Reading this week:

• Memories of the Slave Trade by Rosalind Shaw
• The Lake Steamers of East Africa by L.G. “Bill” Dennis

Don’t worry loyal and overextended reader, our journey through Spain and Morocco is coming to a close. The morning dawned on our last full day in Fez, and since we were now experts on the artisan scene in Fez, and since there would be no other towns after this (we go to Casablanca after this but didn’t expect to do much shopping), it was our last chance to pick up any particular souvenirs we wanted.

One thing my super amazing wife coveted was a copper tea kettle. In our artisan tour adventures the previous day we had swung by the metalworking street (the damascener was on the saddle street) and although didn’t really stop to check anything out it meant we knew where to go. Many of the things for sale were like, large copper pots, but we found a shop with a few copper teakettles. We asked after a few, got rather high-priced quotes and so walked away for the moment to go back to the leather street. I had wanted a weekender bag but after poking around I didn’t find anything that I really loved or cheap enough to settle for less. But it gave us time to gird ourselves for copper kettle negotiations. I was letting my super amazing wife do the haggling though I tried to act unenthusiastic as a foil to help her lower the price. The most entertaining part is that when I pointed out the lid of the kettle she was looking at didn’t fit (I was trying to get the price lower), the guy just took it over to the anvil to reshape it until it did. The was pretty neat to see actually. We eventually walked away with the kettle and in my recollection we paid more than we should have but what that price was I don’t remember, so it couldn’t have been that bad.

The weirdest buying interaction I had is when I noticed a stall selling wooden buckets that they use in the hammams. My dad at the time wanted a wooden bucket for his blacksmithing purposes. The one he was looking at was expensive but here was one at a very reasonable price, hand-made I assume by the two older dudes who were lounging on the floor of the shop when we stopped by. I was eventually convinced that it would be difficult to a) fit a whole bucket into my suitcase and b) ship it back home to my dad, but on the other hand they had these very cute wooden mugs made in the exact same style of the buckets with staves and copper bands and everything. That was much more doable and I did eventually buy one but the dude seemed kind of confused about me wanting one and also I couldn’t understand what he was saying but presumably eventually I handed over enough money. Dad liked it a lot.

And that was very nearly the end of our shopping. We poked around for some slippers but didn’t find any we liked, so with our two purchases in hand we head back to the riad before setting off on our next adventure. We had gotten a thorough tour of inside the medina, so now we were going outside the medina. To do this we arranged a car tour and met our driver Sadiq at one of the gates of the medina. He drove us around to look at different things while trying to explain them. It was fun but a lot of being driven around to different spots, which is suppose what we asked for. First we stopped at the Jnan Sbil Gardens, which were pretty. Sadiq had us wander around them for a bit. There was a section with guinea pigs, chickens, and pigeons in cages for reasons we were unable to determine. From there we popped over to the Jewish Quarter and looked at the cemetery. We checked out the door to the palace (or more accurately the seven doors) before it was off to a panoramic viewpoint. Sadiq had the joke of the day when he called it the “parabolic viewpoint” because of the all the satellite dishes. That was really good.

The highlight though was checking out Art Naji! Man that was really great. My super amazing wife was interested in the pottery and they have a whole factory there and they are super impressive in the way that people doing a certain thing day in and day out for years and years are. We had a little tour of the pottery making which included a guy throwing a tajine in just a few seconds entirely freehand. Then we saw them painting the things and while the main painter had some measuring tools mostly everyone was just again free-handing the things and they all looked perfect. But the most amazing part was the large-scale tile pieces they did. I was honestly blown away they so were gorgeous and intricate. Truly, very truly, poetry without words. The helical borders were the most amazing to me. Our guide from Art Naji made sure to point out their secure shipping methods but we couldn’t bring ourselves to ask the price. We did check out their gift shop but of the things in there I didn’t get any because they didn’t quite live up to the song in my heart that watching the process had inspired (it was more pottery in the shop than mosaic).

Filled with beauty though we left for another viewpoint, across from our parabolic view and beside the Merenid Tombs. We had been ensconced in the city but to see it from above was a different experience. The view really is stunning. A whole medieval city full of people and life and you are looking down upon it from the Atlas Mountains and it becomes mysterious and distant and a mass of puzzle pieces to pictures you’ll never see. Perfect.