Morocco: medinas as a breadcrumb trail

Report Serge Barret, photos Alain Parinet.

This glass of mint tea, its rims misted with hot liquid, is not just a glass of mint tea. It's a symbol, a whole spirit; the praise of an oriental slowness placed on a blue earthenware bistro table. You could stay like that for hours, floating in the sun. a kind of contemplative emptiness. Especially as the pergolas of the Café Maure in Rabat overlook both the mouth of the Bouregreg river and the Atlantic Ocean, giving it a very wide field of vision. On the other side of the river, almost like a border, the white houses of Salé, the twin city of Morocco's tranquil capital, block the view.

The Café Maure, with its terraces and arbours, is a real institution in Rabat. It's a must for everyone, alone or in a group, and can even be made private. Didn't King Hassan II do the same in his day, celebrating his birthday in style? Only to miss it, this iconic caféYou'd really have to do it on purpose. For it is located in the Kasbah des Oudaïas, one of the must-sees when exploring the city. This is the oldest part of Rabat, and undoubtedly the most charming, so calm with its steep alleys, clumsy cobblestones, whitewashed walls painted halfway up in bright blues, bouquets of bougainvillea or oleanders cascading down; sometimes chickens and, above all, cats everywhere...

Casbah in the capital

Although the first stones of the Kasbah were laid in the 12th^e century - a mosque from that era is still there - it was in the 17th^e It was in the 19th century that the Moriscos, Muslim refugees expelled from Spain, gave it the plastic appearance we see today. There's also the delightful Andalusian garden next door, planted by the French between 1915 and 1918, as well as the semaphore platform overlooking the ocean and the residence of Moulay Ismaïl (1645-1727) - an enlightened king, a bit of a megalomaniac and a great admirer of Louis XIV - which has now been converted into a jewellery museum. What remains the monumental entrance door built in 1195 and, beneath the ramparts, the souk-el-Ghezel square where pirates once sold the Christian slaves they had captured. It's a very small town, and the whole thing can be visited in barely a morning, allowing you to wander into the neighbouring medina via the Rue des Consuls, opened in the early 1900s on the other side of the famous Place aux Esclaves. It's a very clean medina, with a host of antique and second-hand dealers, handicrafts and, above all, carpet merchants, including r'bati, the town's great speciality.

The colourful world of the medinas

Medinas and kasbahs are the order of the day on this tour of north-west Morocco. With or without listed monuments, they are the soul of the country and, far from the disembodied shopping malls of modern cities, are home to a colourful world organised in an almost medieval way: neighbourhoods divided by trade, rich palaces and humble adjoining houses, estaminets with four or five tables, improbable stalls selling anything and everything, spices galore and local produce sold daily on the pavement by the local farmers. In the background, oriental music escaped from some probably pirated CD, sometimes a classic by Fairouz or Oum Kalthoum, but also rock, techno or even rap. It's like that in every Moroccan city, each with its own face, almost its own speciality, but always distilling a unique atmosphere. Let's have a look.

On the way back to Tangiers, along the endless beaches of the Atlantic, you'll miss the delightful, tiny town of Asilah would be a real sin: the walls built by the Portuguese in the 16th and 17th centuries are still standing.^e Asilah has a rich history, with three gates, one of which opens onto the fishing port and the ocean, spotlessly clean alleyways, immaculate walls (except for some that have been completely painted in street art style) and art galleries all over the place. Like all the ports on Morocco's ocean coast, Asilah has had a particularly eventful history. First in the hands of the Portuguese in XVI^e century, it was taken over by the Spanish in the 17th century.^eliberated by Moulay Ismaïl in 1691 and governed at the turn of the 20th century.^e century by the notorious brigand Raissouli. Raissouli had no doubts, since between two plunders, three murders and several kidnappings, including that of the American consul, the rascal built himself a palace at the end of the town, behind the ramparts overlooking the sea.

The palace still exists. You can even visit it on request, or take it private for a cocktail party. As for the rest, just wander through the narrow streets, passing from gallery to gallery, enjoying the excellent paintings in some of them, taking in a pretty perspective here and a beautiful view elsewhere.a wildly romantic sceneAsilah is a fashionable place, with its wealthy Moroccans and Europeans tired of the hustle and bustle of Marrakech and, even more so, of nearby Tangier. Because Asilah is chic, and today it's taken over by very wealthy Moroccans and Europeans who are tired of the hustle and bustle of Marrakech and, even more certainly, of nearby Tangier.

Tangier, then. Just 45 km away, it's a whole other world, even a galaxy, the antithesis of the little Atlantic resort; an atmosphere much more than a city, even if the completely renovated Kasbah apparently appeals a lot to the international bohemian bourgeoisie. For a lot has happened in Tangier. The green and the black have given Tangier its letters of nobility, tinged with a fair amount of sulphur. Between the wars, Tangier was an "international free zone". This meant that it was neither in French hands nor allied to the Spanish, but governed by nine major powers and a more than understanding sultan. As a result, merchants, diplomats and billionaires settled in Tangier, bringing with them an underworld crowd of artists, smugglers, exiles, girls on the make and bad boys. The myth of Tangier as a city of permissiveness, vice and excess was born.

