Morocco: The End

 

We wake up to Yousef calling through the opening of our tent. I pull on my boots and am ready. Outside, the desert is grayish pink and the Berber men all have their faces hidden. We mount our dromedaries with two big lurches and set off as the sun begins to rise. We stop for pictures. This time we are nearly silent save for Mubarak’s occasional “Hold on!” When we arrive at the road again, we are sore, sleepy, and a little sad to say goodbye. We shake the hands that become like the foot of a camel, and they say, “Next time, next time,” beneath their scarves, eyes shining, faces full of unabashed kindness.

Back at the hotel we breakfast on crepes and tea, change our clothes and then hit the road.  I fall asleep with my face burrowed in my big jacket. We stop for lunch, more omelet, more Moroccan salad. Back in the car we all take turns dozing. Its dark when we reach Marrakech. We are sad to depart from the close knit group that has begun to feel like a kind of nomad family, and so make plans to meet up for dinner together after settling in to our respective hostels.

Mom and I are staying at Casa del Sol, a cute little hostel near the Square. We set down our bags and Mom befriends the man working the night shift, Mufasa, who speaks near perfect English. He’s playing an eclectic play list that includes songs from O’ Brother Where Art Thou. I take a quick shower, and, confronted by a lack of shampoo or other cleaning supplies, wash my hair with hand soap. We have tea with Mufasa, and then head into the market to meet with the group.

The Square at night is amazing, it’s own breed of chaos and smells and sights. The daytime orange juice carts are replaced with a maze of white numbered food stalls steaming into the cold night air. Vendors throw up blinking toys into the sky, sell lamps and candles and scarves. Men try and talk to us, asking, “French? English?” and making lewd gestures when they give up. Old women and children alike beg and sell packets of tissues. We decide to head to Stall 42, which Keith had visited on his first day.  On the way we stop for snails. Tomás buys a bowl and blinks as he tries them. “Spicy,” he comments. Mom tries one, too, says it tastes good but shudders, anyway.

The children persist all around her. She smiles and shakes her head at them with sad eyebrows and when she says, “No,” it sounds like an apology. We enter the maze of food stalls and are immediately accosted by dozens of eager shopkeepers, men, of course, spreading their arms wide and gesturing at their food. At Stall 42, a boy in a green robe tries to lure us in, not realizing we’d already decided on our destination. When an older man recognizes Keith, he dismisses the boy and attends to us himself. “Good friend,” he keeps saying. We chose a selection of food from the array displayed in a long row in front of the cooking area, and sit a long table covered in paper, where we are brought bread and dipping sauces.

The food comes continuously, like dim sum, a spicy spinach dish, rice with grilled peppers, fried eggplant, little fried potato patties, skewers of lamb and beef, small fish whose entire bodies have been battered and fried, their mouths agape, a strange cinnamon chicken dish that Tomás says “takes him on a journey.” It’s greasy and delicious, the table is covered in little plates and oil spots. We eat until we’re stuffed and warm.

Behind me I hear, “Sleeping,” and I turn around at the sound of English. The boy in green is laying on a bench with his hood over his face. He pulls it down and grins at me, then covers his face again. “Sleeping,” he repeats. How did peek-a-boo become so strangely charming? As we finish we’re brought mint tea in glasses. A boy with some sort of deformity that bends his legs inwards and a shoe shining kit keeps his gaze fixed on Mom. She can’t stop shaking her head sadly at him. Further down the road, a group of young boys weave and bob unsteadily, sniffing glue in an amoebic circle.

We divide up the bill and pay, and Mom gives into a shoeshine. The boy in green comes up and speaks to Tomás and I in Spanish. He says Argentinians are buena gente. He poses for a picture and then leans on my shoulder to look at it. The older man, who served us comes up and leans on my other side. “It’s good,” they approve. Another boy sees this, runs up to Mom and throw his arm around her for a photo, posing as all Moroccan boys seems to pose—extending one arm out wide, either open handed or with a thumbs up.

As the stalls are being taken down, the crowds disperse quickly. The guys offer to walk us back to our hostel, and we’re grateful as we become disoriented in the now deserted streets. We pass huddles figures sleeping under cardboard in the shadows. I stop to pet a sweet-faced kitty and she follows me for a while, and then spooks and darts away. We say our goodbyes, exchange hugs and promises of photos and Mufasa unlocks the hostel door for us. I fall asleep quickly to the strange, lingering sensation of the moving van in our hostel bunk bed.

Morocco: Desert Tour Day Two

 

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.

Morocco: The Desert Tour Begins

 

At 6am, it’s dark and the silence is punctuated only by the shrill call of some early rising bird. At breakfast, there is only one other group eating, and the birds that dive down from the rafters to pick at early morning breakfast spread—pastries and bread with goat cheese or jam, orange juice, tea, sweet cakes and muffins. The tour arrives half an hour late, but the receptionist says in Moroccan time, they’re early. One of the guys, a hungover Argentinean named Tomás, apparently slept though their 7am pick up time. We meet the two Mohammads, driver and guide, and three solo travelers; Tomás, Keith from Texas, and Joe from Canada, as well as Mirjam and Florian, a quiet couple from Switzerland.

