a long hot, dusty and eventful day (see "Crossing Borders, Crossing Continents") and we were relieved to arrive in Fes before nightfall. My wife usually organizes our accommodations and always does a great job, but in Fez she outdid herself. After 13 hours of travel by taxies, ferries, grandes taxis and an Alice-in-Wonderland-esque first stroll through Fes’ medina, we plopped our bags down at 9:00 pm in a beautiful, cool apartment within a dar, a traditional Moroccan house.

As far as I can tell a riad is a larger, multi-room house with a courtyard and central fountain, many of which have been converted into full-service hotels, and a dar is a multi-family house or apartment building for Moroccans. Our apartment manager described our particular apartment as a massreiya, a Moroccan “newlywed quarters” that each of the family’s sons stay in once they are married. Once the first son and his bride are able to get their own place, the second son moves in, etc. Our lodgings were cool and spacious and decorated with intricate arches, stonework and mosaic tiles. Many tourists stay in similar surroundings in a riad, but with a family of four our massreiya was a more affordable option and we liked the fact that we’d have a small kitchen and there’d be other Moroccan families within our dar.

A large family with many children lived directly across from us, our respective doors facing each other, four feet apart. We saw them often and exchanged salaam aleikums or had short conversations in French. When no one else was around their 6 year old would shake our hand, smile and politely ask for a coin. They had a teenage daughter who occasionally would round up her friends and stand in front of the downstairs door, waiting to get a look at my teenage son. As we’d walk by them and up the stairs to our apartment, we’d hear stifled giggles from the group.

Our apartment was near the center of the Fes medina, believed to be the world’s largest contiguous car-free urban area. It’s like taking a flat city and placing it into the bottom of a trash compactor: scrunching the urban terrain to create hills, transforming wide city streets into narrow lanes and alleys and having the same population in an area about one-tenth its original size. The entrance to our building was a battered, non-descript wood door that led to a dark alley. Occasionally we’d see tourists on a tour of the medina watch us enter our unmarked door in a dark alley and we could almost hear them saying Where are they going? We got to know our mercantile neighbors – the gregarious butcher, the sullen barber, the man who ran the market and sold us fresh baguettes each morning and the fellow who ran an Internet café with the world’s dustiest computer keyboards.

Fes in June is hot and just a twenty minute walk is enough to make you start sweating. We found ourselves gravitating towards the shadows as we moved through the medina’s labyrinthine alleys. As we walked though the heat, our massreiya’s cool stone walls and shuttered windows beckoned us, like a silent call to prayer. Although life in the medina was fascinating, the heat made us come back to our cool refuge repeatedly during our stay.

Morocco: Crossing Borders, Crossing Continents

Usually crossing borders is nothing more than a rubber stamp, but crossing land borders in the 3rd world can sometimes be problematic. Perhaps it’s because many border crossings are in out-of-the-way locations, where petty officials can do what they like far from the gaze of their higher-ups. Or perhaps it’s because border towns are places that thrive on incomplete information, where locals can count on travelers not knowing the local price for a cab or the current exchange rate. Nador, the border town where we would enter Morocco, appeared to be such a place.

On paper, getting from Malaga, Spain to Fez, Morocco in one day isn’t a big deal, but because we weren’t flying and we would make a land border crossing, we were ready for anything. Our plan was to take a ferry across the Mediterranean from Malaga to Melilla, a Spanish protectorate on the Moroccan coast, cross the border at Nador, then connect with the afternoon train to Fez. The ferry from Malaga to Melilla was pleasant with blue skies and dolphins jumping off the bow of our ship. The taxi from the Melilla port to the Moroccan border was a breeze but as we walked towards Moroccan immigration through the no-man’s-land between the two borders, we steeled ourselves. My wife handed over our four passports to the immigration officer as I watched our bags. “Who is this?” the officer asked with a scowl, pointing at my passport. My wife motioned in my direction and I waved to him. He then stared at his computer for awhile. After 20 minutes of questions and suspicious glances, he slammed his rubber stamp down four times and we were done. So much for pesky border bureaucrats.

