As promised this post will include some tourist sights as well as the lead up to Ramadan, which started in Morocco today, though it started yesterday in some other countries.

Tour Hassan

This is the site that every tourist to Rabat will have visited. The odd object at the bottom right would have been a fountain for ritual washing. This photo was taken in February, when there were relatively few tourists about. The TV keeps showing aerial pictures of it totally deserted.

It was commissioned by Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur in 1195 when he was Caliph. He wanted to build a mosque with a Minaret that would be the tallest in the world at the time, so it was intended to be 86m (260ft) tall, However he died 4 years later and the project was abandoned with the tower just 44m (140ft) high. There were 348 marble columns to support the roof of the mosque and a few walls. It was built with ramps inside so the muezzin would have been able to ride a horse to the top of the minaret to give the ‘call to prayer’. He would have had to be very fit otherwise, to climb that height 5 times a day on foot.

The Lisbon earthquake of 1755 caused most of the columns to collapse, and what now exists has been partially rebuilt. Lisbon is nearly 350 miles from Rabat, so the earthquake  was massive. Somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 people are thought to have died in Lisbon alone.

The view of the Tour was taken from the Mausoleum on the same site.

Mausoleum of Mohammed V – from Wikipedia

I forgot to take a photo of the Mausoleum from the outside, and, of course, I can’t go out now to do so, so this is courtesy of Wikipedia.

Mohammed V was the King of Morocco before the current king, Mohammed VI. He died in 1999 and had it built ready. Two of his sons are also buried there.

Interior of the Mausoleum. The sons are buried in the smaller tombs at the top right and left.

You can walk all the way round inside on a balcony. There are ceremonial guards at the doorways, and several more inside, as well as one down on the floor inside.

One of the guards at a doorway

The guards are quite happy to pose with tourists for photos.

The whole complex, which is on a hill overlooking the Bou Rgeg river is surrounded by high walls, and each entrance is guarded by 2 horsemen.

They never move a muscle, and I am sure the canopies are to keep the sun off the horses, not the men.

It has been exceptionally busy here since my last post. Last weekend I was woken early by ritual wailing. The very old lady next door had died during the night, having been ill for a long time. By Muslim law they have to bury the body before the next sunset. Normally there would have been lots of people visiting the house, but that was impossible. Ten men were allowed to attend the funeral. The cemetery is about half a mile or so away, just outside the wall of the Medina. There was more wailing as the body was carried out of the house and to the cemetery. Normally everyone then goes to the house and eats a lot. They still made a lot of food, and Assia took an offering around. Later in the day, they brought us some couscous. We had already had a large meal at lunchtime. but it was all eaten. Assia made them another offering for the next breakfast, and on day 3 of the mourning we were brought a ‘roast’ chicken dish. I am definitely in the house with the better cooks.

Since then preparations for Ramadan have been in full swing. Assia supplements her income by making ‘sweeties’, as I told you in my last post. She kept taking orders (against the advice of her mother), so we reached a situation by Tuesday when it was all hands to the pump. Production started at 7.00 am and, apart from meals, generally continued until 11 or 12 pm. A sister who lives nearby made and delivered our main meal each day and they resorted to buying some of the bread in the Medina. Even I was roped in, though the only tasks my arthritic hands could cope with were peeling almonds; separating the individual sheets of ‘filo’ style pastry made with rice flour; packing the output into clear plastic containers and then weighing them. At times even child labour was employed. It was very noisy as the door bell and phones kept ringing about orders, and they all shout to be heard when the house is full. It was also very warm by late afternoon as there was a gas stove going most of the day in the main room. I now know that ‘juj kilo’ means 2 kg, as every ingredient seemed to come in 2 kg  minimum lots. It takes a long time to peel 2kg of almonds! It also attracted most of the wasps in Rabat. Finally finished at 5 pm yesterday evening, and Jamel had completely cleaned and reset the house 2 hours later.

The household is now reduced in size as 4 have returned home, so we are now just 7 people. It is certainly much quieter.

We are now under curfew from 7pm to 5am very day until Ramadan ends. Normally after breaking the fast followed by the final prayers of the day, people go visiting friends and relatives, or congregate in the streets, so the government had to do something severe.

I have volunteered to fast with the family, so breakfast (which during Ramadan has a special (unpronounceable) name) was at 3.15 am today. The family then held a longish prayer session and went back to bed. They will pray individually another 3 times during the day before our next meal about 7.30 pm. That will be followed by more prayers, and I hope, another meal.

Will let you know next time how it is working out.

Travel is very restricted here, and they have just given the police an App to help them even further.  I think it may just be a pilot around Rabat for now. In normal times there are police checkpoints on virtually all roads. Now they will enter the driver’s ID and the car registration into the App, as well as where they are authorising him to go. If another checkpoint later on finds he has gone further, all the might of the Moroccan police will descend on him. (For him also read her, though I doubt there are many women driving anywhere at the moment).

Our ‘lockdown’ has been extended to May 20th. Every day the same official from the Ministry of Health (complete with compulsory face mask) reports on the latest Covid19 situation. Two days ago he apparently said that the number of new cases has started to fall. They have recently upped and decentralised the testing, so one might have expected the figures to rise. Still less than 20,000 tests carried out overall, and considerably less than 200 deaths, so they seem to be coping quite well. There are a few hot spots, including Meknes. Of course the population has relatively few old people, and those there are tend to live with their families, so there is no care home, or care at home situation to manage. There is absolutely no shortage of PPE here, one factory alone is producing 4 million face masks a day. Viewing from afar, I can see that the UK sacrificed its textile industry to developing countries, in exchange for vast quantities of cheap ‘disposable’ fashion items. In retrospect, not a very sensible way to live our lives.