On my birthday, I went to Gallup, New Mexico. Not a typical place for celebration, I realize, but I’m kind of fond of how this town has developed in the last decade. There are murals everywhere, you can get handmade moccasins, the county courthouse is cool Pueblo Deco, and there are demonstration dances on the plaza in front every single night during the summer.
These dancers were from Zuni, just south of Gallup. Most of the crowd was local, or American Indians from other reservations.
Another thrill, for my vintage hotel fixation, the El Rancho is one of America’s finest examples. The desk clerk has a pompadour and a bolo tie, and the rooms are named after Hollywood stars who came to the area to film in the 1940s. I slept in James Cagney.
It’s true, I didn’t go to Gallup just for my birthday. I was also on assignment to write about the flea market that takes place every Saturday, from about 10am on, in a big gravel lot on the northwest side, just off the highway that used to be 666. I visited once before, and I was so thrilled about all the cool stuff there that I made this haul video.
What I really noticed about the flea market this time is how it reflects Gallup’s roots–and I don’t just mean its Navajo ones, as Gallup is the “Indian Capital of the World” and where everyone from the rez comes to sell crafts and stock up at Walmart. The town grew up when the railroad came through in 1881, bringing all kinds of enterprising immigrants from everywhere.
So the majority of shoppers and vendors are Navajo—grandmas in velveteen skirts alongside teenagers in giant T-shirts and calf-length denim shorts, carrying pit-bull puppies. But there are also Mexican vendors—selling tacos, handmade Navajo-style clothing in inexpensive fabrics and even sacks of green chile. In July, green chile wasn’t yet in season in NM, but it’s got to come from somewhere, right? Why not drive a truck up from south of the border, filled with chile from hotter climes?
And I saw young Arab girls in headscarves—no idea whether they were new to town, or had deep roots here. Arabs and Muslims from the Balkans came to Gallup very early on, and there’s a big mosque right on Route 66. And then there were the missionaries—still active now as they were more than a century ago, though the current vocal bunch take a particularly strange form. And as if to round out the archetypal Wild West market vibe, I even saw one stand run by very-new-to-town-looking Chinese people, selling imported tchotchkes like paper lanterns and frilly fans.
The main reason I went was to write about the food, which you just don’t see anywhere else. Here’s some “kneel-down bread”—ground-up fresh corn packed in a husk and roasted.
These are so cleverly wrapped up in corn husks, they look just like regular ears of roasted corn.
I asked the woman selling it if it was called that because you had to kneel down at a metate to grind the corn. “No,” she snapped. “That’s just what it’s called.” It reminded me of when I’d asked in Zuni why the bread was shaped that way and got similarly stonewalled. Later, I felt a little vindicated when I was eating my mutton sandwich, and the Navajo woman next to me at the table pointed to the kneel-down bread stand and said, “It’s called that because ladies used to have to kneel down to grind it on the metate…” But next time, I’ll try not to pry.
At Diamond “T” Grill, people were seated expectantly at tables before the signs are even up, waiting for lamb ribs and achii (sheep intestines around strips of fat) straight off the grill. When I asked the grillmaster if I could take a photo of his work, he cracked, “Did you set your camera to Navajo time?”
That's achii in the foreground.
There was plenty else I wished I’d eaten. Not necessarily because it looked tasty–honestly, Navajo food can seem a little Spartan, and it appears to value the sensation of sheep fat coating your mouth. But just because where else, and how else will I ever taste this stuff? It’s a portal into another world. That’s what makes the Gallup flea so special—and heck, worth a birthday trip.
Bonus birthday give-back for my copy editor friends. Slightly misguided proofreader marks from Route 66 in Gallup, on a wild Friday night:
I try to collect a cookbook from wherever I go, sometimes in the local language, sometimes not. I prefer older and traditional, maybe with a picture of a granny on the cover. (My favorite so far: Cocinando con mi abuela, from Campeche, Mexico.)
For anyone who thinks in the same vein, may I recommend two books to seek out on your next Morocco trip.
The first is Fez: Traditional Moroccan Cooking, by M. Guinaudeau, illustrated by J.E. Laurent.
You can tell it’s traditional because it, er, advises you, the reader, to instruct your “negress” to do particular things in the kitchen. Aside from that awkward bit of language, it’s fantastically informative, even telling in impressive detail how to make a family-size bistilla.
