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Parts one, two, three and four here)
The next morning, we allowed ourselves to be caught and cleaned like good little fish by a waiter trolling for customers from the row of restaurants that line the square. This metaphor was emphasized by the fact that we should have gone to one of the larger restaurants on either side, which were full of Moroccans. There was just one other expat couple in ours, and the omelette Donn ordered was distinctly fishy.
The coffee was adequate however, and we filled up on toast and jam and freshly-squeezed orange juice, which is a basic not a luxury here. We were in a hurry, because we had a long drive ahead of us, and friends who would be waiting for us to pick up our children.
Chefchaouen is east and north of Rabat. Instead of heading back the way we’d come, we opted to follow another one of those tiny yellow squiggles on the map northwards as far as the Mediterranean coast, at which point we could turn left (west) and head over to Tangiers, then catch the autoroute down the Atlantic coast towards home.
We ended up on the worst road yet, but it was worth it. The edges were mice-nibbled and the tarmac was cracked and pitted, and best of all, it was only one lane wide and we were up in the mountains at this point. I will say that the oncoming trucks with their overbearing drivers weren’t what scared me—it was my photographer husband’s habit of driving directly without pause onto these very narrow turnouts, perched precariously high and with no guard rail, grinding the wheels down into the gravel and then leaving the car running while he got out to inspect the view. In retrospect, his photos make it all worthwhile, especially given that we didn’t plunge to our deaths.
I really just want to show you pictures, but first I am going to comment on a frustrating reality—no one would allow us to photograph them. Donn’s ethics forbid him from using a long lens and taking blurry photographs unaware, so we always ask nicely, and no one would agree. This was incredibly frustrating because the people were so beautiful; women with faces like old wrinkly apples and little pink cheeks, men in hooded dejellabas like characters in a medieval drama. We are used to people not wanting to be photographed. It was the same in Mauritania. But there, usually if you talked to someone for a while, they’d agree. In Chefchaouen, we never got anyone to agree. One young man even shouted at us for photographing him, although we hadn’t—we were photographing a building, using telephoto lenses, and he wasn’t in our pictures at all.
I’ve been looking at calendars and postcards with people in them, and they are all blurry. It’s evident that not everyone shares Donn’s ethics. I must admit that I don’t even share them myself! Here is Donn, waiting till this woman passed so he could ask her if he could photograph her. She said no, of course, and that even after we chatted with her for about 10 minutes.
And these two boys came running up to watch Donn photograph the valley near their homes. They hung out and chatted rapidly, but I knew they’d never let me take their picture.
I really cannot recommend this drive highly enough. First you wind through the mountains…
…then you come down through the hills and out into a truly horrific market, which is sort of like driving down a crowded aisle at Safeway, only with live sheep and oncoming traffic, then you make it through that, thankfully, and come out here:
which pretty much makes everything in your life meaningless unless you can move here and go for long walks on the beach every morning, or something like that.
We stopped for coffee at a fascinatingly-named cafe: 
Cafe Carrion. Roadkill Restaurant. We stuck to the coffee, which was excellent. Muy bueno, as they say in this part of the world. (Spanish was more common than French)
We meant to stop right on the Med for pizza, but we somehow just kept going…
stopping at hairpin bends to photograph and getting passed by trucks full of men, or sometimes trucks full of sheep, who drove agonizingly slowly up the hills and then whizzed rapidly down, practically going up on two wheels on the bends,
and we didn’t actually stop for lunch till 5 p.m., by which point we’d left the coast and were cutting back across the mountains to the autoroute.
Donn had grilled meat again and I had a really good lamb tagine with raisins and onions and potatoes, followed with Moroccan tea. We made it home safely, long after dark, picked up our filthy and exhausted children (Me: Abel, when did you last shower? Abel: I have NO idea! Me: I have an idea) and I decided to write approximately 8,000 blog posts about it all!
Don’t think we’re done yet. Coming tomorrow: sunset pics from Dar Mounir!
I hope you enjoyed that alliteration! Here is the picture that I couldn’t get to post.
Going mad with the angles here once again!
