Tuesday 21 August 2012

Birthday Update

Celebrating my 29th birthday in Tangiers! We are having a very successful trip so far. We got off to a rocky start on Sunday when we were not able to find the communidad or our contact person and we walked up and down some hilly streets in 35 degree heat with all our equipment.

Eventually, we found our contact by hunting him down bit by bit until it ended with us in his living room with his wife and son. His wife was mid-boureka making, btw.

We have photographed about 4500 pages so far of minutes, death registers, marriage registers, rabbinic tribunal records and a bunch of stuff we cant read or recognize but are sure has value.




More on what we discovered and what books we have photos of later. 



Today we photographed for four hours in the morning, and then we waited in line for an hour at what must be the most popular tuna sandwich restaurant in Morocco.

After a quick snarf of our sandwiches (we were late because the line took so long) we found our guy and headed off to the new Jewish cemetery.  The pics of the cemetery and shul are on our other camera, so will post them later. We visited the following graves: Mose Benzaquen (my great grandfather), Jacob Benzaquen (my great uncle), Fortuna Haligua (my great aunt), Allegria Haligua (my great aunt), Aureile Reiner (our friends grandmother), Amram Assayag, and Simy Elmaleh. It was quite an adventure as it was seriously hot, there were tons of thorns and bushes to climb through, and we had a hard time locating the graves. But with my dad on bbm directing us, Eli reading the maps, and our guide telling us he knew where the graves were all along, we succeeded.

Then I wanted to go back to the hotel, but our guide was adamant we continue, even though our clothes were soaked through with sweat and Eli's foot was bleeding from thorns he fell on in the cemetery.

We visited Rue de Synagogue in the Medina and saw the Nahon shul again. We took some pics of the beautiful architecture and artifacts. It is so sad that the shul is desolate and empty and there are no more services there ever. 

We had some more fun when we got back to the hotel and had to change rooms for a third(!) time because "the agency did not give us the information", a running theme in Morocco.

We have a few more books left and then we are going to explore the city a bit more. Will keep this blog updated now that we have internet. Yesterday was Eid al-Fitr and apparently the whole Morocco was online so the internet went down. At least thats what the guy in the fez and bloomers at reception told us!

Here's us at an Eid photoshoot last night. You pay the guy to sit on his backdrop. This was seventy five cents Canadian. Totally worth it!

1 comment:

Denise Levin said...

You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted. But mostly they're darked.
A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?

Happy Happy Birthday Miriam!
Love Ma