Riddles in the Dust

The sky turned to black. Would he ever come back? They would climb a high dune. They would pray to the moon. But he'd never return. So the sisters would burn. As their eyes searched the land. With their cups full of sand. Tea in the Sahara with you. Tea in the Sahara with you. Tea in the Sahara with you. Tea in the Sahara with you. - Sumner

Ismail asked me if I was ready for my "90-minute camel massage." I said yes, but I would have said yes to anything. What he meant, he said, was that it's very bumpy on the camel and my neck and back would be in for a workout. He told me it was important to hold on very loosely and to let the beast do all the work. I agreed that I would.

At one point we stopped and he negotiated a good price for me to buy a blue turban. He insisted I wear one and insisted it be blue, since blue indicated the "leader" of the caravan. I closed my eyes and let him wrap it around my head.

We drove forever through... nothing, flatland and scrub brush until the horizon revealed what looked like the sillhouettes of mountains, but were in fact sand dunes. It was the Sahara. The closer we got, the more surprising the colors. Pinks and golds and oranges, strange tricks of the light. Romantic and alive-seeming. Pulverized treasure.

Structures started to appear and then organized buildings, small inns and campsites, and little places where you could rent camels and ride them into the gold. Our path took us to a larger one where you could stay the night if you wanted to. It also had a little restaurant and wifi. Turns out the nomads are addicted to WhatsApp.

The program called for me to meet up with some Berber guides, ride with them out to a complex of tents out in the desert, and sleep out there overnight. Dinner and dancing included. In the morning, we would ride back and I would reconnect with Ismail.

To say goodbye, we had tea on some garden furniture plunked down in the sand. The chairs kept sinking in and falling over, which I quite liked. It felt like we were English gentlemen determined to civilize this wasteland. 

Then the camels were ready.

 

I was assigned to a small group of five led by a Berber named Moha. Another Moha! The other four were a pair of couples. One from Nottingham and another from Singapore. They all wore blue turbans as well. Were we supposed to fight to see who the leader was going to be?

Moha controlled the beasts with a combination of grunts and weird slaps from the flat of his feet. They were old and knew what to do. They had numbers and not names. He would give them the foot, and they would "kneel" and they were ready to be mounted. One had a very weird, judgemental eye, milky with age. I didn't want that one. But I also didn't want it looking at me. 

I was third, and I got on with no trouble, but when it rose to its full height there was a dizzying sense of being thrown. I was afraid of being tossed ass over turban, so I held very tightly to the saddle in defiance of Ismail's advice. I don't think I let go for another two hours. I may still be holding on.

The Singaporean girl gave a delighted shriek when it was her turn. We were all up, and we were all off. Moha walked in front of us and it was very beautiful to see his bare feet make tracks in the sand. It was very beautiful to see other caravans in the distance. It was windy, and a turban was blown off the head of a faraway man. It was blue, of course. Watching him wrap it again in the breeze looked like something from an 80s music video.

The camels were sure-hoofed. Strange monsters. I saw one's skeleton once in the Field Museum in Chicago, and it really freaked me out. Beast horse dream horse. When you're riding straight or uphill, it's very comfortable. When you're going down the other side of a dune, you wish you weren't. A bumpy tension. How do people race on them? Go to war on them?

The sand seemed sometimes to have the consistency of pudding. Thick and sticky-seeming as the fatty hooves of the camels trudged through it.

The further we got into the wild, the more overcast it got. I wasn't getting the movie version of the desert. No cactus or cow skulls. You can see in the pictures how the sky was misted with purple. A mini sandstorm rose up and we could no longer see in front of us. My face was pelted with tiny pricks of sand. I had to draw my turban over my mouth. I had to close my eyes. 

It was marvelous, and I won't soon forget it. The kind of strange discomfort you can only experience in that situation. I found it very valuable. It helped the time pass quickly, because my mind was all a'wander with the sensations. 

When the storm stopped, I saw our tents in the distance. 

We got to our complex and Moha kickboxed the camels into releasing us. Within the square grouping of tents, carpets covered the sand. It felt like being in a home with a dirt floor, I suppose. I'm sure there's a better description than that, but that's where my head was. 

The couples retired to their tents and I was given a large one with two beds. Dropped off my stuff and went back out to explore. In the distance, I saw a black and white tuxedo cat pawing his way up a dune. It was... most unexpected. I guess he belonged there more than I did, but it was quite an amusing surprise. I asked a Berber what was up, and he said:

"He come here sometime to fight the scorpion and snake." 

A hero cat! Outside the tents was a pile of skis. I was encouraged to climb up a dune and ski down. So I did. It was incredibly fun and very safe, even for my creaky body. Climbing back up was a hassle for an out-of-shape patty melt like me, but I managed. Twice, anyway. Sandboarding, they call it.

It was getting colder and darker. When the other boys came out to play, Georgie Porgie went back to his tent to read Arab Folktales. I had brought the book for just this moment. Fun stories about lies and tricks, wild sheep that needed haircuts. There was and there was not.

At dinner, (surprise, a tajine!), I made friends with my caravan and with a gang of Chinese who joined us late. Everyone was disappointed that we wouldn't see the stars that evening, and I was too. I mean, you're supposed to be able to lay on your back and see the vast Milky Way. But, it was all clouds. For one night only!

But we told jokes and played bongo drums and did something called "The Camel Dance." There was nothing to drink, so nobody got too crazy. We were all asked to tell a joke, and I dusted off my lame old "What do ghosts wear in their cars?" gag. They liked it.

A Berber told a visual joke that broke up the room. It went: "What's the difference between money and salt?"

I was like, "Well, Roman soldiers used to be paid in salt. It's where we get the word 'salary,' so not much!"

But he kept a blank face and waited for me to stop. As did the gathered international community.

The answer was, "Salt is like this." He held his hand down and rubbed his fingers like he was sprinkling salt on something. "And money is like this." He turned his hand up and rubbed his fingers like he was asking you to pay him.

