Morocco How To #2: Lizars

In the south of Morocco, especially the Souss and Sahara regions, you will find women do not dress with the more common jellaba or caftan. Instead, they wear what is known as a lizar. What is a lizar you might ask?? Well, a lizar is basically a sheet. It is approximately 3 meters long and about 1.5 meters wide. If you are interested in making your own lizar creation to wear around, you can buy any fabric with those dimensions and follow the below steps. At first, lizar wrapping is challenging and you may find yourself fighting to get out of the fabric but keep with it and in no time you can be a lizar wrapping pro!!

Step 1: Take your lizar fabric and unfold it completely so that it lies like a runner behind you and it will be easiest to wrap yourself.

Step 2: Take one end of the fabric and hold it under one armpit and then grab behind you for more fabric to wrap yourself once.

Step 3: Tie the fabric over your chest and tuck the ends in so that it doesn't stick out later. This step can be confusing. To tie the fabric, start with the end you started with. Next, grab a little of the fabric that touches the first end by your armpit. Tie into a knot as you would ribbon still on a spool.

Step 4: Take the long side of fabric and pull it up over your head, not pulling it too tight so that your arm will have room to move after the following steps. A good test is to pull the fabric taunt over your head and arms with your elbows bent. This will prevent you from pulling the fabric too tight and allow your arm to move around for the last steps.

Step 5: Take an inch or so of fabric that you just pulled over your head and fold it under to prevent it from slipping during the day.

Step 6: Now you should take the piece of fabric that you left loose over one arm and bring it towards your chin while bringing the long piece towards your chin as well. To keep the short end of fabric tight under your chin, bring the long piece of fabric tightly over it. At this stage you may want to use one hand to keep the two ends tight under your chin.

Step 7: Using the hand from the same side as the long piece of fabric, wrap it behind and over your head.

Step 8: To finish the look, throw the remaining long piece of fabric over your shoulder and drape over your chest.

Step 9: Both arms should now be free to move around as normal. If one arm is stuck, go back to step 4 and try again.

CONGRATULATIONS!! You have wrapped a lizar! You are now ready to visit the south of Morocco and blend in (a little bit anyways). There is another way to wrap a lizar, however it is much more complicated. Small steps friends. Small steps. Hope you enjoyed this Morocco how to and look out for the next installment of Morocco how to: Cooking Tajine!!