Fasting in Morocco
03/18/2024, 5:00 P.M., Barcelona
While we were in Marrakech this past weekend, my friend Adam told me a couple of stories about his time last week in Taghazout, a fishing village on Morocco’s Atlantic coast. He had been surfing there for a week or two and coincidentally lined up this part of his gap semester with Ramadan. One day around noon, his juice took longer than expected to prepare. He was confused until he heard the juicer walk over to the man smoking right next to the stand, punch the smoker across the face, and casually continue down the queue of orders.
Visiting Marrakech during Ramadan was half of the allure of my trip. I had fasted half-assedly in past years, waking up for a few days in college, or back in my parents’ hometown in a Muslim part of China, or back at home in Chicago. I often snoozed my alarm with no memory or pretended to be so deeply asleep that three people shaking me couldn’t wake me. When I went about my daily routine in the West, the world moved around me in typical rhythm. There was no sense of consequence or reminder of the fasting that I ditched for the sake of convenience. I was curious, if not yearning, to see what religious tradition looked like when everybody became a reminder of piety.
My non-Muslim friends were justifiably hesitant about the timing of the trip – will restaurants be open during the day? Will people be angrier and even more mad at tourists? Where will we get beer? Ramadan censored much of the western liberalism that coaxed study abroad students and British tourists over to Marrakech, that approachable counterweight to Morocco’s conservatism that kept the city palatable yet exotic. There was an understanding that Marrakech would change, from its museum hours to unprompted restaurant closures, which threw a wrench into itinerizing.
I put on two days of Marrakech without fasting. The days were ruled by the intrusive desire to walk as much as possible in the swelter, to drink as much water, to smoke the odd cigarette, and to eat as much couscous as possible. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was purposefully neutering my trip by fasting for a day. I knew that exhaustion would hit, likely in the peak of the day when we finally settled into a groove in the souks, and I would need to ask to go home like a child and take a nap. Or, perhaps while negotiating in those souks, if I still had my energy about me, my hunger would come out as tension and anger to a vendor, or worse, to my friends who were putting up with me.
“It’s funny,” I told my friends as I ate my fourth meal of the day and washed it down with a beer, “I know I’m Muslim, in a Muslim city, doing Muslim tradition tomorrow, but this can’t help but feel like Mardi Gras before Lent.”
The next morning, I woke as quietly as possible and cooked myself breakfast and lunch for the day. The previous day, I figured I’d go to the grocery store and buy the most sustainable struggle meal without making a mess, so I bought a baguette, six eggs, and butter. Racing the sun, I cooked up six scrambled eggs in the only pot the Airbnb offered. I drank 1.5L of water and forced some bread and butter down. It was all I had for the day. I went back to bed as shadows began to form through the living room window.
I read somewhere that in Muslim countries, fights tend to break out more often during Ramadan. It makes sense when you consider what happens when sweaty, starving people are put in overstimulating environments. According to one of the search results I had for “avoiding fights during Ramadan,” it is perfectly acceptable and recommended to deescalate conflict by repeating this simple phrase: “I’m fasting!”
And so while we were walking through the Jemaa El-Fna around noon, when food stand workers would come up to us and wave menus in our faces and tell us about how the other 80 stands were all the same and used lower-quality meat, I tried it out.
“Come to 02, my friend. Where are you from?”
“I’m fasting,” I told him, to which he apologized and cleared the way for my friends and I. I was awestruck to think that I discovered the cheat code for being accosted by street vendors, an incidental benefit to fasting that made it easier to ignore the foamy thirst beginning to form.
I decided to try it out on a few non-food-related situations just to see how well it worked for deescalation. Adam and I went over to a fake Ray Bans stall to get me a pair of sunglasses before my corneas burned in the sun. The vendor started high at 220 dirhams (22 dollars). Adam started low at 20 dirhams (2 dollars).
The man, somewhat justifiably, was angry at that. “Be serious with me. This is crystal,” and he tapped on the glass lens to show that it was crystal, “and protects your eyes well. Not like the plastic you see in this other pair.” The vendor took another pair of his glasses and popped the plastic out, which I felt was counterintuitive towards selling that product.
Adam went up to 50 dirhams (5 dollars). The man went down to 150 dirhams (15 dollars). Adam asked if the glasses were even worth 20 dirhams (2 dollars) to begin with, given that they were fake. The vendor yelled, “Crystal!” and then brought out his lighter and held it against the lens for ten seconds.
I brought the price down to a happy medium of 100 dirhams (10 dollars), and after a minute of sweet talking, he agreed. Adam brought me over to the side and asked, “would you really pay 10 dollars for a pair of those sunglasses? I think you’re getting scammed.” And so I thought about it a little bit, and told the vendor that I wasn’t interested in them anymore.
He asked us if we were Chinese. I didn’t like where that was going, but we said yes anyways. He then pointed at Adam and went, “you’re a bad Chinese.” He pointed at me. “You? You’re a good Chinese. Don’t get influenced by the bad one.” I shook my head.
As I turned to leave, he grabbed my wrist and put the sunglasses in my hand. “We agreed on 100 dirhams!”
I gave the sunglasses back to him and told him the magic words — “I’m fasting.” He lightened up a bit and the guilt that obligated me to stay was no longer there. He understood that I was hungry and didn’t need the trouble. I understood that, like everybody else working here, he was fasting too. We allowed each other some irrational behavior, which was one of the many small miracles of Ramadan.
Later in the day, when other vendors called at me, I imagined thirst instead of desire. Or, when someone else yelled at me for loitering too long without any intention of purchasing, I imagined hunger instead of anger. When we began walking back to the Airbnb around sunset and the only other things around were motorbikes speeding, almost hitting us on the sidewalk, I imagined them rushing home to a crowded table.