Impression of Morocco: Part Two

Part One//Part Three

Returning to Centre

If the medina is an assault on the senses, then at least it isn’t without cognisance of it’s effects. The city provides balm for it’s own salty wounds. The doors here are of a heaviness (and beauty) unheard of in our culture. Once the door is mastered- sometimes they need a special shove or a particular key jiggle, and those grand old timber and metal sentients close behind us, it’s a whole different environment. In so many ways.

The architecture, mindfully refined over centuries, is the catalyst for the balm. Just inside those thick ancient walls, and due to the structure of the building around a central courtyard and often a maze like path to the courtyard similar to the medina as a whole, the sudden reduction in noise and heat is amazing. Walking into a riad is like being bathed by gentle saltwater waves of coolness and sensory reduction. There might be the distant sound of children playing, or the hum of a scooter (as opposed to a roar), and most evocatively, the Call to Prayer that does penetrate into the riad. Inside, those noises build up a picture, rather than dousing the listener in paint.

The riads I stayed in, whilst on the cheaper end of the scale, still embodied a level of luxury that was new to me. In one room, I was provided a private bath that was as deep as my smaller children are tall. I never filled them, I couldn’t bear to in a country that lives with water scarcity. The bedding was something so special in itself- exquisite linens and soft European pillows that were sweetest to sink into at the end of the day, although holding a shawl or listen to a favourite podcast as I fell asleep was also a deeply comforting part of my nights. I needed an anchor.

And of course, in the riads I stayed in in particular but in the medina as a whole, there is also the ubiqutous balm of Beauty. Here is a city wherein walls are crumbling, or falling down, or being rebuilt in a constant busy, dusty cycle, but the doorways are always beautiful. The public toilet might be repulsive, but then the sink is the most beautiful mosaic imaginable. The souks are busy and you will get harrassed, touched, forcefully coerced by scam and persistance to buy things, but the wares they sell: the mounds of colourful spices; lovingly handmade slippers or tea pots or wooden chess sets, they are gorgeous. The cats are hungry and fight and are covered in bloody scars, but the elderly shopkeeper throws out fishheads and scraps to feed a mama and her kittens.

There are beautiful henna designs everywhere; and the women who will forcefully grab your arm and quickly draw a design without your consent, assuring you it’s a present, then will demand payment after. There are empty alleyways with litter strewn about; and the beautiful mosque at the end of it with impeccable tile work. There are vibrant bouganvillea flowers; and there is rubbish on the ground everywhere; there are palaces that defy the imagination, and there are beggars that wrench the heart. Marrakech is nothing if it is not a constant paradox, and to a foreigner, it can be confusing how all these parts fit together.

I find myself finding new ways of familiarity in the unfamiliar. The teenage daughter of the riad manager walks with us to the nearest gate out of the medina one night, and shows us the navigational tools- in the desert, it’s the silver pendants that have assisted Berbers in the desert since ancient times. Here in the medina, it’s stenciled spray paint. From the Riad, we follow the ‘A’ stencilled at the junctions of the alleyways. I never do find out what the name of the gate is, I suppose it must be something beginning with A. On the way back, small blue stars are painted onto the walls. Small signals, easily missed, but once the trick is learnt, independent local pedestrian travel becomes a lot easier. In a strange city, having this small piece of knowledge feels like a cloak. I become a little more invisible in my confidence and my capability. In a world where I am master of nothing, there is, at least one track that I can find.

As I slowly become accustomed to being in this new land, I find myself returning to habits that keep me sane: seeking out nature, finding solitude, journalling and sketching. One morning, I rise with the first Call to Prayer and quietly take myself to the rooftop. The medina is different from up here, this perspective gives me the clarity to see how large it is, and how microcosmic every little place I find myself in is; it is overwhelming. But I also see how many mosques there are, seeing the minarets rising high up above the buildings, and I remember how, as humans, we will always seek that which fills us, which makes us feel whole. There is such a commoness in humanity, even in a culture so different to my own. This commoness helps me feel safe.

Here, in the syrupy radiance of dawn, I undertake my own devotion. As I watch the sun rise over this beautiful country, I also listen to the pidgeon cooing and watch cats jump between rooftops. I marvel at the ability to grow beautiful rooftop gardens of bouganvillea and cactus and so much greenery in a country so arid. As the sun rises, the air is clearer than any other time I have been up here, and for the first time I can see the Atlas Mountains. They are much closer than I thought they were, and so much higher than any mountain I have seen. I can clearly see the snow on the summit. In a few days, I would be crossing them, into lands again new and unseen.

