Medina, Mountains, and Marriage
The Medina
I have been trying to go into the medina every day now before I leave because I know that there is nothing like it that exists else in the world. Of course, there are a hundreds of medinas in towns across North Africa, but this is one of the biggest and the oldest. I have been living on the edge of it for the past month and a half, and I compare it, in my mind, to living on the edge of a whirlpool. The metaphor will make sense, I promise, once I describe what it is like to go deep inside of it. If you start at Bab Boujloud, a giant, blue tiled gate that marks one of the Medina's entrances, one can follow one the main arteries that run all the way through the old city. On your right you will pass the ex-pat café, and you start going down, down into the heart of the whirlpool itself. I have often felt the sensation during the first part of this descent that I am slowly entering hell for multiple reasons. The first being that as the path becomes steeper and steeper, you sort of begin to wonder as to whether or not it is ever going to level out. The second is that the top of the whirlpool is not always so pleasant. There are tourist shops of every kind, with every single merchant trying his best just to get you to look at what he has to sell.
"My friend, have a look, please just one minute, just to see, just to look."
I have also learned that one should not walk directly in the middle of street in this part of the medina, as you are more likely to be run over by a cart, horse, or the occasional herd of donkeys. There is usually some kind of animal manure in the street, which was something Julian was usually upset about.
"There is shit on the street and trashes. It smells terrible."
"Oui, Julian. Il se ressemble Montmartre."
I remember him smiling at that. When you get further down, you start seeing less of the things that tourists would buy, and more of the things that real Fassis' would buy. This means of course that it is more crowded with people shopping for dates, candles, religious items, both religious and non-religious clothing. As you get further down towards the Kharoine mosque, you start to see big collections of shops that cater to specific crafts such as bronze working or the special furniture needed for a wedding.
At what I like to call the centre of this whirlpool are the tanneries. You would not have known they existed unless you lived in one of the houses that surround them that had a panoramic view of them and the town. The tanneries are a collection of 30 to 40 giant stone vats that are used to dye and prepare leather. It has been a part of this city's economy since the middle ages, and many people still work in them despite the triple digit heat on some days, slapping big pieces of hide in the dyes and leaving them out to dry.
Trying to find your way back out of the whirlpool is a little daunting, but it can be fun, just for the heck of it, to get lost on your ascent because you often stumble onto little corners of the medina, which you would not have otherwise found. There are little cafés everywhere, which you can stop into if you need water.
There are no shortages of men who offer their services as guides to you, and, like shop owners, will try anything to let you accept their services. One trick is to say that the way is closed, and that they can show you a way around that leads through the side streets and alleys. It is something that they have to do, because it is technically illegal to be an unofficial guide for someone. They will often walk far ahead of you to avoid suspicion from the police, and will run from you if they see anyone wearing a uniform.
What is sad sometimes is that when the way is actually closed, but you are hesitant to trust what they say. This happened once to Julian and me. As we were walking down a narrow sidestreet once, a little girl in a yellow dress said to us that the street was closed, but Julian kept going completely ignoring her. As it turned out, the street was actually closed, and we both sort of felt ashamed for not listening to her.
The Medina is as big and intricate as it is mysterious. I have gone into it for hours at a time, and come out of it knowing only just a tiny bit more about it.
The Middle Atlas Mountains and Beyond
Someplace that I had wanted to visit for a long time now was the region south of Fez that includes a section of the Atlas Mountains. I had heard that a good place to stay there was a small Berber town called Azrou, from which one could explore the surrounding region. On Friday morning, I woke up at 5:40 AM, which was not too bad because the sun was already up before me, got dressed, packed up the last of my gear, and headed out the door. Something that I learned from backpacking in Europe was to always have, along with the rest of my gear, a good supply of water, a pack of cookies, and at least one roll of toilet paper. I have found all these items to be essential in some form or another when I am on the road, and I always make a trip to the supermarket the night before I go anywhere. The supermarket, Acimah, is always a spectacular place to go and visit, so I go there as frequently as I can. I left my house at 6:00 AM, walked to the taxi stand in Batha, and found a taxi driver asleep at the wheel. I had to gently prod him in order to wake him up, but he came around eventually and took me to the bus station.