It was pretty great and I will certainly steal it for a play.

The Berbers had a funny habit of saying "Fantastic plastic" instead of "yes." I quite liked it. Where did they learn it? Will there be tea after dinner? Fantastic plastic. Will you wake us in the morning for the sunset? Fantastic plastic. Will the sky clear up tonight? No.

The girl from Singapore asked me if Starbucks was cheaper in Seattle, since it's "the source." So fun to think about a natural spring of coffee under Pike Place Market. 

Slipped off to my tent to write it all down. And stayed there. I heard drumming until late in the evening. There was some tossy turny as I couldn't get the vision of scorpions out of my head, but that's just travelbrain playing the fool. Drifted off.

Woke up around three with the fullest bladder imaginable. It felt like I had a camel's hump in my abdomen. Staggered out to pee, though I thought about just pissing there on the sandy floor of the tent. The moon was as bright as the sun. It blazed. A few week stars hung around it, but they were poor representatives of the Milky Way.

Left the complex, baptized the dunes, and went back to sleep. A short time later, Moha was clapping outside my tent. It was the alarm to see the sunrise. I kind of liked it. I saw the other Berbers softly clapping outside the tents of the others. I saw the silhouettes of the earliest risers on the crest of the dune, limned in orange.

As I climbed up to them, I saw the cat's paw prints in the sand. He had visited us again in the night. That warmed me more than any sun.

It was, of course, very beautiful as it rose. Like a jewel box being opened in an Elizabeth Taylor film.  

The Storks Bring the Prayers

"This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge, keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal, and do well." - Sir Francis Bacon 

                                                  

I read that slight Canetti book on the plane, the one with essays about his time in Morocco, and in the last chapter he talks about seeing a really old donkey get a hard-on. He uses a word I didn't know, concupiscence, to describe the animal's lust. So, I was happy to learn a new word, but I was wondering what he was doing crawling around under a donkey to see how turned on it was. 

But, like the great Canetti, I saw a donkey's...concupiscence in the streets of Fes, and it's pretty difficult to miss. They have big ones. Donkeys have big dicks. It was on my mind when the call to prayer woke me up. Was I dreaming of it? It was my first thought when I awoke. What did it mean?

Today I was scheduled to go on a three-day trip through the mountains, the desert's edge, and end up in Marrakech. I had hired a driver over the internet a few months ago, and he was very cool about rescheduling after my mishap with TAP airlines. Moha had agreed to serve me an early breakfast. 

While I packed I thought about the cab driver ditching me yesterday. He had shown me a postcard when I got in the car, a picture of the Golden Gate bridge on the front and the words "Great Ride! - Becky" in ballpoint pen on the back. The implication, I suppose, was that he was trustworthy. I mean, he'd gotten the coveted Becky endorsement. There was no stamp on it, so she must have written it on the way out the door.

I hoped the dude picking me up was going to be cool. Would he have a postcard? Usually, if someone has to convince you of something, the opposite is true. I wanted to see Secret Morocco and Natural Morocco and not more blackmail and gift shops. It would soon be told. Loaded up, said good-bye to the courtyard and met Moha in the lobby. 

He had a giant bag of dates and bread for me. 

There was some checking out to do and settling up, and the change was fifty dirham, about five bucks, and I gave it to him as a tip. His hands shook when he took it and his jaw was set. It made me feel like I had deeply insulted him. 

The two reactions when you offer a tip here are a loud, vocal, "That's it?!!" or a silent pain radiating out. The latter is much more effective. I felt terrible. I had given more to a dude in the street yesterday. He was probably snoring off his concupiscence in a brothel while poor Mohar was washing my dates. 

Eternal regret. 

Went out in the dark to the post office in the plaza and there was my driver. Call him Ismail. Cool young dude with a nice smile. He welcomed me into his SUV and we were off. He asked me if I was excited, and I said yes. He asked me what other countries I've been to. I told him Latvia and Lithuania, but he'd never heard of them. I told him Vietnam, and he said:

"Did you eat flies in chicken-blood soup?"

I said I did not.

"That's what they eat," he said.  

I told him I had missed out and would have to go back. I asked him where he had heard that. He said that Morocco was a "mixed salad" and that you get people from all over the world coming in and out of the hotels and the taxis. Along the way, he had met some Vietnamese and that's what they'd told him they liked to eat. 

This was going to be a very good three days.

Our first stop was a town called Ifrane, "the Switzerland of Morocco." It was a small, wealthy area and quite unlike anyplace I'd been so far. It was more European even than Spain or Portugal. Such a contrast from the stone walls of Fes. 

The story here was that when the French took over, they were like, "We can't be expected to live like the locals. Let's make this town as French as possible. So, they built Euro-style houses and gardens, etc. When they got kicked out, the Moroccan government thought about knocking it down, but decided it was preeeetty nice, so they were like, "Let's not be so hasty. Let's, maybe... keep it? For ourselves?"

So, they did. The most famous thing there is a giant stone lion that, apparently, an Italian prisoner sculpted while he was waiting for release. People were lined up to have their picture taken next to it. I got a cup of coffee, and we left.  

I ate from the breakfast bag and asked Ismail if he wanted any. He told me six days in Morocco was long enough to trust my skills at selecting dates, so he trusted me. I told him I'd trained on olives and worked my way up. 

As we sped through the countryside I saw a few packs of stray dogs and since dogs have been on my mind the whole trip, I asked him what the deal was. He said it says in the holy books that dogs are devils and that if a dog licks your plate you have to wash it seven times and then drag it through the dirt. 

According to some interpretations of Islam, he said, they're to be killed on sight and aren't allowed in people's homes. God. I asked if it was because they are expensive to feed and he said no, it was because they were evil. 

