Morocco: in words

Here are some snippets of my impressions of Morocco - pictures are coming, I promise. (Speaking of which, does anyone know how to make a mosaic of different images using Photoshop? I'd love to create one for you, but I haven't figured out how yet.)

First off let me say that Morocco, as I find is typical with many non-western nation, immediately penetrates all of your senses the minute you leave the plane. These places are vibrant with smells and sounds and colors, there is a sort of immediacy in everything that lacks in the more subtle, more contained and manner-focused western societies. I will try and share with you my impressions but I am sure that it will only begin to capture the feeling of the place.

Moroccan smells: donkey dung, jasmine oil, mint tea, baked earth, hyacinth flowers, tannery pits, new leather, fish, dust, smoke from the pottery kilns, the occasional smell of sewage less then expected, the smell of sheep that have been in the desert and often long without water

Moroccan sounds: the buzz of the muezzin early in the morning, the sound of the shuttle from a weaving loom, pounding on metal as artisans created the famous pounded silver, laughter, friends calling out to one another, tinny taxi horns, Arabic, French, and the clicking noises of the Berber like a bird in the brush, the hooves of donkey feet in narrow stone passages, loud shouting of men through the night (and how, I wonder, do they manage to get up for the 5am prayer?)

Moroccan visual: narrow, labyrinth streets, tall buildings, colorful mosaics & clothing, women dressed in gorgeous saris, leather works, pointy toes leather slippers, walls & gates to Medinas and around ancient cities, the dry Atlas mountains with onions piled under stone crates, Barbary apes hanging out with donkeys in a forest that seems too dry to be a home for apes, tiny steps and narrow passageways, homes dug out of the earth with put upon door fronts, symbolic colors: green for holiness, blue doors for Mohammad, red for Fatima, plastic bags strewn across the landscape as far as the eye can see, men holding hands or walking arm in arm down the street even a couple of policemen walking down the street hand in hand

Moroccan tastes: almost everything is sweet in Morocco with the exception of the olives which come with every meal. It is no wonder that so few Moroccans seem in possession of good teeth.