Chefchaouen, Morocco (2006)

                                  SOLITARY CAT, CHEFCHAOUEN, MOROCCO

Admiring this surreal image, viewers first think that the extensive blue has been achieved with a computer-generated program, realizing quickly that the cat’s fur, although not as white as it could be, certainly is not blue.

Chefchaoen, the name itself extraordinary, is unlike anywhere else in the world.  Although the blue is not restricted to Chefchauoen (also called Chaouen, Xauoen), nowhere else in North Africa is this dreamlike colour used as extensively.  The entire residential area of the medina, a walled city section featuring constricted labyrinthine lanes, displays spectacular hues of blue, a shadowy dark shade nearest the earth, fading in phases, with the upper walls a powdery blue-white.

Sheltered by steep hills, Djebala tribespeople settled in this remote, isolated area in 1471 A.D. welcoming only Muslim and Jewish refugees.  The nearby tomb of an important Muslim saint with supernatural powers further protected the townspeople from invaders.  When Spanish troops arrived in 1920, the Spanish Jews were conversing in a medieval form of Castilian Spanish vanished from Spain for four centuries.  Until 1920, only three “Christian dog” visitors had intruded: the first in 1883, a Frenchman disguised as a rabbi, spent one hour inside; the second, a British author, narrowly escaped death in 1889; and the third, an American, poisoned in 1892. 

The village market, originally in the central plaza Outa el Hammam, reflecting the Djebala tribes’ tradition of homosexuality, held ‘boy markets’ until the Spanish administration officially banned them in 1937.

Travelers today are not discouraged.