BUT! You're allowed to use them for work. So the tribal people, the Berbers, use them to help herd the sheep, etc. BUT! during the holiday that just passed, all the sheep were sacrificed, so the Berbers abandoned the dogs. "I'm afraid the season's over, Fido, and I ain't got any more jobs for you. Go on, git."

So, these dogs I was seeing had been part of a seasonal labor force and then kicked out. It made me incredibly sad, of course. We passed through a little town with a fountain shaped like a giant apple, and I couldn't smile at it. Ismail told me we were in the apple capital of Morocco. Kind of cheered myself up saying applecapitalapplecapital over and over. 

As we passed through fields of black kohl, he said "What will you do, your election?"

"It sure is a mess," I said, "I'm very happy to be on vacation and not hearing about it."

"But it is over, yes? Since Clinton die."

"What?"

"Hillary Clinton, she is dead. Two days ago, I hear."

I'd been kind of following the news, and I was sure I would have heard that. It was kind of hilarious.

"She had a cold, like, pneumonia, but she's not dead. She was just sick for a few days."

"News say she die and Doe Nail Trump your president now."

"Ok, well, we'll find out later. I don't think so, though."

His feelings seemed a little hurt. I'm having trouble navigating these exotic emotions. I felt like I'd been careful not to make him feel foolish for misunderstanding the story, but maybe I was so surprised when he said she was dead, I made a face that bothered him.

We were quiet for a while, and I watched the mountains and fields. Then he said:

"Ok, ok. Oh, something else America. What is Haw Loo Loo?"

"Haw Lulu? I don't..."

"Hah Loo Loo?"

"Do you mean, hallelujah?"

"Yes. Hallelujah. Where you wear mask and have party."

"Uh,"

"And children get the candy."

I fell deeply in love with him.

We stopped in a little park swarming with monkeys. They had knocked over a bunch of garbage cans and were having high carnival. Some dogs slept near them unmolested. I hoped they shared.  Maybe here among the monkeys they could find peace.

I took some pics and we talked about about animals some more. We saw a giant nest and he said it was a stork's. I told him I'd seen a large one on top of a column in Volubilis. He said they usually make their homes on the tops of minarets and he said:

"I know you have in America this story that the stork brings the baby, but here we say the stork brings the prayers."

That was great. It felt very special to hear that. I thought about generations of fathers pointing to the towers of mosques and asking their sons if they saw the nests. 

Then he asked me if the "quarter break" was the most important player on an American football team. I said it was. 

We passed through a village and he blasted a song called Wiki Wiki, which was a kind of Cuban dance music like reggaeton, I guess. It was kind of uncool to do this and I hoped we weren't disturbing people, but I went with it. Watching old women carry bundles of sticks on their backs while this goofy dance music thumped hit me just right. 

We yelled "wiki wiki!" together at the appropriate times. 

Passed through a town where everyone had dead lambs hanging upside down from their doorways. I don't think I've ever seen anything like that. He said it was the best town in Morocco to eat BBQ in. It made me very hungry. 

We sped through it, though, and ended up at a hotel for lunch. Here, I got the first sense of what our relationship was really like. We had been laughing and singing together and trading idioms and stories, but... he led me into a dining area and left me to eat alone while he relaxed in the bar. 

It was a reminder that we were driver and passenger and not buddies. 

The tajine was terrible and the napkins were dirty.

I found him smoking in the bar afterward. He asked me how the food was. "Poor," I said, "Can we go back to the BBQ town?" He said he wasn't allowed to let me eat there, but I wondered if he had some kind of deal with the hotel. I mean, he must have.

Got back in and we headed off again. Quiet again.

The next stop, he said, was the desert where I was going to ride a camel to my tent. I had thought that was tomorrow's activity. It was suddenly upon me. Of course, I got excited again:

"Today you will ride not a camel, but what we have here Morocco, which is dromedaries."

"Ok."

"Camels have two of the humps, but the dromedaries have only one, which is shame, because with another hump, you could have the WiFi."

"Camels keep WiFi in their humps? What else do they keep in there? Cable TV? Hot coffee?"

"No, no, I am joking."

"Haha, I know, I am joking with you."

"Ok, ok. But you know there is no WiFi out there, right?"

"Yes. Because we have dromedaries."

"Yes. But..also camels do not have...I think you are still joking."

"We are two good joke tellers."

"Maybe so. Maybe no."

Then he told me dromedaries cry when they see fat Americans, because they don't want to carry them. He said we would know if I was in bad shape by watching the dromedary's eye. I told him to save the dromedary for his mamadary, but it didn't land.

We're Sorry, Moulay Idriss is Closed Today

“It is generally supposed that Conservatives are usually old people, and that those in favor of change are the young. That is not quite correct. Usually, Conservatives are young people: those who want to live but who do not think about how to live, and have not time to think, and therefore take as a model for themselves a way of life that they have seen.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Devil

The call to prayer is supposed to kick off at the same time every day (I think) but it kind of starts whenever the guy gets up the minaret stairs. In Bosnia I got to climb up one, and I had to crawl on my hands and knees. The stairs were so old and so high. I got kind of dizzy spiraling around. It was interesting to picture that going on all over the city of Fes every morning for hundreds of years. 

Including this morning; the muezzin closest to the Riad Louna must have gotten an early start, maybe a cat woke him up, because he did his religious cock-a-doodle-doo before five. Someone's always first, then you can hear the others crowing out across the skyline. It's like the opening of a market, and it's loud. 

No rest for the wicked. 

It's pleasant, though. Better than those lazy bells we have in Christian lands. Funny to think about bells being a kind of automation that put singing priests out of business. Good morning, Father. I'm here to call people to morning prayer. Sorry, Brother, you've been replaced by a machine. Ding dong dell, motherfucker, go learn to dig or beg. 

The Call to Breakfast wouldn't be ready for a few hours and Fes is no place to be outside in before the sun is up and the cops have had their Honey Nut Cheerios, so I lounged on a giant couch in the courtyard and read more of Between Meals. Not a good idea to read about food when you're hungry, but the author is very funny. 

