Two Sides of the Same Coin – Noah Huffman

The parlor was set for five with a large silver teapot resting stately on a lacy doily next to five crystal cups and a display of sweet and savory crackers. The late day sun was shining through the open windows above the banquette upholstered in blue, entering freely past the curtains tied to the windowsills. We sat down after climbing three flights of stairs and Karim wiped his moistened brow complaining about the heat. A slight breeze found its way inside uninvited but was quickly welcomed by the party. Malika filled the cups with still-boiling tea, making sure to pour from high above to produce as many bubbles as she could. The glasses were too hot to touch and the tea steamed vigorously out of them. Malika managed to dismiss the heat and took a sip of her scalding tea. “Skhoun,” she laughed, leaning back on the delicate pillows. She placed her cup back onto the table, holding onto the empty top of the glass gingerly with her carefully placed fingertips. I grabbed a cracker to show my interest in the meal, still petrified to attempt in drinking my mint tea. Malika, again, lifted her tea in one hand but grabbed a small paper fan in the other and began to cool herself as she drank her tea. I laughed at the absurdity of drinking hot tea on a hot day, but I mustered the courage to try my own and was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn’t cloying sweet, the way most Moroccans like it.

The old Fes Medina

Karim interrupted the sounds of cautious slurping in asking me how I liked living in Fes for the past three weeks. “The weather there is so hot!” he told me. “You will find Rabat much better, inshallah.” I cracked a smile and nodded my head in agreement. Almost every day that I was in Fes, the temperature was over ninety degrees Fahrenheit; however, the heat was dry, and generally it was very pleasant under the umbrage of the low hanging orange trees. I admit, walking around the old Medina tended to bring a sweat to my back, especially if I were carrying my books andlaptop for class like some sort of Saharan camel. Even in the early morning, the heat could be insufferable. At night, I slept on top of my covers, pressing my body against the cool bedroom wall. It wasn’t until I was awoken by the call of the muezzin at four o’clock that I finally felt the inside of the dar I was staying in somewhat cold. The Fasi, too, were affected by the sweltering heat. During the day, the most foot traffic found was that of shopkeepers and tourists. It wasn’t until the sun went down that the locals began to come out onto the street and enjoy the “day”. The heat permeated into the facets of everyday life, but I found the same was true of Rabat.

Two hundred kilometers away from the scorched city of Fes, Rabat sits on the Atlantic coast, some twenty degrees cooler in temperature, moistened by the sea air. Karim grabs the remote from the table and turns the TV on to the news channel. Different segments flash on the screen while smaller headlines scroll across the bottom, just like any American news station. In the corner, a display of tomorrow’s weather is shown. Karim shouts, “Twenty-six degrees! Unbearable!” I laugh to myself, remembering how shocked I was upon dismounting the bus after our ride to Rabat from Fes to find the air so cool. I could hardly tell the difference of the outside from the air-conditioned vehicle that I had been trapped in for the past three hours. The days in Rabat stay around a pleasant seventy-five degrees and are certainly more humid than those in Fes. A sea breeze blows gently across the city, refreshing pedestrians and tourists. One afternoon, I decided to explore the area around my homestay and found my way onto a street with many upscale shops. It was the most cars and people I had seen at 3 PM in since being in America. I quickly found that Rabat was much more active during the daytime than Fes. Perhaps it was due to the weather, or perhaps to French colonialism that made the city more diurnal. Rabat gave the impression of being more Western in nature, its buildings newer and sensibilities more European. Where my Moroccan dinners used to be at midnight, I was consistently eating at nine o’clock. But, that makes sense given its colonial past.

The Andalusian gardens in Rabat

A busy beach in Rabat                                     

Rabat was not always the capital of Morocco. Before the French colonization, the Moroccan capital was in Fes. Today, Fes is still the spiritual and cultural capital of the nation, but Rabat remains the administrative and official political capital. The French chose to move the capital

A cat enjoying the weather in Rabat

for a variety of reasons. They disliked the location of Fes as it made it hard for French colonists to escape if things turned sour. Furthermore, Rabat came with all the advantages of a coastal city and was close to Casablanca which was correctly predicted to be a commercial mecca for the Western world. Rabat was at the crossroads of both Fes and Marrakesh, as well, granting it a central location to the most important spots in the country. From Rabat, the French could rule effectively and comfortably, especially in the paradisal climate. The two cities paint very different pictures of Morocco. Fes crafts one that is cultural and harkens to its ancient heritage as well as one of blistering heat and late nights. Rabat, however, shows the more commercial and modern side of the country, but still maintains the essential ideas that make Morocco unique.

In Rabat, the people take the weather for granted. They imagine living in the Fes valley with distain and gasp in horror when they hear about our escapade to the Sahara in the hottest month of the year. Accustomed to the temperate, they fear the heat. When my host family asked about my plans this week, I informed them of my intentions to visit Marrakesh on the weekend. And to that they said: “You’ll melt!”