Takes the Glow Off

Over 25 years traveling together in foreign countries, we’ve lost wallets and passports, been burglarized in rental houses or hotel rooms, and had things stolen from us. All of those have been unpleasant and inconvenient experiences, but not actually frightening.  Tonight we have a new one to add to the list of potential travel perils.

After dark, but still early in the evening, we wandered to the edge of the Square in the Medina (old walled part of town) to rest and watch all the activity in the area.  There are  many thousands of people in the square at this time of night – families with children, couples, young and old men or women walking arm-in-arm with friends – it’s a lively, interesting place.  Food stalls which serve as temporary restaurants are set up each afternoon in the square, and we’ve had dinner at them several times.

After sitting for about 20 minutes, a man who appeared to be middle-aged and Moroccan wandered toward us, leaned down putting his face close to Bob’s face,  then pulled back, made a fist and punched Bob hard in the mouth and chin!!!  We stared at each other in open-mouthed shock and disbelief as the man turned and wandered off, weaving a bit. A number of other people witnessed this entirely unprovoked and out-of-the-blue event, and one young Moroccan couple who spoke some English came over and asked if Bob was okay. They stayed with us for a couple of minutes, and we all realized the Bad Man had wandered off into the crowd. Bob’s lip was split in a couple of spots, and bleeding, and he had a sore chin, jaw and several teeth, though no teeth are loose.

We realize something like this can happen anywhere. The Bad Man was “a crazy guy” in the words of the young Moroccan man who checked on Bob afterwards, and there are plenty such people wandering around downtown Seattle and Pioneer Square where we worked for several decades without incident.  We didn’t report the incident to the police, and didn’t seek medical attention, as water, tissue and Tylenol are likely to take care of Bob’s symptoms.  But we must admit, the incident definitely took the glow off of our feelings about Marrakesh, and we now feel ready to move on to Europe.  We took a cab back to our hotel after dinner and plan to spend the rest of the evening reading our junk novels.