About a ten minute walk from the CLC is the Amal Center, a small and popular restaurant that doubles as a non-profit for women from impoverished backgrounds. It’s goal is to provide training for these women so that they can enter the workforce as waitresses or cooks. The Amal Center also has a close relationship with the CLC; Nora Fitzgerald, one of the members of the Board of Directors for the Amal Center, is the daughter of Michael Fitzgerald, the CLC’s director, and is married to Hamza Weinman, our trip’s main contact in Marrakech. Seven days ago, on Monday, our group had lunch at the Amal Center because Mama Khadija has been ill. Pauls, Peyton, and the kids were all there as well, as was Margaret Owen, a painter from Rhode Island who would be joining the trip for a week. We had all just taken a mid-term exam for our Arabic classes, and the general understanding was that this lunch was the beginning of our Sahara trip, even though we wouldn’t actually leave Marrakech until the next morning.
A little about Margaret; she and Peyton have been friends their whole lives, it seems like. Margaret is a small, thin woman with an excited and ever-curious attitude. She would be coming to the Sahara with us, along with Peyton, to teach us about painting. Lunch on Monday was our first painting lesson, as well as the day we were given our art supplies; two sketchbooks, a watercolor set, an extra brush, a water cup, two pencils, and two pens. Margaret led us in some early attempts to learn the intricacies of our watercolors, and by the end I had a painting of an orange I was proud of.
I consider this lesson the beginning of the Sahara trip because painting was the common theme of the trip. Margaret had this way of keeping our noses to the grindstone while also making us walk the entire trip with eyes wide open, sucking in every sight we had and committing it to memory. Because they were the only point in the day where we were all sitting down together, lunch was our impromptu art lesson each day, but there are only so many paintings you can make of mountains from a rooftop terrace. We made art from anything we could remember of the day, and more than once from our imaginations.
After lunch on Monday, I went one last time to Café Maragato, where I drank coffee with Hakim (Ryan’s host-brother), two British tourists, Yousseff (Hakim’s fighter-pilot friend), Ryan, and finally Mourad. At about six, I went home, had dinner, wrote last week’s blog post, packed, skyped my family, then finally went to sleep. It all felt like a smaller, less stressful version of getting ready to come to Morocco; there was planning, answering questions about what was going to happen that I didn’t know the answer too, packing, tying loose ends, more packing, staring helplessly at loose ends that didn’t want to be tied, packing, and answering more questions. The next day, I woke up at 6 am, gathered up my stuff, and left. Mourad got up to help me get a taxi, and we hugged before I piled into a grand taxi.
The CLC at 6:45 in the morning is a strange place. It is a school, it shares a wall with a French elementary school, and across the street is a private school run by Lebanese nuns; most of the time when you go there, you can here anywhere between 1 and 300 hundred children screaming or laughing (it’s so hard to tell which is which with children). In comparison, it is eerily silent at 6:45, or at least it normally is until 15 American college students show up. I felt bad for the doorman; I’m sure he had gotten used to the quiet, and didn’t need us ruining his routine. Thankfully, at seven, we piled into the two vans that would be take us everywhere on this trip, and we were off.
For this journey, our group had a total of 21 people. 15 college students, Peyton, Margaret, Nourideen (the CLC’s personal jack-of-all-trades that was in charge of keeping us on time), Abdelkebir (my Arabic teacher here, who tried to make sure we all learned a little Arabic on the way), and the two drivers. Abdelkebir made a joke to me that half of the thieves were here, and that we would pick up the other thieves along the way (okay, so this warrants a long explanation. Basically, it starts with the fact that in 1992, Disney released the movie Aladdin, which is loosely based off the story of Aladdin and the magic lamp from A Thousand and One Nights, where Aladdin is one of the famous forty thieves. In the movie, the Sultan is a small, plump bearded man named Ali Baba, which is a ridiculous name that basically means “Daddy Ali.” Because the movie has plenty of bad racial stereotypes about the Middle-East, it is fairly unpopular in Morocco (perhaps the rest of the Middle-East, too, but I haven’t been anywhere else so I can only guess), and most Moroccans that I have encountered have taken to calling any bearded tourists “Ali Baba” as a jab about Aladdin. So, as a bearded tourist in Morocco, everywhere I’ve gone I’ve been called Ali Baba. “Bonjour, Ali Baba!” “Ali Baba, come into my shop!” “Ali Baba, do you need a taxi? Fifty dirhams!” Michael Fitzgerald, who I’ve previously mentioned, is also a bearded American man, and he told me that he still gets called Ali Baba as well, despite living here for forty or fifty years. He responds with “Ilya ana ‘Ali Baba,’ intum il-‘rbateen illusus,” (If I’m Ali Baba, you’re the forty thieves), because they’re usually not bearded. Anyways, Abdelkebir’s joke was about there only being twenty people on the trip besides me, so they were half of the thieves, while I was, of course, Ali Baba).
