Queens of All That We Survey, Meknes, Morocco (Feb 2008)

It is Friday night and all we want is a few measly beers. Is that so much to ask? After all, we've taken cold-water showers this morning at our faux five star hotel in Fez, argued with at least four cab drivers, tramped around Roman ruins in ankle deep mud, gotten horrendously lost in the Imperial Palace, bargained for rugs, and unearthed a hidden hammam, all in the last twelve hours. We've earned a few beers. We deserve them. We are entitled to them.

We just have to find them.

Morocco is a Muslim country, of course, but not super strict; we have not, for example, been stoned in the streets for our uncovered heads and arms, or our decadent smoking. People just look at us funny and try to sell us stuff, we can deal with that. However, locating a drink is a more challenging endeavor; we could cab to the tourist district and visit one of the pricey hotel bars. Otherwise, drinking establishments are more like booze holes where the only women present are the prostitutes. Not being prostitutes, it seems unwise to kick back a couple of beers surrounded by lusty, sweaty, sexually repressed Arabic men who exoticize Western women and assume any woman in the bar is for sale. No, that is not where we will find our beers. We will have to buy them and then take them back to the hotel.

This is, obviously, not as easy as it sounds. The aforementioned booze holes won't sell us beers to go, and alcohol sales are strictly regulated in stores. Accustomed as we are to American convenient stores and New York bodegas, we had to learn the hard way that one cannot just "pick up a six-pack" at the corner store. In fact there are a few key items missing from corner stores, including feminine hygiene products.

This is another issue that is becoming more pressing by the day, as my emergency supply is just about tapped. We have asked in many places, using our guidebook translations, and merchants have feigned incomprehension of our outlandish, unspeakable, and embarrassing request. Another place in which we have been led astray by our guides, which airily promised that tampons were "widely available in any corner store in the major cities." Lies, lies, lies; all lies.

So we have a mission: beer, and tampons. Debi and I agree that if we are successful in acquiring both of these items in the Muslim country, with our bare arms and our cigarettes, we shall be Queens of All That We Survey and can consider Morocco sufficiently conquered.

We've heard that beer is available in supermarkets, so we set off to find one. Surely there must be some kind of supermarket within walking distance in Meknes, right? There's even one marked on my map, so we head out looking for it. We found the hidden hammam, we can find anything, we are very nearly Queens of All That We Survey. We circle, retracing our steps, turned around, it's supposed to be right here. Ask someone passing by, they point vaguely off down an alley, we follow that and end up circling back around, it's supposed to be right here. Someone else stops to help us, what are we looking for? The supermarket, yes, but what do we want to buy exactly?

We are comfortable with who we are, liberal American women, but after a week in Morocco we've absorbed some of the cultural imperatives and just can't quite bring ourselves to admit to this stranger that we are looking for beers, that we are flagrantly seeking to break every taboo we can think of. We repeat, supermarket, supermarket, he can't help us and moves on.

I have an idea! We'll hop in a cab and just tell him to take us to the supermarket. It's probably pretty close by so it shouldn't be that expensive, and surely a local cab driver will know where to find the closest supermarket. I am brilliant, and very nearly Queen of All That I Survey!

Our cab driver is youngish, friendly, and speaks some English, although my broken French is still useful. We tell him, supermarket.

"Supermarket??" he repeats in disbelief, confirming; we repeat it back to him with great authority, "Yes, we want to go to the Supermarket!"

"Supermarket, like...Jinane?" At least I think that's what he says, "Yes, Supermarket!" I am positive, I agree that is exactly what I want. He is still not entirely sure we know what we're doing but agrees to humor these crazy foreigners and off we go.

I assume that his confusion is because the supermarket is so close by that it is silly to take a cab, but as we begin driving I see that it was wise to hop in a cab. We wind out of the new city and take the ring road up and around the hill, the same way we came down from the Roman ruins at Volubilis earlier today. Then back down again into the old city, there's the Imperial Palace where we got horribly lost for hours, and then outside of the new city...

And by now we've been in this cab for twenty minutes and are headed irrefutably out of the city center. Debi and I are exchanging skeptical looks, where is this guy taking us? She mutters, "New York cab ride," we are watching the meter tick upwards and becoming glumly convinced that we are being ridden about at random to increase the fare, and that there is nothing we can do about it. If I were in New York I would yell at the cab driver and insist that he turn off the meter, but if I were in New York I'd know where I was and I don't here in Meknes.

