Chefchaouen wakes up blue and stays that way. Every wall a different shade, cobalt to powder to something between sky and bruise. I get lost twice before nine in the morning, on purpose the second time. The alleys don’t care about your plans. They just narrow, turn, narrow again, until you forget which direction the medina gate was in.
The wool shop has no sign, only a doorway stacked with skeins like firewood. Inside it smells of lanolin and cedar and something smoky underneath, maybe the tea the woman keeps pouring for anyone who lingers longer than a glance. Her hands move faster than my shutter, always. She sorts wool by color the way other people sort memories: this one is October in the Rif, this one is her mother’s kitchen, this one she won’t explain, just smiles and moves to the next skein. Terracotta. Dried sage. Every hill between here and the Atlas, she says, like she’s naming relatives.
I ask if she dyes it herself. She says her mother did, her mother’s mother did, and she just continues the sentence. No drama in it. Continuation, not performance. I think about how much of what we call tradition is really just someone refusing to stop.
I buy two blankets I don’t need and definitely can’t fit in the duffel. She wraps them in brown paper like she’s protecting a secret. Outside, a boy kicks a half-flat football against a blue wall that’s absorbed decades of scuffs and doesn’t seem to mind. Someone calls to prayer from somewhere I can’t locate, the sound bending around corners same as I do. A cat watches me from a windowsill with the specific disdain only Moroccan cats seem to master.
I sit on a step to let my legs remember which way is downhill. The Leica stays in my bag. Some things you just want to have happened to you, not documented. Saudade, already, for a place I haven’t left yet.
Do I need the blankets? No. Do I need a reason to come back to a city this shade of blue? Also no. I bought one anyway. Call it a small, deliberate excuse. The kind you plant now so future-me has somewhere to return to when the duffel feels too light and the road starts looking the same in every direction.
