Memories of Morocco
A journey of stepping out into the unknown.
Hi there,
I hope you’re doing well this Saturday.
The following is an account of a trip I made over 15 years ago when I was in my early 20s. I recently found it on an old hard-drive and, rather than leaving it there never to be read again, I thought it better to share it with you.
Who knows, maybe it’ll resonate.
(If it does, make sure to leave me a comment!)
Waiting for departure
Sometime in the spring of 2008, I can’t exactly remember when, I found myself standing on the ramparts of the Moorish castle high above the port of Almería, on the southern coast of Spain.
I was looking down at the big white ferry, motionless in the harbour’s still water, that was to take me across the Mediterranean Sea later that evening.
I had, that morning, hitched a ride from Granada but my journey had started long before that. It had started in adolescent daydreams of exploring the world beyond my horizons.
Yet the unknown had also been paralysingly scary so, at some point, I forced an idea upon myself: I’d make my way down through France and Spain, where I’d board an overnight ferry to the port of Melilla on the north African coast. From there, I’d make my way through Morocco.
Fate would be my guide.
From my viewpoint, I watched as the ferry’s insides were slowly filling up with cargo. Behind this gentle giant, beyond the glistening waters of the Mediterranean, lay the immensity of the African continent.
Standing there with too much time to kill before the ship set sail, I became painfully aware that I had no one waiting for me on the other side.
I was alone.
The crossing
The sun was setting as I sat down against the damp metal shell of the ship’s open deck and hunkered down against the cold, wet, wind of the oncoming night.
This metallic giant was exiting the harbour with loud periodic blasts of its horns as if calling out to the open sea.
Seagulls were flying overhead.
I looked on as the deck slowly filled with men, who, one after another, began to roll out their prayer mats. I watched in silence as they began to pray with bowed heads and palms stretched out towards the darkening, salty sky.
I could hear the faint murmurings of prayers spoken in Arabic as they knelt and prostrated. Each, I noticed, prayed as his own pace, each in communion with a higher being.
I kept watching as one by one, they finished their prayers, rolled up the mats and began to sit together in groups of three or four.
The humming of discreet conversations began to rise up from each group as they took out bits of food and began to eat.
I was shivering by this point.
Darkness now surrounded us and I could no longer see the Spanish coastline. I was about to retreat to the relative warmth of the ship when a man from a nearby group called me over.
Surprised, for I hadn’t spoken to anyone all day, I stumbled across the rolling deck and sat down.
None of the men spoke English and I knew nothing of Arabic so we communicated through basic hand gestures, interspersed with silence. Yet these men began sharing their food with me and, through that, I felt the comfort of their generosity.
As I ate, different men came to join the group whilst others finished and left until, eventually, a man slightly older than I was sat down next to me.
In English, he began talking to me as if we were long lost friends. It certainly felt that way.
His name was Saïd, he told me, smiling.
A Moroccan living in southern France, he told me how he was on his way to his family’s hometown for a family celebration. I had never heard of this town on Morocco’s eastern border with Algeria before, but I now knew it existed.
Out of the depths of the unknown looming out in front of me, something was beginning to materialise—Oujda.
Saïd and I spoke for so long that, eventually, we were the only ones left on the cold deck. Through his stories of his life as a Frenchman of Moroccan origin, I sensed the in-betweenness of the invisible divide we were now crossing.
He became my guide through the dark night and answered all my questions until the dampness of the night forced us back inside to seek a place to sleep.
The ship’s neon lights were on but everywhere people were sleeping in bundles on the floor. It was so crowded that we carefully stepped over people until we eventually found enough room to lie down.
As I was making my best attempts to get comfortable, Saïd looked over and told me that, if I wanted to, I was welcome to join him the following day to Oujda. I smiled back at him, and despite the hard floor and bright white light, I drifted into sleep.
I was awoken what felt like moments later by crowds of people stepping over me in their rush to disembark. In a semi-daze, I heard the ship’s tinny P.A. system mix with the calls of mothers grouping their families together.
We had arrived.
I looked over to where Saïd had laid down and froze when I saw that he was no longer there. My heart suddenly pounding, I grabbed my bag and coat, and joined the moving crowd.
Had I really misread Saïd?
My eyes darted across the room as I forced my way through the disembarking passengers, laden as they were with tons of suitcases. I scanned each face, hoping to see one I recognised.
Eventually the room emptied and I saw Saïd sprawled over a couple of seats, his sleepy face still half covered by his jacket.
He opened his weary eyes and looked up at me.
“You alright?” he asked me. “You ready?”
