The guardian of the Blue City

by Flavio Ciabattoni (Italy)

I didn't expect to find Morocco

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It was 3:00pm when I finally set foot in the medina of Chefchaouen. As you enter the city and follow the flow of people, Chefchaouen looks like any other Moroccan city. Of course, the more one ventures into the medina, within its thousand follicles, the more the city starts wrapping itself with blue. But I couldn’t really say where it started and where it finished exactly. It’s when you turn that corner, when you peek in that tiny square, when you take those secluded stairs and the sky suddenly morphs into earth, and you begin to sink into a milky entanglement of blue icing. Walls, sidewalks, pavements, doors, ledges, staircases and arches, everything becomes indigo, cobalt, periwinkle, ultramarine, azure and lavender, depending on the different shades of sunlight, on the time of the day, on the number of tourists... or probably just on your mood. That’s why Chefchaouen is always different: at a different time, with a different pace and in a different place, each person discovers a different Blue City. We walked up into a tiny square leading to a steep and irregular staircase. I didn’t see him right away, it took me a while to become aware of his presence. He was floating in blue, wrapped in an ancient cloak of ivory wool. The weight of the years was sinking his wrinkles, but his eyes were of such a bright shade of blue that they looked like two sapphires mounted on a mask of marble. There was something weird about the old man sitting at the end of the staircase. His eyes were the same colour as the city. It almost looked as if, instead of him being an inhabitant of Chefchaouen, it were Chefchaouen itself to inhabit him. I grabbed my rucksack and started to look for my phone. It was too special of a sight to just let go. After a few seconds of searching, lost as it was in the infinite folds of my rucksack, I grabbed my phone with an exclamation of victory. I looked up, ready to take a photo... What the hell?! The old man had disappeared. In his place remained only the woollen cloth, lying on the step like a cushion. I stood there, dazed, staring at that wool as white as snow. If Chefchaouen had a guardian with the keys to its most recondite corners, to its most orphic traditions and to its bluest secrets... wouldn’t he look like that old man? Perhaps, in a city you don’t enjoy its seven or seventy-seven wonders, but rather the extent to which your imagination can sew the deepest mysteries on its walls?