I can’t imagine another way to bring the art of Morocco into a museum setting other than to have the artisans construct the setting, which is what exactly what the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York did in its new Islamic wing. Now, I have a new reason to visit New York. There’s a video showing the construction of the court that I tried to embed here, but it didn’t work.

The examiner wrote an article about the Moroccan Court including the following information on color symbolism:

• Black and white – good and bad (soul)
• Blue – land
• Green – water
• Honey – air

Hmmm..green is water and blue is land? I’m thinking that’s a typo. But I do like the interpretation of black/white being soul, a balance of good and bad forces.

So what do you think? Would you visit – did you visit – the Moroccan Court in New York?

Also, you can tour the new Islamic Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art online.

Rabat and Casablanca
I’ve stayed in Rabat often, but never had a reason to stay at Riad Baraka. Located in Oudaya which is has a picturesque medina (old city). And you can take a walk to the Spanish Gardens for tea. I visited it from the outside. It has a picture of a golden cat on the wall. Baraka means good luck. I imagine it’s lovely. You get a view of Sale on the other side of the Bou Rgreg (Bou means river, not sure what Rgreg means). There’s a lovely waterfront, a beautiful medina, shopping across the street. If you wander the medina and see a corner baker, by all means buy something. I believe the petit pain au chocolate runs a couple dirhams.

If you want to take a day trip, you could take a cab to the Grand Mosque in Sale. The architecture there gives you a sense of what you can see in Fes and Meknes.

I’ve never visited to the mosque in Casablanca but would like to. I’m sure it’s a beautiful day trip if you want a Casablanca destination and it should be easy to figure out transportation. You could take the train to Casablanca and a cab to the mosque. I think it’s about a 45 minute train ride from Rabat to Casablanca.

Fes and Meknes
These cities are on the train line so they’re easy to get to. I think it’s about a three hour ride. The train schedule and look-up is online at http://www.oncf.ma/.

Accommodations in Fes are more expensive than Meknes and Meknes is a lovely city only a short train ride from Fes. So, while Fes is the “cultural capital” I think Mekenes is the bargain place to stay. Even though I had a horrible experience staying at Riad D’Or (I think it had mainly to do with being a woman traveling with a three year old), it is a good deal and a nice riad and lots of other people have had positive experiences there. Of course, Riad Safir, as noted, is an excellent alternative, but a bit musty in the ground-level room. If you can afford it, staying at Riad 20 Jasmines was awesome.

I’d organize a tour in Fes. You may be able to have a guide meet you at the train station. There is no way you’re going to find your way (without loads of frustration) around the medina in Fes. You could tour it every day for weeks, I imagine, and never see the same view twice. It’s a marathon experience, but well worth it. Fes has a tourist center. I thought I had a link to that contact information, but I can’t find it online. The person at the riad can help you.

Marrakesh
Marrakesh has hostels I hear and some bargain riads. I haven’t been there much, so I can’t really recommend specifics. Marrakesh is on the train. If you get to go, it’s a very different experience from Fes or Atlantic coast. That’s the great thing about Morocco. If you take the train there, even for just a day, visit Jamal L’Efna, the main square that gets going at night. There’re all kinds of exotic foods and sights, sheep brains to eat and live snakes or monkeys to hold. It feels kind of Indiana Jones. There are tons of things to see and experience in Marrakesh, but its not a city I know very well. I always wished I’d visits Les Jardin Majorelle, but I haven’t yet.

I’ve probably busted your budget here. But if you can budget for just one night in a riad, you’ll remember it always. Happy travels.

People leave comments across this site asking for contacts who know how to build or craft traditional Moroccan furnishings and interiors. I can’t blame them. Check out the great post and pictures “Four Riads in Five Days.” I wish I knew architects versed in Moroccan design. I wish there were more Moroccan design in America, which is where I’ve been stuck for the last few years.

I feel bad for neglecting this site. Morocco is never far from my mind.

I’ve been doing lots of custom painting, stencils, and lighting at home. I appreciate the peace Moroccan design brings me, even when I’m so far from Moroccan sunlight. There’s no substitue for sunlight.

