Tetouan: A Taste of Real Morocco

Friday morning, Matt, Mercedes, and I were up really early to make our 6:40 AM flight out of Seville to Tetouan, Morocco! Now, we knew that Tetouan was a small city, and honestly, we only were going there just because the flights were cheap and it sounded cool. When we looked up things to do in Tetouan, nothing came up besides simply "wander the medina." Surprisingly, despite us flying between two small cities early in the morning, the flight was quite packed. The flying experience didn't cause any issues... we took off on time, and we landed ten minutes before we left, because of the time change.

Arriving early morning in Tetouan, we saw the real beauty of the place where we were going to spend our weekend. The airfield of Aeroport Tetouan Saniet R'mel is small, and the building, puny. Walking off the plane, we were greeted by pleasant weather, the end of the sunrise, a few clouds, and the Rif Mountains: eye-catchingly gray with trees dotting the faces. I think at this time, all three of us knew that no matter how the weekend went in terms of anything related to the people or the cities, simply being here, seeing these mountains and cliffs was enough to warrant taking the weekend here.

We took a taxi from the airport into the city. Our driver, named Saad, was our first, let's say, friend, of the trip. And by friend, I mean someone who is trying to use foreigners to get some money out of them. We paid the inflated taxi price, at which point, he asked us whether we wanted any tour of the ancient medina. We kindly refused, saying that we can explore it ourselves. He then made sure to get our contact information, since we did tell him that we were heading to Chefchaouen later that day.

That entire interaction, however, we tried out our new identities for the first time. See, we were told after last time that "American" means money to Moroccans. So we came up with a backstory. The three of us are all working together in Spain. Matt is Indian, Mercedes is Irish, and I'm German. I don't speak good Spanish, so we primarily communicate in English. And, we've all been to Morocco before. So... white lies and half-truths got us through the weekend. For us to be working in Spain was an important detail because the Moroccans know that the Spanish won't have as much money to give to them as, say, Americans do. So we did the best we could to tell a story so close to our real one, just hiding the key fact that we are, indeed, American. It seemed to work well, and we stopped freezing up after a few times when asked where we were from. It inspired, instead, a more of an "uhh, it's complicated" than just a "we're trying to hide something" pause before an answer.

We arrived at the foot of the medina, the view of which had us in awe. There was a small park with a structure built clearly in an Islamic style, and to our left, Café Granada. This was the first of our signs that we weren't all that far from Andalucia after all! In fact, Tetouan is known as Little Granada, and I 100% see why. First, the city is built on a steep hill with white buildings and winding streets. Exactly akin to the Albaycin neighborhood, with all the buildings also painted white. They do a very good job at maintaining the white as well, and we saw many painters touching up the paint on several buildings throughout the day.

We sat down at Café Granada and ordered ourselves, ironically, the “Andalucian” breakfast. That consisted of the traditional Moroccan bread, with tomatoes, eggs, and a drink. I got, of course, the mint tea that Morocco is so famous for. Halfway through our breakfast, and remember, it’s only 7 AM and the square is empty, a man came up and sat at a table nearby. We continued to eat and talk like normal, but after a while, he turned to us and welcomed us to Africa. We all thanked him, but attempted to get back to talking by ourselves. But he kept on going, telling us how he can do a tour of the medina for us for only 100 dirhams ($10). We thanked him again, telling us that we can explore ourselves. Remember, this isn’t our first rodeo here in Morocco… we know a thing or two about “guided” tours. He then asked us where we were from, and our new fake identities were shared once again. I actually went for French this time so that I could see how it went, and decided that being French does mean I am expected to always speak perfect French, so, I decided for the future that I’d still be the German who speaks pretty good French. He recognized then that we were not American, and we were also students, so he offered to lower it to 50, at which point we still refused. He left shortly thereafter. But as we were leaving from breakfast, we noticed him walking around right outside of the café, asking us again if we were sure we didn’t want a tour. We told him we were sure and continued to walk to the gate of the medina. He did follow us for much of the way, but gave up eventually.