On our one full day in Chefchaouen, (YES we’re still on this. One, two and three here if a. you’re just joining us and b. you care) we followed Begoña’s instructions and headed to the far side of town, where a path leads straight up the mountain’s side. We were tempted to head up, but didn’t have the right shoes. Chefchaouen is located in Morocco’s Rif mountains, right next to two national parks, and just walking around the medina is a pretty good workout, between the steep hills and the well-worn, slippery cobblestones.
We came out of the medina at the river, where washhouses are set up and every day local women come to wash their clothes, spreading them out to dry on the bushes and rooftops. The river is channeled into the washhouses and joined by a tributary waterfall or two on its way down the mountain.
We wandered our way downstream,
eventually crossing back into the medina and coming up near where our car was parked. It was Friday afternoon, and we rested our feet a while in the square, watching the mosque empty out.
We decided to lunch at the famous Casa Aladdin, which offers a commanding view of the town square from its 3rd-floor terrace.
Unfortunately it was too cold to sit outside, so we opted for an enclosed space on the 2nd floor, and I fail to see how it was any less charming.
Looking straight up at the ceiling and lamp hanging from it.
Aladdin definitely lives up to its name, although I did feel a little sorry for the waiters dressed like Arabs as Hollywood might have imagined them in the 50s.
Like the fireplace, complete with fire?
This is the seating area on the second floor
I know you care what I had for lunch. Aladdin only offers a 3 course menu. Donn started with the
zaalouk (eggplant and garlic salad; if you like, sometime I could post a recipe and pics) and I had harira soup…lovely on a cool fall day. Next Donn had a pastilla, which is a traditional Moroccan dish of chicken and almonds in a flaky pastry with cinnamon and powdered sugar on top and is absolutely incredible. (note: ok to be TRULY traditional we’d have to use pigeon…) I had chicken skewers with saffron rice and cauliflower on the side. He finished with fruit salad; me with mint tea and a patisserie. We were incredibly full and relaxed. Our total was around $20.
We wandered back out into the fresh crisp air. The weather wasn’t bad at all; cloudy and cool, but no rain and intermittent bursts of sunlight. We had pretty much exhausted the medina, so we wandered into the non-touristy area, viewing cheap clothes made in China and eyeing bright pigments, sold in powder form and available in bulk, used to create Chefchaouen’s unique blues, turquoises, and even pinks and violets. We bought a blanket.
Not one of these blankets…
Yes, okay, you’re right–these pics were taken in the touristy part.
That night we split a small but excellent pizza at one of the restaurants which line the square.
(pic coming tomorrow. I give up. It’s Friday night and I don’t want to be on my computer anymore!!)
Each restaurant spills out into the square, with table and chairs set up and ropes delineating where one café ends and the next begins. Waiters would stand at the edge, where their tables began, trolling for customers as if they were fishing. Even just walking by and not even glancing their way wasn’t enough to avoid them, and woe betide anyone who actually stopped to examine the large colourful menus posted in the square!
They were fairly easy to shake off, though, unlike the men in the shops or trying to encourage us into their shops. We would explain, “We’re not tourists; we live in Rabat; we’re not shopping now.” They would be shocked! Of course they didn’t care if we bought anything! We had to just look, just look, come in, sit down, all the rugs in the store will be shaken out before us.
We’re still on Day One, but up to Post Three! I know you’re skimming and I don’t care. Online journal indeed! Enjoy the pics. Parts One and Two here.
We had found Casa Perleta at last! I finally learned how to spell and pronounce it. We were welcomed in by a Spanish woman who said she did have a room available for Thursday but not for Friday. She showed it to us and we agreed pretty quickly.
Casa Perleta is a riad, an old Moroccan house that’s been converted into a small hotel. These are very popular as you can imagine. They are usually decorated with all the wonderful architectural details, lanterns, paintings, pottery, and cloth that Morocco has to offer—which is plentiful. Prices range all over, but the ones we’ve stayed at have been very reasonable, around $50-65/night, often with breakfast included.
If I were a real photographer, I would put a black border round this so it didn’t bleed off into the white space, but I am not. Sorry. At least I know enough to apologize.