The bus went on a route through the hills surrounding Fez up and over the Atlas Mountains. What I find continually interesting about the geography of this region is the fact that there is a very clear division between where the forested mountains of the Atlas begin and where the bare, rocky, and windswept hills that surround them end. As you climb into these mountains, one sees forests of pine and other trees that are sporadically interrupted by rocky pastures. The road to Azrou goes up and over the mountains to the town itself, which is built into the side of a hill just below where the mountains begin. It is built with the sort of atypical Moroccan architecture of rectangular houses with flat terraces on the rooftops where people hang their clothes to dry. It hardly ever rains here, so there must be no need for a slanted roof. When I got into the town itself, I managed to find a hotel for about 12 euros a night that had a vacancy for two nights. There is not a whole lot to do in the town of Azrou itself, so I decided to take a hike into the countryside itself on the first day to get a better glimpse of this region.
It is a peculiar, North American sentiment to want to go off into the wilderness, which is sort of inexplicable, and difficult to describe to others. I found this to be the case when I was trying to explain to two police officers on the road south of Azrou as to where I was going. They were tremendously helpful, however, because they said that the Benedictine monastery I was trying to reach, which was listed as 3km away from the town in the guidebook, was actually more like 20 or 25. Thank you Rough Guide. While this was a small disappointment, it did feel great to go off on my own climbing up and down hills, scaling cliffs of shale and granite, and following the sporadic donkey trails that make their way through the hills and up into the mountains. After living in Fez for so long, it felt great climbing into the mountains and getting some spectacular views from the top. The temperature was cool and windy for most of the day, but even then the sun beat down upon my head so much that I had to cover myself with a towel in sort of Arabian fashion. It just goes to show that Douglas Adams was right about the towel being the most useful thing ever invented. Eventually, I did have to turn back towards the town because I ran out of water.
On the second day I was in this region, I went to visit a mountain spring called Oum er Rbia. I had to take a taxi from Aïn Lou, a small Berber village along the way, which cost me about $40, but I think it was worth it because countryside was, as before, absolutely gorgeous. As the taxi curved over mountain passes and dodged herds of goats and sheep that often occupied the road, we eventually found ourselves on the edge of a large gorge where the edges were lined with red earth and white cliffs of rock. We came at last to the bottom of the gorge where the water of the spring flowed into a reservoir for the town, parked the car, and followed the spring up to the source where the water came gushing straight out of the rock face. The water was so cold and clear that some vendors were actually funnelling the water from the spring to their shops into buckets where cold drinks and water were kept. There were even some cafés that were built on the banks of the spring that were simply made with wooden posts and straw roofs. Here is a picture.
When I left Azrou the next day, I made my way towards Ifrane, where I met up with my old buddy Jihan as well as her friends Zeynap and Rika, the latter being from Germany. I took a grand taxi there in an old blue Renault, and while the ride did not cost very much, we did run into some bizarre engine problems on the way. As the taxi was climbing into the mountains, the radiator started leaking water. It first splashed onto my side of the windshield in little spurts, but it soon built into a gushing stream of water. The cab driver did not seem to notice it, or even pay much attention to it, which prompted me to ask:
"Excusez-moi, Monsieur, est-ce que il y a un problème avec le radiateur?"
"Non, c'est pas grave."
As Julian once said to me, "Hey, man, this is Morocco!"
The guy did eventually have to pull over to a gas station and fill the radiator up with water, and explained that the mechanic was not working today to fix this problem. I did make it to Ifrane safe and alive.
Ifrane is sort of an interesting town because the French built it during the days of the empire as sort of a resort where the colonial administers could escape from the heat of Fez during the summer. It sort of looks likes an alpine village that you might find in Switzerland or Germany because all the houses are built in sort of a chalet style. Apparently, it even snows there during the winter. There also exists in Ifrane an English language university, Al Akhawayn University, the only one in Morocco, where Jihan actually goes to school. I got a brief tour of it, and it honestly looks like a typical New England college, complete with dormitories, a gym, a swimming pool, classrooms, all sort of built in the Ifrane style of architecture, with white washed walls and red roofs that slant sharply downwards. If you visit, you honestly do not feel that you are in Morocco, because it might as well be New Hampshire or Maine.
As Jihan and her friends had to go to Fez that day as well, we all took a cab from Ifrane back to Fez.
I Get Myself Invited to a Moroccan Wedding
On the way back from Ifrane, Jihan suddenly turned to me and asked, "Adrian, do you want to go to a wedding right now?" It was an invitation I could not refuse. In the words of Conan O'Brien, "If I am invited somewhere, anywhere, I show up." The bride and groom were friends of Jihan's family, who I had met before several times, so it was not particularly awkward that I was there. Rika also came, as well as the fiancé of one of Jihan's cousins who was Swiss, so I was not the only westerner there.