There’s an empty bank building in Washington, DC, near where I work. There’s a closed Hann’s Shoes story on the street level. I wish, I dream, I see a space inside of it, renovated with a riad’s interior and a fresh produce vendor on the street level shop. We live so much better together, or so do the two cultures inside me.

Moroccan design makes the best use of light and space. The rooms waste nothing. And everything is an extension of the space. No pre-fab. No standard. Custom everything.

I want this bathroom so bad. Where are you, Moroccan design?

“Night is a tent without a central pole or pegs or supports. It opens up horizons and connects earth with sky from whose remote holes a faint light twinkles, hardly illuminating itself. The larger hole, in whose orbit trail smaller ones, has disappeared or perhaps closed up tonight. Some holes are better kept open than patched up, since the patching gives the illusion that the hole is restored to its normal state, only to be revealed still torn someday. Thus the mender realizes that he has been deceiving himself and others as well. It is said “cure your wound before it gets larger.” No, let it get larger and larger until it consumes the whole body, and a new one will be born.”

The Volubilis Visitor Center was designed to leave a minimal imprint on visitors to the Roman ruins and UNESCO World Heritage site. The new buildings fold themselves into the hills and the ruins take center stage.

The project was completed by Kilo Architecture. I appreciate the intention of clean, considerate, and lovely architecture. If I were in Morocco, I would go to Volubilis to see the new as well as the old.

See the Achitecture Review article for more details on the project.

I never heard of Moorish revival architecture until I saw the Bloomingdale’s home store in Chicago. It is housed in a restored Masonic temple built by architects Huehl and Schmidt in 1912 for the Shriners.

The building was declared a historic Chicago landmark in 2001. After renovations, which included replacing the original domes, the Bloomingdale’s home store opened there in 2003.

According to the Medinah Shriners website, they, aka Shriners or Shrine Masons, belong to the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine for North America (A.A.O.N.M.S.). They’re only tied to an Arabic theme through the imagination of its founders, Billy Florence, an actor, and Walter Fleming, a physician. Florence attended a party in Marseilles hosted by an Arabian diplomat. At the end of the party, the guests became members of a secret society. Florence returned to the States inspired by his Marseilles experience and worked with Fleming to create an exotic backdrop for the fraternity. They designed elaborate rituals, salutations, emblems, and costumes, including the Shriners’ distinguishing red Fez hat.

When the building opened, it housed the fraternity. They gathered in a red velvet audotrorium now filled with escaltors, $1,000 sheets, and a cool sound system designed under the constraints the historic status placed on renovations: no speakers mounted on the dome and floating floors.

The Shriners used to hold parades for children regardless of religion. They still work today towards child welfare and health issues.

The building is obviously Moroccan-inspried. I love the way the eight-point star is used in the stain glass windows like a head of a body.

In the above video, Paloma Picasso discusses her for zellige-inspired jewelry collection made for for Tiffany & Co. I’ve noticed lots of designers playing with Moroccan mosaic patterns as part of their jewelry collections.

The above piece is designed by Lee Angel (www.leeangel.com and reminds me of some of my favorite tile work. I bought the one in the picture on sale at bluefly.com. If this discount were deeper, I’d buy the red and white one too. I hope I love it when I meet it in person.

I’ve been thinking about the number three lately. Not unusual if you consider how much three pops-up in our collective psyche: three cheers; red, yellow, green; the Holy Trinity; birth, life, death; three primary colors. Three expresses the tripartite wholeness of our universe. We instinctively recognize it. Three is a group. Less is nothing much really and more than three is excessive or redundant.

I started looking for three in Moroccan design. There is only one pattern I can think of that is clearly triangular. I call it water because it flows. I’m not sure what the formal name of the pattern is. I tried creating it a few times and realized I need a triangle grid, not square, to get the motion right. It makes use of a six-point star; two triangles, Seal of Solomon.

In Sumerian language, numbers were called man, woman, many. In Greek culture, the monad (one) and dyad (two) were considered parents of all other numbers. Like numbers, descriptions for colors also vary across time and from culture to culture. But all cultures have words for at least black, white and red. This limited vocabulary expresses that there is color, absence of color, and then infinite color. Three is the threshold to many. Three introduces infinity and infinite possibility.

