Hizbollah, a Brothel and a Savior

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Though Marrakech was entertaining, after a few days I was ready to wind off of the well-beaten tourist path and delve a little further into the less frequented parts of the country. I intended to go to the Cascades d´Ouzoud, waterfalls a few hours bus ride outside of Marrakech. I decided to take public transportation, which involved taking a bus to a small town, Azilal, and then a shared taxi (7 people smashed into a small, puttery, yellow Mercedes) the rest of the way. The bus ride ended up taking four hours, and at that point I thought that it was too late to wait for a taxi to fill up to take me there and try to find a hotel before dark.

I searched out a hotel in Azilal, and found a very cheap place that had been listed in my Lonely Planet guide, Hotel Sousse. I was in a hurry to dispose of my backpack, which started feeling like an open door to solicitations. There had been no other tourists on the bus and I didn´t see many others in the town. People (men) kept coming up to me asking if I was looking for a place to stay and if they could help me find a hotel. They usually get a few Dirhams from the hotel for bringing clients, but it can get really suffocating and frustrating not to be able to look for yourself. In Morocco, may times you really feel like you have a bulls-eye painted on your back, pointing you out as a tourist and a potential business exchange.

The hotel was located behind a cafe, which was a little out of the ordinary, but I didn´t really think much of it at the time. I checked in, and the place only cost 4 dollars for the night. The man who showed me to the room, Omar, invited me to drink a tea with him in the cafe, status quo for rural Morocco. The cafe, like most, was frequented solely by men who sit and drink coffee or over sugared mint tea and watch television, anything from Al Jazeera to the Simpsons dubbed in Arabic. I noted pretty quickly that they were watching the Hizbollah channel´s coverage of the Lebanon-Israel w0ar, so I very indiscreetely struck up a political conversation with the hotel worker. He was impressed that I had been in Lebanon and knew about Middle Eastern politics. Like many people that I met, he kept asking me if I worked for the CIA. Another friend of his came to join, and the conversation evolved into a three way language lesson of English, French, Arabic and Berber. After a couple of hours it started getting a little dark and Omar abruptly stood up, said goodbye and left.

I took a walk through the streets, since I had seen very little of the town when I arrived. It was a very different ambient than anywhere else that I had been in Morocco. The town was small, with one principal street upon which every one was seated at a cafe or taking an evening stroll. Every seat at every sidewalk cafe was full, only with men of course, and all of the women and children were strolling up and down the street and sitting on park benches. I found the scene very intimate, provencial and tranquill. As I continued, though, I noticed that I was the only person walking alone and that the only female head not covered by a veil. I started to feel a little uncomfortable and decided to go back to the hotel for dinner.

Another man, who I had never seen, was working at the cafe and I asked him if I could eat dinner. He told me to come back down in thirty minutes, that I should wait in my room in the meantime. Obligingly, I went up and read my guidebook for a while and came back down. He pointed me to a table in the cafe and then proceeded to tell all of the men in the room to go outside to sit and moved every table and chair out of the room except mine. He very politely but curtly brought me food and drink, but made no attempt to speak to me. Omar, the man from earlier, passed through the cafe and didn´t acknowledge me. Feeling completley isolated, I ate as quickly as I could and went back to my room.

Feeling a little uneasy from the dinner experience, my mind began churning and I started noticing things about the room that I hadn´t noted before. The doorknob was very loose in its casing and the glass above the door was broken, with a sharp point like a dagger straight down the middle. I remembered reading in my guidebook how many hotels behind cafes functioned as brothels, and noted that the price that they had charged me was less than that listed, where as every other hotel that I had ended up costing more. I hadn´t seen any other people at the hotel except for a couple of young Arabs, probably Moroccan, that I had heard reciting their evening prayers as I waited for dinner. I knocked on all the other doors and no one anwered, and it became clear that I was the only other person in the hotel.

I really worked myself up into a frenzy, as latent minds have a tendency to do when the sun goes down. Though Morocco absolutely nothing to do with Iran and Lebanon, my mind kept replaying scences from Not Without My Daughter and kidnappings of Americans during the Lebanese civil war. I re-read the section of the guidebook stating that it generally wasn´t pleasant for women to travel alone in Morocco and the warnings hotels that were really whore houses. I kept waiting for nother touristi to enter the hotel and not a single one did. I went downstairs to have a look in the cafe and in the room that they had cleared out for me, there were fifty men smoking, drinking and watching Hizbollah TV again. I didn´t have the nerve to walk through the mix. I was absolutely convinced that I had put myself in a very compromising situation.

