Alllahu Akbar!

Each morning around 5 a.m., I'm started out of my deep sleep by a voice broadcast from the minaret outside my bedroom window.
"Alllllaaaaaaaaaaahu akbar!" it says, twice, before going on to a couple of different phrases. It isn't alone: Fez is in a bowl-shaped valley surrounded by mountains, so the calls to prayer from other mosques bounce off each other, creating a chorus of muezzin. It means "God is great", and is a signal to the Muslims in Fez that it is time for the first prayer of the day, one of five to come.
I promptly fall back asleep after taking a moment to be grateful for the chance to be living in Fez. The call to prayer is one of my favorite experiences so far.

Today is Friday, a holiday in most of the Arab world, but Morocco follows the European system with Saturday and Sunday as weekends. It's 3:15, and I just heard the recognizable sound of a faint "Alllaaaaaah" starting far away. The bowl of the city catches it and sends it back as more join it. At first they sound like the lowing of a herd of cows, getting closer and louder. Each voice is slightly different, creating a disharmonious chorus that lilts on for about 4 minutes. And then, slowly, the voices fade away, until one last "Alllaaaaaaaahu akbar" rings out and fades into the echoes of the others. Sitting on the roof of the center in the sun, I am once again surrounded by calm: the occasional birdsong, a chicken crowing, children yelling their way through the narrow streets, or the loud coughing of a motorcycle and the cry of the driver warning everyone to get out of the way.

A view into a mosque in Fez; non-Muslims are not allowed to enter most mosques in Morocco.

You can't hear the call to prayer from every part of the city. Our first night in Fez, we stayed in a traditional riad, a guest house. The rooms were gorgeous and the center courtyard was stunning, and since my roommate and I had a first-floor room, we slept past 5 a.m. peacefully without a hearing single "God is greatest".


The exit sign amused me to no end: it had the traditional icon of a exiting person, but rather than going through a rectangle he was headed for an Islamic-style door.
The Islamic arch is present all over the city. At the main entrance to the old medina and the souk is a large gate, built by the French in 1913 but within the style of the city. Pass through it and you are immediately hounded by touristy restaurant hosts, encouraging you to try their restaurant or cafe and waving a menu towards you. We ignore them and take a side street that our host brother showed us to the heart of the food section of the marketplace. Men and women in jelabas, the traditional hooded robe, walk the narrow streets and stop at olive, date, meat, and vegetable vendors. The chicken sellers have cages of chickens sticking out into the path, or a coop behind the counter. The poultry is, undoubtedly, fresh.

 The Bab Boujloud at the entrance to the old medina and the souk.

 Beautiful architecture at the wood and handicrafts museum that we visited during our tour.

A fountain outside the handicrafts museum.

Fez is divided into various neighborhoods. Each one, traditionally, has a fountain for water, a mosque, a bakery, a public hammam, and a Qur'anic school. Many of the fountains are still running. All of the mosques are still standing; wealthy Muslims often leave much of their wealth to the qadf, an endowment for Muslim and community institutions, and the mosque upkeep traditionally comes from this fund. Communities now have public schools, but the hammams and bakeries are still around. I haven't been to a hammam yet, but my host brother is a huge proponent of the public baths. "You Americans are strange in your showering habits," he said. "You shower quickly once a day. Here, we shower every two or three days, but when we shower, we shower really thoroughly!" 

Keep an eye out for a bakery photo soon - they are still going strong. The doors are left open, with a giant pile of old crates and wood fragments on one side and a giant oven in the back. At the right time of day, a curious passerby can see round loaves of dough and a stack of perfectly browned bread. To buy the khubz, though, you have to stop by a hanoot. The hanoots consist of a counter facing the street, a friendly man working behind it, and a selection of products ranging from soap to freshly-roasted nuts to candy to toilet paper. With limited Arabic, I haven't been brave enough to buy anything except soap and bottled water. But I look forward to sampling more hanoot wares in the next two months!