Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Easy Sell

I was on the train to Fez, Morocco's iconic, time-machine of a city.  I had been in transit for over 2 full days, including a 20 hour layover in Doha, Qatar. The train was overcrowded and could have used more ventilation.  I was relegated to sitting in the aisle, but was relaxed and feeling happy to be on a train heading to a new city in a new country.


From Morocco


I couldn't help but feel a little worn down.  Besides missing 2 nights of solid sleep, I was hungry.  I arrived on the tail end of Ramadan, the holy Islamic month of fasting.  During Ramadan, Muslims refrain from allowing anything to pass between their lips during sunlight hours.  While non-Muslims aren't necessarily required to fast, it's inconsiderate to eat or drink anything in public.  My options were limited, so I picked up a package of fig newtons and stuffed my face in the privacy of the bathroom stall.

I hadn't bothered to book a hotel,  but was scheduled to arrive at 4:30 in the afternoon, leaving me plenty of time to wander around.  I would be arriving the day before the break of Ramadan, a period of feasting and celebration, which in terms of significance, could be compared to Christmas in the U.S.  I wasn't sure how this would affect the availability of rooms.  I was also unsure just how difficult it would be navigating the old city.  Fez is divided into two sections, the modern half, and the old medina, a walled city whose footprint has remained largely unchanged for the past 700 years.  The medina is a maze of 9000 streets and alleyways in an area of just 1.5 sq miles, and my guidebook guarantees that every visitor will get lost at some point.


From Morocco


From Morocco


A half hour before arriving in Fez, Amin, a well dressed and well spoken Moroccan, joined my compartment and chatted me up.  Amin was a few years younger than me, living in Toronto, and visiting his family in Fez.  He asked me where I was staying.

This is situation is familiar to me and it's one where I hate to mistake friendliness for poaching or poaching for friendliness. I had just read this blurb from my guidebook:
The touts who used to hang about Fez train station to pick up customers have now taken to boarding trains to Fez, often at Sidi Kacem junction.  Be particularly aware of overly friendly young men approaching you claiming to be students or teachers returning to Fez - they'll often have "brothers" who have hotels, carpet shops or similar.
This type of ploy is not new to me, but I had no reason not to play along, or at least hear him out.  His narrative was convincing.  He first told me the name of a nice little place in the old medina where his girlfriend, from NYC, had stayed with her friends.  And then as an afterthought, checked his phone to see if he had the phone number.  Lucky for me, he did.  And then, lucky for me again, he offered to call them to see if they had an available room.  Lucky for me, they did.  He quickly quoted me a room for $24, which was at the high end of the budget spectrum, but not outrageous.  Before I knew it, he had arranged for someone to meet me at the train station.  He also gave me his number and suggested that we meet up later in the evening.  He promised to call the guesthouse.

There was a girl waiting for me at the train station, we took a taxi to the walled city and she led me down a narrow walkway into the medina.  I was already disoriented.  The room was nice, a little overpriced, but nice.  Unsure about where I was and unsure about the practices of Ramadan (the fast is broken after sundown), I asked about finding a restaurant nearby.  She recommend against eating at any nearby restaurants because I might get sick from the food, but conveniently, her mother would be happy to cook a meal for me.  For a $12 dinner, the food was good, if a bit overpriced.  But I had a full stomach and a bed to sleep in. I was happy.

The next morning I was having some bread for breakfast at the guesthouse.  I got a phone call from Amin who informed me that I would be having lunch with him and his uncle and that they would be picking me up shortly, just outside the medina.  I still hadn't made up my mind about Amin.  On the one hand, I was pretty sure that his casual hotel recommendation was disingenuous.  On the other hand, the rest of his story seemed entirely plausible and it's possible he was just helping out a friend or family member by sending them a little extra business.  During our meeting on the train, I kept asking innocent questions about his time in NYC and about his travel plans.  His responses were peppered with extraneous details that would have been incredibly difficult to fabricate.  So off to lunch I went.  Besides, "travel rule" #1 is never say "no" to an opportunity.

Amin and his uncle Hassan, a respectable looking man in his mid-30's, picked me up in an older, but well kept Mercedes.  We stopped at a cafe to have some coffee and bread.  Amin excused himself to go to the ATM.  I made small talk with Hassan, who was living in Switzerland, working as an architect for UNESCO World Heritage.  He was under the impression that Amin and I knew each other from Amin's time in NYC.  He seemed surprised that we had just met on the train.