There is no number like three. It is the only number of infinite many that is the sum of all numbers that precede it.

The first shape to emerge from the vesica pisces is the triangle. It is the first shape born of space (circles) and nonspace (point). It resolves the duality of two circles and lets surface forms emerge. Triangles are the surface of our universe. The pattern goes on forever. We ourselves are three parts, head, body, limbs. We recognize three within ourselves and within our world. It ties us, mysteriously, to the whole. Somehow, three becomes one.

I wrote an article about the story of two and the archway that is so common in Morocco and how it is formed by the vesica pisces. But two has no harmony. Two is a tension, and expression of polarity, a reflection of opposites. Two is the black and white; the yes-and-no world. There must be a third to resolve the tension of two and create harmony. The archway is nothing without the keystone. Two coming together make three. Like two chemicals introduced to each other, if there is any reaction both are changed and emerge as a third.

I look for three in Moroccan patterns. I mentioned one where it is evident. The other patterns don’t seem to pay the number three specific tribute. But three is in every pattern; the 12-point star, the underlying grids, the surface of our world. Anything that expresses the infinite or the interconnectedness of our universe and our lives makes use of the number three.

My mother in law is a helpful person, which is to say that she isn’t very good with people. She full of information on the right way of doing things; the right way to eat, the right way to clean, the right way to pray. She is there to remind you to turn off the light, air the bed linens, and say “Bismillah” before eating and “Hamdullah” after burping. Her knowledge of Islamic practices and Moroccan superstitions is vast, which is to say that she doesn’t know or care much about what people want to hear. She is the harbinger of “hashuma.”

Hashuma in Morocco means “shame.” Shame, it seems to me, can come from saying or doing almost anything; whistling inside the house, sitting with the sole of your foot pointed at someone, throwing away left-over food instead of laying it out in the garden for cats or ants. There is an endless supply of hashuma, which makes me thank God that I am an American and can’t be expected to understand it all. But, now that I am a mother, it seems hashuma has become more of my responsibility. My mother-in-law tells me “Your daughter rolls her eyes. Her eyes can get stuck and she will be cross-eyed from doing that. Perhaps you should take her to a doctor.” She doesn’t seem to know that the lessons she learned in childhood were lies used to coerce behavior. Neither does her mother seem to know, for she tells me excitedly that my daughter is blinking again.

“They used to tell us monsters would get us if we walked too far ahead. So, we’d follow closely, about to piss our pants” a Moroccan friend confesses. My father-in-law tells my girl “Don’t spit, or spiders may crawl into your mouth. I’m horrified by the way he tries to help me deal with her problematic behavior. Let’s not terrify the child. But, I must admit, it can be a very empowering to know/nurture your child’s fears and practice your ability to turn on/off. Not my style of parenting *at all* but a style many Moroccan parents identify, nurture, and manipulate.

My mother-in-law lives in a self-imposed state of isolation. Her mother, my grandmother-in-law, is much more extroverted, having raised three children with the help of a network of extended family/friends. One day, my grandmother-in-law asks me (somehow her and I always communicate despite a lack of common language), if I will take her back to her apartment. “Sarah, this house is making me crazy! I need to be back home. I need to see people walking around; at cafes; in the streets. I need to live!” She is speaking in Arabic. I agree to drive her back to her apartment, but want to check with my mother-in-law before taking her own mother off somewhere else. What if I don’t understand correctly (although I know I did)? I wait for her to wake up (this is afternoon, she woke early to pray and break fast). When I say I am going to take her mother home, she replies “I am so sorry Sarah. This isn’t your problem” and she keeps repeating the words “this isn’t your problem” in a way that makes me feel very uncomfortable. She is embarrassed that her husband isn’t on hand to do the driving. I understand her feelings about her husband’s behavior. I don’t understand her offense at my ability to help her.

