Africa & Middle East > Morocco > Northern Morocco > Chefchaouen > Articles > Chefchaouen: Forbidden Citadel

There is an ancient town, in Northern Morocco, whose rows of ice-blue terraces seem to be bracketed, shelf-like, onto the walls of the Rif Mountains. Whilst the passing of the hours are rigorously marked by echoing prayer-calls from the old mosque in Place Outa El Hammam, it seems that the centuries have ticked by almost unnoticed.

In Chefchaouen I met a diminutive old man who seemed to personify this feeling. Despite his frail appearance, he was a masseur in the hammam (steam bath) and like most of his generation, he still spoke Spanish in addition to Moroccan Arabic. As he talked, I toasted my hands by a bucket of smouldering coals and breathed in the stale mist.

Hearing that I lived in Madrid, he straightened himself up on his stool and his bright eyes sparkled mischievously as he turned the conversation to the Moorish conquest of Spain. His arms spread with the abundance of Moorish culture in Andalucia and his jaw dropped at its incomparable beauty. He flexed his puny biceps and shook his fist viciously when he talked of the glory of Los Moros. It was strange to realise that the thought of old-time skirmishes with the Christians can still ignite a fire in the heart of an old Riffian warrior like my friend.

In the 400 years after Muslim refugees from Spain first settled in Chefchaouen, only three Christians were brave enough to set foot in the town. The first, in 1883, came disguised a Rabbi and managed to spend only one dangerous hour here - despite the fact that he went to the extremes of getting circumcised (just in case he was ‘compromised’). The second visitor, a British journalist, narrowly escaped with his life into the mountains when he was recognised as ‘an infidel dog’ and the third (in 1892) didn’t.

The journalist’s curiosity was fired by ‘the very fact that there existed, within a thirty-hour journey of Western Europe, a city in which it was considered an utter impossibility for a Christian to enter.’

For centuries, the numerous Riffian tribes had fought amongst themselves with such ferocity that a man was often considered a coward if he survived to die in his old age. Then the Spanish troops marched into the town from their strongholds on the northern coast and, for the first time, there was peace between the tribes - they united in the common aim of obliterating as many Nazrani as possible.

Within six months they had driven the Spanish back over the mountains with the loss of nearly 20,000 men. It was only when the rebellion spread into French Morocco that the two colonial forces united and brought order to the Riffian tribes.

One way in which this ‘order’ was brought about was by the use of the sort of ‘mass tranquillising policy’ which the Spaniards had once used to such good effect amongst the remnants of the Inca Empire in South America. There, cocaine had done wonders to calm the rebellious characters of the Indians - in Morocco, cannabis provided the same solution. Although the tribes had always grown kif, it wasn’t until the Spanish began to promote their peacekeeping policy that it became commonly used.

In the 1970s, hashish became big business and sales hit an all time high – partly because somebody taught the farmers how to produce (easily exportable) resin…and partly because Jimi Hendrix bought a house in Morocco. Today, Chefchaouen itself is so synonymous with chocoláte that you quickly learn that wherever you go in Morocco afterwards, the surest way to find yourself surrounded by the most dubious ‘guides’ is to let it be known that you have ever set foot in ‘Chaouen.

The hippies have gone but the influx of tourists in recent years has meant that the people of Chefchaouen have come to accept the Nazrani as a perennial sight in their town. In summer, the normally peaceful Place Outa el Hammam can look like a bus depot when coaches queue up to obscure the views of the old Kasbah walls. Then, Chefchaouen absorbs its own underground invasion of hustlers and kif vendors from the backstreets of Marrakech and Fez.

But in winter the town regains its old-world charm. The terrace cafés in the square are again the domain of old men, sitting quietly with their friends, sipping piping-hot mint tea under the pointed hoods of their djellabas - the floor-length cloak that is the national dress of Morocco. They gaze thoughtfully across the roofs towards the brutal twin-peaks of ech-Chaoua. ‘The Two Horns,’ from which the town gets its name, guard the pass to the terrace fields on which much of Europe’s cannabis is grown.

Climbing back down that rocky trail after a day in the mountains, I had met two men who worked for the Moroccan Ministry of Agriculture, advising the local farmers on crops. It was a surreal experience to meander down, between the shelf-like paddocks of cannabis stubble, whilst they explained to me that the cultivation of kif is ‘all but finished in the region.’

Under international pressure, the Moroccan government is making moves to stop the export of hashish and military patrols and roadblocks are increasingly common sights in the mountains. Although its use is frowned upon, no real effort is made to stop Moroccans from smoking but a foreigner can quickly find himself on distinctly stony ground. The danger comes most often from the legions of informants who know that there is a quick dirham to be made out of the paranoia of an imprudent backpacker.

I had said goodbye to the two civil servants on a ridge above the town and scrambled down the rocky slope towards a castellated gateway in the fortress walls. The sloping roofs of Chefchaouen’s houses, a design imported from Moorish Spain, are an almost unique feature in Moroccan architecture. But it is the ubiquitous duck-egg blue paintwork that is the real hallmark of the town - distinguishing it from the architecture of the south, which takes its ochre glow directly from the desert, and from the northern towns, with their glaring whitewash.

The pale blue alleyways, shading to darker blue in the deep doorways and at the ends of winding chasms, give the impression of peering into a clear, icy well. This has a curious effect upon the subconscious, so that at any time of the year you feel instantly cooled when you walk into the tortuous maze of the old town from the mountainside.

In winter, the surrounding mountains quickly debar the alleys of the medina from the heat of the African sun. It was this that lured me away from the search for my hotel and into the steaming welcome of the hammam. More people arrived, carrying towels and bathmats, but I had forgotten my own bath in the old man’s reflections and the hypnotising glow of the coals.

It is one of the fundamental tenets of Islam that ‘cleanliness is next to godliness.’ In much of Morocco, the hammam’s religious implications are reinforced by the complicated logistics of heating enough water to bathe a large family and almost everybody makes a daily trip to the local baths.

I was disappointed when the relief shift arrived and my friend started to pack away his scrubbing pads and towels. He slipped a pinstripe djellaba over his ragged vest and shook my hand with a surprisingly powerful grip: “Bienvenido a Chefchaouen, señor. Enjoy your stay.”

The wail of the muezzin had already marked the end of another day when I left the hammam but I reflected that the passing of the years has, after-all, had a definite mellowing effect upon the inhabitants of this once forbidden citadel.

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