From Fes with Love

By Yaakov Aldrich

Our 14th day in Spain was also our last. We took a bus from our hotel in Seville in the morning and arrived in Tarifa, Spain, around 1:00 PM. After a short break, we went through customs and boarded a ferry for the ride across the Strait of Gibraltar. The trip was choppy, but we all pulled through and landed in Tangier, Morocco an hour later.

Seville–Tarifa–Tangier. Photographs by Yaakov Aldrich.

Tangier, a port city, captured and held by the Portuguese between the 15th and 17th centuries. Its Medina, or Old City, was destroyed by cannons when the Portuguese left, as they didn’t want to leave the fortifications standing for anyone else to use. In contemporary times, the quarter has been rebuilt and is now inhabited primarily by residents who can afford the high housing prices. A particularly tasty hole-in-the-wall ramen shop also operates in the Old City, alongside crafts markets and local artists. 

The next day was the 28th, and we piled into a bus from Hotel Fredj to see the sights outside of Tangier. We drove up a winding road through the hills on the city’s outskirts, peering out the windows at the massive walled-off mansions belonging to the rich and powerful, including Morocco’s royal family and a prince from the UAE. 

At the cliffs overlooking the lighthouse, we learned from our new guide Said that the old saying about the Mediterranean Sea meeting the Atlantic ocean off the coast wasn’t true after all (the Atlantic meets the Straits of Gibraltar). We also got a glimpse of the Caves of Hercules, which are worn into the volcanic rock by the pounding ocean waves. 

At 11:00 AM, we drove to the Technopark, an incubator for tech start-ups in Tangier. We talked with Fatwa, a director of the Regional Center of Investment, about Morocco’s status as a gate to other nearby economies. The country’s prime geographic location, alongside its rich industrial capacities in cultural tourism, agro-food, and industrial engineering, makes it a key market for European and African investors. 

Next, we took a tour of Tangier’s Medina, in which Matisse and John Sargent, among other painters, took up their brushes to immortalize that ancient tangle of crooked alleyways and keystone doorways. Our class that evening discussed Emma Lazarus, a famous poet, scion of a wealthy New York family, and Sephardi Jew. Her work is immortalized in the famous stanzas carved into the base of the Statue of Liberty, and we talked about the meaning of her pro-immigration rhetoric in the context of the Jewish need for safe haven at that time in history.

On Wednesday, we took a bus from Tangier to Fes by way of Chefchaouen. Our stop in the famed Blue City took a few hours, and we learned about the history of the city’s contest between homeowners to see who could make the most beautiful decorations. The city was originally a military base, but after the Expulsion from Spain, Jewish and Muslim refugees began to grow the population rapidly. The city had a robust market of hand-made crafts, and the omnipresent blue decorations and ornamentations made it a hard place to say goodbye to. 

In the end, we all piled back onto the bus for a five hour drive to Fes, and arrived in the evening.