My mother-in-law grew up in Algeria. Her Dad died when she was young was raised in the home of her maternal uncle. Her cousins became like sisters to her. He was wealthy, but lost everything trying to leave Algeria during the civil war. He was going to relocate the family to Oujda, on the Morocco side of the border. He sold all the family possessions in preparation. My mother-in-law left earlier than the rest of the family since her mother was already in Morocco. The night the rest of the family tried the crossing, they were stopped by a false police check-point and robbed. He died destitute, unable to reach the other half of his family; unable for them to reach back to him. My mother-in-law cried when remembering she couldn’t attend his funeral.

Why did I think I could live with her for two months? One, because I lived with her for nearly two years at the beginning of my marriage. I did my best to stay out of her way, in the basement, out of the kitchen. I respected that she had her own way of doing things, even if that way involved leaving sponges used for dishes soaking in dirty tepid water; leaving leftover food outside of the fridge for a day or two; leaving milk and black seeds in dishes by the sink as offerings to jinns. I learned not to question her by my sister-in-law’s example. Sister once threw away an old sponge and brought extra silverware to the house when my mother-in-law was on travel. There was a dramatic backlash for that overstepping of feminine boundaries, sponges, silverware, and all that could imply. I learned from that and thought I knew how to keep the peace with her.

But this time was different. This time I was in her house without my husband. This time I took up two rooms in her house, one for my petulant child and one for me. I tried to stay out of her way. I tried to obey rules about not opening the door for anyone, not answering the phone, not turning on and off the lights, not playing with the garden hose, not doing a number of things that came natural to a woman of 33 and, much more importantly, natural to a three-year-old girl. “The gardener can use the hose, but not me, right? Mima doesn’t yell at him, but she yells at me if I do it, right?” my daughter was sincere in trying to understand the rules, but there was no lesson for her. The expectations didn’t make sense. The demands conflicted. During our visit, my mother-in-law slept in the basement; my daughter and I had taken over her space. Her husband refused to sleep in the same room for her because of her snoring. But I suspect his refusal also had to do with her tendency to watch religious television and wake up at odd hours to pray or break fast. On TV, the men who all wore white clothing and headdresses that contrasted with long dark beards, appeared in slow motion, their mouths half smiling and oddly gapping as they slowly spoke silently repeated words. Orchestrated music played as the credits rolled. I felt I knew what they were saying, but I didn’t want to know. I wanted to keep the peace.

I thought I could stay with her because I loved and respected her. I always defended her. When my sister-in-laws complained about food poisoning at her house because of her unsanitary cleaning practices, I acknowledged that I had food poisoning from eating her food before too. But, what can you expect? She is an old woman. Those are the ways she understands. She has her own rituals. She makes an effort based on her understanding. When my brother-in-laws complained about her inability to throw anything away, about how she hordes useless things, like empty margarine containers and lightly used paper towels, I said she must find use in those things if she keeps them and she keeps them in her own house.

Had she changed since the early days of my marriage? Beyond wearing the hijab, had she herself really changed?

Even though she lived in self-imposed isolation remaining mainly inside her house, she kept her hair hidden. “Oh, the gardener’s here!” She said excitedly, “I must go cover my hair.” She fell-out with the friend who did the pilgrimage with her. I suspect the issue was style. “The Quran tells you to dress modestly. I had this shirt made for me” her friend had explained to me years before as she pointed out the breast pocket and tab details on her lose fitting button-up shirt. “You don’t have to wear a jellaba to dress modestly. You can still be stylish” My mother-in-law only wore jellabas outside the house. Her hijab was either black or white. No colorful scarf around her hair, but a fixed thing with lace detailing around the edges. No possibility of it being more than a head covering.

An intellectual man who liked talking about books, my father-in-law worked in Washington, DC, on topics of international development for nearly twenty years, a time during which he enjoyed dinners with colleagues and walks around the city smoking cigars. Now, back in Morocco, he had no friends with which he could debate intellectually. My mother in law would only talk from the perspective of religion, feeling, and personality. She tried to appear rational. She thought she was being witty. As my father-in-law discussed real estate prices in Morocco and the United States, she interrupted our conversation “What do you want, Sarah?!” I had heard this question, always presented as an accusation, several times in the past few weeks. I knew that I could not answer it correctly. But I miscalculated the response and went with honest instead of correct/proper, a bad habit that has plagued me all my life and caused much suffering for me and those around me. I should have said something like “I don’t want anything. I am happy here with you.” or “May God help me to know that.” or “I have everything I want already. Hamdullah.” But instead I said with deadly honestly “I don’t want to talk about what I want.”