The wedding was on the second floor of an apartment building in the nouvelle ville, and, from what I was told, was small in comparison to other weddings. There were two large rooms in the apartment with couches lining the walls, and it was filled with people dancing, eating small cakes and pastries, and drinking mint tea. No one was particularly dressed up, which made me feel better because I definitely was not, and it seemed to be pretty informal. There were some girls in sort of Moroccan dresses, but as is the rest of Morocco, there were some girls wearing the headscarf, and others who were not.
There were two kinds of music that were played. One, which was played through loudspeakers, was mostly Egyptian popular music that people were dancing to when we arrived. The other was played by a live band of five musicians, who were dressed in yellow shoes, yellow pants, white jalabas, and the white cover that goes over the head. All of them had microphones, and all of them played some sort of percussion instrument. I really do not think that they needed amplification because they were pretty loud by themselves. I got to talk to one of them a little bit later on, and he answered a couple of questions that had to do with what kind of music are you playing, is this a normal sized group, what are the names of the percussion instruments you are playing, and other kinds of questions that only I, a massive ethno-musicological nerd would ask at a wedding. I was a little bit nervous about bringing out my notebook and conducting sort of an informal interview with him because I did not know what they, and also other people at the wedding, would think of me for doing something like that. However, they seemed honoured that I was really interested in learning more about what kinds of music are played at a wedding. I did not get a chance to record it, even though I had my device with me, because they had invited me to come and I did not want to walk around with a microphone when everyone was dancing and inviting me to dance. It was also really loud, and it would not have been a good recording.
Anyway, when I entered the wedding I must have looked really funny walking into that room with my big blue backpack and non-ironed shirt. Immediately, one of Jihans cousins (Halima? I'm really bad with names) took me by the hand and showed me where I could store my backpack and things I had brought back from the mountains, and also assured me that I was dressed appropriately.
And then there was dancing. And then there was me dancing, which I know you are laughing at right now. Just because I am on a different continent does not mean I cannot see what you are doing. In all the experience was a lot of fun. I had been talking to Zeynap, one of Jihan's friends from Ifrane, about how many Moroccan men in cafés and in taxis had asked me if I wanted to marry a Moroccan woman, so we got to joking about that.
"Adrian, I think you maybe would like to marry a Moroccan woman now?"
When the music and the dancing stopped, the actual marriage ceremony began. The band started to play as the bride and groom descended from another room upstairs from the apartment. The groom wore a grey wool suit with a red tie, while the bride wore a gold coloured dress that covered the arms, shoulders, neck, as well as over the head. I'm not sure if the part that covered the head was part of the dress itself, but it looked like one, big, golden apparatus. She also wore a thick golden belt and a loose golden necklace, both of which were ornamented with small, flat, golden, round-shaped things that by themselves could probably pass for Christmas tree ornaments. I know that is a terrible simile, but I cannot seem to think of any other way of describing them.
As they entered the room, people were taking pictures of them, and everyone was served another round of hot mint tea and pastries. They eventually made their way to a large, silver coloured, marriage throne that are made specifically for these kinds of things in the Medina of Fès. Again people took pictures of them, and also started to dance again as the music continued. One thing that I could not help but notice was that the bride looked rather young. She was completely covered up, so I could not really tell what age she was, but Rika managed to ask the questions that I was wondering about myself.
"I have heard that the groom is forty years old. Do you want to know how old the bride is?"
"Rika, do I want to know?"
"She is seventeen."
"Wow, although I probably shouldn't say anything."
"Apparently, she had a chance to say no, but I guess this is what happened."
I do not know the whole story behind the marriage, but if I had to guess why it happened I would say that it is probably a better social or economic situation for her and her family. You read about these sorts of things happening in old issues of National Geographic, but you do not really believe it can happen until you see it happening before your eyes. At the same time, however, you never really understand all the reasons and customs behind it, so I feel it is better to just leave it as one of the great mysteries of this country.
After some dancing and some more eating, the couple got ready to leave. As they did, the bride took off the golden layer of her apparatus to reveal a white covering beneath it. It was hard to get a closer look so I apologize for not being to describe it further. They then made their way to a car specifically decorated for them, and they escaped to their honeymoon I imagine. We left shortly afterwards, because most of the people who were there left when the couple left, and I managed to say my goodbyes to everyone before I caught a taxi back to Batha.
This is going to be my last email for a while. I finish my internship this week, and I am going to be travelling in the weeks afterwards. I will try and write another one before I leave.
