Second impressions

from my first time in Morocco

You know the way western travellers write about their experiences in eastern cultures? So exotic, so strange, slightly magical. If you come with a questioning heart, you may find answers. If you come with wounds, they may be mysteriously healed. Right? Those are the tropes—or maybe the dirty habits—of people from the west writing about visiting the east.

I’m conflicted now. My initial intention for today was to write about my first impressions of Morocco, but I realize I already had a whole slew—a whole slough—of first impressions before I even boarded the plane from Málaga to Tétouan. My first impressions were something like a grab bag of western stereotypes of Muslim culture and a vague awareness that Arabic and French are the primary languages spoken here.

The view from the terrace this morning. Fun fact: the Medina of Tétouan is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

I’m staying at a riad somewhere in the middle of the Tétouan medina. (Dropping words like riad and medina give me a weird emotional cocktail of smugness, pride, and douchebaggery.) The taxi brought me so far—he called the riad owner on his phone, who told me in French that I could pay him with euros. A teenage-looking girl met me where the taxi dropped me off—she also speaks only Arabic. She was there to guide me the rest of the way to the riad. We crossed a street and passed through a large stone gate.

Inside the gate, that’s where I went into survive-the-chaos mode. Corridors rather than alleyways, lined with whatever you want to buy, from silk to fish. And so many cats and kittens, some well fed, some suckling, some holding on for dear life. Several turns into the maze, we make a left turn into an unlit stone stairwell. Halfway up the stairs we turn left into an interior space I recognized from photos on the booking site. I’d arrived, and I had no idea how I’d ever find my way back out of this place.

This is the point in my account where I feel conflicted. I have no context to help me understand what I’m seeing here, and I don’t want to lapse into those western traveller habits of playing up the strangeness. I’m the only one here who finds it strange, because I’m the stranger here.