“I’ll probably never get out of here alive.” I sigh, resigned to my fate, staring at the massive Moroccan rug bazaar in the middle of the Fez medina.

The delicious mint tea, poured hot by my hosts? Obviously poisoned. The magnificent rugs laid out at my feet? Wraps to hide my dead body. My so-called guide? Betrayed me.

But the choice to take an adventure to Morocco after studying abroad in London? Still the best decision of my life.

Three weeks earlier, I am onstage at the Oval House Theatre in London, playing the role of Antonio in William Shakespeare’s masterpiece of mistaken identity, “Twelfth Night.” The performance is the culmination of four months of my study abroad experience at the British American Drama Academy near Regent’s Park. Four months of stage combat, Shakespearean soliloquies and one particularly memorable conversation with Sir Ian McKellen backstage after his performance as the Widow Twankey, a transvestite dame in the pantomime “Aladdin.” As much as I love London, after my program ends, I take Shakespeare’s words to heart: all the world’s a stage. 

It takes me one RyanAir flight, six trains, a high-speed ferry and one quick photo perched atop a mangy, well-aged camel on a Tangiers beachfront to reach Fez. Riding the train to Fez, the spiritual center of Morocco, my cabin-mate Sa’id offers his brother-in-law as a guide to tour the labyrinthine old city, the medina. He then pauses to offer the afternoon Asr prayeron the cabin floor. He is interrupted by his cell phone chiming “Jingle Bells.”

I duck out on Sa’id’s brother-in-law and instead spring for a “Ministry of Tourism” approved guide, Tariq, who guides me through raw-meat markets, the stunningly beautiful interior of the 14th-century Bouinania medersa religious college, a pharmacy that offers henna tattoos in its murky backroom, and every possible tourist-trap trinket store in North Africa. Tariq says that I’ll be one of the few outsiders to ever see an authentic Moroccan rug emporium. I don’t know whether this is good or bad. When he leaves me drinking mint tea, covered with rugs and facing down three very sinister-looking men, I suspect it’s the latter.

But I am utterly, utterly wrong. The Moroccans treat me as a family friend. I see the loom that transforms goat hair, matted from the high Atlas plateau winds, into silk-soft rugs of every color imaginable. After several cups of tea, they say how happy they are to see Americans again. Yankee tourism apparently dropped to a trickle in the post 9/11 age. Soon I am presented with a modest green carpet at a discounted rate, thought it is, admittedly, just a bit closer to the local price.

“Green is the holiest color in Islam,” I am told when I leave. “God be with you.”

From the stages of London to the bazaars of Morocco, any case of mistaken identity can be made right by the experiences and understanding that only true adventure can bring. Shakespeare would be proud.

—Joe Horton