-Adrian
I have been trying to go into the medina every day now before I leave because I know that there is nothing like it that exists else in the world. Of course, there are a hundreds of medinas in towns across North Africa, but this is one of the biggest and the oldest. I have been living on the edge of it for the past month and a half, and I compare it, in my mind, to living on the edge of a whirlpool. The metaphor will make sense, I promise, once I describe what it is like to go deep inside of it. If you start at Bab Boujloud, a giant, blue tiled gate that marks one of the Medina's entrances, one can follow one the main arteries that run all the way through the old city. On your right you will pass the ex-pat café, and you start going down, down into the heart of the whirlpool itself. I have often felt the sensation during the first part of this descent that I am slowly entering hell for multiple reasons. The first being that as the path becomes steeper and steeper, you sort of begin to wonder as to whether or not it is ever going to level out. The second is that the top of the whirlpool is not always so pleasant. There are tourist shops of every kind, with every single merchant trying his best just to get you to look at what he has to sell.
"My friend, have a look, please just one minute, just to see, just to look."
I have also learned that one should not walk directly in the middle of street in this part of the medina, as you are more likely to be run over by a cart, horse, or the occasional herd of donkeys. There is usually some kind of animal manure in the street, which was something Julian was usually upset about.
"There is shit on the street and trashes. It smells terrible."
"Oui, Julian. Il se ressemble Montmartre."
I remember him smiling at that. When you get further down, you start seeing less of the things that tourists would buy, and more of the things that real Fassis' would buy. This means of course that it is more crowded with people shopping for dates, candles, religious items, both religious and non-religious clothing. As you get further down towards the Kharoine mosque, you start to see big collections of shops that cater to specific crafts such as bronze working or the special furniture needed for a wedding.
At what I like to call the centre of this whirlpool are the tanneries. You would not have known they existed unless you lived in one of the houses that surround them that had a panoramic view of them and the town. The tanneries are a collection of 30 to 40 giant stone vats that are used to dye and prepare leather. It has been a part of this city's economy since the middle ages, and many people still work in them despite the triple digit heat on some days, slapping big pieces of hide in the dyes and leaving them out to dry.
Trying to find your way back out of the whirlpool is a little daunting, but it can be fun, just for the heck of it, to get lost on your ascent because you often stumble onto little corners of the medina, which you would not have otherwise found. There are little cafés everywhere, which you can stop into if you need water.
There are no shortages of men who offer their services as guides to you, and, like shop owners, will try anything to let you accept their services. One trick is to say that the way is closed, and that they can show you a way around that leads through the side streets and alleys. It is something that they have to do, because it is technically illegal to be an unofficial guide for someone. They will often walk far ahead of you to avoid suspicion from the police, and will run from you if they see anyone wearing a uniform.
What is sad sometimes is that when the way is actually closed, but you are hesitant to trust what they say. This happened once to Julian and me. As we were walking down a narrow sidestreet once, a little girl in a yellow dress said to us that the street was closed, but Julian kept going completely ignoring her. As it turned out, the street was actually closed, and we both sort of felt ashamed for not listening to her.
The Medina is as big and intricate as it is mysterious. I have gone into it for hours at a time, and come out of it knowing only just a tiny bit more about it.
The Middle Atlas Mountains and Beyond
Someplace that I had wanted to visit for a long time now was the region south of Fez that includes a section of the Atlas Mountains. I had heard that a good place to stay there was a small Berber town called Azrou, from which one could explore the surrounding region. On Friday morning, I woke up at 5:40 AM, which was not too bad because the sun was already up before me, got dressed, packed up the last of my gear, and headed out the door. Something that I learned from backpacking in Europe was to always have, along with the rest of my gear, a good supply of water, a pack of cookies, and at least one roll of toilet paper. I have found all these items to be essential in some form or another when I am on the road, and I always make a trip to the supermarket the night before I go anywhere. The supermarket, Acimah, is always a spectacular place to go and visit, so I go there as frequently as I can. I left my house at 6:00 AM, walked to the taxi stand in Batha, and found a taxi driver asleep at the wheel. I had to gently prod him in order to wake him up, but he came around eventually and took me to the bus station.
