Where do I fit in?

I’ll be honest: I think of myself as superior to the throngs of tourists that constantly crowd the Fes medina. I have a house, a lease, a landlord. I grocery shop. I study Arabic. My decision to live here was well-planned, a product of months of research and writing. My experience (I tell myself) is completely different from those of tourists who come here for a week on a package tour.

The reality of the situation is more complicated.

Because, as I may or may not have made clear before, absolutely nothing is simple in Morocco, and the tourism industry is no exception. And one of the most interesting (and convoluted) facets of tourism in Morocco is the riad phenomenon. In fact, my roommate Roz’s Fulbright project will look at the impact of riad restoration on medina culture.

Riads are restored medina houses, and they are everywhere. It seems that every other Moroccan I meet is converting his house into a one. Restored riads are either rented out as upscale guesthouses or bought by Westerners as a first or second (or third, or fourth) home. The restoration process usually involves replacing or repairing the house’s internal doors and zillij (tile). Many medina houses are stripped of their original decorations, since selling these doors, tile, fountains, etc., is an easy way for families to make some money. Western-style bathrooms and kitchens are usually added to the houses as well. All of these factors combined have created a huge demand for artisans such as tilemakers, blacksmiths, and carpenters (these professions were on the wane before the riad resurgence), as well as for plumbers, electricians, Moroccan contractors, etc., etc. It’s undeniable that housing restoration has created an influx of industry in the medina, and has revived a lot of artisan work as well.

But the long-term effects are less clear. In my mind, the medina will soon reach a saturation point; there are only so many houses, and there are only so many tourists and ex-pats to fill these houses. In addition, what impact does this influx of Westerners have on the medina? Is this centuries-old medina structurally able to handle a rapid increase in Western toilets and showers? And, more complicated still, will Westerners still be drawn to the medina when many of the original Moroccans have left? What’s the point of buying or renting a house in Morocco if you’re not surrounded by Moroccans?

Maybe I’m giving tourists too much credit; the rapidly changing medina may not affect tourism at all. Because riads-as-guesthouses, for all their restored Moroccan glory, are essentially safe havens for Western tourists in the midst of the overwhelming medina. You feel like you’re getting an “authentic” Moroccan experience while experiencing as little of Morocco as possible. It’s hard for me not to condemn riads as a mild form of Orientalism; people see what they want to see of a country without truly opening their eyes to the amazing, complex world around them, filled with flaws but also with incredible beauty. In this way, it seems like riads will continue to thrive well into the future, since their guests (by and large) aren’t seeking out a particular character of the medina but instead are looking for an experience that can be created with or without the actual medina intact.

Westerns who make their home in the medina are also creating an interesting dynamic here. A Fulbrighter from last year (a graduate student in film) bought a house in the medina; she plans to turn it into a film school for Moroccans. She’s developed a symbiotic relationship with the medina, and it’s a really cool thing to see. But I also witness some less than positive attitudes from ex-pats; one homeowner memorably responded, after I asked him if he planned to stay in Morocco indefinitely, “Of course not. But it will be so great to tell my grandchildren that my first house was in Morocco.” I was blown away by the selfishness of this statement, and I think about it a lot as I examine my own place in the Fes medina and in Morocco.

As much as I like to pat myself on the back for avoiding some of the common tourist/ex-pat pitfalls, I’m definitely not above criticism. As a clearly non-Moroccan woman, it’s nice to sometimes go places where I don’t feel like I’m constantly on display, and I find myself frequenting cafes and restaurants geared towards Westerners. I'm renting a house that belonged to a Moroccan family just a few years ago. And, of course, I travel, fueling the tourism industry that I'm so quick to criticize. It’s easy to get bogged down with guilt about my role in the larger changes in the medina.

But I’ve come to realize in the past six weeks that massive amounts of guilt does absolutely nothing- It’s crippling, not constructive. I’m only one person, and I can only take responsibility for so much. I’m reading a really wonderful novel right now: The Map of Love, by Ahdaf Soueif. The story revolves around a British woman’s journey to Egypt in the early 20th century. She reflects in her journal that, “It must be so hard to come to a country so different, a people so different, to take control and insist that everything be done your way. To believe that everything can only be done your way.” (70) I try really hard not to embody this idea, and I find myself succeeding, shuyyah bi shuyyah (little by little). While Marjane and Asima, Moroccan superstores, once held a comforting allure, I now look forward to grocery shopping in the medina, and only head to Asima for the few things I can’t find in the street markets (peanut butter, sliced turkey, skim milk).

I’ll never be Moroccan, and, if I aspired to be, I'd be losing aspects of my identity that I'm proud of, that I've worked hard for. My job isn't to become Moroccan anyway, it's to explore, learn, and represent the United States as best as I can. And, most importantly, I don't want to be selfish with my experience. My roommate, the one who's studying riads, has been tossing around the idea of writing something about sustainable tourism and pitching it to guidebooks. I'd like to do something like that; it seems so silly to have this amazing opportunity and keep it all to myself. But I have no idea what form I want my final product to take. Oh, well. I have plenty of time to figure it out.

dar dyalii zween bizaaf (my house is very beautiful)

This is one of our two salons. Perfect for entertaining large groups of students who need a night away from their host families.


