May 9th, 10th and 11th Ait Ben Haddou and its environs

We left Merzougha early in the morning, as we would have a long drive, mostly along the same road with over 100 kilometers along a different route. This time we drove in a valley within the Anti Atlas Mountains, which provided an opportunity to drive along the old trans-Saharan caravan route though the town of Rissani (previously known as Sijilmassa). There is nothing left of the large caravansari that used to be there, and the only remnants of that wealthier time are the khettara, underwater irrigation systems, that you can see extending for miles. We had lunch at our driver, Rashid’s family home in Kelaa M’Gouna, a short distance from the rose festival pavilion and where the Fantasia was to take place. We were served Moroccan salads, a chicken tanjin with couscous, and some sweets followed by mint tea. We left some funds for the family under the cookie plate after discussions with Abdou.

Despite the day being very hot, many of the local people were out to take in the festival, Fantasia and other markets that sprung up to capture the crowds. We toured the pavilions and the stalls outside, which were all selling basically the same rose water, rose oils, soaps etc. Leslie had learned from the internet how to make rose water using steam distillation and also learned that during the time of harvest, like now, the reason there are so many rose petals for sale in Fez, Meknes and Marrakech is that the women distill their own rose water, either through a small still they own, or one they rent. These stills are also used for making the orange water when those blooms are available (March and April).The delicate white flowers are from the Bitter Orange trees that are very common here in gardens, but from which the orange fruit is not edible. The flowers are distilled for the orange water and the essential oil, also called Neroli after an Italian princess who popularized it in the 17th century. The rind of the fruit and the leaves are used for other essential oils. One of the booths at the rose festival was managed by a Frenchman, and he was proudly displaying a large photograph of his copper still. We left that area and saw a few decorated parade floats starting to line up. One appeared to be for the to-be-crowned Queen of Roses. We headed back to the Fantasia area to see what time things were going to start and encountered more uncertainty, with start times having moved from 3pm to 5:30 to 7pm in just the time that we had lunch. We decided to leave and head on our way, as we still had two more hours to go to reach Ait Ben Haddou.

The whole country seems to be awash with “clay” colored houses, old buildings in their entirety and at least the fronts of the new buildings. Apparently a resident will not get electric or water hooked up to their house until the front is at least of some variation of clay color; terracotta, rust, raw sienna, burnt sienna, some building colors almost reaching the hot 2015 color of the year, 'marsala.'

View out one of our windows

Hand of Fatima

We arrived at Riad Ksar Ighnda around 6pm and were delighted to see this more upscale accommodation in a rebuilt Ksar. The owner is French and has put many interesting touches in the design and décor of the place. We are enjoying our fossil-stone sinks in the bathroom, and the cactus silk (sabra) bedcovers being used as curtains and a myriad of other small touches. We enjoyed a late swim, and dinner started at 8pm and ended two hours later. We are on half board so our dinner was included. The meal was delicious and the presentation excellent.

The next morning, at a breakfast buffet that included real crepes and fresh pancakes, we met the Chef and complimented him on this hand of Fatima décor on the desert plate. Our first stop was the UNESCO world heritage site (designated in late 1980s) of Ait Ben Haddou for a guided tour of this impressive walled Ksar (fortified village), which has served as back-drop to many famous movies including Gladiator, Jesus of Narareth, Jewel of the Nile etc. The Ksar, or multi-family fortress residence, was constructed from the 11th to 15 centuries, and is built on the side of a hill, to gain entrance of which one must cross the river.  

Souvenir shops on way to Ait Ben Haddou

Walking on sand bag stepping stones

At the top of the hill there is the Agadir (Tower of Courage), which makes an excellent vantage point to see the Wadi Melih (salt in Arabic) which has been part of the caravan route where traders brought slaves, gold, ivory and salt westward from sub-Saharan Africa to Marrakech and beyond. The water today is still very brackish, as we can tell from our showers. The salt from the mountains washes down in the river water, which is used in the homes and fields.

As you are walking through the alleys of the historic village you will see artists painting the local scene with 4 ingredients, paint brushes and a small gas stove. The ingredients are: a mixture of green tea with sugar; sugared saffron water; third container is just water and then there is an indigo rock. The artist dips the paintbrush into the water and then pushes it around on the indigo block till he gets the blue color he wants to paint with.

Left side not heated yet

 

After painting with these three colors, of which the green tea and saffron water are barely visible, he turns on his gas cooker and waves the paper drawing over the heat. The sugar in the tea and saffron water caramelizes such that the color changes to a darker one and indigo is set with the heat so it doesn’t rub off. This was an interesting art trick that we had not seen before.  The artist was using just regular watercolor paper it looked like. We bought a small painting for $5.

We headed next to the Akhnif Lglawi carpet cooperative in Tabouraht, just 20 minutes down the road, to view a range of traditional Amazigh carpets.

The “associations” and “cooperatives” here are in reality stores. While they have a loom on display and bring in someone to show you how the handicrafts they have for sale are made, in the end you will have a sales pitch. These artisans will work while you are there and then leave as soon as you start viewing products for sale. The sales speech after your fifth association can be quite repetitive “in the market the quality isn’t like this, in the market they don’t mix the copper with tin, in the market they don’t use natural dyes” etc. As customers we get annoyed when they say that cobalt blue is a natural dye or that hot pink is a natural dye; at that point we are ready to leave the place, because if you know that was is being said about the product can’t be true, you question how true are the other statements being made about the product.