I spend the first hour of the new day writing in my journal and sketching the scene before me, from the next rooftop right out to those majestic, unearthly (or super-earthly?) mountains. It is the most centred time I have in Morocco. I realise the things that nourish me are going to be the same anywhere, if I seek them. Clean water. Fresh air. Early morning sunshine. Wholesome food. Following my cycles. Writing. Drawing. Tending to the liminal spaces. Attending to my womb. Attending to my heart.

Perhaps the point of travel is to find those practices in new places, and through that, experience the opening that follows.

The Women of Morocco

In all my travels, I rarely connect with local women- either Arab or Berber- though I want to. I see them of course. At all times, they are moving with purpose, whether it be carrying their harvest alongside rural roads, or on the way to a mosque, or walking to the markets with a baby tied to their back. Within this purpose, there is a focus that doesn’t often allow for seeing me. We, the tourists are perhaps a necessary evil, a source of income and therefore a means to feeding their families. Do we seem homogenous to them? I worry that we are all seen as the lowest common denominator- the obnoxious tourists that dress without awareness or respect for their cultural norms, that noisily complain about the different toilets, or demand the cheapest price for the quality products that have been handmade in the souks. Are we all like them? Didn’t I complain about how confronting Marrakech could be, and what cultural practices did I unknowingly disrespect?

I guess the answer is, we are all both. The Moroccan woman going about her day within her own gestalt, the conscious traveller, and the obnoxious tourist. I wish I could have experienced the nuances within them, though. Just as with the children, I didn’t have the opportunity to connect because we existed in different worlds. It appears that the men are the public face of Morocco- the stall holders and shop keepers, the drivers, the waiters and the guides.

The women I did meet- the manager of one of the riads, and her daughters; the staff at the French-style hamman, seemed to be the more Western-influenced women. Perhaps this was a coincedence, or perhaps this was an indication of their own choice to move away from traditional roles.

The most interesting connection, however fleeting, I had with a woman, was in a souk. It was still a touristy area but it was close by an area that felt like it had a more local flavour, with mechanics and street food and tailors of Moroccon clothes. I was standing in the alleyway with one of the women from the retreat. She was wearing her long, lustrous hair out that day, whilst mine was pulled back and mostly covered by a headwrap. A middle aged woman walked past, and as she walked by, she paused, took my friend’s hair in her hands and softly ran her hands through it. She then gave us both a smile which was both admiring and admonishing, and walked on.

I am still not fully aware of what she meant by that smile, whether she was bringing our attention to the inappropriate flaunting of female hair; or whether she just liked the look of it.

Men of the Berber Tribe

I found Berber men to be incredibly kind and hospitable. In a riad which felt a million miles from anywhere- but was actually in a touristy area- we arrived hours late for our overnight stay. They were overjoyed to see us, their donkey and porter carts ready to transport our luggage from the roadside (where children stood by to watch, and hopefully, be given a coin or two by affluent tourists), down an ill-defined track to an adobe building built into the escarpment of the Dades Gorge. The Gorge itself, in the time just past golden hour, was a deep red, a welcome and soothinng relief to the monotony of the hammada all day long. Deep in the valley, verdant green amongst the irrigation channels and by the riverside, where a few villagers still worked harvesting and tending.

The mountains that formed the gorge rose up like a cocoon, and though it was cold, I was grateful when our hosts directed us out to the terrace. As the wind blew through, we drank hot mint tea, and I dissolved into the bliss of this new landscape. It was perhaps the most powerful affinity to land I had in Morocco, this half an hour or so as night fell, before it got too cold to remain.

Dinner was served, a delicious homestyle meal like I hadn’t really experienced yet. Things had spice here, whereas often in the city they didn’t- perhaps to appease the palate of foriegners. Here things tasted alive and fresh and made with love- in fact, everytime I walked past the kitchen, the kitchen staff would come out and say hello.

We were serenaded shyly by one of the older members of the all male staff (again I noticed the lack of women); a proud Berber man in a high-vis sweater, playing traditional Amazigh songs on his stringed instrument. He wasn’t very loud, but the affinity he held for his culture was much clearer than his volume.

Into the Desert

As we drive out to the desert, I planned to sleep, but when the time came, I couldn’t bring myself to, although I was tired. This was a landscape so new to my eyes and my heart, and probably one I would never travel through again (though I would like to). To close my eyes and sleep would be to dishonour this land’s bounty and beauty. Instead, I disengaged from the chatter in the van, or other ways of distracting myself and gave myself fully to it. I was sitting up front and so had the best vantage point. I laid back and let my gaze do what it would, for hours. After some time it became like a trance, and a sort of subtle conversation began with the land itself. It began to tell me some of it’s stories. In some places, I felt like the land was drawing me in and close, at other times, it felt inhospitable. A lot of the time, it was simply alien.