C.P. is well done and charming, and even has free wi-fi, but for me its real pull was Begona, the woman running it, who went out of her way to be helpful and informative. After showing us the room, she took us up to the terrace with its view over the town, then she carefully explained to us how to move our car to a closer parking space. Chefchaouen’s old medina has 9 doors, each with a different name, and they are only about 100 metres from the Bab el Souk, located at the end of a steep alley. First we found our way back to the parking lot where we’d left our car, where we saw a friend from Rabat and his family! Small world; small country. Ignoring the map which Begona’s Moroccan friend had drawn us (it utterly confused me; it was backwards from how she’d described it. I believe this is a consequence of thinking in Arabic vs English), we easily found our way through more crowded narrow alleyways to the Bab el Souk, outside of which is a very small parking area guarded by a man who feels you are there to put his children through college, or something. We found him aggressive and unpleasant, especially compared to the parking attendants at the place we’d just left. We eventually bargained him down to the price Begona had told us was normal, and dragged our case back along the bumpy well-worn cobblestones of the medina.
Once we’d settled into our room, we joined Begona and some other guests on the rooftop terrace. She carefully unfolded a map and explained to us how to navigate the medina, recommended a variety of restaurants depending on our mood/budget, and told us which sites were not to be missed, while we all drank sweet Moroccan mint tea in gold-rimmed glasses and munched tiny patisseries brought from a bakery just down the street. Then we set off to explore the medina by night.
Since we were still quite full from Abdul’s excellent tagine earlier in the afternoon, we got a small supper at a place we walked past, with wild décor and a menu in English that said ‘think you coming!’ at the bottom. I had a greek salad and a cheese and potato omelette for about $3.50. I am mentioning prices because I occasionally read other Moroccan blogs, and the prices they quote seem to always be in the $30-40 range for meals and $200 for hotels. I want people to know there are plenty of other good options out there, and you can eat very well for very little here.
In the morning we enjoyed our complimentary breakfast. Begona explained that each little neighbourhood in the medina has its own mosque, hammam (public baths), and communal oven. There’s a small bakery just a few doors down that she frequents for the churros and patisseries and other goodies she serves.
Although we knew in our heads that Friday was a holiday (Green March Day), somehow we hadn’t been thinking when we made our plans (or lack thereof), so we were happy that we were able to find a nice room in another riad that night. Chefchaouen was apparently filled with teachers from international schools that weekend; our fellow guests at Casa Perleta were teachers at the French school in Casablanca, and we met a large group from the American school in Rabat over lunch.
We moved over to Dar Mounir, a place that made me feel like an Arab hobbit. I loved the doors. I took approximately a million pictures.
The door to our room
Door from inside
The walls are actually white, but the light coming in through red curtains gave the room a cosy glow. The bathroom was terracotta, though.
Our bathroom. Well I guess you could have figured that out…
Sitting area. I did not see anyone sit here.
(Yes I know I am pitiful and snap-happy, but at least I’m not in every picture flashing you a peace sign. See? A bright side.)
Dar Mounir didn’t have the equivalent of Begona, although there were two friendly helpful young men. Donn moved the car and I checked us in, and then we set out to explore on our one full day in Chefchaouen.
Part One here. Warning: this looks to be getting quite long. Feel free to skim.
We drove on, replete, sleepy after all that food. By now we were coming into the foothills of the Rif Mountains. We drove through olive groves, past family groups harvesting olives. These were usually groups of women, with their hair tied up and long red-striped cloths round their waists, a cross between a skirt and an apron. They spread a white cloth under the tree and hit it with long sticks, providing a thwack-thwack rhythm to our drive, then gathered round to collect the hard green olives into buckets. Little girls chased curly-headed toddlers, who would sometimes wave but more often just stare as we drove by. Once when Donn stopped to photograph, they shouted NO! NO! at him and waved their long sticks, but when they realized he was photographing across the valley and not them, they calmed down.
We came to the town of Ksar-el-Kbir, where we tried in vain to find the tiny road that would lead us on to Chefchaouen. Do not worry if you decide to drive from Rabat to Chefchaouen—it’s actually not that hard, and there are decent roads. But we didn’t want decent roads. We wanted to drive through the mountains and through the villages where women carry backbreaking loads of…something green?…in baskets and small boys chase runaway donkeys. We wanted to see the long light across the green valleys and narrow little rivers chuckling among the blank grey stones. So we turned around, seeking that road. We asked two teenagers on bikes, who smiled that complex blend of embarrassment and stand-offishness, admitted to speaking no French, and flagged down an older man on a scooter, who told us we’d gone 25 kilometers too far. No, no, we protested, fluttering our map at him. THIS road—this tiny yellow squiggle connecting Ksar-el-Kbir to Chefchaouen. “You don’t want that road,” he told us flatly. “It’s dangerous.” We insisted. Finally he conceded to show us the way back to it, waving perplexedly as we turned up a steep little hill. Admittedly it wasn’t the sort of road you’d want to show off to tourists. It was frequently one lane wide at best, nibbled at the edges, winding round the mountains, no guard rails between us and the precipices. We were often greeted at blind curves by large trucks, and somehow it always fell to us to be the ones who slowed way down and crept off the pavement onto the wide shoulder, even though the drop off was on our side.
