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Published: June 28th 2022
Marrakech 1
Navigating streets in the medina is made more challenging by the constant flow of speeding motorcycles. And were there donkeys pulling wagons filled with trash? Yes, indeed there were.Arrival
My students are safely returned home, I'm standing in the passport control line at the Mohammed V Airport in Casablanca, and my vacation is about to begin. I'm next in line when I'm tapped on the shoulder. In the next line over is Steven, my martial arts instructor. He's wearing a white fedora that makes him look like a Miami mobster from the 1960s. Months ago we conceived the idea of meeting in Morocco. Given the unpredictability of modern travel and our fluctuating itineraries-- he coming through Barcelona and me Munich-- the probability that we'd ever meet seemed remote. But unpredictability is a two-way street. Sometimes it can work in your favor.
The next morning we're on the Marrakech Express. I try to remember how the song goes:
Travelling the train through clear Moroccan skies ...
something, something is in your eyes... At some point during the trip I'll pull it up on Spotify and be disappointed.
A taxi takes us from the train station in Marrakech to one of the medina's gates. Beyond this point the roads are too narrow for cars. We'll have to navigate the maze on foot using
Marrakech 3
The courtyard of my riad! Google Maps. Amazingly, it works! Each turn puts us on a narrower, darker street. A beggar sitting at the intersection of our last turn ominously warns us that there's nothing at the end of the street we're turning onto. He tells us that we are lost. If I stretch my arms I can touch the walls on either side of the street, and yet a gang of kids is playing soccer there. They weave around us like we're invisible. The street dead-ends at a massive door. We knock. The door slowly opens and we are welcomed into a garden paradise. Water dripping from a fountain in the center of the courtyard makes quiet musical notes. In one alcove a pool of cool water awaits our hot, tired bodies.
Marrakech
Our hosts didn't speak English. I knew Steven spoke some French because he grew up in Montreal, but in fact, he is fluent. He even has a fair bit of Arabic due to his Egyptian heritage. It's a side of him I never saw before. It was as if I was looking at someone who looked just like my martial arts instructor from Santa Cruz, but melodic flawless French
Marrakech 2
Are any of them N-95 certified? was pouring from his mouth. It was as if he had been possessed by the spirit of Pepe le Pew. This hidden talent will come in very handy throughout our trip, but it will also mean that I'd be left out of many conversations.
Steven and I know each other from years of me being his oldest martial arts student. Post-COVID, this mostly consists of the two of us meeting on occasional Friday mornings at Seabright Beach for a light workout and some sparring. But travelling together is new for us. It'll take some time for each of us to get used to the other's idiosyncrasies. This is Steven's first trip to the developing world. The many people on the street who want to be our "friends" and then lead us to the nearest carpet shop make him nervous. I squirm a little when he gives out too much information to strangers or asks soldiers for directions. Over the years I've developed the habit of being vague when asked about myself. Often, I lie out of habit. But I see that Steven's open friendly nature charms a fair number of people. I will have to become friendlier; he will
Marrakech 4
Tea overlooking the central square at sunset. (It would've been even better if we had martinis!) need to become more invisible.
The narrow maze of streets that house the souks eventually spills out onto an enormous central square. At night everyone in Marrakech comes here to watch acrobats, storytellers, musicians, and snake charmers. Steven and I sip mint tea on the balcony of a cafe overlooking the square. Afterward, we inch our way through the crowd. Snakes and monkeys are foisted on us for photos. Storytellers beckon us to play roles in their stories (which are being told in Berber). Steven snaps a photo of an exotic bird and the angry owner chases after him demanding money. It will be a miracle if we don't get COVID, I think to myself.
My face
At the ticket booth for Majorelle Garden the guy behind the counter tells me that I look just like Donald Trump. He is visibly amazed by the uncanny resemblance. This is a step up for me. The day before someone told me that my face looked exactly like a football. European or American, I wondered.
South
Steven and I were happy to leave Marrakech. We hired a Berber driver named Abdul who spoke French and English. For several
Atlas 1
The road through the Atlas range. Not too long ago it would've been the route caravans took bringing goods from Central Africa to the markets of the great city: Marrakech. hours we drove south over the High Atlas Mountains through treeless, sunbaked, red mud landscapes. The villages we passed appeared to be abandoned ruins. Occasionally, between roofless adobes, we would see a forlorn man leading a forlorn donkey loaded with straw. ("Honey, I'm home from the straw store. I hit a big sale!") Probably some predecessor of the road we were on had been an important link in the caravan routes that connected Central Africa to the souks of Marrakech. In those times these villages would've been prosperous waystations.