Open your ears
I was sat at one of several big round tables, each piled high with lamb and couscous at their centre.
Saïd was sat next to me but other than him, I knew no one.
All of the guests were men who were somehow connected to Saïd’s family. They were all there to celebrate a new birth in the family.
(I never got to see the child in whose honor this feast was taking place. I later learned that women and children were forbidden from entering the ceremonial tent in which we were; they were having a parallel ceremony in the house next door).
As the evening wore on, Saïd became so engrossed in his friends’ stories and jokes that he stopped translating for me and I let it be.
Every detail fascinated me.
I observed how the food was eaten—communally, with each guest reaching over and picking up what they desired from the big plate of food.
I listened to the deep throatal sound of Arabic that was so often punctuated by the laugher of men who hadn’t seen each other in a long time; men who were truly enjoying each others company.
At one point, after what must have been a particularly amusing anecdote, Saïd turned to me and, pointing his finger up to the space above our heads, said, “tends l’oreille”.
Open your ears.
I knew exactly what he meant.
Understanding would come in time, I just had to be patient.
The town with blue walls
The sun was beating, my heavy bag slung across my back, and around every corner, men who looked high were trying to sell me drugs.
I felt desperately lost in the maze of blue walls that make up the town of Chefchaouen, high up in the Rif mountains of northern Morocco.
But I couldn’t stop walking.
My paranoid state had been compounded by a long bus ride I had just taken through this cannabis producing part of the country; I had spent the last couple hours trying to get a shady guy to lose interest in me, or more accurately, my money.
My gut had been repulsed by his insincerity and the experience had shaken me a lot, especially after the warmth of Oujda.
I had known the Rif mountains to be touristic, but I hadn’t realised that a big part of this tourism was due to the cannabis fields that dotted the landscape. I hadn’t expected the roughness that an illegal drug trade produces.
The place daunted me, and for now, I was utterly blind to its beauty.
Its blue walls just reminded me of some bad trip and all I wanted was to find space away from the madness in order to catch my breath.
Barren landscapes
I opened my blurry eyes to see an old man kneeling down next to me, gently tapping me on the shoulder.
Keeping him in focus took all my energy.
He was slight of frame, typical of men from the high Atlas mountains, and his face was wrinkled and beaten by the arid air. He was wearing a dark brown fez and his face was punctuated by a greying goatee.
Despite the dizzying sun, his coarse woollen overcoat betrayed the coolness of the high altitude air. Although I never saw his flock, I imagine he must have been a shepherd bringing his goats down from the barren mountains to drink from the lake.
He asked me what was wrong and I told him that I was fine, that I was only very weak with a stomach virus, but that I was fine.
In between my stumbling words, I felt myself sink back into a daze.
He touched my forehead with the palm of his hand. Through the roughness of his skin, I felt the tenderness of a healer.
I felt like I owed this old man an explanation, that I had to prove to him that I wasn’t alone to the world.
I pointed over to the lake just beyond the shade under which we were and told him that my friends, some local guys and Christophe — a French guy roughly my age I had met and had been travelled with since Chefchaouen — were swimming.
They knew that I was here, that I was okay.
I don’t know if this convinced him but, with the greatest care, he instructed me to ask for a local remedy once we got back to the village. It was black like tar, he told me, and mixed with Coca-Cola.
He promised me that it would restore my strengths.
When I opened my eyes again, the old man had left, leaving me to rest under the cool shade of the trees.
Old taxi
Several days later, Christophe and I went our separate ways.
His was a free-spirit, a child of the universe, and it was time to move on. We said our goodbyes and he took a bus to someplace.
I took a taxi-ride down the valley to the old city of Fes, where my flight was going to take me home a few days later.
Looking out at the passing landscape in that beat-up old taxi, I couldn’t help but reflect on how my journey had taken me into this unknown land. I had had no plans and yet things happened, falling into place, as if by magic.
For the first time in my life, I had had the courage to surrender my faith to the unknown.
Along my way, I met people who had recognised that and who had rewarded me with their generosity. People with whom I was able to share in our common humanity.
And, for that, I will never forget them.
If this post resonated with you in any way, I’d love to know which part and why. So please do leave me a comment!
I enjoyed this story, Ben. Travel does so much for us apart from just seeing a different country. You conveyed the sense of that very well, and now I want to go to Morocco 😉
Love this, Ben. Really evocative (and it reminds me of my first solo journey in a foreign country). "I had to prove to him that I wasn’t alone to the world." – that's a lovely insight... funny how reluctant we are to appear vulnerable.