The illustrations are quite nice, though more for atmosphere than for instruction.
(Er, sorry so blurry.)
I picked this version up at a shop in Marrakech that otherwise sold rather stylish little modern tchotchkes. Here’s a newer edition on Amazon, with an introduction by Claudia Roden. No idea if the dated language is changed.
The other book has no grandmas anywhere in it, I don’t think, but is solid nonetheless: The Clock Book, by Tara Stevens. (Here’s a link to it on Amazon.co.uk.)
If you’ve been to Fez before, or heard about it from any traveler, you probably know about Cafe Clock, a great little hangout/cafe/cooking school/cultural zone in the Fez medina, started by British man a few years back. The food is a cool mix of traditional Moroccan stuff and more bistro-snacky things (a camel burger, for one). The cookbook covers all the menu items and a lot more. If you want to get a handle on Moroccan cuisine without going hardcore traditional and having to pretend like you didn’t just read the word “negress,” then I recommend this. I promptly cooked a number of salads and cookies out of here and liked them all.
When I was in Fez, I also took a cooking class there with the truly delightful Souad, and learned to cook up a mean lentil soup. And, utterly unrelated and entirely coincidentally, I met Tara in Casablanca, and it turned out she was the very woman a friend in Barcelona had been trying to introduce me to a couple of years back.
The world is small, as usual. And full of tasty things. Thanks to these books, I now have more tasty things at home with me.
When I was a kid, my father and I would drive from New Mexico to Los Angeles to visit my grandmother. We’d leave before dawn, and drive straight through. When we got out of the car in L.A., the night air was warm and humid and smelled of orange blossoms.
My grandmother’s house always seemed exceedingly elegant–tall windows, plush carpeting, long drapes. In the dining room was a drawing in pastels of a medina gate, busy with be-fezzed pedestrians. I knew it was a place in Morocco, though my grandmother had never been there. My father told me she drew it from a postcard, in a class.
Decades later, my father and mother went to Morocco to live for a stretch. Due to the drawing? I don’t know.
When I was just in Fez in June, I passed by Bab Bou Jeloud, the main gate into the medina, quite a few times–the ATM there was the handiest one that accepted my card.
It was only on the fourth or fifth pass that I realized: That’s the gate! (And if you’re thinking that was a slow reaction, note that I’d even been to Fez before.)
Bab #1, 1950sBab #2, present day
The gate was renovated sometime in the last decade, which I assume is why the decoration around it is a bit different. Or Grandma Carol took some artistic license. Who can say? But the two minarets are still the same, and though the fezzes are gone and synthetic fabrics are in, not too much else has changed.
Except for the fact that the drawing hangs on my wall now. Alas, we have no orange blossoms here in Astoria, but occasionally when I travel, I still step into a hot, humid night and think, “L.A.–we’re here.”
Poor unloved Casablanca–or “Caza,” as locals say it, with a nice buzzy z. Six million people strong, and typically dismissed by guidebooks and travelers as not scenic, too busy, too modern.
But especially in a still-very-traditional place like Morocco, it’s interesting to go to the modern place and see just what details are preserved. As I’ve written about Cancun, in a newish city, you can see what people value because it’s there by choice, not just hundreds of years of accreted habit.
So Casablanca has hammams. And it has a little medina. And it has a modern medina, the Quartier Habous, a winding-streets area built by the French. (This, I suppose, is a better reflection of what the French valued in Moroccan culture than what the Moroccans themselves do.) It has loads of cafes. It even has honest taxi drivers, a rare thing anywhere in this world.
And it has plenty of people dressed in djellabas, the long robes with hoods that both men and women wear (with differing levels of decoration). This shouldn’t be a big surprise, but when you see old men in djellabas shuffling along old medina alleyways, it can all seem a little…put on, you know? You get that creeping sense, maybe born of watching too many movies or something, that somehow a place is just an elaborate bit of stagecraft put on solely for your benefit.
But in Morocco, they’re not messing around. People really do wear traditional clothing because they like it–and have adapted it to modern needs. Women color-coordinate their babouches (leather slippers) with their djellaba trim and their headscarves, and they can ride a moped in a djellaba just fine.
What I saw the instant I got off the plane. And it just got better from there.