Each village had a casbah or castle as its focal point. We stopped at one and had a look inside. I felt like Indiana Jones feeling my way down a dark tunnel, certain that at any moment the whole thing was going to come crashing down on me. But the tunnel opened up into a beautiful courtroom covered in blue and white tiles and lit by a carved glass dome high above us. A pigeon flapped around as if to show off the spaciousness of the room. Ornate doorways led to chambers where the pasha and his wives would have slept.
The next day we followed the Draa, Morocco's
Atlas 2
A pigeon flaps around in the court of an abandoned casbah. longest river. It carves a canyon through the Anti-Atlas called the Draa Valley, an out-of-place swath of green that divides the red mountains. We spent the night in Zagora. A few miles south Steven and I got our first look at sand dunes. Walking up a dune was surprisingly difficult. With each step I'd slide back a half-step. The crest was knife-sharp. It was hard to keep my balance. The sun was setting which caused the wind to pick up. I had to curl up to protect myself from being sandblasted.
West
The next day we turned west toward Taroudant. We followed a new road that skirts the northern edge of the Sahara. Until now I wasn't entirely sure that desert nomads still existed. How could anyone survive in such a place? But we could see their white tents in the distance. We could see them watching over great herds of camels, sheep, donkeys, and goats. Each time we stopped for a photo the shepherd bounded toward us to collect a fee. Abdul pointed out that a camel might cost $15K so a herd of 100 is worth a lot of money, making the desert nomads rich on
Atlas 3
A forlorn man leads a forlorn donkey carrying a bunch of straw. Are they going to or from the straw store, I wondered. paper. I asked why they didn't sell their herds and move to mansions on the coast. Abdul pointed out that they had been living this nomadic lifestyle for thousands of generations. It's so deeply rooted in them that they wouldn't know any other way.
The Anti-Atlas Mountains finally turn into foothills in Taroudant. We would stay overnight here before heading to the coast in the morning. Steven was complaining of an upset stomach so I went to a nearby stall to buy some juice for him. When I mentioned that the juice was for a friend with a stomach ache the proprietor led me to a nearby bush and pulled a few leaves off of it. He instructed me to mash the leaves up in a bit of fresh orange juice and give it to Steven. When I got back to our hotel I followed the shopkeeper's instructions with the help of the hotel owner. Steven gamely swigged the concoction and a short while later we were out and about.
The Coast
Our road finally met the Atlantic in the port city of Agadir. It was great to breathe cool ocean air, to sit in a cafe on
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Ourzazate is the movie capital of Morocco. Film crews come here whenever they need a desert shot or a biblical backdrop. Scenes from Lawrence of Arabia and Gladiator were filmed here. All of the old props are in a museum. We spent an hour trying out different thrones. the beach sipping fresh mango juice. We followed the spectacular coast several hours north to Essaouira. Here is the place I would come back to. One of the medina's walls is a seawall lined with canons. Steven and I walked along it the first night. Huge waves were crashing against it. On the rocks beyond, amidst those same crashing waves, a guy in white robes with an electric guitar was posing for some sort of music video.
Essaouira has figured something out that other tourist places have yet to learn. There were no motorcycles in the medina. And, we could actually walk into shops and not be set upon by aggressive salesmen trying to force things on us that we didn't want. It was great; no one wanted to be our "friend".
That night Abdul led us to a restaurant where we could watch the sunset while dining on seafood and listening to Gnawa music. We had just missed the Gnawa Music Competition which is held every year in Essaouira. (The website said it was in June but never specified the days!) Gnawa is an ancient style of tribal trance-inducing Islamic religious music. The festival features Gnawa fusions
Anti-Atlas 1
The Draa valley: an unlikely swath of green that cuts through the sun-baked red of the Anti-Atlas range. with modern jazz.
Abdul was engaged in an intense conversation on the phone, maybe lining up his next gig. When he hung up I asked if he could not be on the phone at the table when the food came. He agreed, but when the food came he got back on the phone again. I asked if he could finish his conversation away from the table. I wasn't angry, but I was firm. Perhaps a bit too firm. Both Steven and Abdul became very upset with me. I apologized to Abdul, but Steven was so upset that he avoided me the next day. So how was dinner? Delicious. Peaceful.
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mike conniff
non-member comment
What a way to visit the world, through Jon's eyes and lenses!
Thanks, Jon, for these entertaining blogs. Your stint in Bavaria coincides with my just finishing Dan Jones's Powers and Thrones, which ends the "new history of the middle ages" with the Reformation. The loop through Morocco elicits Indiana Jones, as you aver, and also a study abroad trip I once thought about going on. What a great time int'l professors get to enjoy.