See? The road was fine. In spots.
We got to Chefchaouen (it’s pronounced shef-show-en, in case this is driving you crazy) about 4 in the afternoon and set about first of all finding our way into the medina, which involved driving down a really scary street filled with people and cars and small furry animals, all of whom were apparently determined to be exactly in the spot where we already were. A middle-aged man dressed in a traditional djellaba, the long hooded robe ubiquitous in rural Morocco, approached us, eager to help. Having ascertained that we were Americans, he became even more friendly. He told us we could park where we were. He told us that he had an American girlfriend. He told us that he had a shop that sold many traditional things that we should come visit, where we could have tea and smoke a little hash.
Excuse me?
But no, we hadn’t misheard. As we later wandered the streets of the medina, we were offered drugs many many many times. This was a mystery to me. We are typical 40ish Americans. I am nowhere near my ideal weight. Donn is balding. We are boring, nondescript. We do not smell of patchouli, or dress in interesting colourful rags and stride the streets with two large dogs on leather leashes, as so many of our compatriots did. But nonetheless, we were frequently offered hash, rif, marijuana, etc. It was bizarre.
We always said no, being good citizens who still remember Nancy Reagan and her handy slogan. “No, merci,” we said consistently. This was enough for most. But a few would continue to follow us, insisting. One said, finally, just as he was having to accept the cold hard fact that we just weren’t going to agree, “Paranoid?” “No, just annoyed,” said Donn. He cracks me up.
But this came later. We declined the man’s offer to help us park, and soon realized that we weren’t even in the medina yet! Eventually we came to a spot where the road ended and we were able to park. We entered the medina, which is quite large, in search of Casa Perlita or Perlida or whatever it was.
Chefchaouen has an interesting history. For a long time, no Christians were allowed to enter—although Jews were allowed. One of the first Frenchman to penetrate its walls was poisoned when he was recognized as being in disguise. This was over 100 years ago now, and ironically Chefchaouen has become a noted tourist destination. I’ve read that in the summer season, tourists can outnumber the locals! I can see why–it’s a charming town, tucked up against the hills, near two national parks, in a beautiful part of the world.
But now our first job was to find the Casa Whicheveritwas, the one I liked the look of on the internet. We set off at random from the parking lot. Most people we asked hadn’t heard of it. We popped our heads into a tiny shop where a man sat at a loom, weaving a large rug. “Casa Perlita?” we said. He pointed in a general direction, so off we went. Every so often we’d ask someone else, who continued to point us in the general direction. Eventually, when we were quite close, we asked someone who actually knew the place and took us right to the door.
When we realized that all three of our children were spending part of their vacation with various friends in Casablanca (remember: not a fun city), Donn and I looked at each other and knew this was a golden opportunity not to be squandered just sitting round Rabat. A kid-free weekend! (Ok, it was Thursday and Friday nights, but close enough)
We decided to go to Al Hoceima, on the Mediterranean coast. I did a little research online, but wasn’t able to find a hotel. I called a friend on Wednesday night to see if we could borrow a guidebook. “Go to Chefchaouen,” she said. “It’s one of my favorite places in Morocco!” She’s been here 8 years; she ought to know. We were easily convinced.
I did some research on hotels and found one that looked great—Casa Perleta, in the old medina. I meant to write down the info, but what with one thing and another I didn’t, in between finding sleeping bags and enough toothpaste for 3 kids who’d be sleeping in different places and packing for ourselves and deciding what books to bring, while Elliot was making chocolate chip cookies to eat on the train and I was making curry for dinner and trying to keep the onions out of the cookies. So it came about that we were several hours down the road when Donn said to me, “Which hotel was it we decided on?” I said, “Casa Perlita, Perlata, something like that.” “Where is it?” he said. “Do you have the address or the phone number?” “Uh…no…actually,” I said.
