Morocco's Atlantic Coastline
Originally published in Khaleej Times WKND Magazine, 08/07/11
A
salty wind is blowing from the west. The broad, white-capped sweep of the
Atlantic stretches away along a fading coastline, and the blue sky is full of
bone-white seagulls. I am standing on the corner bastion of the walled
Portuguese quarter of the Moroccan port of El-Jadida. Below me the madcap
jumble of the town stretches towards a distant line of palm trees, the
honey-cultured sandstone glowing in the bright morning sunlight.
***
Morocco’s
Atlantic coast is a world of wind, waves, fresh sardines and fiery sunsets.
When the summer heat of the imperial cities of the interior gets too much,
generations of travellers have headed west to catch the breeze, in towns
steeped in maritime history.
For
the past decade Essaouira, due west of Marrakesh, has been the Atlantic getaway
of choice. But with ever larger hordes of sightseers clogging its white
alleyways, those with a little more imagination are searching out quieter
spots.
I
have come to Morocco to explore a string of lesser known seaside towns, three
alternative Essaourias that are nonetheless just a short hop from Marrakesh or
Casablanca. My first stop is El-Jadida.
***
Below
the ramparts I enter a tortuous network of tangled alleyway. The walled quarter
is known today as the Cité Portugaise, though the Iberian incomers who built
the place in 1506 knew it as Mazagan. They had chosen a spot where a kink in
the long line of the Moroccan coast provided shelter for ships, come to load up
with the produce of all North Africa.
The
Portuguese held Mazagan for two and a half centuries, but in 1769 the Alawite
sultan Mohammed ben Abdallah evicted them and built a sprawling medina outside
the walls, dubbing it El-Jadida, “the New”. The old quarters were abandoned
until the 19th Century when Jewish settlers from other coastal towns moved in.
Today
it is a place where sunshine falls in molten pools, a cubist cityscape of
pastel tones where weathered doorways open to elaborately tiled stairwells. Pink
geraniums sprout from windowsills and black cats lounge in the heat. I wander
between light and shade, dodging dead ends and ducking under crooked archways.
Here and there I catch a tantalizing whiff of cooking from a shuttered window.
A
handful of old townhouses have been turned into boutique guesthouses, and
foreigners and middle class Moroccans scared off by the soaring prices for
medina properties in Essaouira and Marrakesh have started hunting out El-Jadida
bargains in recent years. But for now this is still a quiet place, and I am the
only visitor when I explore the Citerne Portugaise, a church-like underground
chamber of vaulted arches and shimmering water, originally built as a
reservoir. It was for the surviving gems like this that UNESCO declared
El-Jadida a World Heritage Site in 2004.
El-Jadida’s
post-independence fortunes have been based in part on its dark-timbered fishing
fleet. A short walk from the Portuguese gateway, and close to the entrance to
the port, I find an enclosed courtyard where rival stalls serve up platters
loaded with freshly-landed seafood for bargain prices. I opt for five salty
sardines grilled over charcoal with a hunk of bread and a bowl of
coriander-scented tomato sauce for the princely sum of Dh10.
***
The
following day I make the short hop up the coast to the smaller town of
Azzemour. Many Moroccan cities have their own color schemes; if Marrakesh’s is
earthy red, and El-Jadida’s is honeyed yellow, then Azzemour’s is white and
blue.
The
medina here was also built by the Portuguese, but today it is a sleepy
backwater. Casablanca lies just an hour to the north, however, and hidden
behind heavyset medina doors there are a few stylish guesthouses here too.
There are also dozens of artist’s studios, and the stark white color scheme of
Azzemour is broken with bright splashes of color – murals daubed on blank walls
by resident painters.
Elsewhere
a crumbling Portuguese citadel looks out over the white roofs, a handful of
cannons dotting the ramparts like beached whales, their carriages long since
rotted out from under them. There is a strange kind of melancholy to these
former Portuguese possessions which dot the world’s foreshores from Morocco to
East Timor, the remnants of an empire of outposts.
***
The
potter lifts another simple, uncast cup from the rack and with a few deft
flicks of a wooden cutter he has sliced a tiny star-shaped hole in the creamy
clay and paired it to a crescent moon puncture. Swiftly he begins to repeat the
motif all over the smooth surface. He can turn out 150 of these pieces in a day
he says casually, without looking up from his work.
From
Azzemour and El-Jadida I have travelled 150 kilometers south down a stark
coastline to another little-visited port, Safi, and now, just outside its bulky
walls, I am exploring its most intriguing neighborhood – a hillside potters’
quarter. I am being shown through the process by a tall, lean potter named
Mohammed – “Like the Sultan,” he says with a grin, meaning Mohammed VI,
Morocco’s current king; “But not the Sultan of Morocco – the Sultan of the
potteries!”
It
is amongst the warren workshops and wood-fired kilns here – clustered around
the white shrine of a local saint, Sidi Abdurrahman, patron of the potters –
that the unmistakable Moroccan ceramics that show up in gift-shops and on
restaurant tables all over the country are made. Clay is brought in from local
quarries before being kneaded – by foot. Pots, plates, and all manner of other
crockery are then crafted, decorated and double fired.
The
potteries rose to prominence in the 18th Century after artisans arrived from
the royal city of Fez. However, Safi’s modern ceramics owe their reputation to
one man. In 1918 the Algerian-born, French-trained potter Boujemaa Lamali
settled here, teaching local apprentices, reviving old patterns and color
schemes, and pioneering motifs which have now become Moroccan standards.
The
yellow and black plate I buy from one of the stalls after bidding goodbye to
Mohammed features the classic olive kernel design, a Lamali invention.
***
Like
the other towns I have visited, Safi was once a Portuguese outpost. But they
were only here for 33 years, and they did little more than build a sturdy
fortress, the Dar el Bahar, knock down all of the Almohad Grand Mosque except
its minaret, and start work on a cathedral, which was never finished, and which
the returning Moroccan forces subsequently turned into a hammam. The caretaker,
who shares a name with the Saint of the Potters – Abdurrahman – points out to
me the spot where the roof vaulting is still stained by the smoke from the
charcoal used to heat the bathwater.
But
despite the tit-for-tat mistreatment of houses of worship, Abdurrahman
explains, Safi was long a place of tolerance. The Jewish communities of other
Moroccan towns were confined to their own ghetto quarters, known as mellahs,
but here they lived amongst their Muslim and Christian neighbors.
Today
most of the Jews and Christians have gone, but there are still quiet corners,
and in the evening the little paved square at the seaward edge of the medina
fills with food stalls like a miniature version of Marrakesh’s iconic Djemaa el
Fna. Unlike in Marrakesh, however, and unlike in Essaouira, just two hours down
the coast, there is hardly another tourist to be seen.
I
eat a tasty dinner of merguez – Moroccan beef sausages spiced with paprika and
served up in a hunk of fluffy bread – from one of the stalls, and then make my
way to the Corniche, a cliff-top walkway south of the old town. A pale moon is
slipping up above the white rooftops, and an amber sun is sliding down in the
opposite direction over the wind-chased Atlantic. Whirling flocks of
black-winged swifts are dancing in the clear air.
This
is the end of my Atlantic excursion, and tomorrow I’ll make the three-hour trip
inland across the blistering plains to the hustling heat of Marrakesh. Maybe
one day people will be proclaiming El-Jadida, Azzemour and Safi, “spoilt” and
“too touristy”, but for now, I decide, they make a fine seaside sidestep off
Morocco’s beaten tracks…
©
Tim Hannigan 2011
No comments:
Post a Comment