We wake up early for a bleary eyed breakfast—oily crepes with butter and jam, bread, coffee, and tea. Then back to the van, back on the road. Keith is running behind so we pull the van away from him, pretending to take off, giggling. The hostel’s proprietor seems more concerned than he does.
Our first stop is along a tall cliff, to snap photos of the huge bulbous rocks that are supposed to resemble monkey thumbs. “I can see something, but it’s not a monkey’s thumb, “ Joe comments. “Looks more like troll dick,” Mom adds helpfully. The rocks are incredibly phallic, it’s true.
We’re on the road for a good while, twisting and winding through the insane streets as the sun begins to creep up and send shadows along the roads. Our next stop is at the deep Dades Gorge. It’s freezing but beautiful, We keep running into the same groups of tourists and are unable to escape an American family with their horrible blond little girls that keep yelling, “Get me in the photo!” every time they see a camera. Moroccan children follow us with little woven grass trinkets, trying to stick them on our clothing, especially Mom. They tell Mohamed that they need money to buy a soccer ball, but he says they told him the same things last week. “Always the same story.”
I feel similarly when lunch rolls around and we encounter the same menus in French—Moroccan salad, omelets, tagines. I order a salad and a vegetable tagine. After lunch we stop at a fossil shop, where we are shown trilobites and squid captured in stone thousands of years ago when the desert was a sea. We watch them lifting, grinding, polishing huge slabs of rock, and still the workers stop and smile flirtatiously. Then we are taken into a big gallery with huge polished tabletops, necklaces, sinks, business card holders, all made of fossilized stones that can be shipped to our home countries.
Then it’s back to road, where I attempt to study half-heartedly. Our next stop is for water, then scarves. We drive through a gate to the scarf shop, and men come and greet us with leathery hand shakes and jagged smiles. The shop is beautiful, covered floor to ceiling with rugs, scarves and djellabas, the ankle length robes with pointed hoods that are so prevalent. The prices are good, and everyone digs through the big piles of cloth in every color imaginable. The shop keepers wrap Mom’s head in a lovely turquoise cloth and joke with her, “How many camels?” They wrap the men’s heads, too. We leave with three scarves. Everyone seems to have found something—Keith even scores a black djellaba. On our way out, a boy around my age smiles at us and rushes ahead of us and stops us in the doorway, saying, “Sorry, excuse me, look.” He points out a big sword hanging on the wall. His face is proud. He stands by the door, beneath a big goat skull, and waves as we drive away. In the car we practice wrapping our heads as the men showed us. Tomás masters it quickly, and leaves his turban for the rest of the ride.
When we arrive at the dunes, we are given a few moments to leave our belongings in a hotel room, just taking with us our cameras, extra layers of clothing, and water. Across the street from the hotel, we can see the camels (dromedaries, to be exact—they only have one hump) lined up, lying down. As we approach an unexpected hum of nervousness build in my stomach at the prospect of riding these strange creatures.
There is an older Berber man, Omar, and another boy, my age, Mubarak, to help us onto the dromedaries and guide us. The camels are ornery and smelly and generally hilarious, tied tail to snout in a row. They protest and bellow as we mount them, one by one. Mine is named Baksheesh, the guide tells me. Tomás is riding Jimi Hendrix, who seems to be the grumpiest and keeps foaming at the mouth. They walk in big awkward strides across the dunes, led by Mubarak, who walks ahead of us in long straight-backed strides. Every now and then he glances back at us to make sure we’re alright or shouts out, “Hold on!” when the animals are on the verge of ascending or descending a particularly steep dune. The sun slinks down behind us and we stop to take photos as the dunes turn to a deep, burning red, and the sky ripples into a myriad of yellow, orange, green and finally a dusky blue. The rhythm of Baksheesh’s careful, long-legged steps is almost meditative, despite the ache that begins to set into my thighs and lower back. Slowly, crystal clear stars begin to appear overhead. The desert is absolutely silent save for the plodding steps and our fragmented conversation. Three or four camels ahead burn a tiny orange ember, the scent of tobacco wafts through the air from Mubarak’s cigarette. About two hours later, in near complete darkness punctuated only by the sparkle of the persistent stars, we arrive at a clump of shadows that is to be our camp for the night. Mubarak coaxes the camels back onto their knees and they bellow and moan, again. He steadies us as they lurch down in two heaving motions.
The camp is comprised of two or three rings of tents surrounding an empty fire pit, illuminated by one bare bulb that we later learn is powered by a little solar panel. We shake hands with the enthusiastic young Berber, Yousef, and Farrah, a woman from Mauritius who made the desert trek on her own. The men build a fire and we vacillate between multilingual conversation—French, Spanish, English, Berber—and contemplative silence. Eventually Mubarak reappears, announcing dinner, and we enter the dining tent, illuminated also with a bare bulb and a few candles. Farrah’s place has been set in a dark corner of the tent, and the boys tell her, “You Berber.” We insist she come and eat with us.
We start off with a tasty rice and tomato vegetable dish, something I hadn’t come across yet. Bread is plentiful, of course. Mubarak and Yousef take turns checking in on us. “Everything good?” they ask. Joe tries to tell Mubarak that it’s the best meal he’s had in Morocco but his English isn’t up to the challenge and he stares at Joe with dark, confused eyes. Joe finally makes that universal smacking gesture for delicious and he gets it. Next they bring us two tagines, one only with vegetables, one with chicken. It’s sizzling hot. We follow it up with big juicy oranges. After our plates have been cleared away we gather back around the fire and the boys bring out drums and play for us, pounding out fast rhythms and calling out in playful broken voices, encouraging us to clap. Yousef pulls our chairs away from the fire and dances, pulling at the edges of his robe in a goofy bent over camel dance. “Baila! Baila!” he calls to us. They yell out, “Aiy, aiyaiyeee!” Yousef keeps telling me, “Estás durmida!” Mubarak hands his drum over to Tomás, and Mom plays for a while, too.
Conversation and song blend together in an easygoing flow of sound and gesture. Yousef tells us riddles—“What is born with two horns, lives with none and dies with two horns?” He asks us twice, English and Spanish, and when we can’t figure it out he says, “Es algo natural,” and makes a gesture with his hands. “La luna?” I guess. Yes. We ask him, “Why is six afraid of seven?” He loves it.
It’s getting later, and Keith has already slipped off to bed, not feeling well. Mirjam and Florian follow shortly after. The boys tell us the moon is coming up and that the fire will obscure our view, so they lead us away from the tents. We climb a steep dune in the absolute dark and shiver and stare as the moon creeps up, a big luminous half-orb, outshining the clusters of stars smeared all across the black sky. I want to lay on my back, but the sand is freezing. Mubarak sees me shivering and offers to wrap my head in a turban with my scarf. He brushs my hair away and winds it carefully around, covering my mouth. It’s much warmer. When we descend he offers me a hand he later comments, “Becomes like the foot of a camel,” rough and calloused as a hoof. We return to huddle around the first, but this time Mom and Farrah drop off to sleep. The fire is dying down, and the men scoop up coals and toss them between their bare hands to keep warm. Even Joe and Tomás catch them for a moment. Omar tells us of cold desert nights when they’d spread our the remaining coals and place their mattresses over them for heat. We share heavy woolen blankets that smell faintly of the dromedaries. We stay up for hours that way, exchanging broken sentences around the warm ashes.
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