No worries. We like adventures. We turned off the autoroute at Moulay Bousselham and headed down a small pockmarked road into the countryside. There had obviously been recent rain, and all the potholes were filled with water. We bumped along for a long time, heading inland towards the mountains. At one point we came to a town where there was a roundpoint, quite new, but no signs. We guessed that we should turn, but the man we asked told us no, go back. We did and came to a second roundpoint, this one even newer, but still with no signs. We turned right on a whim, feeling that it looked more promising although the road was barely one lane wide at that point. Miles later, we asked a small boy, and he confirmed that we were right.
We went on and on. Eventually we came to a small city set on a hill. As we crested it, we were greeted by the unmistakable smell of grilled meat and the sight of tagines smoking away. We pulled over and Donn went to talk to the friendly man grilling meat. Donn loves mischwi, Arab-style barbecue. He ordered a plate of grilled meat and I opted for a tagine.
We sat down at a dusty plastic table, and soon a woman came to wipe the dirt around a bit and set down two pieces of paper to serve as placemats, along with napkins and forks to hold them down. The tagine had been smoking away so it was soon set before me, the lid lifted off with a flourish to reveal meat and vegetables in a savory sauce with just a hint of spice. The grilled tomatoes were the best! Soon, Donn’s plate of grilled meat was set before him. I ordered a glass of sweet mint Moroccan tea to finish up with.
It was a lot of food, but we ate heartily and did our best to finish. Everything was excellent, cooked to perfection, served with a smile. Our total bill was about $11. Abdul was friendly, letting me photograph him, insisting that next time we pass this way, we come to his house for couscous.
But now my family is calling me to watch a movie, so I’ll post this and continue it tomorrow.
Where were we this weekend?
I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow… (or possibly the day after)
Last week, we decided to take a trip up to Fes and Volubilus.
Donn and I have been to Fes before, but it was the kids’ first trip. We were visiting friends, planning to tour Fes’ enormous ancient medina and maybe visit the deep caves in Taza, a couple of hours north. We needed to plan round the different rhythms that govern day and night during Ramadan, which means that shops open very late and close earlier than normal. You don’t want to be out in the hour before sunset, when everyone is racing desperately to get home in time to eat the second that call to prayer floats out into the rosy twilight, and you take your life in your hands if you are anywhere near a road.
We got up to Fes in time for a late lunch with our friends, and let the afternoon get away from us as we sat and chatted. It was late afternoon by then, too late to attempt the medina, so instead we drove up past it, up into the hills, to visit the graves of the Marinids (an Arab dynasty that ruled Morocco from 1269-1420) from which there is a lovely view of the city nestled into its surrounding hills and olive groves. We wandered round, photographed, admired the view, found a weird hole opening into the side of the hill which freaked me out a little (was it a grave? Or what? It was apparently being used as a rubbish dump, but there were stones in it—and rooms.) The kids wanted to explore it but I thought better not, especially without a flashlight.
Looking over the ancient medina of Fes, the largest non-automobile area in the world. Just beyond it and to the right lies the modern city, paved and with cars and roundabouts and fountains and fruit shops and McDonalds.
Ancient monument
Ancient monument with modern children and graffiti.
The next day, we set off much later than intended for Volubilus. Volubilus is a Roman town, started by 300 BC if not earlier. It was a thriving little metropolis set amongst vineyards and rolling hills until about 300 AD, when it began to decline. By 600 or so, it was deserted, and now it is just a collection of columns and arches and mosaic floors and lizards and tourists and piles of rocks bearing witness to the passage of time. It has a ruined temple, forum and triumphal arch, bearing witness to Octavius’ decision to grant tax-free status to the village. Uh, yeah. Those were exciting times.
We drove hours through a tan countryside–wheat-coloured, straw-coloured–and then turned a corner and saw this enormous lake!
