In the autumn of 2001 I was single and newly retired and I wondered what I should do next. I decided to put myself to the test. I would go to Morocco because it is not very far away, but a fairly alien culture. I took a big rucksack and stayed in cheap hotels, but mostly in youth hostels.
Casablanca is hardly "typical Morocco". It is a big modern city, women are unfettered and it is full of cafes, with the TV high on the wall. Here I got a nasty fright. There was an aircraft crash near New York. A second 9/11? For an hour or two people watched the TV tensely. Then relief. It was an accident! They don't want trouble. It was with sadness that I heard a few years later that there had been an Al Qaeda bombing in Casablanca.
But I had to see more of Morocco. I took the train to Rabat the capital and the most traditional of the large cities, and then I went on to Meknes and Fes. I saw the abandoned Roman city of Volubilis. It seemed very out of place here in North Africa, but on second thoughts maybe less out of place than Hadrian's Wall in my home city. I saw water being used to irrigate fields - surely there are better ways of doing it? I saw olives being harvested and the amazingly crude way they are crushed and the oil squeezed out. Despite all the praise-talk about the olive being the foundation of Mediterranean cooking and culture, really they are one of the few things that will grow in this climate and they have an unpleasant taste and all this praise is simply making the best of a bad job. I ate fresh dates, to Moroccans the equivalent of apples to us, and a very different experience from the dried dates we eat.
I saw museums where the buildings were as interesting as the things on show; the lines, curves and lighting lead the eye in a very seductive way to make you savour the space. I saw displays of Arabic writing, not just in museums but on workaday things like the lettering on the sides of buses. Their writing obviously give Arabs pleasure far more than ours does to us and second only to Chinese writing.
But the touts and urchins were like flies around all the tourist spots; I tended to avoid them. So, a different kind of doubtful person latched onto me. Mostly young they claimed to want to talk to a foreigner, and Morocco is not a totally free society so there might be some truth in that, or simply have a stroll with interesting conversation. But I was always in doubt as to their motives. By "pure chance" they might call in for a cup of tea at a carpet shop run by an old friend. Too damned obvious! But travelling with only a rucksack meant that I really could not buy their goods. I walked a long way talking to a chap I met in the street, then he asked me for the taxi-fare home! Had all that been to soften me up to give him that money? I felt dirtied. They weren't all like that, but I could never be sure. So, I never got to see the famous dyeing vats of Fes. I ran away!
I took the train from Fes to Marrakech. The trains are French '70s stock, super-fast for their day, but in Morocco they run at far below the speeds they are capable of. The train moved through the landscape with the dignity of a ship at sea. It took all day.
It took me too long to realise that Marrakech and whole of the south of the country is wholly different from the north of Morocco. There was none of that following me around, offering me this deal, that deal or simply wanting to walk with me, with very uncertain motivation. I had put up my guard against that kind of thing, and I probably missed some good opportunities before I learned that there was no need for it here. I got talking to a music-shop owner who was ashamed of that behaviour and was sadly aware of how harmful it is. The tourist guidebooks say that you should be willing to be overcharged a bit, it's not much loss to you, but a big gain to them. Is this saying somehow that they can get a free lunch? But there are no free lunches, somewhere somebody must be taking a loss, probably the country as a whole because tourists don't like to be swindled. Nor does anybody. No wonder Thailand has set up a special tourist police to stop this kind of misuse.
As the bus from Marrakech to Ouarzazate drove out a roll of tear-off bags such as you find in supermarkets was passed back along the seats and the passengers tore off a bag or two. What for? I soon realised. The bus was a modern vehicle in good order, the road had a reasonable surface, but it swung from left to right along the side of the valley and if anything went wrong it would be a long way down. These were local passengers on a service bus, and those bags were sick-bags and they used them! I just enjoyed the ride as a Valkyrie-ride.
On the Sahara side of the Atlas mountains, Ouarzazate looks as if it is there as an act of human will. It is hard to see what it makes a living out of. But it has a hotel which I stayed in. The hotel was in the form of a hollow rectangle but there was no roof, no need for one in a place with (almost) no rain. But one morning there was a little bit of water on the landings.