This was going to be a day where I made everyone angry, because I had scheduled myself to see Volubilis, an old Roman town full of standing structures and original mosaics. Angry, because I'd figured out the bus and train schedules. 

The riad wanted eighty to take me, and the touts outside told me the riad was a ripoff and I should let their cousin drive me for sixty, but by taking the train and two taxis, I would be paying about five dollars. And there wouldn't be any detours to any wooden spoon "museums" or rug-weaving "demonstrations." 

It all made me feel like a thrifty Roman senator. Hale and well met, Bargainus! How goes the journey to Volubilis? It goes well, Cicero, but can you lend me your chisel? Mine has gone blunt from hammering out coupons from this week's tablets.  

I wanted to load myself up on cheese and charred bread before I left, so I watched the dawn play backgammon with the palm leaves until everything was the color of fruit juice. Birds I never saw chirped and held high carnival above. It sounded pleasant, but I'm sure if we had translations of birdsong, it would just be: Wanna fuck? Why not? Look at my chest? You don't like it? Fucking lesbian. You? Wanna fuck? Dude, get those berries out of your fucking beak before I flutter all over your face. 

I heard teapots banging around upstairs, so I washed my face in the weird little cavern they call a shower (it's one of those European-style things where they just jam a spout in the middle of the wall, so when you bathe, the toilet and sink get all wet. It's like you bring everything into the tub with you).

Went upstairs and Moha was pouring mint tea for a couple of Spaniards. They always pour really high here, so it makes that impressive long stream from pot to glass. It also makes the surface all foamy, and they have the expression, "If there are white bubbles, there is good tea." 

Moha was the dude who collected me on arrival day. His name is short for Mohammad, which I guess is obvious, but it's not something I'd heard before. I reckon an American Mohammad would call himself Moe or Ham. Something not quite cricket about ending on a vowel like that. It sounds like a museum. 

Sneaked a bunch of Laughing Cow cheese into my bag, drank a dram of coffee and headed for the train station. It was too far to walk, so I did the "Choo choo!" thing in a cab and got there for under a dollar. Very nice, modern train station, but the people would rather die than use the automatic ticket machines. 

The line had about a hundred people in it, but I walked over to the machine and got a ticket in about thirty seconds. I think it's just a matter of the machines being unfamiliar to them. Or maybe it's the same anti-tech solidarity that keeps bells out of the minarets. 

I had been tipped off to spring for a first-class ticket, a difference of about fifty cents, and I'm glad I did. It means you get a seat. Second class is like a Simpson's-style exaggeration with people crammed in, hanging on the sides of the train and farm animals looking terrified in their arms. 

Really felt like a wartime evacuation from a movie, but it was just a normal commute in Fes. First class was all foreigners who'd read the same blogs I had, I reckon. 

Short trip, but I finished Between Meals. The "read twenty books" goal of this trip is ahead of schedule. Really happy about it. 

You get off in a town called Meknes. For some reason I had the phrase "Can I get a witness?" in my head. Is it a chorus from a pop song? I replaced witness with Meknes, so I was making myself crazy with "Can I get a Meknes?" I become my own enemy at such times. Tried to push it out by crooking my finger and calling it the Mek Ness monster.

Worked out a cab to the ruins. Dude told me he'd even drive me back to Fes after. His price was dope, so I took it. We zipped right over there passing the Holy Town of Moulay Idriss on the way. Awesomely scenic pile of colorful Lego blocks on a hill. It's apparently got some great old gates and mosques, but it was "closed" on this day. 

The sheep-slaughtering part of Eid al Adha was over, but the "take a couple weeks off" part was still in effect, and this particular city was very religious. So, they're less open to some dude from the Land of Ronald McDonald flying his drone over there to snap shots of their relics. I made do with a nice view of the exterior. It's the top image on this page. 

Moulay Idriss was built with material from the Roman town of Volubilis, a few minutes away. I mean, why not? The Romans left all this marble and stone laying around when they fucked off back to fountain-town. They, the Romans, had mostly been here to gather wild animals to ship back to Rome to be killed in the Colosseum. 

And I'm sure they had plans for taxing the locals, but they proved unruly. That's been something about this place, the invaders don't stick around too long. The Romans were only here for about two-hundred years, that's an eye-blink, or just enough time for a foamy cup of mint tea. The French were here for less than fifty. The only one that stuck was the Islamic invasion when the dudes came over from Syria and stayed forever. 

Really the only thing the Romans did here was give the indigenous people the nickname of 'Berber' which means, of course, barbarians. 

In any case, since nobody gave a shit about them, the town was left alone, (when the useful building material wasn't being hauled away), and there are some incredible standing structures and mind-blowing mosaics. I was very moved by them, because they were, what do you call it, in situ. 

Like, they haven't been restored or recolored or anything. They're just where they were two thousand years ago. It was awesome. They have a little rope to suggest you not stomp on them, but it would have been easy to just snap off one of the tiles and make an earring out of it or something. Or to spill your raspberry Jamba Juice on it and fuck it up forever. 

Something about the sort of permanent impermanence of them affected me. It made me think of all the poets and painters and historians over the centuries who loved to sit in ruins and be inspired by the grandeur of man's ambitions. John Ruskin and the Stones of Venice. Wordsworth and Tinturn Abbey. That kind of thing. 

Maybe it was because there was almost no one there and I was free to sit and experience them all day if I wanted to without a guide bossing me around or picnic people harshing my mellow. 

It was, however, blazing hot, and I thought of the bit in Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" where the rhyme goes, "Two little Indian boys sitting in the sun. One got frizzled up, and then there was one." Except there was just me, so if I got frizzled up, there'd be no one to pay the taxi. So, I headed back there. 