We had a map and directions from our friend, so we decided to attempt the back road. I’m so glad we did. Morocco is full of charming vistas off the autoroutes, of sleepy hamlets reachable only by donkey, of sudden lakes blooming blue out of a baked tan landscape, of rolling hills moulded by groves of olive trees, of herds of sheep blocking the one-lane road you are treacherously bouncing along, of the skinny fingers of minarets poking above the tops of the hills. We weren’t entirely sure that the tiny potholed lane we were on was actually the one printed on the map when we came upon this village, built into a ravine, glowing in the late afternoon sunlight. I fell in love with it; I thought it was so charming. (The children did not fall in love and hope to continue to live in a place where American fast food is available in case someday their parents actually let them eat it)
Eventually we made it to Volubilus. Abel came into his own. For some reason, he loves Roman history, and he chatted away about Roman baths and triumphal arches. He and Ilsa ran around shouting “COME! SEE THIS! HURRY!” as the rest of us moved with agonizing slowness, at least in their eyes.
Our friend had told us to bring water to rinse off the mosaics. It was good advice. The mosaics are roped off, but I leaned over and splashed what I could. We sat back and watched as pinks and reds and olive greens bloomed under the layer of dust. But we didn’t have much water with us, so were limited in what we could do.
I took this to show you how the mosaics looked without water.
This is one splashed with water. Notice the brighter colours. Both this and the previous picture were part of the same floor, showing the 12 labours of Hercules.
This was in a different part of the village. Its humourous description of a man riding his donkey backwards earned it the name “The Acrobat’s House.”
We pretty much had the place to ourselves, except for a busload of tourists who walked through the temple area at one point, then went on to the triumphal arch, while we continued to explore at our own pace.
Tourists and temple
Some sort of bath, I believe
This was called “The House of Columns.”
I believe this was the entrance to the market.
Stork’s nest on pillar.
The hills beyond the ruins.
Abel
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains…
P.B. Shelley; “Ozymandias”
Photo taken in Volubilus, Morocco
At the end of June, Donn went to the Mauritanian border and met a fruit truck with all the things we’d left in storage there 2 years ago. This is the final segment of his story of that journey. Read parts one, two, three, four and five here.
Yes, this is the truck
I’ve been meaning to ask Tim who drove from Nouakchott to the border. Saied 1 drove from the time we met, mid-day, until 2 AM when we stopped at a gas station that I think was in Layoune. Here we installed a massive gas tank on the left hand side of the truck and filled it with over 800 liters of diesel fuel. We had dropped our hitch-hiker somewhere along the way and S2 slept in the small bed behind the seats for 5 to 6 hours until he took the wheel in the wee hours of the morning.
He drove for an hour and a half and then pulled off the road where we slept for about 3 hours. When we woke, S1 took the wheel again and drove most of the day. S2 went back to lying down. Traveling with Saied 2 was like trying to row a boat with an anchor hanging off the back. At least that was the image that came to mind.
For breakfast we pulled into a small restaurant and had tea and fried eggs from a communal plate from which we pulled bits of egg off with our bread. At each café, S2 found a group of men to socialize with after the meal while S1 and I waited around the truck. This wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for his insistent wrist slapping at the border. I fought the urge to gesture towards my imaginary watch. Instead I waited by the truck and imagined pouring molasses on a cold day. The Saied Brothers apparently made up for lost time by keeping a stack of 20 dirham notes in a cubby-hole in the dash board and shaking hands with the officer on duty at every checkpoint. This seemed to save us bags of time which could be better spent loitering around truck stops.
S1 and S2 at breakfast
S1 played Berber music intermittently throughout the trip. Not being musical at all, it really is beyond my ability to describe but I’ll give it a shot. Only know that you need to then find some Berber music and listen to it. Ok, so it’s repetitive. The rhythm, the melody, and the vocals are all repetitive. Everything in it repeats not twice or thrice but until you stop counting. There is a musical phrase that winds through a constant, dare I say repetitive, rhythm over and over again while the singer presumably tells a story with each verse ending with the same phrase. It was not entirely unpleasant. Traditional Mauritanian music has no reference point for western ears, but the Berber music Saied 1 played was ultimately kind of catchy. I mean it was no Bob Dylan but seemed a propos to the drone of the highway, the many Mohameds I’d met, the number of times America’s shortcomings were the topic of conversation, and the multiple goat tagines that blur in my memory. At one point, S1 scanned the radio for something western. We found the theme to Flashdance. It’s hard to feel stupider than driving through the desert with two men you can’t communicate with while listening to Flashdance. I think even S1 understood that because after one song it was back to the hypnotic strains of his cassette.
