Faith in travel, II

The New York Times has a great story and photos up today (Sunday in the print edition) on Fez, one of our favorite cities from the trip we took about six months ago to Morocco.

It includes this passage:

Fez seems to have stopped marking time several centuries ago (cellphones and occasional soccer jerseys aside). And like the water clock, this mazelike city of minarets, shrouded figures and forgotten passages can seem impossible to decipher — yet tinged with a deep enchantment.

“It’s a mysterious place,” said Abdelfettah Seffar, a craftsman and cultural entrepreneur, as he stood on the roof of a beautiful but dilapidated 18th-century Moorish estate that he is restoring into a vast guesthouse and arts center. “It’s even a mystical place.”

Mysterious and mystical, indeed. Our friend and fellow traveler Jim Torson opened his show of Morocco-inspired paintings last night in Vancouver. It captures about as much of that essence I imagine is possible to do on canvas. (If you're a Vancooterite, or even live just across the river, it's worth a trip to Northbank to check it out. And for those who may have seen his Springbox show in the Pearl last month, I have to say, this one is even better. Many more pieces of his work.)

Nice to catch up with many of our friends from the trip, drink a lot of mint tea, nibble some of Fatna's real Moroccan cookies and do a wee bit of drumming. (Hope there will be more of that as the weather improves.) But the best part, in my book, was seeing so many people pour through the gallery over the course of the night and find connections to that stunning and magical place half a world away, all through the beauty of a Jim's art and Abdul's generosity in putting the trip together in the first place.