After coffee, Amin said he needed to make a run out to the family farm, and that I should go with his uncle.  The two of us drove to another cafe so Hassan could say hello to a friend.  We met two older, distinguished looking men.  Hassan informed me that we were talking with the governor of Fez, a good friend of Hassan's father.  While they talked in Arabic, I sat quietly and tried to keep a polite look on my face.  Hassan informed me that we would be having lunch with the governor as I followed them around the corner into an apartment building.

The apartment was spacious and upscale by any standard.  Hassan and the governor excused themselves for prayer and I was left to watch CNN headline news for the next hour.

Hassan and the governor returned from the mosque and we had a feast of a lunch, prepared by the house help.  It was an enormous spread of roasted chicken, couscous, vegetables, and yogurt.  We talked about travel, something Hassan seemed to know something about.  We talked about the hospitality of the Moroccan people and how I was now family, after having shared a meal with him.

After lunch, Hassan took me to his apartment, which was in a new development of the city.  He said that he likes to keep the apartment for when he visits and that he owned many properties.  He also told me about Amin's entrepreneurial ventures of buying Moroccan crafts and selling them in the U.S. and Canada at art auctions.  His apartment was filled with old lamps, tile fountains, and ornate wood furniture.


From Morocco

We killed a few hours smoking grape-apple shisha (hookah) in the midday heat, talking politics and more travel.  Eventually the conversation veered toward the Ground-Zero Mosque controversy.  He asked me if I believed in Osama Bin Laden.
"You mean, do I believe he was responsible for 9/11?" I asked for clarification.
"Yes."
"Yes, I think he was behind the attacks.  You don't?"
"He wasn't.  And I have proof!"  Hassan said, getting more excited.  "Tell me, do you know how many Jews worked in the World Trade Center?"
"No, but I assume there were a lot."
"Five thousand Jews worked in the World Trade Center."
"Ok, that sounds plausible."  I skeptically replied.
"So tell me, how is that not a single Jew showed up for work that day?" he exclaimed triumphantly.
"Um......I don't know.  That's a difficult fact for me to refute right now....." Especially because you're craaazy, I was thinking to myself.  "So who was responsible for the attack if it wasn't Osama Bin Laden?" I was curious to find out.
"I don't know.  The Jews, the media, the government, who knows?" 
"But why then is there video tape of Osama claiming responsibility for it?"  I innocently asked.
"How do you know that the person you saw in the tape was really Osama Bin Laden?"
Checkmate.
"Yep, I guess you are right. I don't know that it was actually Osama Bin Laden because I've never actually met Osama Bin Laden.  You sir, have proven your case."

It was about this time that Amin showed back up.  I asked him a few questions about his business of importing Moroccan goods to the U.S.  He said that he made $30,000 at his last auction and that by getting a certificate indicating that all the goods were art pieces, he could avoid paying import duty on them.  I asked more question and remained skeptical, he seemed to have everything figured out.  Then he offered to get me in on the action.  There was no reason why I couldn't turn the same sort of profit in DC.  Not wanting to go down this road, I simply said that I had no extra money for this kind of venture.  Then he said that he would be maxing out the amount of duty-free goods he could bring back, and that if I wanted to just transport some hand-stitched tapestries, I could take a 10% on the auction price.  I told him I might be interested, but under no circumstance was I going to put up any money for this.  I was sure that he was going to start backtracking his offer, but he did not.  We left the matter unsettled.

Fez is renowned for it's high quality leather goods and for a production process which has remained unchanged since medieval times.  The Fez tanneries are made of primitive limestone vats where pigeon shit and cow urine are still used as a key compounds in leather production. Amin wanted to buy a new leather jacket, because the one he got in NYC for $1200 was sub-standard quality.  Amin had already sweet-talked Hassan into buying the jacket as a gift for him and suggested that Hassan get one for himself.  Amin needed to do some shopping for his import business and so Hassan suggested we go to the leather shop.  And, as long as we were going, I could also take a look to and maybe get a discount for a purchase of three jackets instead of two.


