Monday, 26 January 2004

Morocco II: I am worth 3,000 camels

I had gotten decked out in my best gypsy costume with the scarves and everything because I wanted to kind of fit in! NO, I was so wrong! First of all picture me wearing this bright pink scarf on my head, when all the Moroccan women were wearing tans and grays. (We heard that if your hair is beautiful, they quickly cut it off while you´re walking by and sell it, so we were all trying to hide or minimize our hair) All of us Americans (about 25) were bunched in a group, with two bodyguards and two tour guides, Hottie and Thug leading. As soon as we stepped out of the bus we made SUCH a commotion! Everyone was staring, and the women were SO mean to me, ONLY ME! They were hissing at me, and glaring at me! OMG! I thought they would be all over my other friend who has beautiful goldlocks hair, or other girls but NO! Only me! (I think they thought that I was Arabic or something and not wearing the right attire, because the street vendors came up to me and kept asking are you arabic? are you arabic?) All of a sudden we were barraged with street vendors coming up to us and screaming in our faces TEN EURO, YOU BUY, YOU BUY! (In english). So we were rushed out of the streets into this elegant store that was like the Neiman Marcus of Morocco. They had mint tea all set up for us and these really good pastries and had a fashion show of rugs ( I didn´t think that was possible, but it happened) About 10 guys would come out of the backroom like models with huge rolls of rugs, walk down the freaking CATWALK and roll out beautiful rugs while this guy would talk about the quality of each! HAHA! They were trying to sell us college students these 2,000 euro rugs! RUGS, HA, yeah freakin right! After the fashion show, they turned into street vendors. ´´YOU BUY YOU BUY THIS, You are beautiful and for this I give it to you for special deal, shhh, only 300 euros´´. WHATEVER! Then the owner comes out and sees me taking a picture and says ´´Are you arabic?´´ and I´m like no, and he keeps following me around the store. I don´t know if he´s joking or not but he says to my friend with the Goldilocks hair, ´Two thousand camels for you. ´He looks at me and says ´you look arabic, three thousand camels for you!´ I just laugh it off and go look around, cuz I´ve never heard that one before! Then he asks me to look at a special collection he has and it´s just me and him in the corner right? So he looks around all secretively and hugs me really close and says ´Look at me, look into my eyes! You can have any of these rugs, all of these rugs, if you will stay here with me forever.´ I look at him like HELL NO! And he says ´no, no don´t answer now, look around and consider it.´ So then he comes around TWO MORE TIMES, and tries to hug me again and I´m looking away for someone to help me, and he keeps saying ´look into my eyes´! So finally I go far away into a corner, where his salesmen keep harrassing me and saying, ´COME COME, I have special offer for you back here.¨ (TRYING to take me to the backroom where I´m sure the owner was waiting like a spider, the Creep!) Finally the Creep says, "I know where you are in Spain. I will come to visit you soon. I have business in Salamanca! Do not turn away from me!" I clung onto one of my guy friends and would NOT leave him for anything.