And when it rains, they can put up the hood. That’s what it’s for–it’s not just some vestigial bit of tradition.
Anyway, enough about fashion. Casablanca is fun, and you shouldn’t miss it, especially if you like Art Deco architecture. (And trams! They’re adding a tram line! Very exciting!) The whole French-built center is chock-full of old-fashioned bars and cafes with foggy mirrors and even foggier-looking old men. The tiny medina is still there, selling knock-off sneakers and vegetables. The sea is all around.
Other than that, there’s only one real thing to see. One of the things I like about Morocco, honestly, is that non-Muslims typically aren’t allowed in mosques. From a religious standpoint, that strikes me as slightly precious, but from a lazy tourist standpoint, it’s a huge relief–it knocks so much sightseeing right off my list! But there’s one mosque everyone’s welcome in, and that’s the Hassan II monster, right on the sea in Casablanca.
Photos can’t quite convey how large the thing is. Here’s one. Make sure you appreciate how tiny the people are. The whole mosque is like one of those sight-gag over-large chairs that make anyone who sits in them look like a kid.
Our guide said the mosque was built over six years by about 10,000 artisans working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Even if I’m misremembering the numbers a bit (likely), is there any comparable building erected in the modern era? The level of craftwork is boggling, straight out of the middle ages.
Once you’re done being boggled by that, you can walk (slowly, if it’s a hot day) to Sqala for lunch. Or you can go to the mosque in the afternoon (2pm is the last tour of the day), and then wander over to Sqala and get an early start on dinner. Or you could go to Sqala for lunch, wander around the medina behind it, and come back for dinner. I’m putting so much thought into the timing of this because I would gladly eat there two, even three times in one day.
Sqala in itself is reason to go to Casablanca. You know how I was complaining about how all Moroccan restaurants have the same five things on the menu? At Sqala, all the treats are out: special juices (date, almond, orange-blossom water, for instance), all kinds of nifty salads, a million little sweets, and tagine combos I’ve never seen elsewhere.
We had a salad spread that included something conch-ish (abalone?) in a tomato sauce, green olives with chicken livers, an incredibly fluffy eggplant thing and something that was so tasty we ate it all, so it doesn’t show up in the photo and I can’t remember what it is. I’m crushed.
We also had a little stew with lamb, saffron, dill and what I thought were regular-but-exceptionally-good mushrooms but I now realize were so-called “desert truffles” (terfes). I had them in Syria a couple of years ago, and thought they were tasty but not tremendous. Here they were wonderfully firm and earthy, but also a bit light and springy. Maybe the Syrian ones weren’t so hot because they’d actually been imported all the way from Morocco that year, due to a bad crop in Syria.
I could go on. The setting here is beautiful, in a courtyard with fountains, under dappled shade. The place is filled with families, and the children are all well behaved. The prices are reasonable.
Another thing you could do to kill time between meals at Sqala is go see a film at the Rialto cinema, which has been beautifully restored. Just about everything is dubbed into French, but if something with enough explosions is playing, it shouldn’t matter. Or you could have a drink at the Hotel Transatlantique, where Edith Piaf once lived for a stretch. It’s not quite as down-at-the-heels as I’d like, but it’s hard to complain about any renovation in Casablanca, where the fabulous architecture is all in need of love and repair. Or you could just ride the tram to the end of the line and back–that’s what I intend to do next time I visit.
Morocco is a slightly tricky place to eat. “Restaurants are OK,” everyone says, “but the best food is served in people’s houses.”
But, the skeptic in me counters, isn’t that true everywhere?
In Morocco, though, it does seem to be more true than elsewhere. Restaurants serve the same three tagines, plus couscous with seven vegetables. Oh, and there’s soup. The end. It can get a little wearing after a few days, and even irritating, just knowing that somewhere people are eating many more varied things than this.
In fact, the best meal we had was in someone’s house. Granted, it was a house where the family had turned their sitting room and courtyard into a restaurant. And the menu, at first glance, did have just the standard items on it.
But what a difference a home cook’s hand makes! Dar Hatim opened a couple of years ago in the Lahoudi section of Fes. It is genuinely the owners’ family home, and is so family-stylie that the guy, Fouad, came to collect us in his car–fortunately, because we surely would’ve gotten lost halfway there from our hotel. Once he sat us down and dashed off to pick up more guests, his wife came out and got us settled. And Fouad’s mother was upstairs in the kitchen the whole time.
