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Published: November 22nd 2006
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From how the guidebooks describe it, arriving in Morocco by ferry is like jumping into the lion’s den with a bloody steak strapped to your leg. Even in Ceuta - a Spanish enclave on the North African coast, just minutes from the border - you’re primed for a pack of slick, hungry predators, eager to escort you from the ferry terminal to overpriced hotels in the wrong part of town. One even cautions you to “watch out for suspiciously over-friendly passengers,” which will - with apologies - explain my brusque behavior with at least one kind Moroccan onboard.
It’s not like I’ve gotten better reports from friends on the ground. In Granada I met a traveler who’d just returned from a few days in Tangier. He’d decided to go on a whim, throwing caution to the wind and going without a guidebook or, it must be said, much of a clue. At the border he was met by a smooth-talking young tout who practically promised seven and seventy virgins at a bargain-basement price. Though Mark - a well-meaning Aussie - knew he was being conned, he decided to go along for the ride.
It was, after all, part
of the Tangier experience.
The guide led him to a place that - at €20 a night - would’ve been a steal across the Strait of Gibraltar. In Morocco, though, the price was practically extravagant - which would’ve been fine with Mark, if a few hundred bed bugs weren’t thrown into the bargain. By the time I met him, Mark had already scrubbed his skin raw and done a few loads of laundry. And for his efforts, he was still leaving a trail of bed bugs across Andalucia.
It’s with such thoughts in mind that I watch the jagged profile of the Rif coming into view, ready for anything Morocco might throw at me. I’ve already noted which passengers are making suspicious eye signals to each other around the bar; one in particular, who’s relentlessly smoothing his eyebrows as he looks my way, is almost certainly intent on shanghai-ing me straight off the boat - though whether it’s to get into my wallet or my pants is, admittedly, anybody’s guess. It’s something of a disappointment, then, when I make my uneventful way through the arrivals terminal, onto a broad, sunny avenue where a solitary soul - meekly
asking, “Bus to Marruecos?” - turns back after just a single, “
No, gracias.”
Of course, it’s all a bit misleading. While the
hijabs and
kaftans of Ceuta are pure Arabic, the city itself - its palm-lined promenades and busy plazas - could be anywhere in Spain. You don’t begin to feel like you’ve arrived in Morocco until you reach the border, where the bedlam that unfolds is part refugee camp, part
Black Hawk Down. In some spasm of denial, I’d managed to convince myself that the crossing from Ceuta would be like a walk down Gumdrop Lane. But how to explain these grim, stooped and haggard souls, weighed down by giant bundles, fenced in as they trudge wearily toward the border? It’s enough to make you start an NGO. There’s a separate passage for foreigners - one that’s so wide and inviting that you feel like a total shit as you merrily traipse down it. For what I suspect won’t be the first time in Morocco, I feel horribly conspicuous. And it doesn’t take too long for the sharks to circle round.
A man smiling a broken, gap-toothed smile greets me in the broad concrete wasteland between
Spain and Morocco. He’s wearing a handsome green
kaftan that flaps gently around him. He has a mellifluous voice and stubble on his chin.
“Welcome to Morocco,” he says, which - roughly translated from the Arabic - means:
Welcome to Morocco, wealthy foreigner. I will now do everything in my power to fleece the living shit out of you.
He strikes up a conversation, pointing to a small laminated badge on his chest that touts “Ministre du Tourisme” in an elegant script. I’ll blame my disorientation for the fact that I overlook the very obvious differences - in age, facial hair and general good looks - between the face on the badge and the one smiling at me. He wants to know where I’m heading.
“Chefchaouen?” he says incredulously. He taps on his watch, which reads 20 minutes to eleven. It’s apparently too late in the day to head to a town hardly 90 kilometers from the border. “You can stay one night in Tetouan. There’s a very nice market there: you can buy fish. There’s a very nice hotel called the Pension Iberia. Do you know it?” I’m trudging toward the border, where
a few fully uniformed policemen are conspicuous. “After. We talk after,” says my guide, shrinking quietly away. When I ask the border guards if he really works with the Ministry of Tourism, they laugh and shrug and say, “
Es un buen hombre.” After they stamp my passport he’s again in pursuit, and I can hear him calling, “Hello? Friend?”, as I make tracks toward Morocco.
If there’s a sign welcoming me into the country, I sure miss it. In fact, if there’s a single sight or sound at the border that doesn’t urge me to dash back to my happy Spanish enclave, I’m hyperventilating a bit too much to notice. On one side is the slate-colored sea; on the other, a small hill rising up toward a sky that’s somewhere between “foreboding” and “ominous.” There are fires burning, men huddled and crouching in ragged, silent packs. This is a mean place to find yourself - alone, slightly confused, and not entirely sure who’s from the Ministre du Tourisme and who wants to find a nice ditch to dump you in. En route to Morocco, I’d prepped myself with some useful French phrases, a dash of Arabic, a resolve
to haggle over any price that’s not more or less chiseled in stone. But I’m feeling slightly shell-shocked as I plod with my hefty pack past leering eyes. When the first cabbie comes up to me asking, “Tetouan? Tetouan?”, it’s neither French nor Arabic nor any proper language that comes out of my mouth - just a dumb animal grunt that translates as, “Anywhere you want to take me, just name the price.”
I’ve paid double what everyone else pays - an allowance I’m willing to make. Morocco’s famous
grands taxis are old, beat-up Mercedes into which six passengers are improbably crammed, and it’s worth buying two seats for an extra bit of leg room - all the more so when the old man sitting next to me starts hacking and spitting up onto the floor. We drive for an hour under a leaden sky, past barren acres of farmland and men leading donkeys by the side of the road. We drive through towns of small, leaning shacks and concrete apartment blocks. We slow to a crawl passing through a town bazaar, where men haggle for clothes on either side of us and livestock loudly scatter. Twice I
see a small train of camels resting on the grass, and old men chewing and spitting with indifference while our taxi whizzes by, carrying two attractive young girls in
hijabs, one coughing and wheezing old man, and a wide-eyed American who very much hopes he isn’t catching tuberculosis.
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