After the only bit of hustling I got in the south, I went all the way into the desert. Along the side of the road are the amazing oases, valleys where the water that has fallen on the Atlas comes to the surface and there is mile after mile of date-palms with sandy desert on both sides. What a sight! And onwards south to a camp specialising in nights in the desert and camel rides for the foreigner. The camp's GPS coordinates were printed on the owner's card; really sensible in the desert. All the way, and here as much as anywhere else, I was impressed by the local knowledge of geology and fossils, all discussed in purely European terms.
Taking care not to get lost and using compass bearings, I walked out on the sand. It's not just sand, this is a land which was green and fertile in historical times. The "sand" is soil with the dark organic matter oxidised away. The wind can only blow away the small particles, so in places I walked over gravel pavements, in other places the sand had gathered in great dunes, which move with the wind. There was just the sun, the wind, the sand and me. What is it that is so special about that? Is it the fact that you are the only living thing in sight, and you might kick sand or stones as much you like, but there is nothing that can make a response? The only thing you can get a response from is yourself.
On the way back I decided to stop at the town of Taddart. I ordered a tagine (stew) and ate it on a very pretty terrace beside a tumbling stream and asked about the hotel I was aiming for. Ah, there was a problem! That hotel was closed for Ramadan (mindful of the tourist trade the Moroccan government tries to insist that at least one hotel in every place stays open during Ramadan, but evidently its writ doesn't run to these parts) Ah! But they had an idea! I could stay with the restauranteur's family!
So they took me in. It was a fairly modern concrete house, it didn't look out of place set into the rock face, and like so much else in Morocco, it wasn't finished. I'm sure I was a financial windfall to them. They were the grown-up children of elderly parents who lived next door. Each grown-up child had a family, and lived with that family in one room and they locked the door of each room with a padlock. They provided me with the same for my room. They were the sweetest people, but the need to lock the doors like that stuck in my throat. I stayed a couple of days with them. In the evenings round the fire we talked. It was getting on to December and bitterly cold and they shivered. They didn't think of closing the door!
I walked out on the mountains, where the rock is poor quality crumbly stuff. I saw the base of something I couldn't understand and I asked the senior brother about it. It seems that just after the war German prisoners of war were made to build a Swiss-type cable-way which ran all the way from Marrakech to Ouarzazate, but it was scrapped in the 60s. What a shame, it would have been a huge asset to the tourist industry today. There were areas where trees had been planted, not too difficult because although the mountains seem to be bare rock, if you drive a pick into it, you can very soon turn it into pocket of shale which you can put a small tree into. But tree planting had come to a stop. There was a dam and irrigation canal, expensively built on the money of those who had gone to Marrakech for work, but hopelessly badly laid out and very wasteful: and a good job too because, if it had captured and used all the water, the city of Marrakech would have gone dry. I saw fields which had been planted in the hope of rain. If rain didn't fall, then the seed and work would have been wasted, but that's life in the Atlas.
I got talking to a man in his 40s, who said how life was so hard. There is very little for anybody in the Atlas, his family, parents, brothers and sisters and their children had all gone to Marrakech to try their luck in the big city, but he had to stay behind to keep a hold of the family lands now that the family had gone and not let others seize them. Not that the land had any real value. I didn't ask, but it seemed plain that he was the bachelor of the family - always put upon.
And so onward to Marrakech on the Valkyrie-bus. My rucksack was put in the luggage compartment under the floor with the goats, front and back legs tied together, on their way to market and the goats piddled on it. A very authentic experience!
Marrakech is really a fun city. There are all sorts of cultural highlights, from high-brow museums and galleries to street musicians and jugglers, there are shops of all kinds, at night (during Ramadan, anyway) stalls are set up in Place Djemaa El Fnaa where you can eat any kind of food you want and watch all sorts of entertainments. Now that the bad impression of Moroccans that I had picked up in Northern Morocco had been cleared, I enjoyed Marrakech better. But you can't settle when you're on holiday. I took the bus to Essaouira.