We ordered a couscous with vegetables as well as bistilla, the flaky-pastry sweet-savory chicken (or pigeon) pie that’s one of the ultimate dishes of Moroccan gastronomy. We hadn’t eaten it yet on the trip, because I was leery of getting it in a sub-par restaurant. In the wrong hands, it’s a sugary, slightly creepy mess.
But first, the salads. So simple…and so many.
Beets and black-eyed peas and string beans and carrots and and and...
First, I must congratulate Meg and Emily for their exceptionally restrained eating habits throughout the trip. Even when presented with something so-so in a restaurant, I tend to finish it out of some obscure sense of duty. Which is especially misguided in a place where serving sizes are monstrous. But Meg and Em were able to eat a normal amount, and sit back, guilt-free. I only wish I could bring them to Mexico with me, to keep me in line there.
At Dar Hatim, however, they were the teensiest bit undone but the array of salads. And then Fouad’s wife came in and gently chided us: “Is that the best you can do?” she said, with a small frown. She made no motion to remove our salads, just turned away and walked back to the kitchen.
“Activating. Second. Stomach,” Em said, gamely. We each earmarked our favorites, and when our judge returned, she deemed it acceptable to move on.
To the couscous. Which, you know, isn’t filling at all. It was full of butter, and vegetables with a texture that said “cooked to death” but flavor that said “I am exactly what a dream zucchini was always meant to taste like.”
Fortunately we didn’t have to finish that before our two bistillas arrived. They were beautiful, so plump and flaky on our plates, bedecked in cinnamon, confectioner’s sugar and toasted almonds.
“Third. Stomach,” croaked Em.
There are several secrets to bistilla. One is to balance the sweet and the savory. Another is to get the moisture of the filling–a combination of chicken, eggs, herbs and stock–correct. And another is to keep the warqa, the pastry sheets, whole and properly flaky.
Warqa on their own are such an art that most sensible cooks buy them from specialists. Here’s what the process looks like, by a dedicated expert in the Fes medina:
Yes, the woman is applying gobs of dough by hand to the hot skillet–a very sticky, wet dough that leaves the barest film behind, just enough to create a translucent, slightly stretchy crepe-like thing that’s whisked off (again, by asbestos-hand) and set in a stack. According to a cookbook from the 1950s that I bought in Marrakech, it takes 140 of these sheets to make a proper family-size bistilla, about as big around as a small coffee table.
Fortunately, Dar Hatim’s bistillas are single-serving (er, allegedly), so require a slightly fewer sheets of warqa. We managed to eat just about all of ours.
Emily looked truly sad as she left her last bit untouched. Fouad’s wife had mercy and did not chide us this time. After dinner, she invited us upstairs to see the kitchen–just a regular home kitchen, with the addition of a nice oven for the bistilla. We groaned slightly as we hauled up and down the stairs. I, at least, was slightly relieved we’d had only this one meal in a house. I’m not strong enough for many more.
Ah, blog tagging! I’d forgotten about such a thing, paddling way over here in my little Queens tidal pool. But the excellent Conner of Here Is Havana just reached out and tagged me for this 7 Links round-robin. (Here are her selected links–all pretty great reading if you’re curious about Cuba.)
So hop into the way-back machine with me, and let’s check out some goodies:
1. Most beautiful post:
I’ve got 845 of the buggers. I can’t find the one that used to make my throat constrict and tears spring to my eyes. Can’t even remember what it was about. So instead: How I learned to cook, via Madhur Jaffrey.
2. Surprisingly successful post:
Just scrolled down to see what was charting as my most popular post. What?! New Mexico #4: All Aboard the Rail Runner? This warms my heart, because I guess this means I’m not alone in loving trains.
3. Most popular post:
Technically, second-most-popular: Car Insurance in Mexico: My Experience. This is my most straight-up, just-the-facts-ma’am post ever. So I just ignore the fact that it’s popular, because that might imply that my lyrical wordsmithing and my deep, deep thoughts might not be the reason people read this blog. La la la, I can’t hear you, stat counter.