From Morocco


So off to the tanneries we went.  When we walked in I was immediately handed off to an older gentlemen who gave me a quick tour of the place and then started on his aggressive sales pitch.  The month I spent in India was good training for these situations as I politely held my ground and refused to show any preference for any of the products being showcased in front of me.  Out of morbid curiosity, I asked for the price of a black leather jacket.  The negotiation started at $750.  I laughed.  I told him I would give him $50 for it.  Meanwhile I kept Hassan in the corner of my eye, who didn't seem to be doing any shopping at all, just talking to another store clerk.

After talking in circles for 20 minutes, it finally became clear to the salesman that I wasn't going to put up $700 for a jacket.  So then he started in a sales pitch for leather handbags, perhaps for my mother, who surely deserved it.  Hassan, who was supposed to be my bargaining ally, also pressed me to get something and seemed frustrated that I wasn't interested in buying a high-quality leather jacket.  When we walked out of the store, there was definitely a chill in the air, like we just gotten into a fight.  He asked again why I didn't want a jacket.  I told him that I didn't have extra money, and that besides, picking up the jackets was his idea, not mine.  "By the way," I asked, "Where are the two jackets we came here to get?" I was feeling a little angry and betrayed, despite all the warning signs.  He quickly countered that they didn't have the sizes he needed, which was such an obvious lie.  He re-composed himself and said happily that he only paid $500 for each jacket. "Good for you." I said with a little bit of snarl.  He coldly pointed me in the direction of my hotel and muttered something about maybe seeing him the next day.

The next morning I changed guesthouses, effectively cutting off any means of Amin getting in contact with me.  Even as I think about this experience now, I can't quite make sense of it.  Throughout the day I had my guard up, but the more time I spent with them, Hassan especially, the most preposterous it seemed that he should dedicate so much time and effort to make a commission on something like a leather jacket.  He showed me pictures of the house he was restoring in the old medina on a $2000 MacBook.  Mixed in with those pictures were pictures of his home in Switzerland (so he said).  There was absolutely nothing about him that indicated that he made his money by scamming tourists like me, or that it would even be worth his time.  There are far too many details to mention, but after spending 6 hours to him about his life and never being evasive about answers, it's difficult to square the reality with the narrative.

The next day I walked into a random leather shop, picked up a similar looking jacket off the rack and asked how much it was.  Negotiation started at $100, a far cry from $750.  Out of curiosity, I also checked out the import laws on art goods to verify the claims Amin was making about importing.  It turns out that fine-art over 100 years old is exempt from duty, but all other handcrafts are taxed like any other good.  I'm still unsure of the angle Amin was going for when we supposedly agreed that he would entrust me to transport goods worth thousands of dollars.

All in all, the day didn't cost me a single cent and I had quite a nice lunch followed by a shisha session and interesting conversation.


From Morocco


I ran this episode by my brother, who has been to Morocco twice and has had the advantage of a home-stay while taking Arabic lessons.  None of it surprised him.  It's nothing for a middle-class Moroccan to work in Europe for a season and then come back, putting his European credibility to work while taking advantage of rich tourists.  The Mercedes that Hassan drove may not have been his car and nice clothes are cheap to come by.  I can never relate all the details of the day that made the days events seem incongruous.    For me, trying to put all these facts together is kind of like Hassan trying to account for the 5,000 Jews who didn't show up for work on 9/11.  Who can say what makes sense?

This episode, which happened within the first 36 hours of my arrival seemed to set the tone for the rest of my visit.  Just watching Moroccans interacting with each other gave me the sense that they are a warm people, but everyone I interacted with was just trying to sell me something.  The Moroccans that I would have been interested to talk with were probably the ones who respectfully left me alone.


From Morocco



From Morocco


There were two separate instances where boys, maybe 10 years old, started throwing rocks at me because I refused to give them money.  With so many European tourists coming to Morocco to have an exotic Middle-Eastern experience, it's not a surprise to me that the balance is not holding.  For me, it's hard to feel really good about visiting a place where touristic dollars have created a clear class division and along with it, a sense of contempt.  The progress of the world seems to have skipped over Fez the way a single house has been skipped over by Santa Clause in a neighborhood full of good kids.  Donkeys still do all the heavy lifting, as the streets are too narrow for any motor vehicles.


From Morocco


Marrakech is an assault on the senses.  Snake charmers are playing their double-reed flutes (they sound like oboes, but with more of a buzz), all sorts of kabobs are being grilled in the main square, the buildings are pink and lit with ornate lanterns.  It's all a really wonderful thing to experience.


From Morocco


From Morocco


From Morocco


From Morocco