Climbing further up and around the hills that cradle the city, we can see all the lights below us and we are moving away from them. Oddly, we're not frightened, although maybe we should be. The driver seems amiable enough, tries to chat with us in his halting English, asks us what we want at the supermarket exactly? "We just need to go to a supermarket," I say firmly in a voice that clearly will not brook further interrogation. The crazy foreigners want to go to the supermarket and that is that, thank you please.

Forty-five minutes after we clambered into this car, we drive into a huge parking lot--we have arrived at the SuperMarket. "This is what you wanted?" he asks, as our jaws drop and we start almost giddily giggling. We had wanted a supermarket, the kind with a meat counter and seafood and household supplies and aisles of food and maybe some toiletries, some vegetables and oh yes, a beer aisle. A modern grocery store, which is what we were led to believe "Supermarche" means in Morocco. Instead, we are faced with something more akin to a Wal-Mart or Sam's Club. And not just any Wal-Mart, a Super Wal-Mart. We could walk out of here with a set of patio furniture, a flat screen TV, and a lifetime supply of paper towels.

But will they have beer and tampons?

The meter is still running, and we ask the driver to wait for us; nay, we insist, we will be so screwed if he drives away and strands us at Moroccan Costco. We bolt out of the cab, this place is huge we have to have a plan, let's do this quickly--I will look for tampons and Debi will find the beer.

We are not quite running down the long concrete aisles, but definitely power-walking, heads swivelling to decipher labels on each aisle heading. I find feminine hygiene and break right, yes! So close to victory, almost Queen of All That I Survey! Run down the aisle, there they are, shelf after shelf of sanitary towels, pads with wings, pads without wings, slimline panty liners, some that are nearly diapers, getting closer, getting warmer, and then that's the end.

No tampons. I can't believe it so I slow down and survey the whole shelf again, wondering if I have overlooked them in my panicky state. Pads with wings. Pads without wings. Panty liners. Diapers. And still no tampons. I am out of time on this mission, I have failed, but maybe Debi has succeeded. I run back out to the main aisle to find her, she is pacing back and forth and cannot find the beer aisle. I see a clerk and run up to her, panting, "Qu'est-ce que vous cherchez?" she asks politely and a little fearfully of the clearly distressed Westerner before her.

"BEER!" I almost shout, screw the false modesty and cultural sensitivity we've come this far we can't fail now. She reels back a little, and then turns and points to the far wall, above which is the legend "La Cave." That is where they keep the beer.

Behind the rolled down steel door closing off that section of the store, that is.

Debi and I stare at the door, stare at each other, and then turn and run back out to our cab empty-handed, fearful that he has left us and not at all Queens of All That We Survey. He's still there, thankfully, more confused than ever when his crazy foreigners that were so insistent on the SuperMarket emerge with nothing. Why did we need to come all the way up here to buy nothing?

He asks again, gently, "What do you want to buy?"

"Beer! We just wanted to buy some beer, we're American and we just wanted a few beers..."

"Beer? You cannot buy beer at the Supermarket on Friday..."

"Now we know that!"

"Why didn't you tell me you wanted beer?"

"Just... just take us back to Meknes."

We are defeated and distinctly non-royalty as we slump in the backseat for the long ride back into town. Half an hour later and the meter still ticking upwards, and we are back near the city center where we began. But wait, we are passing the road that will take us to our hotel, where are we going?

"We go to find beer!" Our driver is on the game now, part of our mission and if only we'd enlisted him earlier...but too late to think of that now, now we are just feeling our spirits and hopes rise a little that perhaps we will end this evening Queens of All That We Survey after all.

He pulls up outside a corner store, and our spirits dip momentarily, but wait! Wait! WAIT JUST ONE STINKING MINUTE! There's a Heineken sign outside this corner store, there is beer in there! We tumble out of the cab and run into the store. It's orders of magnitude smaller than the megastore so much easier to cover all the ground, we are hunting like hounds, almost sniffing the air for the scent of the trail. There's no beer on the shelves anywhere, and none in the coolers either. But we know it must be here, our driver brought us here and there's the sign outside there is beer in here somewhere, we know it!

On the left hand wall I see a discreet staircase going down. Ha! I have the scent now, and we descend the stairs to find a small counter, one of those half-doors with the top open and a man behind it. Above the doorframe is a small, printed list of products available at this window, Bud Light and Heineken for about $1 each and some presumably bad wine.

We get eight beers, we probably just want one or two but we will pack these with us if we don't drink them tonight because lord knows we do not want to have to repeat this adventure in Casablanca tomorrow. We exit the store with our opaque plastic bag, clinking with clandestine merchandise, our black-market beer, Queens of Half That We Survey.