For all those fans of Meknes.

I've spent the last four days here and have written too much about it to pick a good description of the city, and since I have a request for some info I decided to give an overview of my impressions of the city, being my first real part of Morocco.

First, for those of you unfamiliar with the middle atlas in Morocco, it is far from the desert. Outside the city is acres of plush farm land on rolling hills, with a few forests in the distance. Inside the cities its much more like a desert, lots of dirt, lots of beige, and lots of sun.

The road into Meknes is long and peculiar. Most of the towns along the way appear to have no services, and a few barely inhabitable. The farms all lack machinery, horses and mules doing the bulk of the work. People get on and off the bus at cross-roads in the middle of nowhere. The strangest site is that every tree that once evenly formed the sidewalk of the highway has been systematically removed of all branches. My imagination runs wild when I see further down the road a horse pulling a trailer piled with sticks, as high as possible without requiring something to hold them in place.

The bus stop in Meknes is a dirt field whose only resemblance to a bus stop is the orderly row of buses surrounded by a sea of taxi's, cigarette dealers, snack stalls, and a worn down unmarked building with a ticket counter inside. The bus stop is on the old side of the city, where I spent much of my wandering time. The highlights are long. First is the Grand Mosque, not too far off the main medina drags. I never did find a view of its minaret, but I walked around it, gathering an understanding of its massive interior of which I only caught a glimpse. It's not at all marked, just an opening created by cutting out a square of wall and pushing it back three feet. I would've walked in having not noticed the reed mats lining the floor, and the incredible feeling of forbidenness that I couldn't deny feeling. But those glimpses inside were enough. Outside its bland and dirty on the streets and the walls. Inside it is meticulously tiled and I managed to spy a woman walking through a ray of sun inside. Every picture I've ever seen lived up to the images I saw. Around the Grand Mosque are the souks. The main souk being a long stretch of imported silk bearing designers logos and knock-off toys bearing little resemblance to western eyes but doing just fine here. Past that is the vegetable area and past that is a stretch of lumber yards fenced in by small compost dumps from the food that never sold. The nicer wares are in little strip mall areas, but again it's all imports. A few handmade items were to be found, but all lacking any workmanship and pumped out in huge numbers. On the other side is the Kasbah. It is litterally miles of walls with very few entrances, and I walked nearly every stretch. The Kasbah contains a few points of interest. One is the local picnic grounds where soccer is played in the old imperial riding stables. The other is a quarter mile stretch of wall, on one side is the old mellah, booming with growth and showing off satelite dishes in every window, and on the other side of the great wall is a shanty-town on the edge of a steep ravine. The children ignored me as they played with sticks and rusted pipes while there parents were elsewhere. A couple of roosters guarded their territory and some remnants of a cat meowed at me. Once you leave the Kasbah you see the greatest site Meknes has to offer (and impossible to compose a good picture because of its quantity of information). To the west is the old city. To the east is the new city, boasting tall buildings and an upward cost of living. Between them is a narrow valley whose trees block any acknowledgment of the river. On the road between the two halves of town lies a testimony to the achievements of american demographics. In a spot possibly assumed unthinkable by local developers lies the McDonalds in all its neon glory. It is perhaps the largest one I've ever seen with a huge picnic area outside. Yet with only half a standard menu the place is still packed, the lines long, and it provided me with a rare opportunity to observe feeling the confidence of being a local on my turf.

After that you enter the new city. My best attempts at description always return to the phrase that I can't tell whether it's coming or going. I've already mentioned the dilapidated park and the dried up reflection pool, but there is also the cell phone shops, the internet cafes, and the new buildings popping up. There is also a host of economic stratas in the new city from the high-pressure business women to the shoe shiners who also sell individual cigarettes and photocopied crossword puzzles. Some services are missing from the city, but they are quickly filled in by an independent worker. If there isn't a store offering the service there is someone on the street with a small display making talents known. There is a five star hotel half a mile from mine which has no hot water at any time of the day.

Part of the thrill of Meknes is that after one visits Fez (or so I'm told), nearby Meknes has little to offer. Because of that I walk the street the lone tourist, probably working here in most peoples eyes. Occasionally the price of merchandise will be given in Arabic although they are fluent in French and probably assume I am too. If I don't recognize the number (of which I know very few), I just guess and hope it's enough.

I wish I could say so much more, I wish I could add my entries on my visit to nearby Volubilis and my unwelcoming in Moulay Idriss as the locals hissed at my non-muslim status kindly letting me know that I was only welcome in that holy city to catch the next bus to Meknes, which is a whole experience in itself. Too bad, you'll just have to wait because tomorrow I head to Fez for a whole new batch of experiences.