The drive begins, first through the dusty outskirts of the city, then into dustier more desolate desert, and up until the view becomes lush, green, and mountainous. Our first stop is at a little café-restaurant called Tagdalt, for breakfast. Mom and I have already eaten, so we climb up to the terrace and snap photos of the red hills speckled with green clumps of foliage, the big sheer cliff sides and the trees. The café bathroom is grubby, the blue walls chipped and faded. Along one side are doors leading to what resembles a shower stall with medium sized blackish hole in the ground. The other side has toilets. It smells horrible, and as I’m pulling up my leggings, someone begins rattling on my door. I hear my mom say, “Someone’s in there,” and I say, “Occupied, one second,” and wave my hand over the door. Finally I exit to find a baffled looking Asian couple, still attempting to tear open my door.

The group of Asian tourist are dressed in a wild array of clothing and accessories—one lady wears a dress with a strange print of sloppily painted dolls with exaggerated red mouths, one or two of the women are wearing germ masks, like surgeons, and one man is even wearing a big black turban over his otherwise non-Moroccan attire.

After the group finished breakfast, we’re back on the road, stopping to photograph an older Berber village—it reminds me of the caves in the Sacramonte, but more square, a big neutral brown stack of houses growing out of the hillside. I watch a young man guide a sheep along a path, then scoop it up in his arm and carry it across a little river. The turquoise doorways and yellow, orange, pink clothing hanging out to dry stand out against the earth-colored backdrop.

As we drive, the snowy tips of the mountains loom closer and closer, and soon we see patches of snack beside the road. We stop again, up high, and a little cluster of men try to us sparkling stones and hand made trinkets. The road is scattered with little shacks displaying geodes and teapots, camel carvings and jewelry. At our next stop, a man places a snake around Joe’s neck. He offers it to us next saying, “Not poisonous,” over and again. The other men come up to us with foreign currency and try to trade it for dirham. “No bank,” they say.

We continue on for lunch, where we stop at a place called Labaraka, and sit together around a circular table in a room covered in colorful cloth, with a tent-like ceiling. The menu is in French, but we manage to order a Moroccan salad, a delicious and refreshing combination of green peppers, tomatoes, red onion and black olives, and a Berber omelet, in a tagine. It’s accompanied, of course, by the flattish bread that resembles a cross between pita and sourdough. The food is delicious and the waiter is a smiley man who has acne and seems shy, but bemused. We follow the meal with bitter mint tea.

After lunch we walk to Ait-Ben Haddou, a fortified city along the Ounila River, where movies like Gladiator and Lawrence of Arabia were filmed. It’s a big sprawling stack of reddish earthen towers coming out of the hillside. We cross the water on a footpath made of sand back and head into the maze of earthen structures, winding through the chunky cobbled streets, under big arches, past painters and souvenir shops, up crumbly stairs, past little homes, carpet looms, and donkeys, and finally through a faded pink doorway into a Berber home. The walls are textured earth, covered in fine cracks, and the rooms are illuminated with big squares of natural sunlight. We climb up a narrow staircase and follow the pungent smell of hay and wool to a little sheep enclosure within the house. The animals eye us suspiciously. Next we follow Mohammad to a little terrace where we can see the desert, the mountains, the little river, and the rest of the village. Outside are colorful pots and terracotta tagines. We enjoy the sun for a moment, and then descend into a little room that once served as a prison. It’s decorated with trinkets now; teapots, swords, vases and pots, and illuminated with candles. We sit around a low table and drink tea. “Berber whiskey,” Mohammad jokes.

We head back outside and begin to work our way uphill until we reach the top, where we have a perfect panoramic view of the snowy mountains, the red desert, the sprawling town, the river with it’s patches of lush green. We stop for photos and enter the little building perched on top. 

We head back to the van and drive onwards as the sun slinks down out of sight. The streets are suddenly full of foot traffic, women covered from head to toe walk alongside their more modern companions in jeans and head scarves, children and men in robes on and motorcycles alike. It’s dusk when we arrive at our hotel for the night, and a chill has set in. Our hotel is adorable, adorned with busy tiles and geometric shapes. We settle into room 30; it’s dimly lit with a low little couch and two small beds with thick woolen blankets. We freshen up and rest for a moment, then head downstairs for dinner.

The dining room is heated with a smoky fire tucked into a hearth in the corner, and we are served delicious soup with big pointed wooden spoons, the typical triangles of bread, vegetable tagine with chicken to the side. Afterwards we peel big cold oranges for a messy dessert and chat sleepily for a while.

The beds are small and a little stiff, but the wooly blankets are thick and heavy. I fall asleep almost immediately.