As we were leaving Marrakech, we saw the sun rise over the Atlas mountains, far in the distance. I fell asleep soon after, and when I woke up we were at a small way-station in the mountains, taking a quick bathroom break. An hour later, we had breakfast just above the snow line at a place that uses the argan nut, which only grows in Morocco, to make cooking and beauty products. After lunch, we were led on a small tour, where we learned how the nut is processed by hand and shown the various products. When we left, there was snow on the ground beside the road, and the road was extremely windy. The road we were taking went through the Tchika pass, which is notorious for its windiness. I feel asleep again as we drove, and when I woke, we were out of the mountains, surrounded by wide, flat desert, with small, rocky hills around us.
Our next stop was Hait ben Haddou, or the Hollywood of Morocco. It’s a small, ancient village built into the side of a hill with a picturesque granary at the top. Fans of the movie Gladiator may recognize the village as the place where Maximus first becomes a gladiator on the fringes of the Roman Empire. The buses dropped us on the other side of a river from the filming sites, and we met our guide, Mahmud ‘Action,’ at his inn. Action had appeared as an extra in over forty movies, and was in the most recent season of Game of Thrones. He lead us across the river, up the hill, then back down, across the river again, and back to his inn, where we had our first terrace lunch of lamb tagine and oranges.
After lunch, we got back in the vans and had a straight shot to where we would spend the next two nights, a hotel called Riad Berbere in a small town called Boutaghrar. When we were having our first planning meetings for this trip, Hamza described the Riad Berbere as ‘rustic,’ which I think is a fair descriptor. The Riad was a single three-story building, with an open middle area through all three floors. The first floor had two salon areas, one where we had tea and another where we at meals. The second floor was our various rooms (Ryan and I shared, another constant throughout the trip), and the third floor was an open terrace. The rooms were small, with space heaters for the night. My room had one actual bed and another mattress on the floor, thick blankets, and, besides the main light, two colored lights, one red and one blue. On the first night, I slept on the bed and Ryan on the floor, and we switched for the second night.
That first night in the Riad was also the night we met our guide for the next day, Abdelaziz, who was a small, well-built man in a perfect fitting suit. The next day, he led us on a hike that started in a village about eight miles away from the hotel. We spent the morning hiking along the bottom of a river valley, crossing back and forth through the river several times. Abdelkebir, who has arthritis, rode on a mule the whole way because the cold water would hurt his feet, listening to ACDC. At about noon, we crossed out of the narrow river valley into a fertile, flat, farm area, still following the river. We passed through several villages, and as we passed the children would stop and watch us. We were met for lunch by some staff from the Riad who brought several egg tagines, salads, and sardines from the Riad, and we had a picnic lunch in the river bed. After tea, we set off again, Abdelaziz leading the way, now wearing black robes and a head-wrap in the Berber style. Two-hours after lunch, Abdelaziz led us straight back to the Riad, where more tea was waiting for us. Ryan, Hannah, Sam, and I sat in the salon, barefooted, painting, while the others went and showered. After about thirty minutes, Abdelaziz reappeared in his immaculate suit and asked us if we needed anything.
After dinner that night, we sat in the tea salon and watched traditional Berber dancing, led by a group of five men and five women. The dancing was mainly the men and women standing across from each other, the men holding drums and the women holding hands, and singing in a call in response while revolving around each other with short, stamping steps. After the first two times, the women started grabbing members of our group and having them dance with them, while Ryan and I were beckoned to by the men, and we stood with them, clapping while they sang. The dancing went until about 11 at night, and then we went back to sleep.
Thursday was, all things considered, a fairly uneventful day. We rose early, had breakfast at the Riad, then departed in a flurry of jokes and dodging cars in the narrow streets of Boutaghrar. We spent most of the day in the buses, stopping for a lunch of tuna sandwiches and a painting lesson from Margaret. At about four in the afternoon, we arrived in Zagora, where we spent the night at Kasbah Sirrocco. We had the afternoons to do as we wished, met at seven-thirty for dinner, and were told we would leave after an early breakfast the next day.