Essaouira was the nicest place in the whole trip. All motor vehicles stop at bays outside the city walls and unload into hand carts which deliver or collect from the city. A very few building vehicles, diggers, forklift trucks and the like are allowed into the city, but apart from them, it is pedestrians only. The municipality is obviously in firm control. You can meander through fruit shops, cafes, fruit and vegetable shops, spice shops (always a splendid display), anything. Without the roar of traffic, people talk on the street. I found it easy to start and finish conversations. There is a fishing harbour and dunes and beaches and good hotels and shops selling interesting things. Tourists could safely bring young children here.
I stayed in a hotel in the old city. A young man, also staying there told me he was expecting a visit from his "father's wife". That's a strange way of putting it because normally you father's wife is your mother, and I wondered if I had got the words wrong, but then I realised: This is a Muslim country and this must be his father's other wife.
I also had a fright. I went to the hole in the wall to get out money. "Sorry, we cannot handle this transaction" came back the message in French. Oh dear. I went to another hole in the wall and got the same. And another! Something must be wrong with my account back home! A sick feeling arose in my belly. I was hundreds of miles from Casablanca airport and no way of getting back in a very foreign country. Then I saw a man walk away from another hole in the wall with a look of exasperation on his face. It was a general failure, not just mine. And in an hour, all the machines were working again. But it had been a nasty fright and a reminder of how thin a thread you hang by in a foreign country.
And by bus back to Casablanca. This being Ramadan, the bus loudspeakers were playing recitations from the Koran. The voices are very strange: one of the boys at Taddart had been like that; he looked 17 or 18 and his voice hadn't broken, giving his voice a not-child, not-man, not-woman quality we don't get in Europe From the youth hostel I went round the corner to cafe I had been to when I was first there. Some of these cafes are like French bistros, and like them, there can be good conversation or none, it's pot luck. A good evening in this case.
I must say I was impressed by some of the young people. So keen on their learning. Maths? Not my strong point alas! English? Ah yes, real English conversation. Geography? Where have you been? What did you think of it? Their thirst for knowledge was very impressive. But will their keenness do them any good or will it turn to frustration and sourness? I fear that the aim of many is to leave the country, and it is easy to see why. Morocco is not a desperately poor country, but it knows that very much better is possible, and not very far away, in Europe. For many years it has been the wish of some sections of Moroccan society for Morocco to join the EU. Many cars carry number plates with "EU" on them. Not only do they want European economic standards, they also want European standards of health, justice, culture. Several times it was aggressively put to me that Morocco was being denied the right to join the EU because it was a Muslim country. My answer that it was not being allowed to join because it is not a European but an African country was met with a lot of scepticism. Well, seeing that their view of Europe must mostly come from France, maybe that's not too surprising.
I saw a market barrow, very like a market barrow in Britain, selling bananas. A crowd of men stood round it buying the bananas, in a city where women are not allowed out of the house, the men have to do the shopping. Half a dozen men bought their bananas and took them away. That was all. No more action! The other men drifted away. Their interest had been to watch other men buying bananas! They must have too little to do. Knowing nothing else, do they accept it? Or does it cause a deep inner frustration or anger?
In my time in Morocco I was offered hash at least 6 times, a woman to marry 4 times, and I am fairly certain at least one attempted homosexual seduction. I brushed them off of course. All the women were all under 20 and the youngest surely only 14. Somehow the girl would appear and father and/or elder brothers would say "Would you like to marry her? Nice girl! What are you shy about?" and the girl would smile winningly and put her hand out to me. Of course I said "no". But in their eyes it would be a good deal. However "well" or "badly" the marriage worked out, on any calculation it would better than what she would get in Morocco - looked at coldly, that is probably a correct calculation - and I would die in her young middle age and she would be a free woman in a first world country. And the family would have a finger-hold in a first world country. They took no offence and showed no surprise when I said "no"; no doubt they'll get a taker in the end.
Does it hurt to view yourself and all you know as so much less than the foreigner?
First published in VISA issue 72A (April 2007)
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