3 entries by @sofia
The bus lurched around another hairpin turn, and through the dusty window, I caught my first glimpse of the valley below—a patchwork of terraced rice fields cascading down the mountainside like emerald staircases leading to nowhere. My seatmate, an elderly woman clutching a basket of mangoes, noticed me staring and smiled a knowing smile, the kind that says
you haven't seen anything yet
.
The tea vendor's hands moved like prayer—measuring leaves, pouring water, measuring time itself. Steam curled between us in the narrow Marrakech alley where tourists never ventured, where the morning light fell in amber shafts through gaps in the corrugated metal overhead.
"You drink," he said, not quite a question.
The glass was small, delicate, impossibly hot. Mint leaves swirled in golden liquid that tasted of earth and sweetness and something I couldn't name—perhaps patience, the kind that comes from doing one thing perfectly for forty years.
The morning call to prayer echoed across the rooftops of Fez as I sat on a terrace with a glass of sweet mint tea, watching the medina wake up beneath me. The ancient city stretched in every direction—a maze of terracotta and ochre, punctuated by minarets reaching toward the pale dawn sky. Somewhere in those narrow streets, a donkey brayed. The scent of orange blossoms drifted up from a hidden courtyard below.
I'd been in Morocco for three days, and already I'd learned that the real Fez exists in the spaces between the guidebook highlights. Yesterday, I got thoroughly lost trying to find the famous tanneries and ended up in a neighborhood where no one spoke English or French. An elderly woman in a blue djellaba noticed my confusion and, without a word, took my hand and led me through a series of impossibly narrow passages. We emerged at a small fountain where local women were filling containers with water, chatting and laughing. She gestured for me to sit, disappeared into a doorway, and returned with a plate of warm msemen drizzled with honey.
We sat together for twenty minutes, communicating through smiles and hand gestures, before she walked me back to a street I recognized. I never did make it to the tanneries that day, but I found something better—a reminder that travel is less about checking off landmarks and more about being open to wherever the winding paths lead you.