He was having a high old time with the guys at the pay station, but he threw back his tea and clapped them all on the shoulder and took me back to Fes. His English was poor, but he was able to help me understand that all the crooked, stunted little trees around were olives. 

Roman ruins on a hill surrounded by olive groves. The stuff of Catullus. 

That's a joke. He's the porny one, I think.

The stuff of Ovid. 

Easy ride back, about half an hour of speeding through some winding roads and dodging the fuzz. When we got close to the medina, he asked for more money. They all do this. They agree to take you to X, but when they get to V, they're like, "Yikes, I didn't know traffic would be this bad. We're close, but the price I quoted you isn't going to get us there."

They usually make this appeal in a place inconvenient for walking. They kind of blackmail you. I don't appreciate it. It makes you not want to trust anyone. I usually pay it, since it's like, "Big deal, you're extorting an extra thirty cents out of me," but for some reason I was sort of fed up. I just got out on the highway and started walking.

I could kiiind of see a minaret in the distance that kiiind of looked like the one near the one near one close to the Bab Boujloud.

The side of the road was defined by a giant wall, so I hugged it and walked minaret-ward. He was trying to get me to get back in the cab, but I ignored him. He was a dirty rotter. Though, I suppose it's cultural. Like, in the "West," it's awful to change the deal after you've agreed on a price, but here I think it's just part of the deal. Like, everything is "ish" and there's no shame or harm in trying to squeeze a few more cents out at the end. It's expected and not rude. I think. I was just over it.

I ducked into the first crack in the wall, and it revealed this amazing open plaza with stone arches and gateways. People were setting up some kind of local market, the kind of thing where someone puts down a sheet and dumps all the stuff they've found on the side of the road and hopes they have just what someone needs. 

It kind of felt like the stuff that's in homeless people's shopping carts back home. It was like hoarders being ordered by the court to clean out the last decade's collections. Broken tools and dirty trays and wires and the keypad half of a flip phone. 

One guy had his stuff arranged as meticulously as an I Spy puzzle. There was no way he was going to let me take a picture, so I didn't try. I loved that I got to see it. It was an interesting contrast to have seen a dead civilization and then this "living" one.

Followed a donkey loaded with Evian to an area I recognized and found the Blue Gate and the Corridor of Herbs and the Riad Louna. Once you have a sense of direction, the city is pretty thrilling. 

Moha was on his phone in the street, and he gave me a high five without looking at me. It was really sweet. Dropped off my camera and books and went over to the Cafe Clock for dinner. 

There, in the sitting room, a band of five old fat ladies played the drums and shook these crazy metal spoon-looking things. It was awesome. People stood up and clapped and sang. The cafe has four floors, and people were hanging over the balconies to shout and cheer. They danced and threw their straw wrappers in the air. 

It was like the debauchery of Ancient Rome. 

Rage Against the Riad

"An Englishman teaching an American about food is like the blind leading the one-eyed." - A.J. Liebling

 

Early morning helped along by the call to prayer. Fes has over three-hundred mosques, and they each have their own tinny, fuzzy, sparky speaker system. When the muezzins sing, it sounds like a thousand radio stations tuned to separate channels all switched on at once to tell you someone scored a goal.

Had breakfast on the terrace and read Between Meals by Liebling. Fun to read about the glories of classic French cooking in a former French colony. I ate shriveled olives, drank strong coffee, and spread cheese on some sort of charred flat bread. 

Ali brought me tea and reeled off pleasantries. He spoke English very well, but it was like he learned it at a finishing school for diplomat's wives. A little French was mixed in with his speech as is common here. 

"Will monsieur take his tea on the balcony or is it his pleasure to remain here? Here? Ah, oui, excellent choice, as the view here is parfait, ah, very beautiful."

Have the terrace removed, Ali, we no longer require it. 

Then it was a ramble through the gameshow for lunatics they call the old medina. It's like parachuting out of a battered seaplane and landing in Mos Eisley spaceport. You turn and dodge and duck and walk for what seems like blocks to discover that rights are lefts and seeming dead ends suddenly open up into active slaughterhouses.

Everywhere colorful slippers and tin lamps and ceramic pots and scraps of tile and men sewing silver thread into belts. Leather bags and prickly pears. Pigeons in cages, donkeys laden with propane tanks, the Hand of Fatima, and endless cries for your attention in all languages.

Hola. Bonjour. Hello. Ah, hello. English. You are lost? You are lost. The medina is big place. There is no shame for you. Follow me, I am your friend. You would like to see my shop, just to look and not to buy. Just to look, to see. My brother work here and he will take care of you, he is my family. Leather bags, fine rugs, silver for your sweetheart." 

They can probably do it in Finnish and Klingon.

The hard soft-sell is everywhere, the long con is in effect. Plots within plots, wheels within wheels. Everyone is a trained actor, everyone is a Decepticon, everyone prays five times a day to Fraud. If you would like to feel what it's like to be a woman drinking alone in a bar, go to Fes and walk around for thirty seconds.

Hello. Come here. Yes. Yes. Free. Mixed in with sudden cries of "Belek!" which either means "look out!" or "donkey!" because they shout it when a donkey is coming down the corridor to crush all in its path.

They load them with everything. Gasoline cans, soccer balls, water tanks, rubber tires. Probably other donkeys if I waited long enough. It's donkeys all the way down.

When you hear, "belek!" you and the women in headscarves and the Australians with hangovers and the tired men with battered briefcases all throw yourselves against the walls or, too often, into shops. Ah, have some mint tea and look but just to see not to buy unless you like to buy. I have best price in medina.

At one point I ducked into a wide, open area with piles of wool ten feet high and man with a long-ass knife was slashing up sheep skins. It was like some kind of horrible reverse fairyland, like the vision a wizard shows he hero of what the world will be if he is not successful in his quest.

The air full of dust, the scraping sounds of post-slaughter, the smell of dead animals, a sad horse tied to a concrete post. It was a production center and very interesting to see, though certainly outside of my experience and, almost, my comfort zone.