The bus went on a route through the hills surrounding Fez up and over the Atlas Mountains. What I find continually interesting about the geography of this region is the fact that there is a very clear division between where the forested mountains of the Atlas begin and where the bare, rocky, and windswept hills that surround them end. As you climb into these mountains, one sees forests of pine and other trees that are sporadically interrupted by rocky pastures. The road to Azrou goes up and over the mountains to the town itself, which is built into the side of a hill just below where the mountains begin. It is built with the sort of atypical Moroccan architecture of rectangular houses with flat terraces on the rooftops where people hang their clothes to dry. It hardly ever rains here, so there must be no need for a slanted roof. When I got into the town itself, I managed to find a hotel for about 12 euros a night that had a vacancy for two nights. There is not a whole lot to do in the town of Azrou itself, so I decided to take a hike into the countryside itself on the first day to get a better glimpse of this region.
It is a peculiar, North American sentiment to want to go off into the wilderness, which is sort of inexplicable, and difficult to describe to others. I found this to be the case when I was trying to explain to two police officers on the road south of Azrou as to where I was going. They were tremendously helpful, however, because they said that the Benedictine monastery I was trying to reach, which was listed as 3km away from the town in the guidebook, was actually more like 20 or 25. Thank you Rough Guide. While this was a small disappointment, it did feel great to go off on my own climbing up and down hills, scaling cliffs of shale and granite, and following the sporadic donkey trails that make their way through the hills and up into the mountains. After living in Fez for so long, it felt great climbing into the mountains and getting some spectacular views from the top. The temperature was cool and windy for most of the day, but even then the sun beat down upon my head so much that I had to cover myself with a towel in sort of Arabian fashion. It just goes to show that Douglas Adams was right about the towel being the most useful thing ever invented. Eventually, I did have to turn back towards the town because I ran out of water.
On the second day I was in this region, I went to visit a mountain spring called Oum er Rbia. I had to take a taxi from Aïn Lou, a small Berber village along the way, which cost me about $40, but I think it was worth it because countryside was, as before, absolutely gorgeous. As the taxi curved over mountain passes and dodged herds of goats and sheep that often occupied the road, we eventually found ourselves on the edge of a large gorge where the edges were lined with red earth and white cliffs of rock. We came at last to the bottom of the gorge where the water of the spring flowed into a reservoir for the town, parked the car, and followed the spring up to the source where the water came gushing straight out of the rock face. The water was so cold and clear that some vendors were actually funnelling the water from the spring to their shops into buckets where cold drinks and water were kept. There were even some cafés that were built on the banks of the spring that were simply made with wooden posts and straw roofs. Here is a picture.
When I left Azrou the next day, I made my way towards Ifrane, where I met up with my old buddy Jihan as well as her friends Zeynap and Rika, the latter being from Germany. I took a grand taxi there in an old blue Renault, and while the ride did not cost very much, we did run into some bizarre engine problems on the way. As the taxi was climbing into the mountains, the radiator started leaking water. It first splashed onto my side of the windshield in little spurts, but it soon built into a gushing stream of water. The cab driver did not seem to notice it, or even pay much attention to it, which prompted me to ask:
"Excusez-moi, Monsieur, est-ce que il y a un problème avec le radiateur?"
"Non, c'est pas grave."
As Julian once said to me, "Hey, man, this is Morocco!"
The guy did eventually have to pull over to a gas station and fill the radiator up with water, and explained that the mechanic was not working today to fix this problem. I did make it to Ifrane safe and alive.
Ifrane is sort of an interesting town because the French built it during the days of the empire as sort of a resort where the colonial administers could escape from the heat of Fez during the summer. It sort of looks likes an alpine village that you might find in Switzerland or Germany because all the houses are built in sort of a chalet style. Apparently, it even snows there during the winter. There also exists in Ifrane an English language university, Al Akhawayn University, the only one in Morocco, where Jihan actually goes to school. I got a brief tour of it, and it honestly looks like a typical New England college, complete with dormitories, a gym, a swimming pool, classrooms, all sort of built in the Ifrane style of architecture, with white washed walls and red roofs that slant sharply downwards. If you visit, you honestly do not feel that you are in Morocco, because it might as well be New Hampshire or Maine.
As Jihan and her friends had to go to Fez that day as well, we all took a cab from Ifrane back to Fez.
I Get Myself Invited to a Moroccan Wedding
On the way back from Ifrane, Jihan suddenly turned to me and asked, "Adrian, do you want to go to a wedding right now?" It was an invitation I could not refuse. In the words of Conan O'Brien, "If I am invited somewhere, anywhere, I show up." The bride and groom were friends of Jihan's family, who I had met before several times, so it was not particularly awkward that I was there. Rika also came, as well as the fiancé of one of Jihan's cousins who was Swiss, so I was not the only westerner there.
