So this is a small village, a small blue village, a beutiful Andalusian blue village. Andalusia was and is Morocco as well as Spain. A vegetable market is going on at the Bab Souk...the Market Gate...down the street; women from the Berber villages up the mountainside bringing in cilantro, carrots, legumes, potatoes, oranges for sale. The most imortant local crop is kif, smuggled in great quantity to Spain a few miles and an European Union away, across the narrow strait of Gibralter.
Am staying at another riad, a small inn designed with an interior court, terraces overlooking the village, and Moroccan design in terms of crafts, architecture, narrow stairways, and lots of light. This part of Morocco was controlled by Spain...which still maintains several small ports along the coast, ten miles or so from here...so there is a lot of Spanish spoken which I easily mix into my French, but no one seems to mind. In the first countyard of the riad are a set of tiles in Spanish and Arabic. A old Spanish tile reads "Dale limonsa mujer no hay en la vida nada como la pena de ser ciego en Granda" "Give him alms madam there is nothing in life more painful than to be a blind man in Grenada." The same holds true for this blue village on the other side of the strait.