A boy came up to tell me his father worked in the tannery and would I like to see it. No, but it is very impressive to see the tannery where my father works, but I see you mean no, so please follow me to my cousin's shop to see something very interesting.

The something interesting is: purses.

Beggars sit on busted cardboard boxes with their hands cupped. The men try to look as miserable as possible. The woman usually have messed-up kids in their laps and bright yellow cards saying Certificate of Malady hanging around the child's neck.

I met my doom outside the purse store. 

Hola, bonjour, hello. 

"I'm just exploring. But, thank you. Thank you. Shukran."

Is no problem. Is no problem. I take you to the tanneries. You want to go to tannery to see Moroccan tradition, Moroccan leather, best in world. Come see for your sweetheart. You are my friend.

I was tired and gave in. And I did want to take photos of the famous tanneries. "Ok. Listen, though, I don't have much money. I am only looking around."

Yes, yes, just to look. Just to see Moroccan leather. Not to buy. Only to see. If you like something, good. If you like something, I give you Moroccan price. I give you friend price.

Ok.

"Ok. On the way, I will take you to meet my family. You wish to see Berber family? Very friendly,
 very beautiful home."

Um, I don't want to be rude, but I am very tired, and...

"Ok, I take you now my family."

Just the tannery, please.

"Oh, here is misunderstood. In Morocco, families live where they work. My family lives in the tannery. You are my friend, and they will meet you. Moroccan leather is best in world."

Ok.

"I am Muhammad. I am your very good friend."

You learn quickly that there is no such thing as a "museum" in Fes, unless a museum is something where everything is for sale. Nice collection you have here. I'll take two of them Starry Nights and if you throw in that Manet, I'll take them Elgin Marbles. You ship to the US, right? Wrap 'em up real tight.

Muhammad took me to rug "museums" and wallet museums and metal-lamp museums. There was no ditching him, and when he did leave me, it was to attach me to one of his family members. 

I learned quite a bit about the leather industry. An old man, one of Muhammad's six or seven fathers, told me leather should never smell because human skin doesn't smell. He stank very badly, but I understood what he meant. No chemicals in the "biological" leather of Fes. 

The tannery is decently interesting. Medieval-looking pits filled with men and dye. Dudes stomp skin down into pits full of liquefied mint to make green purses, pureed poppy to make red shoes, mertilized indigo to make blue Trapper Keepers, etc. 

The dude I saw flensing before was scrapping loose wool off, because he deals in wool, and would send the skin over here to be trampled in a saffron-stuffed hole until it transformed into a yellow backpack.  

It was quieter and less smelly than usual, since people were still on vacation for Eid. I missed the mass slaughter, but I was seeing the beginnings of the afterparty. 

At one place, fatigue and the endless pressure began to work on me. There was a camel-skin messenger bag with "old" coins sewn all over it in a fun random pattern. I love old coins, and the bag was wide enough to hold record albums.

I began to imagine myself walking into a club like some kind of Jim Morrison (when he was fat), my coinbag full of dance hits. I let the salesman start to talk me into it. It was around $300, which is a lot of money for a dumb bag. I guess it was worth it, but it probably wasn't. And I didn't need it. I'd been spun around in circles and squeezed for about an hour. Dizzy. Vulnerable

It was getting pretty advanced. Once they get their hooks in, it's psychologically difficult to back out. But, praise be to Allah, at one point, he was bragging about the quality and how it would last forever and how the coins were triple-stitched and would never come off, and I saw a little patch on the bag where a coin was missing. 

The thing probably had two hundred little studs and sequins and coins on it, and I'd been looking at it for a long time before I saw the missing one. It broke the spell, thank god, and I was able to be like, "Hey! You said they would never come off, and look at this!"

He was furious, not with me, but with god, the world, fate, Bill Gates, the universe. It was a legit excuse for me to back out. Like, if he was going to play up the fantasy of the bag being made of starstuff and assembled by mermaids, I could play up the fantasy of being a prince who demanded perfection. 

He was like, "Maybe the artist... did this on... purpose." I was like, "Thank you, good day!" and got out of there. He gave chase. "We can fix. I have thread here." 

I'm sorry. I no longer want it.

He probably stomped through the floor like Rumplestilskin and forcefed loose change to the shop's tailor. 

 

 I had an idea this incident would let me also scrape Muhammad off my sandal, but he was waiting outside. He had a knack for being around corners, turning up like a bad dirham. 

"You not buy? This is terrible. Was it quality or price?"

I'm going home now, Muhammad. Thank you for everything. 

"I will take you first to the Bab Boujloud."

That was the thing from yesterday! The words the driver made me memorize. What could it be? If Muhammad wanted me to see it, it was probably a giant gumball machine or a factory that prints your name on key chains. 

I agreed, but he took me to see his "brother" at another purse store. Motherfucker. His brother seemed to agree with my assessment, because it got strangely aggressive.

"We are here, my friend. This is Abdul. Abdul will show you the terrace and everything to see. Abdul, this is my friend, Simon."

Abdul grabbed Muhammad violently by the collar

"Simon is not your friend now. Simon is MY friend. Go far away. Simon has new friend."

It didn't look like he was kidding. He released him and Muhammad smoothed his clothes and said he would see us later.

"You like joke I make Muhammad? This is how we are here Morocco. Jokes. Jokes with family. Now what I show you? Bag for sweetheart? Bag for you? Your bag you have is terrible. Do you want to know why our bags do not smell? Natural. Your own skin does not smell. Smell it. There is nothing, no smell, because natural."

God. God. He led me up some stairs to see "something special." It was the same tannery from a different angle. Amazing. You think you're far away, but you've just been going in circles. I was as polite as possible, and when Abdul was momentarily distracted by a busload of Israeli tourists, I fled.