What we’d come to realize once we got into our taxi at the end of the day to go to Chefchaouen was that he was friends with our taxi driver from the morning. He was a plant. Again, in Morocco, everybody knows everybody, and everyone’s just out to get a quick buck.

So as we walked into the medina, a few things strike us as being different from Marrakesh. First, the streets are much quieter. As the eleventh largest city in Morocco, Tetouan really does not attract that many tourists. What tourists it does get are those who fly in to go see other places like the airport-less Chefchaouen, though the route from Fes to Chefchaouen is much more often taken. So, what we saw in the medina of Tetouan was a much more pure souk… people buying and selling things for everyday life, and not just for tourism. And what I saw was that the souk of Marrakesh isn’t inauthentic in the slightest. It’s an honest-to-goodness souk, selling normal things for normal Moroccans. It just happens to also have stands that are catered towards the tourists. Again, this reemphasizes my understanding that Jemaa el Fnaa is not just a tourist attraction, but rather a place where tourists and locals enjoy equally often. The things being sold were like remotes, power tools, knock-off articles of clothing, and cheap sandals. My favorite knock off brand, personally, was Kalvim Kleim underwear…

As we continued to walk through the city, we left the souk and ended up towards the top of the hill that the city stood on. We went to this museum that showed off art done by foreigners of the region, which was mostly just vistas of the city. The house it was in, which is a house typical of the region, was very, very reminiscent of Andalucia. The same tile work seen all over Seville is seen here, and the same coffee mugs and tote bags with tile patterns are all there as well. We ended up also in a cemetery, where the gates and the graves are covered in more Andalucian tiles, and where we got a wonderful view of the mountains and could just barely make out the Mediterranean in the distance. It's important to understand that Tetouan, though a city with history spanning thousands of years, was largely destroyed by Casillian forces during the Reconquista. And as the inquisition started, Jews and Muslims left Spain and settled in this region. Therefore, the real spread of influence was not simply Arab to Spanish, but rather Arab to Spanish to Arab again. Tetouan is not Granada's mother, but rather Granada's daughter. As we continued to climb upwards, we finally made it to the Kasbah. Note the similarity in words to describe castles and fortresses in Spanish and Arabic... The word for castle itself in Arabic is قصر, qSr. Adding on the definite article al, you get al-qSr. The Spanish adopted this into the familiar Alcázar, pronounced like al-KAH-thr. Another word for more of a fortified castle, usually on a hill would be قصبة, qsbah. Again, adding the definite article, you get al-qsbah, and that was borrowed into Spanish as Alcazaba, pronounced al-ka-THA-ba. So, from our visit to the Alhambra, Matt and I were already well-familiar with the concept of an Alcazaba, which was just now here in Morocco, except disguised under the name of a Kasbah.

So, high on this hill, overlooking the white city of Tetouan, still bested by the height of the city that continued to sprawl up the hill, with magnificent views of the Rif mountains on one side, and just the faintest outline of the sea on the other stands this Kasbah. Now, every city in the region really has one of these. And I mean not just the region of Morocco, but I am extending this to anywhere that the Moors had significant cultural and political influence. But I had never seen a kasbah or alcazar so deserted, so original. Now, they were doing restoration work for this, so we could not go inside (believe me, I thought about jumping the fence...), but it seems as if the Kasbah of Tetouan hadn't been restored until just the last few years. It struck me as the closest I can get to the palace as it was centuries ago. We sat here for a while, resting our legs and admiring the views.

