I have changed my mind about the subject of this post, as yesterday I left the house for a couple of hours, so can report on the local situation outside. There are also some preparations for Ramadan that may be of interest.

I entered Morocco on 21 January as a 90 day visitor. There are no visas as such, but normally to extend over 90 days one has to fulfil all the requirements for a resident. My 90 days expires on 20 April, but there is no way I can leave by then.

Last week I used the on-line contact facility of the British Embassy here (it is closed and they are all working from home), and got a reply from the UK Foreign Office within 3 hours. They told me I had to contact the Morrocan Immigration authorities.

I can’t cope in French on the telephone, so yesterday Yassin rang them for me. He was told I had to go and register in person at a police station. So I was allowed to leave the house for the first time in weeks.

Wearing a face mask (compulsory if you are outside), and with hand cleanser in my pocket, we walked through the Medina for 5 minutes to where he keeps his car. The food market is only about 50 yards from the house, and that was busy. Almost impossible to keep 2 m apart. Everyone had a face mask, but in that area a few people were wearing theirs around their neck, because it is impossible to smoke with a mask on. The rest of the Medina was very quiet, with only the shops that actually sell food or household products open.

Normally this (the main street through the Medina) is thronged with people, and every shop is open

Once in the car, we left the Medina by one of the gates and, at the roundabout just outside the city wall, we were held up whilst a convoy of a police car with flashing lights followed by 3 large armoured army vehicles drove very slowly round it. It turned out to be going most of the way that we were, so we followed very slowly indeed for more than a mile.

At intervals on all larger the streets, there were police checking one’s authority to be out and about. We were stopped about 10 times in a couple of hours, but Yassin works for the Customs so has a government pass, and we were always quickly waved through. There was not much traffic or many pedestrians once out of the Medina.

We found the police station he thought would do, but after a few minutes they decided that we had to go to the central main police station for Rabat. So we drove back nearly to the Medina.  It was very difficult to find a parking space, and we ended up paying 2 Dirham to an old man to ‘guard’ the car in a side street; to be fair he did also assist Yassin in parking in a very tight space. After walking about 400 yards we found the main entrance to the police station. I have never seen so many policemen in one place as were milling about outside. Possibly it just happened to be change of shift, but there are a lot of police in Morocco.

Inside we were told it was the wrong entrance, and we had to walk right round the outside of the building. On the entrance steps we were definitively told that there was no paper work to be done, and that I could stay until the borders re-open. So I didn’t need to leave the house at all!

We had nearly got back to the Medina when Yassin’s phone rang and the ‘catering committee’ ordered him to go to a patisserie and buy some ‘goodies’. The patisseries in the Medina are all closed, as they could not manage correct spacing of customers.

Yassin in the queue; note the yellow crosses marking the correct spacing.

This large patisserie a mile or more from the Medina is also a café in normal times, and has 2 doors, so is able to operate a one-way system. They had 2 girls serving, and another on the till, and still mostly had 6 or 8 people in the queue. Everyone left loaded down, so they must be coining it. Yassin bought baguettes, pain au chocolat and filled croissants.

I also stopped at a bank to withdraw some cash (usually I have to give my card and pin to Yassin; he can only withdraw about £180 per day with it, and I trust him, but it is against the bank’s rules, I know). The pavement to the ATM was split in two by a barrier parallel to the wall of the bank, and inside the barrier correct distance was shown by red lines painted on the pavement. I used my hand cleanser immediately after getting the cash.

Ramadan is fast approaching, and Assia has a sideline in making and selling the special  sweet items that it is customary to eat each day when breaking the fast.  In what follows, the names of the items are my best interpretation of what they call them. She has already made a lot of ‘brewatt’, which are made of filo pastry, shaped like samosas and filled with scented ground almonds. They are in the freezer, and will be baked when required. We sometimes have savoury brewatts for dinner.

Yesterday she started the production of ‘shbekia’. These are made from flour, olive oil, melted butter, a little vinegar and ground almonds, and flavoured with sesame, cinnamon, dried mint, aniseed and orange flower water.

Once the dough has settled, it is rolled very thinly, cut out and shaped.

Cutting and shaping ‘shbekia’; the roller has a serrated edge

They are then put on large trays and taken to the public bakehouse.

Jamel had moved all the houseplants from the only bare wall in the living area, and brought a large gas cylinder from the shed on the roof, and extracted a rudimentary stove from the very well filled ‘bogey hole’ under the staircase.

By the time we returned from my excursion, the next stage of the process was in full swing.

They are fried in olive oil , dunked in a sugar mixture with a lot more cinnamon, then drained and sprinkled with sesame seeds

The sugar mixture starts as 2 kilos of sugar, a lemon, cinnamon and water which is boiled gently for an hour. The final result are very, very sticky spiced sweet ‘things’ (I can’t think of a suitable word in English).

Production of the next batch is in progress as I write this, and Fatima is stacking yesterday’s output in a large polystyrene box lined with a thin sheet of plastic.

I have had a report of the swallows arriving in Yorkshire. There were still some here yesterday, but none this morning.

Next week I will return to the tourist sights of Rabat – unless something else interesting crops up in the interim.

Keep safe.