After the enjoyably rustic Riad Berbere, Kasbah Sirrocco seemed a lush paradise. When we first arrived, we were ushered into a back courtyard by a kind but firm woman, where we were served tea. The courtyard had a pool and a bar area, and was heavily shaded by large palm trees. After tea, we all spent the afternoon in different ways, which all seemed to have fit our personalities pretty well. I, for instance, first took a hot shower, then brought a book down to the pool area and read while drinking nous-nous. Sam went swimming first, then sat by the pool wrapped in a towel and worked on her resume, before going to take a shower. Ryan, conversely, went on a run with Nourideen, came back, jumped into the pool, swam for thirty seconds, then went upstairs and took a shower. The others all drifted in and out of the courtyard, some after exploring the area, others after showers. Emma and Karissa, after exploring the nearby markets, both decided to jump into the pool even though they didn’t have swimsuits, then disappeared upstairs for a shower. Lauren took a shower then laid down in a lounge-chair by the pool and fell asleep. At dinner, I’m pretty sure I remember Alexa and Carly talking about how they climbed halfway up the nearby mountain, then came back and showered. After Ryan’s shower, he and I had another cup of nous-nous each while he painted and I wrote.
Friday, compared to Thursday, was much more eventful. In my mind, it’s broken into three large chunks. The first chunk we spent at Tamgroute, an old city which was home to an Qur’anic school. In the school, we visited the library, which was run by an ancient, wheel-chair bound man who had been the librarian since 1959. He showed us each of the library’s main attractions, which started with a Qur’an written in 1063 in Cordoba. When we left him, he had us all stand around him and take pictures, then spoke a blessing in which he wished us a bright life full of joy and knowledge. After the library, we walked around the old city of Tamgroute itself, learning led by a jovial guide and followed by maybe fifteen children asking for candy. Besides tourism to the library, Tamgroute’s main industry is pottery, and our guide showed us the potters at work before taking us to their store.
After leaving Tamgroute, we drove closer and closer to the Algerian border, which is closed on both sides. I think I fell asleep again on this drive, and when I woke, there were saddled camels waiting on either side of the road. There was enough camels for each of us, except for Abdelkebir, who said he didn’t want to ride because of his arthritis. The camels were led in trains by our guides, who walked ahead and talked. I was in the smallest train, which was made up only of me and Olivia. Our guide, rather than following in line with the other groups, led us to and fro across the desert, stopping and showing us various plants and animal tracks. He seemed to walk faster than the other guides too, since we still arrived in the camp at the same time as everyone. Riding a camel, in my opinion, is mostly similar to riding a horse. The concept is essentially the same, only the camel needs a wider saddle and is taller and moves more when it walks. My camel’s name was Mobruk, which means congratulations in Arabic, and ended up being the smallest of the camels; a strange sight, since I’m the largest person on our trip.
We ate lunch at the camp, which was a circle of brown tents around a large fire pit. We ate lunch in the largest of the tents, then prepared for an afternoon hike. The hike was up and over several dunes nearby. Climbing up involved nearly slipping down the hill and having to start all over again. Once at the top, climbing down involved involved sinking into the sand up to your knees and letting gravity pull you forward. It was on this hike that my shoes filled up with sand, and even though I’ve tried several times to empty my shoes out again, I can still feel the sand whenever I put my shoes on.
Dinner was in the same tent as lunch, and after we sat around the campfire. Our guides played drums and sang for us, and after, most of us stayed up with them well into the night. I did not; I had been fighting a cold for the entire trip, and I needed to go to sleep early.
I ended up waking at 4 in the morning, needing to answer nature’s call. When I walked out of our tent, the moon was just going down behind the dunes, and I watched it sink. After my business in the latrines, I realized that if I climbed one of the nearby dunes, I could watch the moon set again. I had one brief moment where I thought I shouldn’t. There could be scorpions, or snakes, or angry camels, or wet sand, really anything my tired mind could come up with. Then something in my mind said, “Screw it,” and I started climbing the nearest dune. I was right about the moon still being up when I got to the top, and I stood for about five minutes before it disappeared again. Two hours later, I was up again, this time to watch the sun rise. The others were up too, and we scattered around the dunes, in small groups or alone.
Saturday, we rode back to the highway and our vans. After saying a quick good-bye to our guides, we set off back to Marrakech on a ten hour drive, retracing our way past all the places we had already gone.
In Arabic calligraphy, there are three ways to write a letter; the initial form, the middle form, and the final form. The form you use depends on where in the word it appears. Most often, the final forms of the letters appear with a small curve, a flick-like motion like a tail, different from everything else in the word. The trip’s tail came near the end of the 10 hour drive, when we were just reaching the top of the Atlas mountains. The entire trip had been nothing but blue sky and heat. I had fallen asleep again (I get car-sick if I read, and pandora doesn’t work in Morocco, so I do nothing on the long van rides but sleep), and when I woke, there was snow on the ground again and the sun was setting far, far in the distance. Just above us, maybe ten feet, were the clouds, and the road was only going up. We spent three hours on the country’s windiest roads, driving through fog so thick I thought I was in Monterey. The whole way, I could only think of how strange it felt, looking over the side of a steep mountain and not seeing the bottom. When we left the fog, we were thirty minutes from Marrakech.