Muhammad found me as if I'd had a tracking device taped to my camera bag. He asked me why I didn't buy anything. I told him I was done for the day. He said he would take me to the Bab Boujloud. I told him to leave me alone. He said he wanted money for being my guide. I gave him ten dirham and he went crazy with grief. I gave him forty more so he could turn the gas back on at his house.

I went the direction he pointed, but it was hopeless, turning around, surrounded by walls, hassled by donkeys. A boy came up and asked where I wanted to go. I gave him five bucks to leave me alone. I figured better to pay now then be led on another tour of the finest wallets and coin purses the nation had to offer.

Found the Bab Boujloud, which was a massive (and famous) entrance to the medina. The Blue Gate. It was cool. Nearby, a slewth of cats waited patiently for a butcher to toss them some scraps. Had some coffee at Cafe Clock.

Found my way back to the riad and collapsed in a heap. In addition to being hot, this place is emotionally exhausting.

The riads are, usually, mansions that had fallen into disrepair and were bought and restored by European investors. They clean them up and turn them into hotels and make a fortune. Grand old places with massive wooden doors, exquisite tile columns, and bird-filled courtyards.

The locals seem to hate them, because the riads offer everything. They change money, arrange tours, etc. Some sell spices and bags. They have a restaurant inside. So, when the touts in the street come up and ask if you want something, and you say you got it taken care of at the riad, you can see the mask of politeness slip. They almost shake with how much they hate them.

They tell you not to trust them and if you can return anything the riad gave you, they'll give you a better price. It was the first sense I got of the kind of resentment that leads to revolution. Like, the official colonization was over, but the French (and English) were still sort of flexing a kind of economic control.

I sympathized, but I wasn't going back out into that bullshit again. I had a delicious tajine of chicken, olives, and preserved lemon peel at the riad cafeteria. Ali was very happy to serve me on the terrace.  

A Year's Salary Fell Out of My Pocket

Comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master. - Gibran: The Prophet

Fatima puttered around in the kitchen trying to get the timing right on the soft-boiled eggs. I amused myself by singing Maggie's Maid to the tune of a Rod Stewart song. Wake up, Maggie's Maid, I think I've got something to say to you. The bus to Fes didn't leave until noon, so I had plenty of time for breakfast. 

Marmalade and toast and olives and cheese. And that wonderful egg. Maggie came down to say goodbye and told me a great story about how she was an extra in Gladiator, "They needed European types to play the senators," and how in the desert there is pure oxygen, so you only need three hours of sleep a night. 

"You wake up refreshed, don't you? We stayed up all night with Russell Crowe and Oliver Reed and, oh what is his name, the director. It was never a dull moment. Of course we ended up on the cutting room floor, you can watch the film twice and never see me, but it was quite the experience."

There was some hilarity where Fatima didn't know where to put a giant bag of minced lamb. "She says it's a gift from her family," said Maggie, "but of course I give them the money for the sheep each year." 

Then it was time to go. I felt strangely close to her. 

Took a grande cab for a petit price, because the tout was desperate. Easy ride to the bus station, which was a hive of activity. Men shouting the names of cities in competition, heavy pressure to take one bus line or another. I had arranged passage the previous day, so I was worthless to them. 

Stopped into the little office to make sure everything was on schedule, and a man tapped me on the shoulder and handed me four-hundred dirham. That's about $40 or, roughly, enough for the guy who found it to buy an olive grove and retire. 

Very careless of me to have dropped it. I've gotten so unused to carrying cash, I don't protect it properly. It flies out when I take my phone from my pocket. I thanked him and saw another 200 on my bag. These were the big bills I'd had trouble breaking earlier. 

Everything's a dollar here, and it's hard to make change for what might as well be a fifty. It must have looked to the people who saw it like I'd been trailing a string of pearls. In any case, he returned it and revealed himself to be the bus driver. How about that?

It didn't take very long to be in the countryside and very soon there was nothing but golden hills and lonely onion salesmen. Shepherds sleeping in tents as their flocks grazed. Donkeys laden with alfalfa driven by boys with sticks. Men ride sidesaddle here and boys straddle the beasts. 

I read a book called Where the Jews Aren't about a region in the Soviet Union they tried to make a Jewish homeland in the 40s. Birobidzhan. It was probably a more-appropriate book for my last trip, but having been to Latvia, Ukraine, etc, put the book in much better context. I enjoyed it and might not have gotten as much out of it if I'd read it a year ago. 

Just as I will get a lot out of the books about Morocco I will read in the next few months. I really try to use these trips to broaden my understanding of the world and not just to get cool magnets. Although, it's true that I have a marvelous collection of magnets at this point. The envy of my peers. 

I had the front seat, so I got to see the road. It was in some disrepair. Long ago, I read a thing about Mark Twain learning to navigate the river from the helm of a steamboat. He would look at the colors and patterns of the river to identify where a stump might be buried or where there was sudden current. 

The bus driver read the asphalt this way, slowing to avoid invisible-to-me dips and depressions, speeding up to overtake slower coaches. It was very professional. We stopped for coffee once, and I bought some grilled meat from a roadside vendor. It was good and well-fed cats swarmed. 

No dogs. They don't like them here. It's often on my mind. 

As the sun set, the mountains changed colors as deliberately as someone turning the "hue" knob on an old television. A dazzling variety of yellows and reds and golds. The little hills looked like scoops of gelato in the window of an Italian sweet shop. 

A long journey but not an unpleasant one. I was fresh, and I enjoyed my reading. We pulled into Fes in the evening. There was the usual weirdness where randos get on and off the bus in the middle of nowhere. It's a charter, one city to another, but as you get close, certain passengers gain strange privileges. 

At one point, the driver lost his temper with a Mercedes and several riders were cheering him on and laughing at his probably creative curses. I laughed because they were, and people shared their smiles with me.

At the main station, I was accosted by the traditional cabmen and tourmen and facilitators of convenience. They're all liars and actors, of course. The driver was like, "Where you stay, Fes? You have riad?"