We continued upwards, into the part of the city above the Kasbah. Here, we were able to let our guards down a little, getting some directions from locals. In most cities in Morocco, you'd expect there to be locals everywhere willing to exploit tourists' lack of knowledge for financial gain. But in this neighborhood, it was different. Tetouan itself is already puny as compared to other cities in Morocco, and there's not too much there for tourists. And we were now in this neighborhood that wasn't shown on the map of the city, outside of even the farthest major landmark of the city. Here, the people were happy to show us where the madrassas and pretty buildings all were, just because they were happy we were there. In this neighborhood, the all white theme of the buildings in the rest of the medina is largely abandoned, with red, blue, purple, and green buildings not uncommon. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

It was refreshing, after the angst of Marrakesh, for us to finally be able to relax, have our guards down for a little bit, and to be trusting of people for once.

We headed back down into the city through the park where we had started our day, and walked in the opposite direction. This led to a European-style downtown, with broad avenues, roundabouts and squares, and an abundance of Moroccan flags. We wondered how we had missed this region, and were thankful that we stumbled upon it, since it had a totally different atmosphere than the medina. The medina was mostly empty (and yes, it was a Friday, the holy day of Islam, which likely helped), whereas this district, the Spanish district, was filled with life. There were ice cream shops, tourists and art shops, restaurants, and wonderful views of the mountains on one side and the city on the hill on the other. We stopped to buy, or try to buy, some things. Matt tried on some soccer jerseys but was unable to get them for a price he liked, and I was able to get both Diary of a Wimpy Kid and a Quran for $6 total. I could have bargained, but one book by itself was $5 and I felt weird bargaining over a Quran, so I paid the 60 dirhams and went on my merry way. We then took a quick trip to the Jewish quarter. Sefardis know Tetouan as the "Little Jerusalem," and though the Jewish population of the city nowadays is very small, there is, and has historically been, little antisemitism. From what Ihave found looking online, there is only one notable pogrom event, and it was in the 1700s. Most Jews of the city moved to Israel once it was established, as a way to reconnect with the homeland, not as a way to escape antisemitism. The north of Morocco is a region that exists in its current form only thanks to the influx of Jews and Muslims out of the Iberian peninsula, so when compared to other Islamic countries, Morocco has very little antisemitism. In fact, when leaving Marrakesh last time, there was an El Al flight at the same time flying to Tel Aviv.

In the Jewish Quarter of Tetouan, the streets are laid out in a grid, as opposed to the winding medina in the rest of the city. Their names are reminiscent of Jewish places and history, with lots of streets being "ben" someone street, as well as a Haifa street and a Gaza street. In the Jewish quarter, there were more jewelry shops and higher-end stores than in the medina, though I wouldn't say that the difference was so noticeable when compared with the Spanish district. I did drag Mercedes and Matt to the synagogue, where I was welcomed by a couple of Spanish origin who keep the synagogue. They gave me the Jewish history lesson that I've just recounted, as well as showed me around the synagogue. Like the synagogues in Córdoba and Toledo, this clearly has Moorish influences with arches and tiles, however unlike those, there is still an ark and places to pray. The synagogue is still certainly in use, and you can see signs of that, which were a welcome contrast to the barren museums that are the synagogues of Spain. The couple were really sweet, and we talked a little about their family and their sons, who are living in the south of Spain. The man only spoke Spanish, and his wife, enough English where the three of us could communicate just fine. It felt nice to have some people I knew I could relate to, I could trust. I think that speaks in general to Tetouan, as it was certainly the most "easy" or relaxing city to be in throughout my entire time in Morocco, but I felt very, very welcomed in the synagogue.

After wishing them a Shabbat Shalom, we headed back out to the Spanish district, where we wandered and got some lunch. Tagine, of course.

We headed back to the square where we started our day, and as I mentioned earlier, our taxi driver from the morning picked us up. And his friend, that guy who offered us a tour was there, catching up with our driver. I was disappointed that he had put a plant in for us, but again, Morocco is a place where it's hustle or be hustled. Everybody's got friends, and everyone's out to make a quick buck. So you can't blame them, but rather the system or the culture. I'll stop here, and continue with Chaouen and Tangier in the next post.