tannery

love his hat!

 Although the leather tannery of Fez is almost at the centre of the medina, you will never have trouble finding it. As you get closer, you will smell the unmistakable odour, simultaneously besieged by any number of people wanting to take you to their father/brother/cousin's shop. The leather shops are all situated close by -most with a birds' eye view of the dyepits, which is where these photos were taken, and where I saw the skins being dyed for the yellow baboosh.

A small girl aged about 10 years followed us there, in spite of us telling her we were not going to give her any dirhams-  all the way being told by stern Moroccan men that she should be at school. Unofficial tour guides are actively discouraged by the authorities, and any one caught is in trouble with the police. We had first hand experience of this, after we met an entertaining young man with terrible dental hygiene, speaking excellent English, while standing hopelessly lost in the street looking at a map. We followed him for an energetic, interesting 45 minutes through narrow twisting alleys far from any known route, when quite suddenly he was pursued at high speed on foot by two uniformed men while standing talking to me. We never saw him again, but hoped he got away as we had really come to enjoy his company.