The wedding was on the second floor of an apartment building in the nouvelle ville, and, from what I was told, was small in comparison to other weddings. There were two large rooms in the apartment with couches lining the walls, and it was filled with people dancing, eating small cakes and pastries, and drinking mint tea. No one was particularly dressed up, which made me feel better because I definitely was not, and it seemed to be pretty informal. There were some girls in sort of Moroccan dresses, but as is the rest of Morocco, there were some girls wearing the headscarf, and others who were not.
There were two kinds of music that were played. One, which was played through loudspeakers, was mostly Egyptian popular music that people were dancing to when we arrived. The other was played by a live band of five musicians, who were dressed in yellow shoes, yellow pants, white jalabas, and the white cover that goes over the head. All of them had microphones, and all of them played some sort of percussion instrument. I really do not think that they needed amplification because they were pretty loud by themselves. I got to talk to one of them a little bit later on, and he answered a couple of questions that had to do with what kind of music are you playing, is this a normal sized group, what are the names of the percussion instruments you are playing, and other kinds of questions that only I, a massive ethno-musicological nerd would ask at a wedding. I was a little bit nervous about bringing out my notebook and conducting sort of an informal interview with him because I did not know what they, and also other people at the wedding, would think of me for doing something like that. However, they seemed honoured that I was really interested in learning more about what kinds of music are played at a wedding. I did not get a chance to record it, even though I had my device with me, because they had invited me to come and I did not want to walk around with a microphone when everyone was dancing and inviting me to dance. It was also really loud, and it would not have been a good recording.
Anyway, when I entered the wedding I must have looked really funny walking into that room with my big blue backpack and non-ironed shirt. Immediately, one of Jihans cousins (Halima? I'm really bad with names) took me by the hand and showed me where I could store my backpack and things I had brought back from the mountains, and also assured me that I was dressed appropriately.
And then there was dancing. And then there was me dancing, which I know you are laughing at right now. Just because I am on a different continent does not mean I cannot see what you are doing. In all the experience was a lot of fun. I had been talking to Zeynap, one of Jihan's friends from Ifrane, about how many Moroccan men in cafés and in taxis had asked me if I wanted to marry a Moroccan woman, so we got to joking about that.
"Adrian, I think you maybe would like to marry a Moroccan woman now?"
When the music and the dancing stopped, the actual marriage ceremony began. The band started to play as the bride and groom descended from another room upstairs from the apartment. The groom wore a grey wool suit with a red tie, while the bride wore a gold coloured dress that covered the arms, shoulders, neck, as well as over the head. I'm not sure if the part that covered the head was part of the dress itself, but it looked like one, big, golden apparatus. She also wore a thick golden belt and a loose golden necklace, both of which were ornamented with small, flat, golden, round-shaped things that by themselves could probably pass for Christmas tree ornaments. I know that is a terrible simile, but I cannot seem to think of any other way of describing them.
As they entered the room, people were taking pictures of them, and everyone was served another round of hot mint tea and pastries. They eventually made their way to a large, silver coloured, marriage throne that are made specifically for these kinds of things in the Medina of Fès. Again people took pictures of them, and also started to dance again as the music continued. One thing that I could not help but notice was that the bride looked rather young. She was completely covered up, so I could not really tell what age she was, but Rika managed to ask the questions that I was wondering about myself.
"I have heard that the groom is forty years old. Do you want to know how old the bride is?"
"Rika, do I want to know?"
"She is seventeen."
"Wow, although I probably shouldn't say anything."
"Apparently, she had a chance to say no, but I guess this is what happened."
I do not know the whole story behind the marriage, but if I had to guess why it happened I would say that it is probably a better social or economic situation for her and her family. You read about these sorts of things happening in old issues of National Geographic, but you do not really believe it can happen until you see it happening before your eyes. At the same time, however, you never really understand all the reasons and customs behind it, so I feel it is better to just leave it as one of the great mysteries of this country.
After some dancing and some more eating, the couple got ready to leave. As they did, the bride took off the golden layer of her apparatus to reveal a white covering beneath it. It was hard to get a closer look so I apologize for not being to describe it further. They then made their way to a car specifically decorated for them, and they escaped to their honeymoon I imagine. We left shortly afterwards, because most of the people who were there left when the couple left, and I managed to say my goodbyes to everyone before I caught a taxi back to Batha.
This is going to be my last email for a while. I finish my internship this week, and I am going to be travelling in the weeks afterwards. I will try and write another one before I leave.
-Adrian
posted by Adrian's Fabulous Name Goes Here at 7:49 AM
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