Impressions of Morocco, Part One

Part Two//Part Three

Sometimes, what is possible and what is realistic slip into a pocket of dreaming time, and you find yourself doing things you never thought possible.

I have recently returned from an eighteen day journey to Morocco, comprising a few nights in Marrakech, a two day journey out to the Sahara Desert via the Dades Valley and Todra Gorge, two nights in a luxury desert camp, and a few more nights in Marrakech. I was taking part in Anni Daulter’s ‘Travelling Sisters Retreat’ as part of her Sacred Living Movement, and I had two or three days of independent travel each side of the retreat, as well as a Sacred Ayurveda course run by Atourina Charles.

As I ground back into life here in this little valley I call home, I am left with impressions- the way this amazing country entered me through my senses, through my heart, through an embodiment both vulnerable and brave.

I will dream of those lands forever.

Arrivals

My first view of Marrakech is in the darkness of midnight. I am trembling from days of flights culminating in a delayed flight, broken communication, a transfer that didn’t turn up and a merciful security guard, who seeing my distress found a taxi driver for me. Not knowing whether my riad room will still be available, not knowing how I will get from the taxi drop off point through the strange winding alleyways of the medina (the old walled city), full of fear that I will need to wander the city till morning- if I was indeed safe come morning- I have nothing but trust to sustain me. I clutch my crystal necklace in both hands, dizzy and thoroughly disoriented.

But here I am.

The air on my face from the open window feels incredibly nourishing after so long in planes and airports. That, and driving on what seems viscerally like the “wrong” side of the road, without a seat belt:  even sitting in a taxi is so different here, it feels exhilarating as well as daunting. The long avenue to the medina is landscaped with date palms and roses and despite the late hour, plenty of people were still out and about.

On the pavement beside the road, I see a man riding a scooter, a woman holding onto his back behind him, and a sleeping toddler between them, his little arms around his mother. Other scooters zip by, taxis tussle for position on the road.

As we enter the built up areas, under archways and into streets that become narrower and narrower, we stop a couple of times for the taxi driver to ask for directions. I am highly anxious. The last time we stop, a couple of men run up to us. Obviously something routine is going on, but I am not sure what until my bags are packed into wheelbarrow-like carts, and I am told, after paying the driver, that this man will take me to the riad I have booked (which the paperwork tells me will only hold my room until 8pm unless otherwise contacted, which was impossible, given the unexplained delay and no public phones, a Moroccan SIM card and an only rudimentary grasp of the French language).

We start what feels like a convoluted and highly confusing trek through alleyways, full of stalls selling mobile phone accessories, and shoes laid out on the pavement, and food and jewellry. We twist and turn erratically, but this guy, he knows where he is going, and he is going quickly. He is talking to me, but I don’t understand anything except when he pauses under an archway into another alleyway and points to a small sign above it “Derb Jemma!” He proudly declares. I nod and smile and sigh with relief, I recall this name from the riad address. A few more turns (wondering vaguely how I will ever find my way anywhere), he brings me to the door and knocks, takes his money and leaves.

And I am there, by myself (could he not have stayed until I got inside?), hoping the door, this impossibly huge looking door in a scruffy alleyway with a building site on the corner and the sound of cats fighting somewhere close by, will by some miracle open.

I knock again. And the door opens, and I just about cry with relief.

Travel through the Senses: Smell

Smells are transient here; but that does not speak of their intensity. The stomach clenching smell of animal manure and rotting garbage in Djemma-El-Fna; diesel and gas fumes from scooters and streets stoves; the stench of public toilets, cigarette smoke and the ubiqutous odour of cat urine.

However, as intense as these smells are, they do not travel well. Walk a few metres and other- quite likely more pleasing smells- will be equally as demanding of attention.

The smell of cumin and cinnamon, redolent and heavy in the narrow covered souqs, the more fragile scent of amber, so sweet and elegant, the resin rubbed against the skin of my pale wrist, a protection against the more revolting smells that can come upon me suddenly. The deep, writhing smoke of frankinscence and sandalwood burning, an invitation to breaths right down to the pit of my belly- smells as nourishing and quenching as food.

Travel through the Senses: Hearing/Call to Prayer

The first time I hear the call to prayer, it is in my dreamtime. I am completely somnolent in the hours of discombulation after my midnight arrival in the riad. Strange dreams haunt me all night (and well into the next day as I nap and doze away the stress of the previous day). Within them, not even aware of my wakefulness, I hear a strange singing. A lulling, redolent chant. My mental mind is not awake enough to identify what it is, though I have expected it. I simply experience it, and later when I wake fully, to the memory of it.

When I awake again, that memory is mixed with the sounds of birds. These bird sounds, I have only heard on television and in movies. I associate them with England, or Europe, and I remember I am far closer to there than any place I am familiar with. And so, sound becomes my first experience of being in a new place.

Over the coming days, the call to prayer becomes something familiar I can hold onto in this strange place. It starts up from one direction, in one voice and intonation, and one by one, I hear it from many mosques and loudspeakers. It is clearest when I am sitting on rooftops. I never find the place where the words become familiar, although sometimes it seems like a longer or shorter prayer depending on the time of day.

I find myself starting to synchronize with my own unique responses to the Call to Prayer- with the first one in the darkness, I begin to wake up for the day. The last ones, time to head home, and time to turn inward. The middle of the day call to prayer often surprises me; it is often later in the day than I expect. Even the quality of daylight feels different here.