4. Most controversial post: My commentary on the flap around Thomas Kohnstamm’s book about his first gig as a Lonely Planet author. Stupid Yahoo killed my comments in that era, but eesh, I got an earful by email. I stand by it all, though I take even fewer freebies than I used to–not worth the trouble.
Runner-up: I complained mightily about Pistilli, Astoria’s worst developers, in Why Astoria Will Never Be Cool, and it pulled out all the love-it-or-leave-it Queensians who didn’t get the tone. Again, no comments thanks to Yahoo, but there were some gems. Years later, I’m channeling my Pistilli loathing into Astoria Ugly.
5. Most helpful post:
I set up this blog back in 2004 to record the details of our pig roast, because at the time, I couldn’t find anything similar online. Turned out the pig rocked, and we did a lamb for good measure. And in the course of writing the specs down, I also wrote a long story. And years later, that story got turned into a section of Forking Fantastic!, and then people read that and did their own. So by that definition, that single post has likely helped the most people.
Runner-up: Cancun bar bombing: not a tourist issue. I woke up one morning and was dismayed to see people freaking out on Twitter about an explosion in a bar in Cancun. I used Twitter then to spread the word about the bar’s real location. I hope I helped some people feel less freaked about traveling to Cancun.
6. Most underappreciated post:
A whole set of them, the ones I wrote about Robert Farrar Capon’s book The Supper of the Lamb. Rereading them (start here), I can’t say they’re really bursting with my best writing, but I feel like they’re underappreciated because not every. single. person. has written to say “Thank you thank you thank you for introducing me to this book!”
On the other hand, come to think of it, maybe these posts are how I came to know A Thinking Stomach? In which case, I’m completely satisfied.
7. Post that I’m most proud of:
I think this one about the Momofuku cookbook, line cooking and copy editing. After seven years of blogging, I think I’m finally getting better at controlling my urge for digression. This one is focused and doesn’t gallop off by itself.
Now time to pass the hot potato. I tag:
A Thinking Stomach: I live vicariously through her garden. Killing Batteries: Fellow LP author, master of the miserable/hilarious trip diary. Food Bridge: All the nuances of Israeli food. Which I have not yet eaten, and it kills me. Hudson Line Rider: Beautiful smartphone pics of an NYC commute. Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking: Kate the Great, bursting with tips and thoughtful words.
Now I see why, when people sell their books, they just copy and paste the announcement from Publishers Weekly. I don’t really know what else to say.
Co-author of Forking Fantastic! and travel writer Zora O’Neill’s THE CRIMSON SOFA: Journeys Into the Arabic Speaking World, which uses the author’s twenty years of learning the thorny Arabic language and her travels in the Middle East and North Africa to shine a personal, illuminating and often humorous light on the diverse cultural and social landscape of the various Arabic-speaking countries, to Amanda Cook at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, in a pre-empt, by Gillian MacKenzie of the Gillian MacKenzie Agency (World English).
To make it seem a little more concrete, I did a Google image search for “crimson sofa.” I got this. Hmmm.
Go eye patch!
And then this:
The lovely Diana Vreeland, on her lovely crimson sofa
Which made me realize…duh, I have a crimson sofa. But I don’t look that glam on it, and I won’t be hanging out on it much in the coming year. The book won’t seem real until I start traveling and writing. First stop: Egypt, this fall.
This post covers the practicalities of visiting a hammam in Morocco, and what to expect when you go–skip to the end for the summary. But first, some preamble.
At some point in my Middle East Studies academic experience, I read part of a travelogue by a 19th-century Egyptian government guy who’d gone to France on a diplomatic mission. “The people there are quite strange,” he mused (I’m paraphrasing). “They eat in public and bathe in private.”
Maybe this is why I like the Middle East–I love me a public bath. I’ve been to hammams in Turkey and Syria, but never before in Morocco. In Istanbul, the hammams are pretty much a tourist thing. In Damascus and Aleppo, they’re half-and-half–some are glitzier than others. Tragically, in Cairo at least, there are no remaining non-sleazy hammams (although I read one was being restored?).
In Morocco, however, they’re still really used for regular old bathing, because so many people don’t have good facilities in their oh, you know, six-hundred-year-old houses.