Looking for an escape route, I consulted the guidebook again. There was only one other hotel listed in the town, and I was sincerely scared to walk down the street alone, but I decided to give it a try. Honestly, I felt like I was going through enemy territory, and in my mind was avoiding land mines and sniper shots as I tore through the men in the cafe and walked four blocks down the main street. Though the streets and piazzas were full of men and boys playing, I was decidedly the only woman out. When I arrived to where I though the hotel would be, I saw a old man with a fedora sitting out on the street. Employing my minimal French, I asked him if it was the hotel that I was searching. He nodded with a strange and incredulous expression on his face. I asked if there was an available room and he nodded again and motioned for me to follow him. We walked up two flights of dark stairs through the center of the hotel. I felt like I was in the twilight zone, in a ghost town where I didn´t belong. I was a little panicked and breathlessly asked him if there were any other people staying in the hotel. He replied something in Berber that I didn´t understand.

We walked up to the third floor and he knocked on one of the doors but kept on walking. He opened another door to a room at the end of the hall for me to have a look. In the meantime, a tall, younger man with a closely trimmed goatee walked out and the two began an exchange in Berber. I really didn´t know what was going on, and the younger man didn´t seem to either. He introduced as Ali in stumbling French, seeming very confused, and asked me where I was from. I responded that I was American, at which point he changed register, laughe, and started speaking English. His name was Eli, and it turned out that he was a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco staying in Azilal for the weekend to get supplies. I was still a little bit frightened and explained that I was convinced that I was going to die if I stayed in the other hotel. He reassured me that I was better safe than sorry and walked me back there to get my things. I returned for me to stay in the same hotel as them.

It turned out that there was absolutely no problem with the first hotel. When Eli and I went back there, there was a young Czech couple staying there, and Omar from earlier was back to his chatty self. Both the Chech couple and another of the hotel guys who also worked as a trekking guide would actually later show up at the next place that I stayed in the neighboring valley. I went ahead and took the second room and spent the night chatting with Eli and John, both Peace Corps volunteers. The next day, they invited me back to see their sites in the nearby valley. I stayed there for a couple of days, learning about their work and staying in a small family run hotel in a nearby village.

So, though in the end there was really no risk, I really though that I had found a savior and was glad to have some company for the night. The guys were really impressive. They had only been in Morocco for four months, but both were already conversational in Berber and had really big ideas for the projects that they would initiate in their two years. There really isn´t much American tourism in Morocco, mostly European, but the Peace Corps presence is strong. Volunteers have been there since the founding of the program, and there are currently 160 volunteers in the country. In fact, many Moroccans that I met assumed that I would speak Berber, as most of the Americans that they met were Peace Corps volunteers who were fluent in the language and working in the country.

After a few days outside the big cities, I realized that there is really little danger travelling in Morocco. All parts of the country see tourism, even the most remote areas get trekkers in during the proper seasons. In fact, traveling in the less frequented areas is usually more pleasant than traveling in the bigger cities, where trying to make a dollar off of a tourist is a way of life. The people that I met were helpful and hospitable and very eager to share what they had with the visitors that they met. My experiences in the valley were the picture of the Moroccan hospitality that travelers often describe.

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Photos

Valley
View of valley taken from the taxi.

Moving In
John (standing) and Eli (sitting), peace corps volunteers, shopping to furnish John´s house. He likes to joke that the first place that he has ever rented is built of mud and without running water.

Truck
Public transportation, a la marocaine.

The Village
John walking up to the village where he lives.

Valley 2
Second view of the valley.

Mint Tea
The owner of the gite d´etape in a classic Moroccan activity, drinking syruy sweet mint tea.

Comments

[P.Lahiri]

Safe morocco
Your courage helped and now we know its safe in those places which look rather unusual and unsafe. I praise your courage and believe no Indian lady will dare to take the trouble you took in visiting unknown places. Keep it up madam. With best of luck ,expecting to read about other unknown places.Mr. Pinaki Lahiri from Calcutta