Travel through the Senses: Taste/Mint Tea

The taste of Mint Tea becomes familiar and before long, something I crave. Served out of elaborately crafted silver teapots, set upon a similarly crafted tray, and that must be handled with a cloth as not to burn, the sweet, simple tea is poured from a height into small glasses. The glasses too are gorgeous: many colours, or clear, embossed with golden designs. The sound of the tea filling a glass becomes as comforting as the taste itself. Mint tea at night time in the courtyard, under candlelight, becomes a little ritual for me. The tea itself becomes synonymous with being welcomed, with being nurtured and cared for. I drink it everywhere: on rooftops, at restaurants, at stalls, in the desert, in my room. A little continuity, a little sweetness. 

Daily Life in the Medina

There are no general stores in the medina (at least that I came across). Instead, there are kiosks set into the building walls, small but frequently occuring , often just a few metres from each other, and selling the same products; with small yogurt tubs and nit combs and crisps and brooms and bottles of water and round loaves of bread coated in cracked wheat stacked in high piles. Shopkeepers regularly splash a bucket of water into cobbled alleyway in front of the kiosk to keep it free of dust and muck.

Older children stop to buy a couple of disposable nappies, sent by their mother. Old ladies with their hair covered buy bread. Friends of the kiosk owner squat in the alleyway, passing the time smoking and chatting.

Outside of school hours (which seem quite different to our own), the sound of joyful children playing becomes vibrant as it echoes through the alleyways. Through these same alleyways, on the way to riad hotels that are located randomly among residential areas, groups of dark-haired children in tracksuits kick soccer balls, or sometimes bottles or other makeshift toys. They are mostly oblivious to tourists walking by. I am sure the ubiquotousness of us, the travellers in their home, makes us invisible. Perhaps it is only when they become older, and their income depends on us, that we become so visible. To walk through a souq unharassed is impossible. To walk through an alleyway that is the domain of children playing, is easy and unencumbered. I wish I could talk Arabic so I could interact with some of them. To show them that I respect them and to thank them for offering me their city, or at least a small part of it. To tell them seeing their joy makes me miss my own children so much. But of course, this is not for them. This is my story and not their burden. They play on, and I walk on.

Overwhelm

In Djemma-el-Fna, the main square and centuries-old meeting place in the medina, all of Marrakech is amplified. Juice vendors shout for my business. Henna painters approach me from metres away, with henna tools at the ready. Beggars look up with dejected gaze, young men touts sunglasses and watches insistently, and horses wait (more patiently than their human companions) for passengers. There are men holding falcons and monkeys on chains, inviting tourists to have their photo taken with the animals (for a fee, of course). And everywhere, the low, almost discordant sound of a clarinet type instrument, where men sit playing music to entice bored, lazy looking cobras to dance. The snakes have been here, seen it and done it all before.

There are no clear pathways around the edges of the square- that is, the places that aren’t taken up by rows of street food vendors and other stalls. The expanse of space between the stalls and the buildings edging the square is both a no-man’s-land and a free for all. Taxis and caleches (the horse drawn carriages) and scooters zoom through in direct paths, only stopping if it appears there’s a more than moderate chance they will hit someone. They pull up wherever they please. Touters, wanna-be guides and the ubiquotous henna artists skirt around them, showing their wares to dazed and confused tourists, often trying to find the nearest way out; or occasionally the tourist-ly eager.

As the traffic, both pedestrian and two wheeled (and four wheeled, wherever they can possibly squeeze, and more than once I did see a taxi need to reverse out of an alleyway too narrow, or when faced with an equally adventurous cab driver coming from the other direction) is funneled into souqs and alleyways, space becomes even more premium. You can tell the people in their first day or two in Marrakech- these are the ones that wander loosely along the way. The more experienced, the ones that have already had their fair share of collisions or near collisions- uniformly walk on the right hand side, ears open for the drone of an oncoming scooter, over the general din of the markets. If it isn’t a scooter, it could be a donkey carting building materials, or a porter carrying luggage. The idea of acceptable proximal space is smaller here, by necessity, and seemingly by culture. We squeeze by each other, traveller, porter, building site worker, seller of goods, seller of services, touters, locals on the way to mosque or market. I never get over the habit of saying “Pardon, excusez-moi” every time someone enters my space; I am continually apologetic for my presence. Only the beggars seems to stay still, sitting outside mosques, quietly singing their request of alms.

The souqs are the epitome of the intensity of Marrakech. Traffic and the intensely close contact with other humans, animals and modes of transport aside, the senses have much to process. The smell of spices and meat cooking in kiosks contends with the sound of a thousand different languages being spoken, mixed in with the taste of orange juice you have bought to rehydrate whilst your eyes feast on beaded leather slippers neatly arranged in more colours than you have even imagined, whilst your weary legs scream to sit down for just five minutes. Meanwhile, each stall holder is asking you to come into their shop and wanting to know what country you come from and yes- that item there I see you looking at- how much would you pay for it? For example? Just tell me, for example, what you want to pay? It’s very fine work, look at this, I have more inside in all these ways- no please, just look at this (Every. Single. Stall. You. Walk. Past) and you narrowly miss colliding with a blind beggar who is chanting and shaking their tin and then the shop keeper just here splashes water on you as they clean the front of their stall with a broom and a bucket, but mind the scooter, he’s just managed to wind his way around the donkey and cart just there, and then the Call to Prayer starts sounding out and overlapping and coming from a few different loudspeakers at once, and look at that, that offal is for sale there, that's what that smell was, but it’s okay, because smell that beautiful amber and frankincense displayed here in baskets, beside spices that are colourfully displayed in mounds and watch out, you’ve tended to the left and now an angry scooter driver is yelling at you “On the right!!”

In between the stalls, a scruffy looking white and ginger cat feeds her single kitten of the same colour. Her eyes are wide and wary, and she is positioned to protect her little one against the traffic and hustle. The kitten is snuggled in, oblivious, this is all he knows, all he will ever know- the thrum of scooter, fish heads and scraps thrown out in beneficience, fleas and flights and leaping across rooftops.

Part Two//Part Three