A Day in Tetouan

Cats in the fish-market

Tetouan, a city on the northern coast of Morocco, had long been a crossroads of civilization. The city had seen peoples from many lands come to its shores, including Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, and Arabs, yet its most famous story had to do with mercy in a time of need. Including Jewish and Muslim refugees from Granada in Spain, fleeing the Inquisition and the end of both Muslim rule and the Jewish golden age. For centuries, it had been known colloquially as bint al-Garnatah, the daughter of Granada, and even its official name stemmed from that history of cross-cultural connection. It came from titti-wan, Rifian Amazigh for "eyes in the mountains", referring to guards local lords had appointed to watch over these refugees build new homes after hey had lost everything. For centuries, it had been a place of welcoming and renewal. 

However, in June of last summer, the city saw a new group of travelers: ten bleary-eyed Wheaton students, three days into a speed-round tour of northern Morocco. The last days had been a cacophony of sights and smells: we had traveled there by bus and boat, across the Strait of Gibraltar, briefly stopping in two other cities and a tranquil rural village before continuing our journey through mountains and valleys. We had processed more in the past days than I could write about, and by this day we were all tired, yet looking around at the confluence of old and new around us: where the modern city met the medieval medina within. 

This walking tour we went on,  led by an eccentric older man with a penchant for dark jokes, led us right into the center of the medina: the souk, or market. I had heard souks discussed and seen them in another cities, mostly selling dried herbs and handicrafts, but this one was different, felt more like a lived center of commerce deep into local life. All of the senses were engaged when we walked down those covered streets: the sights of market stalls, the sounds of a city of movement, the taste of the air on our breaths, the touch of cobblestones rolling under our feet. The strongest one, however, was smell.

Did you know that Morocco is the world's largest producer of sardines? You would know if you were in that souk. There were many fish booths in that market, all piled high with ice and sardines fresh from the seas. I saw many of my classmates break at this, both from the smell and the visceral closeness to our own foodways, but this only enticed me further in a strange way. It felt so lived-in, so real. This was a place where people lived, if that makes sense. I feel as if things like markets in other countries are so over-romanticized, yet when other people fled at the real thing, I was only drawn in further. 

It wasn't just the fish, at first. It was the lack of disconnection. Diane Ackerman in her work Natural History of the Senses detailed how people shy away from natural smells, prefer florals and freshness overpowering anything. This subverted that. There was nothing inherently unclean or unsanitary, the fish were on ice, after all. It was being part of a living breathing organism of markets and bathhouses, not relegated to a medieval past, but alive around me. It did not conform to my American sensibilities, and I loved that.