First step was locating a hammam. They’re so common in medinas that often they don’t have signs (or they’re marked only in Arabic)–you just have to know that there’s usually one near the mosque. I was in Marrakech, so I went hunting for the Bab Doukkala hammam, which is through an unmarked red-and-white-painted entrance off the northwest corner of the Bab Doukkala mosque.
After I’d scoped out the location and asked the door guy what I needed to bring, I went out to collect all my accoutrements: gooey traditional Moroccan soap, a scrubby glove, a towel, underwear. I had to buy underwear because I’m the kind of mercenary traveler who packs only thongs because they take up less room. Mine are also totally shot and barely stay on, so I figured it would be better to have a pair that would guarantee some decency. Buying this underwear, incidentally, was my first introduction to the Marrakech custom of quoting prices in rials, which are a fictitious unit that’s 20 to the dirham. First I was indignant at the underwear seller asking me to pay about $20 for a crappy pair of granny panties, then humbled when he kindly picked the right amount (4 dirhams) out of the coins in my open hand.
The $20 granny panties in question
My guidebook had exhorted me to bring a plastic mat or a stool to sit on, but I couldn’t find any mats, even at the shops that seemed to specialize in hammam gear, and investing in a plastic stool seemed like a waste. So I figured I’d subject my butt to the hammam floor, and hope I didn’t shock anyone with my poor hygiene–these fabled mats weren’t ever used in the Turkish or Syrian places I’d gone.
Finally, I gathered my traveling companion, and we set off. Meg had never been to a public bath situation, but said she was up for it. I knew roughly what to expect, but when I’d peeked my head into this and a couple other hammams in the neighborhood, they looked pretty bare-bones. The ones I’d been to in Syria and Turkey all had lavish lounges for sitting and drinking tea after, and loads of towels available and that kind of thing. Here, I’d seen no such comforts.
We paid our entrance fee to the man at the door, and then he carefully made change for me so that I’d have exact money to pay the attendants inside for our scrubbing (gommage) and stashing our bags. We got the stink-eye from the main attendant for not getting massages, but I figured a regular rubdown was intense enough.
In the big, very vaguely defined changing area, we stripped down to our undies, put on our flip-flops, clutched our little towels and gingerly removed our glasses. We were at the mercy of the hammam ladies now.
We needn’t have worried: As soon as we were inside the big central domed steam room, a woman bustled over with two plastic mats (hooray!) and sat us down by a pillar. She hung our towels up for us, then grabbed our tub of soap and exhorted us to rub it all over. Some other women sitting nearby made sure we lathered up our faces too.
We sat and softened up for a bit in the steam, while our attendant filled a giant bucket of water and dragged it over to us. When we were suitably tender, the attendant pulled on one a glove and set to work on Meg. She scrubbed and scrubbed, occasionally pausing to see whether Meg’s skin had flushed. She didn’t move on to a fresh limb until the first one was properly lobster-red. Then she sloshed on warm water from the bucket, and proceeded to the next quadrant.
Notably, the hammam attendant didn’t stop to show off the little rolls of dead skin that were building up on her mitt. This is a standard part of hammam-for-tourists theater. Here in Marrakech, scrubbing off those little wormy bits of skin was just so completely normal that I don’t think it occurred to our woman to highlight it.
While Meg was down, I got to look around the hammam, with my fuzzy vision. It’s so rare in the US to get to see naked people, and there’s something so heartwarming about seeing so many different sorts of flesh. Here was everything from an astoundingly lithe and firm young woman to a mountainous older matron, all happily scrubbing themselves and each other. Maybe it was the steam talking, but it did feel like world peace was attainable, if we all just took our clothes off.
Then it was my turn to get the gommage. I slipped around on my plastic mat like a fish on a boat deck. I grew gradually warmer as each inch of my true skin was brought to light. Being in such authoritative hands was more relaxing than any massage I’ve ever had.
When she was done, I sat there panting a little as the attendant went off to get some shampoo. She also brought one of those little plastic brushes that fit in the palm of your hand, and proceeded to mercilessly detangle both of us. A few days later, I invested in one of those for the long haul.
Our attendant stood us up and sloshed us both with the last water from the bucket. We’d been scrubbed clean like newborn babies inside half an hour. We could’ve lingered and chatted, like all the other women in the steam room, who were working at a much more leisurely pace, but I wanted to get outside and marvel at my brand-new skin.
