On the recommendation of a friend, I took a pair of pants over to a tailor on Rue Oqba. The pants in question (once nearly the cause of an international incident*) were so baggy that they looked like clown pants, since I’ve lost a lot of weight in a short period of time.
Anyway, the tailor’s shop is tiny, naturally. I went in, explained my problem, and he waved me into a teeny tiny changing room. I put the pants on, came back out, and he pinched a bunch of material at the back, pinned it, made some chalk marks, asked me about shortening the hem, and then said he was finished with the measurements. All in about 20 seconds. I asked him when they’d be finished, and he said “Tomorrow.” OK, not in English, but I can’t always put the Arabic words, right?
I went back to his shop this afternoon, and they were done! It cost me a grand total of…drum roll…30 dirhams! (about 3 bucks) I tried on the pants at home, and they fit perfectly. I can’t even tell where he took them in.
I know that I complain about Morocco a lot, but sometimes, people do a damn good job here, and they do it cheaply.
*My husband and I went to Marjane one evening, where he noticed the hems of my pants dragging on the ground, and he said, “What’s wrong with your pants? Your cheap little two dirham pants, ha ha ha!” (which is a big joke in his book) He stopped laughing when I proceeded to step on the hem, tripped, frantically cluched at the waistline to keep them from falling down, and fell over onto him.