Morocco: Day One

The Red City is mostly a faded kind of putty pinkish brown. In the Square, Djeema de Fna, we are approached by men who offer to be our guides—Good price, they say. A well dressed, thin little man in a neat black pea coat tells us to follow him. No money, he says, I’m paid by the hotel. We are hesitant but it feels rude to blatantly accuse him of lying. He shows us where we can exchange currency, we walk past skinny horses tied to carriages, palm trees and pruned back roses and cross the wide seemingly lane-less street where cyclists, mopeds, trucks, taxis and horses speed along together.

In the bank we stall for time, hoping he will leave, but he doesn’t. Back outside, in the dry smell of exhaust, he tries to guide us down a side street, away from the busy plaza and the marketplace. He says it’s better, but the road he indicates is much more quiet and empty. Trust me, he says, and a little signal goes off inside of me. We tell him we want to see the souks, wander through them without a guide.

The plaza, across the street from the foliage-filled square, is a strange mixture marketplace and street. There are no marked pathways, but mopeds and bikes zoom through pedestrians; the loud squawk of horns fills the air. A woman with a hidden face comes towards us, her voice is loud and demanding and she tries to push a book of henna photos into my hands, just to look, she keeps saying. She grabs Mom’s gloved hands, saying, look, look, yanks back the glove and pulls out the little henna syringe, lightning fast. Mom pulls away just as the woman squirts henna onto her hand. She follows us for a moment, but falls back when we ignore her.

All around are identical looking white and blue carts with stacks of oranges piled high. Behind them young men call to us, Bonjour, hello, orange juice? No? Next time, eager optimistic, determined. A man with a monkey on a leash steps between us. gestures at the sweet animals, more vendors offer us dates, spices, coriander, they say, saffron. We step into a covered street, the reds seem to deepen here, and we are engulfed in a mass of colorful slippers, silver teapots and jewelry, mounds of spices, leather bags, stacks of carpets, little wooden boxes. Women with covered faces crouch against the walls with outstretched hands, a soft faced boy fixes his store front with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and all around us are the cries of the English phrases picked up through the marketplace—just to look, just looking, maybe, good price, take a look, top quality—they outstretch their arms, try to herd us into their cramped little shops to point at their goods. Here, silver, here, red stone, they show us their earrings. Genuine leather, they boast, holding a lighter to the surface, you want smaller? You want different color? They zip and unzip the pockets in their bags to show the durability.

It feels like a sensory whirlwind—toothless old men with canes, stray cats cleaning themselves in the sun, slinking around little lamps and carved boxes, round faced women cooking square pancakes, butchers slamming down their knives, young boys rubbing their hands together, relishing the prospect of a sale, vegetable vendors crying out their wares, restaurant owners shouting out their menus behind us, shop keepers offering up their soaps and cedar wood to smell. We have this moss, good for the hair, mix with other things, lavender, chamomile, they tell us. Where you from? England? Ireland? We have herbs for snoring, too. This is Moroccan made, no China, Marrakech made. Artisan. We buy nothing, wind our way through the confusion until we find a quiet courtyard outside a museum.

It’s still and peaceful. We order tea and sample Moroccan sweets, breathe in the sun, chat with the friendly man at the counter, marvel.

When we plunge back into the twisty little streets, we feel rested, energetic, ready to take on the leather shops. We become bartering machines, or Mom does, picking our way though the bags thoughtfully—No it’s too big, no I don’t like the stitching. Finally she finds a little brown burgundy bag with a flat bottom and silver buckles. The shopkeeper is a boy about my age with a sweet face in a long gray robe and shiny black tennis shoes. He asks for 750 dirham and she offers 300. He offers 700 and she stays firm. It goes on like this—he says, I’ll give you a plastic bag for free, and we laugh. I want to make you happy,  he says, Madame I cannot sell it to you for that. I am an artisan, he tells us, proud. 350, maybe 400. We walk away and another man, whose shop we’d stopped in before, comes running up to us. 350, he says, it is okay. We return to the shop and the boy tells us, 400, you promised 400. Mom tells him, I want a long strap, 400. He ushers us into seats and disappears into the maze of leather. When he returns his hands are greasy and he has a shiny leather strap that is being stained darker. Artisan. Then he turns to me.

I want a backpack, and I tell him so, so he begins to show me little packs. I say no, bigger. I’d seen one earlier, in a different shop, and suddenly that other man reappears, and seems to remember the bag I liked. I have, they keep telling me. He disappears.

The boy chats with me. Is that your mother? How old are you? He is also 21 but finished school five years ago and has picked up all his English in the markets, with the people, after leaving his Berber village to work in Marrakech. The man returns with my bag, a big, brown leather backpack. Handmade, they tell me, good quality, good leather.  The bartering begins again, Madame, this bag is much bigger. Mom tells the boy she wants him to come sell insurance for her and we laugh. He has straight teeth. I want to make your daughter happy, he says, working the charm that seems to come natural to Moroccan men. We finally agree, 350 this time, no plastic bags. We all laugh, all happy, all defeated. Next time come visit my shop, he says, waving from the doorway, come and have tea.