Though it did seem a shame to encase my perfect cleanness in my nasty old traveling clothes–and to subject my steam-dazed brain to the rigors of regular Marrakech street life. I could’ve used a little buffer zone between freshly bathed me and the real world, a little more time to sit and marvel about how odd and unfortunate it is to bathe in private.
Practicalities: Hammam Bab Doukkala, Marrakech
Cost: 10 dirhams entry, 10 dirhams to stow a bag, 50 dirhams for gommage (scrubbing). These are the general rates at all neighborhood hammams. Massages are also available (I think for another 50 dirhams or so). Women’s hours are from noon till about 7pm; men’s are early morning and later in the evening. (Some hammams have separate men’s and women’s sides, so you can go anytime, but it’s more typical to see this split schedule.)
All the gear you need is available from shops near hammams, or in the spice-seller areas of medinas. You’ll usually spot them first by their displays of the scrubby mitts–most sellers hang a bunch of them on strings, like garlands.
sabon baldi the gooey black soap made from olive oil, sold in bulk. I got a small tub, good for about five washings, for 10 dirhams. Of course you could bring regular soap, but it’s not as good! If you decide to bring some home, ask to get it wrapped up in a plastic bag with tape, so it doesn’t ooze in your bag.
a keesa a scrubby rectangular mitt made of crepe de chine. Some women are old-school and use a terracotta thing that looks like a pot-scrubber, covered in a crochet cozy. This seems harder to maneuver.
shampoo
ghassoul Totally optional, but for the full hammam treatment, use this clay-like stuff to treat your hair. (Don’t be tempted to put sabon baldi on your hair! It’ll never wash out.) It’s sold in small brownish chips, again in bulk. A standard-size bag of it is about 10 dirhams and will last for many washings. You make a paste with the ghassoul and warm water, then work it through your hair and let it sit for about 10 minutes. Then you rinse it out and shampoo.
a comb or brush with big teeth for using on wet hair. Those little palm-held brushes are good and cheap.
a towel Don’t tell them I said so, but one from your hotel is probably fine–it won’t get nasty.
plastic flip-flops to wear inside the hammam, more for your own good than anything. The place I went, not a lot of people were wearing them.
a plastic mat If you’re in Morocco a while and think you might go to a hammam more than once, get your own, so you have you a smooth, clean spot to sit on (the floors are often just rough concrete). If you don’t bring your own, they’ll probably have an extra for you to use, but again it’s more for comfort than for strict hygiene etiquette–I think you could go without one and not shock anyone. The typical mat is about twice as large as a placemat, and they’re usually rolled up and stashed off to the side at shops selling hammam gear; once I knew where to look, I saw ones that were smooth plastic, and others that were sort of ridgy foam things.
a caftan or some similar loungewear (or a couple more big towels), if you want to sit around a bit in the changing area to relax
an extra pair of underwear You’ll wear yours into the hammam, so you want a dry pair for later.
Here’s what the soap and glove look like:
Nasty, right? No! Best spa tools in the world.
And here’s the hairbrush. Note the random application of the alligator logo.
As Peter and I got off the Q18 bus in Maspeth, he briefed me: “Remember, if anyone asks, we have a car, but it’s in the shop. We love the Mets. And the city hasn’t been right since Giuliani was in charge.”
Maspeth is one of those “real Queens” neighborhoods, where you understand why even the mention of my fair borough’s name inspires fear in the hearts of Manhattanites. There’s no subway access. Everyone owns a car. And the demographic is fairly old-school, conservative white.
We were here because we always make jokes about taking the most impractical transit route. And then occasionally we do it. This time, we were headed to a movie at the wonderful Kew Gardens Cinema. But for some reason that didn’t seem like a really exciting plan until Peter suggested we walk. And to sweeten the pot, he said, we could take a bus first. Starting in Maspeth skipped us over a lot of territory we already knew well and dumped us in an area we wouldn’t otherwise go.
We grabbed a slice of pizza (sesame seeds on the crust!), admired a display on historic Maspeth in the local bank window, and then headed for the nearby cemeteries. There’s a whole swath of them in this part of Queens, which shows where the border of “town” was, way back when–as cemeteries are always set on the outskirts. Now they’re just consumed in the larger tangle of Queens.
