Day 48: Mahi Binebine

Day 6 of our 9-day trip

Plan: Marrakesh

Today our only commitment was to go to Moroccan author and artist Mahi Binebine's house for lunch. I slept in until 10 and had some roof top breakfast. Already at 10, the temperature was over 95 degrees. The high for the day was a massive 104 degrees Fahrenheit and it was definitely a factor. Our rooms in the riad were only air-conditioned if you asked them to turn on the AC and even then, it was pretty poor AC. Today was a battle against the elements and element #1 was heat.

In the morning, Marissa and I went shopping in the medina. Element #2 was the monkeys and trying to avoid having them thrown on me again like last time I was in Marrakesh. I can proudly say that it was a Barbary-ape-free day. When we were walking around, I spent 20 minutes haggling with a guy over some gifts for my family. Besides getting thrown out of the door like usual, I got the gifts down from 370 to 200. At the end, he shook my hand and told me he had never met an American as crazy as I am before! It made me pretty happy because it provided some qualitative data to support that I have approached superhuman levels of bargaining prowess.

We left the riad at 12:30 for Mahi Binebine's house out in the suburbs of Marrakesh. He lived in a gorgoues house on a bougainvillea lined street, both of which looked like they could have been in any part of Miami. Although we came in skeptical, it was so much fun! We met his wife and two of his three daughters and both of his brothers stopped by too. His older brother was imprisoned after the Independece movement for being a socialist. He spent 18 years in a prison in the desert where only four of the captives managed to survive. The younger brother was the complete opposite: a man raised in New York, fluent in English, who was both a billionaire with a background in orthopedic surgery and who owned an investment bank in China. Lunch was a blast and Mahi was just a super jovial guy with lots of funny stories. We didn't talk at all about his work but it was interesting to see what the Moroccan upper-middle class was like and how closely it resembled western life and my life back in Miami. We ended up staying for three hours!

After lunch, we were dead tired but Lla had arranged a guide to take us to a Berber museum, to the Majorelle gardens designed by Yves Saint Laurent, and on a tour of the city. While the gardens and the museum were nice, it was too hot and we were too tired to get anything out of the experience. I slept through the whole city tour on our poorly-air conditioned bus because I was so tired. Element #3 was sleep deprivation.

We got to the hotel at 6 and had some free time during which we all napped. For dinner, we went back to stall 117, but then had a second dinner at KFC. It was "finger-lickin good." Element #4 today was hunger.

Elle had been pretty sick all day with some stomach stuff and people were all so tired and drained that we decided to not go out again. It's too bad we passed up the opportunity to enjoy the Marrakesh nightlife but we just hung out on the terrace and tried our best to cool down. Personally, I was just too full and didn't think my pants would fit after two dinners and ice cream for dessert. I went to bed at 1, finally submitting myself to all the elements except for barbary apes.