Still, I was shocked to find her angry and pointing at me “You are the problem. You!” she screamed red faced with her finger assaulting the air between us as she jabbed it towards me. I had laundry in both the wash and the dryer. My child was watching TV upstairs and I came down to put olives in the fridge. I packed our bags helter-skelter and went to a friend’s house, which is where I sat wondering how I will pay for this…how I will pay for honesty this time.

“Why did you tell your husband that I didn’t want you here!” She yelled.
“Because you did.”
“I never said that! How can you say that to my son…MY son!” she yelled and turned her assaulting finger toward herself.
“You’re a liar.” Why back down now? “You said it to me in the kitchen, by the sink. And if you say you didn’t, then you are a liar.” I was calm.
“When?”
“I don’t remember exactly. I don’t know if it was a Monday or Tuesday; since I’ve been here. I was talking to you about the girl, and you said ‘You know, this is a real problem for me. I don’t feel comfortable in my own house.’ You said it to me in English.”

My daughter had begun to scream when she saw her grandmother coming, no doubt because she didn’t want to eat the hashuma that was about to be dished out.

“You are the problem! You! You have problem with everybody. Why are you here and not Fatima? I have a problem with YOU! Not your daughter. Just YOU! YOU are the problem!”
“OK. I need my bags.”

And so, I packed them – all four oversized suitcases, all the toys, the wet laundry, all. And I packed my girl into the car I borrowed from my father-in-law. I smashed my sunglasses in the trunk door trying to get it to shut. I can’t believe this is happening. So against the rules. He helps me load the car sanely.

“Why are you going?” he asks dumbly.
“For the same reason you disappear for days at a time.” I replied

I would hear him start his car in the morning and then no one would see or hear from him for a few days later. When confronted with this behavior, he said nothing. His facial expressions had grown hard to read. He always looked slightly numb. Now and since I had arrived.

Car loaded, girl clipped in place, I found my way to alternate accommodations for the second time in four days.

We arrived at 11pm. Reda met us downstairs and walk along side our car as we navigated to the guarded parking lot. It was once we stopped that he realized we carried with us four full suitcases, one carry-on bag, two baskets – one of which was filled with plush toys, the other with beach toys – a back pack, a camera bag, and a tote bag. Of course, no one could expect him to know the inventory in the detail described. I had packed in a hurried and confused state of mind. I couldn’t find my daughter’s shoes. I didn’t know where I put her pull-ups. She peed on their couch a few weeks before, so I was particularly anxious about this last point. But, as any observer could have done, he noticed the chaos. “Wow, you packed everything!”

We went upstairs, figured out the shoes and pull-up situation with another escorted run to the car. We, my daughter and I, settled upstairs and were watching our laundry dry in the front-load machine. We rested on the couch that had been moved to the terrace in anticipation of coming guests. Fatimazohra had prepped the bed for us with only a few moments notice. Mr. Reda, as my daughter calls him, came to check on us. “Don’t leave your clothes too long, they are already close to dry.” His remark made me wince with reminder of my mother-in-law. My daughter chatted lightly with him, which put me at a welcome ease. She was wearing only a pull-up and t-shirt. I wondered when someone would ask me why she had no pants on. No one did. She had nestled under a soft blanket and murmured there-year-old thoughts . He paused to survey the situation. “Wait, you need the right light. This light is too bright.” He walked away and returned with a leather and wrought-iron lamp shade decorated with henna and blue dye. He put it over an exposed light bulb that had been shining in our eyes.

“Why did you do that Mr. Reada?”
“Because the light was shining in your eyes. It’s better this way.”
“Yeah its better.”

He reassessed the situation.

“Wait. I made a mistake. I put it on wrong. Sorry. Let me fix it. There. That’s better.”
“Why did you do it wrong?”
“I made a mistake.”
“Why did you make a mistake?”
“Because I did put it on here wrong. It should go this way.”
“Yeah, Mr. Reda, you did it wrong! You did it wrong, Mr. Reda.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Well, that’s OK, Mr. Reda. That’s OK.”