In the mornings and evenings the narrow side of rural roads are filled with women of all ages, in Arabic hijab or black Berber robes, bent over with a back full of alfalfa they have harvested with which to feed their animals. They walk in groups or couples, though the steepness of the road often prevents conversation. Their eyes are on the next footfall whilst tourist vans fly by. In dust, in heat, in fog and rain. The animals must be fed.

The vast expanses of bleak and barren hammada- the stone desert devoid of soil or sand- broken occasionally in it’s mundanity by a nomadic Berber camp or a rural town. On the side of a hills, I see Arabic script or once, the Berber symbol for freedom, created by the placement of large white stones. This same symbol for freedom can be seen on doors, as grafitti in the streets or on shop signs all across the south of Morocco.

I imagine what this landscape would look as a colour scheme in a design portfolio. The base colour would be a washed out tone of tan, the colour of the parched earth, where we see fields of craters where people have dug for water. This would be paired with a dark charcoal grey, almost black, the colour of the rock that blanket the barren land. There would be a smaller portion of murky green, the colour of the occasional shrub that I see goats crowding around, unknown species of plants that are the small micrcosmic oasis for whatever life survives out here. There would be a large expanse of pale blue, the sky, interrupted only by mesa and hills of the same tans and blacks, and the very pale grey clouds that promise no rain but perhaps a thin viel of shade.

The hammada is also broken up where the low rivers run across rocky watercourses in the valleys. In these places, ancient irrigation channels have been engineered with much success: in these thin, fertile areas, lush green is solace to the senses (and a vital source of nourishment to the locals). There are crops of alfalfa, peas, wheat, date palms, figs, almonds, apricot and olives. If you explore more closely, there are salad greens and brassicas and even flowers- proving beauty is an essential form of nourishment.

Through the more barren areas, I see herds of goats and camels occasionally, with withered looking men with shepard’s crooks and robes that reach to their ankles. I wonder what there is for the animals to eat, out in this landscape. It must be a hard, dry life. The areas that herd and shepard span must be large.

A manifestation of bounty on the roadside: frequent stalls of raw crystal and, closer to the Sahara, fossils. Often the tables were improvised: an old door on saw horses, or branches lashed together with old plastic rope. Most had some kind of structure behind for the stall-keeper, a primitive mud hut emerging from the embankment, or a tent made of rugs on an a-frame. Quartz, amethyst, flourite and more laid out haphazardly or piled up to attract the attention of drivers passing by, the views of the High Atlas are free. A donkey stands passively by the stall, occasionally munching on stunted shrubs and mountain grass, waiting for the time to return with his human from whereever they have come from.

Many of the stalls have no (visible) attendant, just collections of abundance, accumulated from the mountains and plains themselves, sitting sentinel on the slopes.

As the hours drain by, and the soundtrack changes from Tinawiren and desert inspired songs of wildness, to repetitive pop songs that seem to revive everyone in the van except for me (and the long suffering driver), I grow restless. The distance to the desert is much longer than we were led to believe, and I feel our precious time in the desert eking away. I become irritated and even the landscape no longer soothes me. I long to touch the ground and do the work (not realising, of course, that I am already doing it). I need space, and quiet and comfort.

The day is very close to turning as we arrive in what appears to be a non descript car park of two unidentifiable buildings in a small village- which also appears to be uninhabited. If not for the regular signs pointing to desert camps on the edge of the road for the past twenty minutes or so, I might be nervous.

Waiting there are three four wheel drives. The men- Berber, warm and hospitable, move our luggage to their vehicles.

And then, finally, after so many uncomfortable hours in the van, we are off, not on any road, but literally straight out into the desert, onto the sand without any discernable marker (although on the way back a couple of days later I do spot the regular stone markers painted bright pink).

The majesty of the desert is incredible, and in a foldaway seat at the back of an impeccably clean four wheel drive, the only thing that draws my attention away from this majesty is the shift in mood that overcomes us. The driver picks up on our jubilation and liberation from the long drive out and hits the crests of the dunes a little faster with each whoop-

And suddenly, the three four wheel drives are racing through the desert, windows are down, we are shouting and laughing between cars as each driver takes his own unique path through the desert. We’ll lose the other cars for a minute or two as we speed and bounce over the sand, only to find them waiting for us, patiently and smugly, around the next bend, and we will suddenly take of again in a cloud of dust and sand leaving the others behind. The bags are falling on me and the seat is uncomfortably small and there is sand whipping in my eyes and we are going way too fast and up questionable dunes- and I haven’t laughed like this in months.

We stop, once, solemnly, to watch the sunset. And then we are off again. Into the great unknown. Into a nature I have never been a part of before. Wild, unkempt and ready.

We arrive at the desert camp at twilight.

Part One//Part Three