no kingly hand loving for you!

I am going to try to do this justice, but it was a surreal visual thing, so I am not optmistic. But here goes.

At the end of the first day in Marrakech, we retired to our hotel. There was a TeeVee in the room. As i almost always do in hotel rooms, I turn on the TeeVee to see what is on.

There were about half a dozen channels. Some in French, some in Arabic, one in German and one in English.

On what appeared to be an all-news arabic channel was a scene that I shall not soon forget.

In the center of the scene, in a fairly tight shot, a man was standing in a white, hooded robe, referred to as a gallabeya in these parts. He looked vaguely familiar. Turns out he is the King of Morocco and I had seen his photo everywhere.

Off to the side of him where several gentlemen wearing military uniforms and a few men in standard western suits.

From off camera-left came men. They were mostly middle aged and older. They all wore a white gallabeyas, with a fez and the hood pulled over the fez.

They approached the King. The king held out his hand. The man would take his hand and kiss it.

Or rather, attempt to kiss it.

Here is where it got weird.

The king, however, decided how much kingly hand loving they got. He would, rather abruptly, pull away his hand which often resulted in the kisser smacking himself in the face with his now empty hand! Doh!

The king allowed 4 levels of kingly hand loving. There must have been some ranking and favoritism to this. The 4 levels, in ascending order of lip-to-hand contact time:

1. No actual lip contact. The king allowed his hand to be clasped and then would YANK it back before it could be kissed. (Heretofore referred to as the King Yank or K.Y.) Smack!
2. Kissing the back of the hand followed by K.Y. Smack!
3. Kissing the back of the hand, then turning it over to kiss the palm followed by K.Y. Smack!
4. Kissing the back of the hand, turning it over to kiss the palm, then turning it back to kiss the back again. K.Y. Smack!

There were 2 outlyers in this group:

1. A very small handful (heh) of men got the full multi-sided hand loving and got a few words from the King. They must have been very special individuals
2. One or two did the whole front-back-front kiss and then proceeded up the King’s arm kissing as they went. This seemed to really annoy the King.

This procession went on for about 15 minutes. There must have been over a 200 people in this line. The entire time a very solemn voice proclaimed, what I assume to be, the names of the kissers.

We were there during a national holiday, a day where the King attends the mausoleum where his ancestors are entombed. I assume that these men were ministers of parliment, or otherwise leaders in the country and this was a ritual profession of loyalty to the king.

Kaddee and I laid in bed watching this with slack jaws. It was like a bad train wreck, you didn’t want to watch it, but you could help yourself.

The entire time I watched it I thought: The Daily Show would get a kick out of this.

I have looked for video of it, but I can find none.

Anyway…