The call to prayer echoes across Fez's medina just as dawn breaks, and I'm already lost. Not the panicked kind of lost—the good kind. The kind where narrow alleyways twist like riddles, where every turn reveals another carpenter's workshop or a woman selling fresh mint by the bundle. The air smells of cedar wood, lamb tagine, and something sweet I can't quite place.

I follow my nose to a small bakery tucked between a leather tannery and a metalworker's shop. Inside, an elderly man pulls rounds of khobz from a clay oven, the bread puffing with steam. He sees me watching and gestures for me to sit. No shared language, just the universal grammar of hospitality. He tears off a piece of bread still too hot to hold, dips it in olive oil and za'atar, and hands it to me with a smile that says, this is how we start the day here.

I spend the morning watching the medina wake up. A boy no older than ten navigates a wooden cart loaded with fabric through passages barely wide enough for his shoulders. Two men argue over the price of saffron, their voices rising and falling like music. A cat stretches in a shaft of sunlight that slices through the latticed roof above.

Later, I find myself on a rooftop terrace, drinking mint tea with a woman named Amina who runs a small riad. She tells me about her grandmother, who lived her entire life within these same walls, who knew every family, every shop, every secret the stones held. "Fez doesn't change for anyone," Amina says, pouring more tea into my glass. "You have to change for Fez."

As the sun sets, the medina glows amber and gold. I finally find my way back to the main square, but I'm already planning to get lost again tomorrow. Because that's the thing about places like this—they only reveal themselves when you stop trying to conquer them and start letting them teach you instead.

Some journeys are about the destination. This one is about surrendering to the labyrinth.

#travel #Morocco #medina #wanderlust