For the first few days here, most of us only went two places; our homes, and the Institute for Language and Culture (INLAC). INLAC is inside the old medina, and is the school where we’ll be taking our classes for the next two months. My host-mother just calls it “al-madrasa,” and that’s where I tell her I’ll be during most of the day. INLAC is in an old, riad-style home. After walking through the main entrance, you can either go left up a set of stairs or left into the main courtyard. When the house was originally built, the court-yard have been uncovered, but when INLAC was renovating the building, they put a canvas roof over it that still let’s in the light. There are several table here, and the courtyard is surrounded by two classrooms, the administrative office, a kitchen, and INLAC’s library. It’s here that we all meet in the morning, take our hour and a half long Arabic class, have our morning tea, and, later, eat lunch. Upstairs are more classrooms, and we have our eleven o’clock class in one of the second-floor classrooms. At the top of the building is the terrace, which looks out over all of Fez’s old medina and far down the valley in which Fez is built.
Fez is divided into three main districts. The old medina, where we have spent most of our time, is the oldest of the districts, where the city was originally founded in the 9th century CE, and is surrounded by the ruins of the walls that used to protect the city. The old medina is also a UNESCO world heritage sight, and is one of the largest inhabited areas that is inaccessible to cars. Atop one of the hills that overlooks the old medina is the new medina, which was founded in the 13th century CE as an administrative center for one of Morocco’s new dynasties. The final and third district, which cannot be seen from the roof of INLAC, is the new town, which the French built during the Colonial period of the 20th century. As such, it is considered the most modern part of the city, and is home to the city’s current administrative buildings, shopping malls, and the train stations.
We learned about most of this on the first day in Fez from Dr. Moha Ennaji, one of INLAC’s directors. The other director is his wife, Dr. Fatima Sadiqi. These two doctors are the ones who teach what I refer to as our “eleven o’clock class.” Dr. Sadiqi has on Mondays and Wednesdays from 11-12:30, and is teaching a class on gender in Morocco. Dr. Ennaji has us for Tuesdays and Thursdays, and is teaching us a class on social movements in North Africa. The two classes are closely related, as Dr. Ennaji pointed out that one of the largest movements is the Feminist Movement, which Dr. Sadiqi will cover with us.
Dr. Ennaji’s and Dr. Sadiqi’s teaching styles seem to be so similar, it sometimes feels as if we are taking one class with them, not two. They both give their lectures in a stern, commanding voice, taking us slowly through the point they are trying to make so they know it is clear. They both leave room for questions, too, looking around the room after a pause to see if any hands are raised. They’re both kind, though I think Dr. Sadiqi tends to make more jokes. I’m excited to keep taking classes with them.
For our Arabic classes, we are divided into two groups. One group is being taught by Khalid, a tall, lanky man with a beard and an easy laugh. The group I’m in is being taught by Mohsine, who is shorter and paler, with a mop of thick black hair. The directors also have two administrative assistants, Youssra and Zeenib, who work out of the office next to the courtyard. Youssra came and got us on our second day in Fez, leading us from the hotel we stayed in to INLAC. We were all carrying our luggage, and we seemed a strange sight, I’m sure, trudging through the old medina with hundreds of pounds of baggage. At one point, Youssra turned and told us that we only had fifteen more minutes to walk. Then, she turned a corner with us, walked up a street for one minute, and told us we had arrived, laughing happily. Zeenib started at INLAC the same day we did, and is actually friends with some of the people we knew from Marrakech, since she used to work there.
We met our host-families on our first day. After a quick orientation with Dr. Ennaji, we walked down to the courtyard and found our families there, waiting. We awkwardly sat, and Dr. Ennaji gave a quick speech in Arabic, and then began calling out names. Mine was the fourth name he called, and when I stood, he pointed me to a small woman with a bent frame. She gave me a quick smile, and insisted on trying to carry me bag, until she felt how heavy it was. We made it out the door and had wandered a way down the street, and then asked me if I had something. I shook my head, and she asked another host-family that was leaving at the same time. The mother pointed back to INLAC, and just as we arrived, Youssra stepped out. “Dr. Ennaji pointed you to the wrong woman!” she said, then said the same thing to the woman I was with. We went back inside, and Youssra pointed to my actual host-mother, an equally small woman wearing a black overcoat and a pretty green hijab. After a quick laugh, my new host-mother and I left INLAC. Her name is Halima.
Halima lives on the edge of the old medina, in an apartment near the Bab Jdid. She lives alone, though her brother sometimes comes to visit. The apartment is simple; the kitchen is only big enough for her to stand in, and the toilet and the shower are in the same place. She’s given me a small room just off of the living room, which is just a bed and some shelves for my clothes. The shelves are especially nice; I didn’t have any with Mourad in Marrakech, and this is the first time I’ve been able to unpack since arriving in Morocco. Halima lives in the room next to mine, and in between is the living room with the table where we eat food and a TV. There is one more, much smaller room off of the living room with another table, the fridge, and some cabinets that has a window, and it has become my favorite spot to read during the day.
I’ve discovered that Halima and I live the farthest away from INLAC. Most everyone else lives in the immediate area of INLAC, some even directly next door. Another group lives a little farther away from them, but they are all neighbors as well. Mine is the only house in this direction. It’s worked out well, however; the Batha neighborhood, which has a few museums, some shops, and Cafe Clock, where we all like to hang out, is in the opposite direction, so more than once already I’ve walked a group of people back towards INLAC, dropping them off at each of their homes before finally departing for mine.
Cafe Clock is the same name as the Cafe Clock in Marrakech, where we went to see story-telling. In fact, the Cafe Clock in Marrakech is an off-shoot of the one in Fez, and it also has story-telling on Thursdays. On our first Thursday, in fact, the story-tellers Mehdi and Jawad came to visit us, and Mehdi told a story at Cafe Clock that night. It has easily become clear, to me at least, that Cafe Clock is going to be a place I regularly visit.
My main impression of Fez so far is that it is very different from Marrakech. The city feels closer together. There are hills here, and greenery at the edge of the city. You don’t see the mountains here the way you did in Marrakech. Here, it feels as if you are in the mountains. Never do I feel this more than when I stand on INLAC’s roof and look out over the city, which descends below me, and I see the sharp hills that flank the city on either side. We have two months here. Thinking about that does not make me feel tired, like it did in Marrakech. I don’t think this says anything bad about Marrakech, which I miss immensely. I think it means that, in some small way, I’ve gotten used to Morocco.