We then went to a shop, Taznakht, which Abou knew that was right in the new town of Ait Ben Hadou  (right across the river from the historical site). The owner spoke good English, and when asked about a bright pink color in a carpet said, that while that color can come from the cochineal insect, they don’t have that here in Morocco so they use chemical dyes. This honesty proved to be the point to make us stay in the shop and discuss the various items. The owner had many little factoids and one was that the Missoni sweater motif was taken from the Berber Glaoua carpet pattern. Once he said that we could really see the resemblance in the bold zigzag and textured patterns as Ed Zinola had a couple of Missoni sweaters that he loved.

Glaoua also known as Zanafi carpets

We had lunch poolside overlooking the stepping stones across the river to the old Ait Ben Haddou UNESCO site. We enjoyed a glass of Meknes rose wine, berber omelets, fresh bread and finished are meal off with a nus-nus coffee (half coffee half milk).

We had been unsuccessful at contacting our friend Victoria’s guide for her Morocco film, Houcine through phone calls as the numbers we had from Victoria and the internet were incorrect. Houcine has a 12 room guest house with a lovely terrace looking over to the UNESCO site (only 8 families still living there). We drove to his guest house and were fortunate to find him there. We invited him to join us for a dinner on his terrace and arranged to come back at 7pm so we could enjoy the sunset.  

We went back to our hotel and had a little nap as the heat is quite intense with the dry air. We woke up to the sounds of drums beating and had to investigate. A bus load of tourists from A1 Travel arrived, and for them the hotel had organized for some traditional music from the village to be played. We enjoyed the show!

 

View from Housine's place in the evening

 After laundry duty, we headed back to La Fibule D'Or, Housine’s place. We enjoyed our meal with him and listening to him reminisce on his 2 weeks travel working with “Vicki” (Victoria Vorreiter) while she was doing her filming. We gave him a DVD of the documentary film that she had produced “Morocco and the Cycles of Life,” and he was very pleased.

The next morning we went to the Imdint Women's Textile Association, which had about 15 members ranging from 19 to about 60 years old. The lady on the left in our picture with the facial tattoos is the oldest, and she does the weaving and dying instructing. We enjoyed meeting these ladies as they were happy to discuss how they dyed the yarns for their carpets, which included boiling the wool first in water mixed with alum and then adding the vegetable dyes to that water. It was interesting to hear that they were making a dark brown color using onion, vinegar and rust powder.

Naturally-dyed yarns in Imdint

 They would collect bits of rusting metal and scrape off the rust so they had a powder they could use. For indigo blue they would mix the indigo, not with the alum water, but with henna, dry figs and ash. (In Oman they use dates instead of dry figs.) After dying with indigo they rinse the items in another pot such that the water is bluish and they then put yarn into this pot to get a very light grey color. They pound all of the natural herbs and twigs into a powder before use, as picking little sticks and other bits out of the yarn is more time-consuming than just taking the time to pound it into a fine powder. All the items that they have dyed they put in the shade to dry all day. The next day they wash with water and dye in the shade again. The day after that the yarn is put into the sun to absorb UV light. At that point it is ready to be woven into a carpet. This was an enjoyable visit and we left a hefty tip, as nothing was available for sale and the ladies had put on a lavish tea spread and shared much information. Leslie shared with them pictures of her quilts and enjoyed the interaction with the ladies.

We then were driven to Ouarzazate to see an embroidery and weaving cooperative. The men do the weaving on looms and often combine the sabra silk (cactus) with linen and cotton. The sabra silk will be one color and it will we woven along with at least one other color so that you have either 2 or 3 threads in the shuttle at any one time. At this “Association” the sales man was really annoying and tried to move us along from watching the weaver to the sales, only on being reassured that the weaver was still going to be there at the end of the presentation did Leslie agree to move away from the loom. Much to her chagrin, the weaver was gone as soon as she turned around while the ladies embroidering were working the whole time and then were assigned to fold up all the un-purchased merchandise that had been spread across the floor for viewing.  We did buy two small items even though the salesman had made another faux pas by saying a turquoise color was a natural dye when it was obviously chemical.

Oufzazate man weaving with doubled thread

We were then taken to a large commercial store selling antiques, carpets, lanterns, etc. The artisan for the two minute display was a metal worker and we enjoyed the sounds of his work. We then went to look at Sabra carpets which were basically $400 each. We had seen the same type of things on the internet for $250 so we knew that we could get a better price from the factoid-rich salesman we liked in Ait ben Haddou.

We had lunch again back in Ait Ben Haddou, poolside with the view and then went back to the shop, Taznakht to make our purchases of two smaller sized sabra carpets to be made into cushions at some point in time. These sabra carpets are to be treated like silk: washed in cold water less than 30 ° with natural soaps. One of the interesting tests on how to tell if a carpet is real vegetable silk is to burn the fringe. If it burns and becomes just becomes ash and falls off you know it's made from a real vegetable matter; but if, on lighting the thread scrunches up into a ball like burning plastic, then you know it's it is woven with a synthetic thread.

We were back at our hotel by 3pm and enjoyed some free time before a late dinner. The Moroccans like to eat late, after the last prayer, so it is hard to get anything before 8pm, according to our experience, and explained by our driver Rashid. It could also be the French influence as well.