Artists first of all. Painters like Bacon, following in the footsteps of Delacroix and Matisse, film-makers like Pasolini and, above all, writers - Tangier is clearly a literary city - whose list would not fit on the walls of the Sorbonne: Paul Morand, Jean Genet, Samuel Beckett, Roland Barthes and of course most of the greats of the beat generationTennessee Williams, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and, above all, Paul Bowles, who lived in Tangiers from the end of the Second World War until his death in 1999.

Then there were the billionaires. Princes and princesses, but above all the famous and extravagant Barbara Hutton and, a little later, the American billionaire Malcolm Forbes who, in August 1989, organised the 'party of the century' at his Palais Mendoub for two million dollars with 1,000 guests from all over the world, including Elizabeth Taylor and Henry Kissinger. For the occasion, the billionaire, who stopped at nothing, provided his most prestigious guests with his gold-painted DC8, as well as a Boeing and a Concorde. That's how it was in Tangier, until well into the 80s, magical nights nightclubs and cabarets that come and go as fashions and fads change.

We'll discover Tangier like a book of hours, as we wind our way through some of the places that dot the city's skyline. a kasbah in great white The medina and its popular souks tumble down the hill to the port. It's a very quick trip, barely half an hour; a little more if you count the breaks. Old fortress walls, staircases, not many people in the alleyways, high white walls housing - who would doubt it - sumptuous residences, including that of out-of-touch billionaire Barbara Hutton, and the Café Baba at the bottom of a flight of stairs. Why this faded café, which smells of more than just tobacco? Because Keith Richards, among other rock stars, used to frequent it...

As a result, there's no escaping a mint tea break around out-of-date tables with tired marble tops. In fact, there are very few public places in the medina. This café, two or three worthwhile restaurants and also a few tourist shops linking up with the Socco, otherwise known as the souk in Spanish, which caters for all expectations in terms of souvenirs produced by more or less inspired craftsmen, imitations of just about every major sports brand, jewellery shops, but also fruit and vegetable vendors. Bistros, too. And what bistros!

Three of them, gathered around a tiny square, the Place du Petit Socco, tell the story in their own way. the crazy atmosphere of a Tangier that has disappeared forever. Apart from the Central and its terrace bristling with white parasols, the others - the Tingis and the Fuentes café - have remained in their original state, if you can call it that, especially the Fuentes, which is in the process of giving up the ghost and is best avoided in the evenings, as the faces there are so frightful. Genet loved the Tingis, Burroughs preferred the Central. There is hardly a piece of writing or a novel about Tangier that doesn't mention the Place du Petit Socco and its famous cafés.

The old towns of the Moroccan Rif

From here, you can almost immediately reach the esplanade of the old port, which has been transformed into a car park and is dominated by the terraces of the Hôtel Continental, which is still in use today. an institution from the 50s having seen just about every celebrity in the world at the time. Unfortunately, the interior of the building could do with a little sprucing up...

It's evening now, and it's time to head back to the hotel set alongside the newly redeveloped beach, just five minutes from the old town. Tomorrow, he wakes up early for an excursion into deepest Morocco, the Rif, with visit the old medinas of Tétouan and ChefchaouenNot so far apart geographically, but culturally a thousand light years apart. A single day is all it takes to discover them - or would be more accurate to just touch them - with a return to the hotel, in Tangier, in the evening.

In fact, these two towns are a real incursion into the former Spanish Morocco. In Tetouan, for example, the prelude to the medina, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the magnificent Avenue Mohammed-V, lined with Hispano-Moorish buildings with large balconies, tall windows and wrought-iron gates. And then, past the Royal Palace, you enter magical chiaroscuroYou'll find a wealth of shops and boutiques in the city's labyrinth of alleyways, skylights and vaulted passageways. More than elsewhere, the stalls are above all aimed at the local population: bazaars where you are sure to find everything for nothing, fresh produce and oriental scents. A little more than elsewhere too, you'll recognise well-defined neighbourhoods, grouped by guild and as they were drawn up in the Middle Ages: coppersmiths, cabinet-makers, tanners... For the most part, these are arts and crafts that you can discover in the true tradition - wood, leather, plaster, ceramics, embroidery... - by visiting the craft school and its workshops, which are open to the public as well as to groups.

With them will be the last craftsmen we see on this journey, the last visit being to Chefchaouen, nicknamed the blue city, in fact a large town set against the mountains of the Rif. And to be blue, it is blue, this charming medinaThis is one of the prettiest colours in the whole of Morocco. All the houses use this colour, which varies - depending on the quantity and quality of the pigments - from pale blue to Klein blue, to scare away insects.

One last shopping trip - a rustic one, given the mountain village - before returning to Tangier, and one last gift the next day before the evening flight. A wonderful gift, full of flavour, in the form of a cooking class joyously given by Nadia, housekeeper at the Dar Sultan riad in the Kasbah. On the menu: tagine. It's very easy, in fact, and above all, it will make a wonderful souvenir to share back home. It's well worth the effort - Moroccan cuisine is among the finest in the world.