Marrakech 2014

We currently sit at home more isolated than ever. In addition to the virus limiting our movements, we are suffering severe smoke from the Oregon fires. Not really any sunlight today, just a brighter yellow sky filled with dust and smoke. We sit in side with all the windows and doors closed and wait. It is not even fit weather to wander around the block in search of a few small things to photograph. There is no sound outside or man nor beast and hardly a breath of air is stirring. No one walking along the sidewalk, no pets abroad. Just dust covered trees and an eerie yellow light filling the world.

In the meantime, we remember better times. Today, we make a short journey back to March of 2014 during spring break while on our London semester. Since everything now feels so alien and foreign, it seems fitting that we explore for a few minutes a place that, compared to Snohomish, really is.

The Morocco we visited is a land of contrasts and surprises. Consider the modes of transportation. We saw lots of mules and motorbikes on the same streets and at the same time. Poverty runs the gamut here.

In the Atlas mountains, the early signs of spring were appearing as the fruit trees began to bloom.

The valleys long since carved by water have been also carved by man to make "modern" access to these remote and traditional places. As best I can recall, there is a river hidden just behind the rocks to the left but my low angle makes it impossible to see.

Across the mountains, we come to the edge of the Sahara where mud is the primary building material and the presence of water is the foundation of a city more important than the rock on which it is built.

Aside from the hubbub of people and overwhelming strangeness of this culture so removed from the one in which we live, one of the most striking features of the city is the doors. They are strange, marvelous, and beautiful.

And when a door is left ajar so that you can see inside, you learn that the painfully plain and dirty streets are lined with walls that hide all the intricate beauty of the Muslim world. The combination of colors, shapes, and designs leaves my mind grasping for a line, a concept, a dominant shape to guide my eye through this maze of embroidery so delicate that I can scarcely take it all in. 

 The entire visit was like this. The contrasts of the mule excrement beside the vegetable vendors display; the building interiors and exteriors; the Atlas Mountains and the Sahara desert; the warmly friendly and the obnoxiously insistent people; the good food and the things we were afraid to eat. As we learned when we visited Alhambra, these Muslim designs are all constructed with a flaw in them somewhere to remind the artist and the viewer that only God is perfect.