Traditional Moroccan homes have internal windows and courtyards. Even the most opulent Moroccan homes aren't very fancy on the outside; inside is where all the beauty is.



The is the view from our roof. One the left, you can see the Kairaouine mosque, a landmark of the Fes medina and part of the oldest university in the world, founded in 859 AD.

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Our living room. See if you can find the cat in the photo.

My room. It looks out into the internal courtyard.

Anyway, this is our house. I'm still in love with it a month into my stay here; our landlord is amazing, the location is perfect, and, of course, the house is beautiful.

That's not a tattoo.

Everyone has a breaking point. Mine came when a friend asked me if I had a tattoo on my ankle.

I do not have a tattoo on my ankle.

What appeared to be a tattoo was actually a large circle of dirt and dust that refused to be scrubbed away in the shower, despite numerous, vigorous attempts on my part to make it disappear.

While I’m used to getting a little dirty in the United States, it’s easy to make myself as good as new with a hot shower. Here, the dirt permeates my entire being; it’s difficult to distinguish my feet from my tan sandals and a layer of dust covers exposed skin almost immediately after venturing outside. Attacking this level of filth with a regular shower is completely and utterly futile.

This is where hammams enter the picture. Hammams are communal saunas, and they are a staple of Moroccan life. While I didn’t go to the hammam when I studied abroad here two years ago, this time around it’s completely necessary. Maybe it’s because Fes’s climate is more arid, or maybe it’s because I’m doing more walking this time around, but I’m way dirtier here that I ever was in Rabat. Whatever the reason, it was more than necessary for me to hit the hammam.

The hammam is a social activity as well as a hygienic one, so I made my first trip with my friends Megan and Stephanie. Armed with our hammam gear (a large plastic bucket, small plastic bowl, loofah, shampoo, and a change of clothes), we walked down Talaa Kaber, one of the main arteries of the Fes medina, to our chosen hammam.

18th and 19th century European art is fascinated with the Middle East; more often than not, this art depicts life in the Muslim world as exotic and sensual. This exotic lens is especially noticeable when these artists show women-only settings, such as bath houses and harems. In the eyes of these artists, Middle Eastern women are sensual, passive, and sexually uninhibited.

Of course, I’d always assumed that this depiction was ridiculous, a product of Orientalism and patriarchal times. My theory was proved correct immediately after I entered the hammam, and, by the time I left the building more than an hour later, I couldn’t help but think of this art as completely disconnected from reality.

So, here’s how the hammam works: The first room is essentially a women-only locker room, where women of various shapes, sizes, and ages walk around in nothing but their underwear. My friends and I had opted to pay extra for a personal massage, so this was where we first met our masseuse, Chadija, a fifty-something woman with extremely hairy legs.

After we got undressed, Chadija lead us commandingly into the second room, a large, tiled steam room, where hammam-goers sat on the floor (on their mats) surrounded by buckets of water. We sat cross-legged on our mats. After a few minutes of chatting and sweating profusely, Chadija returned and sat on the floor next to me. At this point I should mention that, while this was my first time at the hammam, it was not the first time for Stephanie and Megan. And so, when Chadija yanked me over to her (I slid across the wet floor) and began to wash my hair, I was a little disgruntled that I couldn’t watch the whole experience happen to someone else before I experienced it myself.

The real fun began after Chadija washed my hair. She grabbed a loofah and aggressively scrubbed down my entire body. Dead skin was literally rolling off of me. At one point, she told me to “Shuuf!” (Look!) at a particularly disgusting hunk of grime; you know it’s bad when you’re impressing a professional with how dirty you are. After Megan and Stephanie were scrubbed off, Chadija left us again, and when she returned she gave us each an equally vigorous full-body massage. Of course, I went first again. Then, Chadija ushered us into the third and final room, where she unceremoniously dumped large buckets of water over our heads and then brought us back to the locker room, where we changed and emerged onto the street a much cleaner group of women.

I had survived my first hammam experience.

What struck me the most about my experience was how completely uninhibited the women were with each other. In the United States, women are conditioned to hate their bodies from an early age- We’re not thin enough, tall enough, our hair is too frizzy, our pores are too big, etc., etc. We’re constantly in competition with our peers to be the most “beautiful.” At the hammam, there’s no competition, no insecurity; it’s simply women enjoying an hour or two in the steam room with their friends and family. Which is why it’s completely ridiculous that artists sexualize the hammam- It’s an experience that couldn’t be less about men.

Without delving into the topic of gender roles in Morocco (I’ll save that for another day), I will say that, while the Western media loves to condemn Muslim countries for what they perceive to be oppression of women, nowhere in the United States can women feel as comfortable with each other as Moroccan women do in hammams. And maybe that speaks volumes about our own culture treats women. Just a thought.