Before lunch I made contact with Elizabeth who informed me of Michael Jackson’s passing. I tried to communicate this news to S1 & 2 since in my experience, pop music icons seem to be one of the most common points of reference for North Africans on the subject of The West. That and America’s failings.
I pronounced his name the way I would say it. MY-kul JACKson. Then I tried the French, or at least the Peter Sellers way. Mee-shell Zhjackson. And then the incredulous way. “C’mon guys. Michele Jackson. [falsetto] ‘Just beat it!’” Nope, Nothing. In simple phrases, trying both Hassynia and French: Il est mort. No? Hua matt. No? Unbelievable. I gave up. Shortly after that we pulled into a truck stop, perused the menu and decided on the goat tagine. A television anchored to the ceiling was on showing….. Michael Jackson. “You know him?” I asked. Of course they knew him. What a stupid question. “He died today.” “Really?” All of the sudden S2 decided to understand a few words and related it to S1.
When we reached their home town of Agadir, we pulled off the highway onto a street lined with trucks. This was the kind of place one could find a truck to rent and I was a bit concerned they were going to try and off-load me. They had already broached that possibility with Tim and I was really wondering what was going on as we pulled into this truck mall with no explanation. Fortunately, we only changed the oil and were off again. As we left Agadir, we wound up behind an empty truck from Kenitra which is a city just north of Rabat. S2, now driving again, gestured at it repeatedly and spoke at length about it. I didn’t understand a word and yet I feel I know the jist. S1 occasionally replied to S2 and we kept driving northward.
Near Marrakech I was in regular contact with Elizabeth estimating the time of our arrival, planning who would be there to help unload, etc., when…. we turned around. What??? We spent half an hour driving up and down the same section of road lined with truck stops. Are we looking for a specific goat tagine? I imagined their conversation as something like, “You know, these guys drove the old Cup-o-Tagine guys right out of town.”
Apparently, we were looking for a friend of S2’s. He had been on the phone coming into Marrakech and had arranged to meet a friend, so back and forth we went, looking for him. (I had imaginary friends too, but I outgrew them) S1 explained it to me with a Berber word but I didn’t understand. I forget the word now but when we stopped, I looked for someone that spoke French (and presumably Berber). “Excuse me, do you speak French? What does this word mean?” “Friend.” Are you kidding me? Ohhh. I wanted to slap more than his imaginary watch. S1 and I waited round the truck for another ½ hour. I tried to exude annoyance and wondered if S1 would ever find a new partner. He is using you, Saied.
Eventually S2 sauntered over to the truck and we all piled back in. Language barriers can be a gift, I suppose, as we rolled on in silence.
On the other side of Marrakech, we had our final and best tagine. This was technically a michwi, not a tagine, michwi being grilled meat and tagine being more a stew. It was actually phenomenal. Grilled mutton chops with onions, tomatoes and salt. Soo good.
Choosing our michwi, pre-cooking
Back on the road, I calculated our time to Rabat and called Elizabeth. Looks like we’ll be there around 3 AM, assuming Saied doesn’t have any “friends” in this neck of the woods, I told her. Earlier I had realized we wouldn’t be there at a time when anyone would want to help so Elizabeth suggested we stop somewhere and sleep. “You want me to prolong this?” I asked. If I was scheduled to be released from prison, would she say, “Boy, tomorrow’s not a good time. See if you can stay another week.” I suggested to Elizabeth that she let Elliot have a sleepover. The more the merrier! “Have fun, watch a movie and at 3 am boys, we’re going to unload a truck!” It’s amazing what sounds fun to young boys if pitched the right way. I felt a bit like Tom Sawyer but hey, it worked. We rolled in at 3 AM, woke everyone up and unloaded. The guard on our street, who was awake (!), also pitched in and it took us about 2 ½ hours.
We’ve discovered we’re missing a few small items including Elliot’s Louisville Slugger baseball bat, which Elizabeth saw in the truck as we were unloading, but all in all, it was a successful trip. I made it home alive and we have our STUFF. Was it worth it? I don’t like to think about it. Would I do it again? Not without putting something about “friends” in the contract. Does Elliot miss his Louisville Slugger? Yes. I only hope S1 uses it to keep S2 in line.
FIN
Planet Nomad 