We had trouble finding our way into the first one, though some street signs clarified:
I should hope so. This is Queens, after all.We finally made it into the Lutheran All Faiths Cemetery, a refreshingly scrappy place, with lots of plots overrun with weeds and wildflowers and mulberry trees. As the name indicates, it’s the catchall cemetery. There’s a mass memorial to the victims of the General Slocum steamboat fire. Around the edges were newer graves, which some people were visiting for Father’s Day. Fortunately, the cemetery appears to have relaxed its policy on plastic flowers.
On we trudged, through the adjoining cemetery and past thousands of German headstones. In the newer part of this one, many of the graves were for Puerto Ricans. And Chinese. This mishmash, even in death, is what I consider the real Queens.
Out the other side of the cemetery, and we felt like we’d been dumped in some small town. These train tracks are spookily abandoned. I don’t know how a city like New York can afford to have abandoned train tracks cutting through for miles, but that appears to be the case. Maybe they can earn some cash back by hiring them out for a remake of Stand by Me.
But soon we knew we were back in Queens. A utopian version of Queens. We have these kinds of row homes in Astoria, but they’ve all been colossally messed with over the years, so the original vision has been lost.
I’ve never seen such a pristine block. American flags were fluttering. Lexuses were parked. Women were speaking Brazilian Portuguese. Like I said, utopian Queens.
Soon enough, we were on the straightaway, down Metropolitan Ave. Where we saw the Chalet Alpina. I am still mentally apologizing for the extremely stupid penis joke I made, just before a sturdy older gentleman exited the heavy wood front door and said to us in a thick German accent, “Try anysink. You cannot go wrong.” Shamefaced, we peeked inside–only to set eyes on a real live woman playing a real live accordion. It was only 5pm, though, and we weren’t hungry yet for schnitzel. We soldiered on.
When we passed an old-timey soda fountain, we did magically get hungry for ice cream. Our timing was flawless–we’d apparently just missed an insane rush of Father’s Day sundae consumption. Behind the marble counter was a mess of sticky glasses and wadded-up napkins, and our counter guy looked a little shell-shocked. My chocolate ice-cream soda (with chocolate ice cream) was pretty splendid nonetheless. But we were getting close to our appointed movie time, so I had mine in a to-go cup, instead of a nifty glass like this guy’s.
Fueled by sugar, we made it to the theater with five minutes to spare. That gave us five minutes to duck into the wood-paneled gloom of the Homestead Gourmet Shop, where the glass cases are packed with German specialties. The Homestead deli is right across the street from the Homestead retirement home, and they both use a similar typeface in their signs. Could it really be that the two businesses are related? If so, I think I’ll be looking into an assisted-living situation there. And the train whisks by right behind. And the movies are across the street. Where do I sign?
Scooted into our seats for Midnight in Paris just as the previews started. Kew Gardens is a great place to see a movie all about nostalgia, because its halls are lined with old film posters, and the whole operation seems like it’s from a gentler era. Tickets cost $10! The carpeting has cool Art Deco patterns! Genuine teenagers work here! (Non-New Yorkers: This is remarkable because everywhere else in NYC, all the crappy service jobs are held by full-grown adult aspiring actors. Takes some of the innocence out of it.)
After the movie, we heeded the siren accordions of Chalet Alpina and walked back, through Forest Hills Gardens, ogling mansions all the way. We tucked in to wicked schnitzel, some lard-loved spaetzle and hearty goulash soup. Our brusque waitress shamelessly upsold us (“Zat schnitzel is very small. You cannot share it.”), but we couldn’t complain about anything.
We toasted each other with our giant beers. “What a great trip to Wisconsin,” Peter said. Sure, you read about Queens’ ethnic diversity all the time–its Indian, Colombian, Chinese, etc. scenes. But I never expected a day out to end with sauerkraut.
Earlier, just after the movie, we’d had a quick beer on a patio just next to the LIRR tracks. We were looking at our handy-dandy Queens bus map and plotting our next move when our waiter (another teenager) asked, “You guys tourists?” The way he said it made me for once proud and flattered to be a tourist. “Only from Astoria,” Peter answered–but I think that counts.
, by Tahir Shah, and 
, by Joseph Braude.
1. Most beautiful post:
4. Most controversial post:
6. Most underappreciated post:
7. Post that I’m most proud of:
