The promised account of the Morocco trip…finally!

All immigrants have one conflict in common: where to go on holiday. Do you go home and quench your longing for your home country, family and friends? Or do you explore this vast world as much as your time and budget allow? A solution to this eternal conflict is to meet your family members in a third country.....and Morocco may just be the ideal destination for Turks.

Why? It’s almost half way between Turkey and the UK, almost always sunny, does not impose visa to Turkish citizens and it’s cheap (£1 = about 15 dirhems). I spent the last week of March in Morocco with my aunt so can vouch for it.

I met her in Casablanca. She came on a package tour from Istanbul and I joined the same tour from London. I normally prefer the freedom of independent travel. But this time a package holiday was the best option for two reasons. First, the fact that all logistics were taken care of meant that I could spend more quality time with my aunt. Second, the presence of other Turks on the tour lessened my longing for the mother country – at least a little (more on that later…).

Morocco is a kingdom. Majority of the 29 million population is Muslim and consists of Arabs, Berbers and mix of the two. Very beautiful people I tell you. It’s almost as large as Turkey but because about half the country is desert, most live in the northern half. The French which ruled here between 1912 and 1956 left behind large avenues and beautiful, tall (though now mostly run down) apartment blocks.

Our tour was called ‘Royal Cities’ and covered Rabat, Meknes, Fes and Marrakech. The tour started in Casablanca because of its transport connections as the biggest city. It has all those beautiful French apartments but little of the romance the film of the same name created on screen…it turns out the film was made in Hollywood anyway!

Rabat Medina (the old town - Medina means town in Arabic) is beautiful but the rest you can skip. Meknes – you can totally skip…Moulla Idris is a small town between Rabat and Fes – interesting in that it’s not a beautiful town to be in but a great one to look at, the way it’s positioned on a couple of hills cradled by two larger ones. The nearby Roman town is also worth a visit. Fes and Marrakech, on the other hand, are unmissable.

The old town of Fes is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Some of the streets are so narrow that two people can’t walk past. Not only the architecture but almost even the life style of the city seems to have been preserved since 9th – 12th century when it was founded…that is except for the multiple TV antennas that don every roof.

The oldest and largest square of Marrakech, Cemaa el Fna, is another World Heritage Site. The square, which was once where public executions took place, is today full of life. During the day, it’s full of dried fruit and nut and orange juice sellers, and Moroccans of all sorts running after their errands. At night, it is a festival of Moroccan cuisine, fortune tellers, sooth sayers, alchemists, snake charmers, musicians, dancers and many other treasures.

The liveliest parts of any old city during the day are the souks. It’s impossible not to get lost in them. Colours, smells and noises emanating from the shops are simply thrilling. “To look is free – no need to buy” they say but once you are so much as hesitate for a second in front a shop, it’s near impossible to leave without bargaining and then, of course, buying something….usually very good value but possibly for something that you don’t really need.

The similarities between Morocco and Turkey don’t end with souks and bargaining. There are also men’s cafes almost on every corner: the difference is that theirs are less depressing. Women are also dressed rather conservatively (with or without head scarves) even if it’s hard to see what Moroccans (men or women) wear since they mostly wear a jellaba over everything that covers them from head-to-toe and depending on the material keeps them cool in summer and warm in winter.

Mind you, my fellow tour goers from Turkey changed my understanding of how ‘conservative’ Turkish women can be. They were two couples (brothers and their wives). All four were hajjis and women covered their heads – even though due to her colour coordinated outfits, at least one of them looked more feminine than my aunt and I who were just slopping it! The other woman wasn’t as happy with having to cover her head I think…. She would sneak around and have a cigarette every now and then (her husband knew but not the older brother-in-law who clearly was the Alpha male of the family). She also had a great sense of humour. One morning when asked how we spent the night, my aunt said the people in the neighbouring room in the hotel woke us up by having showers at 3 in the morning. Her response was “perhaps they were living their fantasies” (fantezi yapiyorlardir)…the fact that they may have been living their fantasies would have never occurred to me - less so to suggest it to strangers in a package tour….and I call myself liberal!

If you don’t want to go on a package holiday of royal cities and shop till you drop, Morocco also offers Berber villages, wild Rif and Atlas mountains, lakes, beaches, desert, and plains covered in wild flowers. In our tour, we covered over 1000km (feeling guilty about the CO2 emissions). The scenery during the whole trip was made up of thousands of wild flowers of all colours imaginable…the best cure after the grey winter of the UK.

A holiday that’s close by, sunny, green (at the right time of the year), historical, cheap and requires no visa…. A holiday that’s a welcome alternative to making endless visits to friends and family during which the same new stories are told and the same old stories are rehashed….what are you waiting for?!