With what is typically the hardest part now done, things started to fall apart. We jumped into a taxi and headed straight for the train station, where we arrived to find out that the afternoon train to Fez had left 30 minutes earlier. We then went to the bus station but when we arrived we learned that the only bus remaining was later that night; too late to get us to Fez at a reasonable hour. This led to our last resort, a more expensive grandes taxi, the large Mercedes-Benz share-taxis that ply the roads between large Moroccan towns. It was now almost 2:30 pm and it would take five hours to get to Fez. We walked about five blocks, seeing no other foreigners, to a lot full of Mercedes-Benz taxis and began haggling with a taxi driver. After 20 minutes of not getting close to the standard price – a price that we had earlier verified at the bus station – we realized that we were in a local taxi area, not the grandes taxis that make long runs between towns. Apparently, a long run would have been made for us if we’d been dumb enough to pay double the going rate.

The taxi driver pointed to the right location further down the street and saw about 15 taxi drivers sitting around waiting for business. I picked out an older gentleman who spoke Spanish and started our negotiations while the other drivers stood up and eagerly watched. We settled on the price fairly quickly but, when clarifying that he would take no other passengers, he became upset for some reason and gave me a look that said “Hey buddy, do you want a ride or not?” My insistence on clarifying this point led to what looked like an impasse to the other cab drivers, who quickly started importuning me with quotes for a ride to Fez. Two of them grabbed my arm and my Spanish-speaking guy was getting moved to the back of the crowd. Voices were raised, people started pushing to get closer to me and chaos was starting to take over.

There are moments when you can feel a crowd situation starting to get out of control. As long as my Spanish-speaking guy seemed to be in control, the others just watched. The moment it looked like he was losing the catch, the others sensed blood in the water and wanted their turn to reel in the big fish. Sensing that this might be one of those moments, I pointed to my guy and said “Si, vamanos,” grabbed him by the arm and steered him away from the group. We put our bags in the trunk of his taxi, got in the car and waited, glad to be away from the mob. Our Spanish-speaking guy drove us around the corner then got out to make way for another driver that didn’t speak English, Spanish or French. Before we could object to the bait and switch driver, he was gone, mumbling something about a stop at a police checkpoint.

We drove out of Nador with our new driver a little after 3:00 pm and into the North African desert. Nine hours earlier we were in the modern Spanish port town of Malaga and now we were in the desert with no food or water and a driver with whom we could not communicate. We had made no stop at a police checkpoint and it quickly became apparent that our taciturn driver was not in the mood to communicate with us. “Can we stop for some water?” my wife asked him, in three languages. Even when I pantomimed drinking a bottle of water, he just shrugged and drove on. My wife later told me that she wanted to stop for water as much for someone to see us as to slake our thirsts. If we disappeared in the Moroccan desert, at least someone would have seen us.

After an hour we stopped for gas at a dusty adobe shack on the side of the road. While our driver emptied a couple dirty, plastic liter containers of gasoline into his tank, I went inside to buy some water. The proprietor was in cleric garb with a knitted Muslim skull cap. When I asked for water he seemed to be annoyed, but sold us some warm drinking water. Feeling a bit tense, we continued to drive through the desert. The drive was long and after a while our driver warmed up a bit. He accepted a swig of water from my bottle and made another stop for us to buy some snacks. We felt much more comfortable with him and sat back and enjoyed the scenery which became greener and more agricultural as we neared our destination. We arrived in Fez around 8:30 pm and after meeting our apartment manager, we made our way to our accommodations located in the center of the medieval medina.

The last leg of our journey was a surreal 20 minute walk through the Fez medina; a dense, compact walled city overflowing with humanity and mercantile activity. It was a long and eventful day crossing the border into Morocco and getting to Fez. Everything leading up to the rubber stamp at the border went smoothly, it was the aftermath that was touch and go…and interesting.


"Rubber Stamp" is the theme of the latest Lonely Planet Blogsherpa Carnival, hosted by GingerBeirut. The carnival starts on June 21st.