This gesture, Mr. Reda, perfecting the lighting for a few lost birds, meant worlds to me. And what a beautiful lesson for a 33/3 year-old girl to learn: it’s OK to make mistakes.

People smile at me as I walk with my daughter through the medina, my thumb and index finger wrapped around her billowy wrist. These standing witnesses seem like the collective soul of the world, yawning, like a baby awakened with a gentle rub on the back. When my daughter and I are together playful and chatty, we become a catalyst that causes a deep, dear memory to show itself as a smile on the face of strangers. This floating memory is so primal that it cannot enter the conscious mind as a coherent thought. Instead, it enters the semi-toothless mouth of a fruit seller who, in broken English, asks my daughter if she wants some melon. His words are difficult to understand. She appears confused when I tell her what he’s offering. I think she is more suprised that I understand him than she is put-off by him. His eyes shine upon her in search of the smile that decorates his face; a reflection of youth.

In the parking garage below the grocery store Aswak Aslam, I wander the lot with a cart full of bags and my daughter sitting in the fold-out shopping cart seat. A man wearing an orange vest showing him to be a parking attendant of sorts speaks to me something I don’t understand. He knows where my car is, but I doubt it. He takes the cart to push it in the right direction. I follow closely. He finds the truck where I left it. He talks in words I don’t understand as he unloads the bags from the cart and lifts my daughter from the seat. We both recoil at his familiarity and she grabs my legs once her feet hit the ground. Perhaps she is perceived as a sort of cargo and he is being chivalrous towards me, but I don’t think so. At Pizza Hut, the waitress kissed my daughter’s cheek as she greeted our table. A security guard in customs kissed her head, and a man in a café kissed his fingers and put them to the crown of her head as he walked past our table. She is something new here, something different than a toddler in America. She is a memory and a promise of life’s continued flow.

Moroccans love children: a love like warm sand at dusk. It is a love for the temporary nature of youth. In it is an awareness of youth as a precious gift that we all once had and that we all must eventually give away. But there is no glorification of youth. There is no equivalent to an American pop culture icon or the corresponding obsession with youthful sexuality. Beyond the radiant smile on the face of strangers, the kisses and candies, lies all the pain of an ordinary adulthood.

At Magic Park, an amusement park in Sale, I hold my daughter’s hand, anxiously trying to keep her from sitting on the dirty pavement while we wait impatiently in line to ride the Dragon Adventure. Children turn back and forth, calling to each other. Their smiles reveal rotting teeth; one’s happy eye is made heavy by a cyst. They push their way forcefully to the front of the line. I do not smile at them. Poverty has made them old by ten.

Leaving the park, our car is stopped by a traffic light. Music plays on the car radio. I encourage her to dance by bobbing my head and wiggling my elbows. She reluctantly complies. The men in the next truck smile widely at her and honk their horn and wave when the light turns green.

I found a park near my in-laws house in Hay Riad, an upper-middle class section surrounded by villas. It is a small structure holding two slides. It is secured in a pile of dirt that hides pieces of glass, used batteries, rusty bottle caps, and an ant colony. The park is frequented families that don’t look as if they live in the neighborhood; the adults are too comfortable sitting in the grass and the girls too happy playing simple games: making a candy wrapper jump on the cement by thumping their hand.

Each slide has a crack in it and the metal work that holds it has become rusty and jagged. I wonder, if I lived here, what part of the park I would work to fix first, or if I would instead build a private playground behind villa walls. A girl stands on the top of the slide, she stands out to an observer because she is older than the others and she wears a clean white party dress decorated with a large print of red flowers. She has taken her hair ribbon out and watches it blow in the wind. Her eyes have a melancholy look.

I don’t have the words to talk to her. I want to ask her what it is that she sees so far away. Somehow, it seems like a private moment for her. She is alone among us. I think of home. Perhaps there is still a reason to build your house in the fashion of a riad with the windows facing inward. More than the privacy it provides women, but for the privacy of family and the sanctuary of a child.

Can you see her?