henna attack

Pedro and I took a trip down to Rabat's medina for a wander yesterday— naturally we left the labyrinth of shops with things we had no intention of buying (a set of carved wooden frames and a carpet bag). I suggested we stop by the overpriced tea garden in the Oudaïa before heading back home— it's a pretty place that overlooks the water, shady and cool, with a fig tree in the centre. On the way up to the entrance of the Oudaïa, I was approached by several women in djellabas with syringes who offered to paint my hand with henna for a small fee. I declined as politely as I could, when suddenly a large woman in a pink floral djellaba materialized out of the shrubbery.

"Bonjour madame, une fleur pour vous parce-que vous êtes belle!"

You know when people smile at you but their eyes do not? I did not want this "gift", and tried to be nice about the whole thing but before I knew it, she had my arm in her iron grip and was scribbling all over the back of my hand. I tried to pull away, told her to stop, but it was futile. Once my hand was covered in a mess of lines, she let go, and with a grin, told me to pay up.

"Non! Je vous ai dit que je ne voulais pas!" I was stern, but she insisted that I only pay what I wanted to pay her, and added that she was working to support her many children. I handed her a five dirham coin, which for some reason prompted her to switch to English— no, the five was not enough. What did we have? Euros? She would take that, she could make change. I did not budge. Eventually she relented and sauntered off, her syringe poised for the next attack. Had I actually wanted my hand hennaed, or had she drawn something a little less 'abstract', I would have felt more generous. I really did not appreciate being grabbed and forced into an orange squiggly stain that will last two weeks or more. Oh well. There was mint tea in the shade to think about.



I had forgotten the coolness of wet henna on skin, the spiced smell, and the way your skin itches ever so slightly when it dries and cracks off. I loved marking my hands with it when I was young. I remember once, many years ago in Dubai, my cousin Rania took me to a salon to get the most beautiful, intricate patterns drawn on our palms. The petals and leaves of flowers bled a vibrant red-orange into the lines of my heart, head, life, and fate. I rubbed olive oil into the designs each day, wanting them to last as long as they could.



The ocean brought salt on its breeze, and a waiter dressed in a blue bluer than its depths weaved in between tables, little glasses of amber-coloured tea balanced precariously on a silver tray.

geometry

horn of the gazelle

My shoulders, neck, and back decided to remind me that I am so much further away from my twenties than I'd like to think, and that carrying a load of goodies under a hot sun for a few hours was a bit adventurous. We were about to walk out the main Oudaïa gate when a woman called out to us and pointed down a path, indicating another exit. As we approached her, she sprung into action, grabbing my free hand and attacking it with pretty swirls of henna.

"Non, non, non, merci!" I tried to pull away but her grip was strong. She insisted that the henna was beautiful and she's really good at it, and as I kept pulling, she soon began the 'gift tactic'. Sometimes a gift really is a gift, but sometimes it's one of those 'well-now-I've-done-this-for-you-now-pay-me' kind of things, which I suspected this might be. The henna was cool on the back of my hand, and its scent brought me to my childhood somewhere between Dubai and Egypt— I almost gave in, but then Pedro saved me with a polite "Merci madame, un autre jour, inshallah".

These were the magic words that he had discovered would elicit an inshallah in response, and a backing off. She wiped the design off my hand with her thumb in a blink, and smiled with the expected inshallah. Next time, for sure— it just didn't seem to be practical at the moment with all the bags.

The path lead us to a lovely patio overlooking the Bouregreg, full of tourists and locals sipping mint tea under the cool shade of a trellis. Once we ordered our tea, a young man presented us with a platter of beautifully shaped cookies flavoured with almonds, orange blossom, lemon, and coconut. My eyes were greedily drawn to the long cookie with a pretty woven pattern pricked into its dough— this one he said, was called corne de gazelle. Horn of the gazelle? I had to have it.



Though it was a little on the dry side, and the less exciting-looking, nameless lemon-flavoured cookie was certainly the tastiest, I was captivated. I guess that's marketing for you!

doors of the oudaïa

oudaïa blue

Oudaïa is almost as fun to say as it is to get lost in its maze of blue and blinding white. We took the long way home after a visit to the art supply store, my spine bending with the weight of several large tubes of oil paint tucked carefully into my satchel. There were canvases and sketchbooks, gouache, two wooden spoons, and a hand-woven blanket that also made their way into our arms.

But the blue, oh the blue... I could forget so much in that blue.