It was very kind of him to have taken such an interest in me, almost a responsibility. After the event with the money, I felt like I could trust him and he felt like I was a babe in the woods. 

I told him I was staying in the Old Medina, and he pointed to where the petit cabs were. "Tell driver 'bab boujloud' 'bab boujloud.' Now you say!"

I said something closer to babaganoush, but it satisfied him. He patted my shoulder, and I touched his arm, and we will never see one another's mustaches again in this life. 

Got a cab, he offered me a newspaper cone full of peanuts, and I told him where I was staying. He understood, so I didn't need to mention the babaganoush. The bus station is in the "new" part of the city, so it looked like anyplace. Starbucks, big gas stations, shops. We left it behind and made our way to the ancient walls of the medina. 

He kicked me out near an old post office, and the second my feet hit the cobbles, a dude was like, "See-mon?" I had given an estimate of my arrival, but didn't think it would result in such an easy pickup.

His name was Mohammad, and he took my bags and I followed him down an alleyway about the width of my body. Two men could not walk abreast down this corridor, and a woman with breasts could not walk sideways. That's not a very good joke, but it is the one I wrote. 

The Riad Louna, for 'twas there I was to sleep, has a magnificent courtyard with a plashing fountain, tall trees to keep it cool, and blue-tiled columns. My room was up a winding stairway. I was transferred there from Mohammad to Ali who led me to the terrace where I saw an enormous moon shining on the minarets and tombs that define the Fes skyline.

He offered me a great deal, but I wanted only sleep. Good night, Ali. In the morning, I had plans to get hopelessly lost and to take a great many pictures. For now, for then, I wanted only a pillow between my legs and another in my arms. 

Travel day. Reading day. Arrival day. Fes day.

As I drifted off, I remembered that I had forgotten to ask what bab boujloud meant. It would soon be told.

Mood Indigo in Chefchaouen

Instead of "once upon a time," Arabic fairy tales begin with: "There was, and there was not." I read a very funny one about a man whose wife gave him the coins sewn into her hat so he could make one last shot at respectability. He pays it all to a mean man to stop him from hurting animals. Later, the animals make him rich.

Early in the morning, very early, before even the call the prayer, the sound of BBC Radio woke me up. It was super loud, and a tiny vent between my room and another made the perfect conduit for the sound to travel through.

I had gotten some decent sleep, so I didn't quite mind, but it wasn't amazing. I've been happy to avoid news of the US election, which has been hijacked by polls and ratings and advertising, so it was a little annoying to hear about one candidate's health and another's tax returns. But, I wasn't in my own home.

Fatima, the maid, had bused in from parts unknown and was staggering around in the kitchen muttering and tsking. Super old lady in a "peasant" dress. Maggie is from the last generation who remember The Raj and other mighty colonies, and this fit right in.

 

She was not, however, behind the loud radio.  That was Nigel, a dotty deaf British lodger in his 70s who wore a kimono and kept announcing he wanted coffee but was never seen drinking any. He would ask Fatima to pour it, walk away, let it grow cold, and come back to say he was ready for his coffee now after it had been cleared.

I drank my coffee alone and ate a croissant with butter and marmalade while I waited for Fatima to soft-boil my egg. Maggie had to wake up early to time the egg for Fatima. She came down the stairs with a kind of aggrieved majesty, and they bickered in French while I poured myself some hot milk.

The egg was wonderful, and I felt like a Sir John Tenniel illustration while I ate it. Had a little trouble breaking the shell, but I was being kind of fancy about it. Maggie picked up my spoon and smacked the egg. "This type of operation requires brute force," she said.

God, that rolled Scottish r. Swoon.

Egg was delicious. I dipped a little toast in there. Swoon. When I tried to clear my own plate, Fatima shrieked like I had threatened her with a knife.

 

Nigel was lounging on a chaise, and he asked me where I was from and where was I going. I told him I was from Seattle, "Ah, yes, there are airplanes there, yes?" and that I was here for another day and would be moving on to Fes and Marrakech.

"Yes, Marrakech. Of course, I owned a home in Marrakech for twenty-two years. Do you know Judith [Something]? She takes on lodgers in Marrakech. She's expensive, of course, but her home is ten times the size of this one."

I said the loud radio and the large house could both use a "volume discount," but the joke made no impression on him, and I wished him a good morning.

Dressed, packed the camera up, grabbed a book in case I got stuck somewhere, and headed out.

Maggie called after me. "When you're there, try and eat at Cafe Hassan. There's nothing nice to eat in Chefchaouen, and Cafe Hassan is the only thing decent."

"You're saying there's no chef in Chefchouan?" I asked her. These are the jokes, people. She grimaced and told me she would see me tonight "unless that very rude Spaniard changes his plans again, and I am free to answer the calls of the cafe."

 

The taxi situation in Tangier, and I would soon discover in all of Morocco, is hilarious. The distance a taxi is allowed to travel is determined by its color, and the color is different in each city. In Tangier, you take a blue "petit taxi" for short hops, say to the bus station, and white "grande taxis" on longer excursions. Say, to the airport or another city. 

Chefchaouen was about a three-hour drive away and there is some kind of "zoning" law that forbids them from going too too far. 

So, to get there I had to take a blue cab to the taxi station, a white cab to someplace an hour away called Tetouan, exit, walk across the street, hire a BLUE taxi, because that color means "long distance" in Tetouan, and take it to Chefchaouen.

Additionally, these are "taxi collectivos" which means you share them with four other people. So, when I got my grande taxi in Tangier it was with two girls and a massive harem guard.  Another dude was in the front.

When the driver beckoned for me to enter what looked like an already-full back seat, I cracked up and crammed in. 

We all just kind of waited for it to be over.  I closed my eyes and thought of The Raj.

 

In Tetouan, it was a mad scene with groups of bearded dudes yelling out the names of towns and squabbling. Arabic sounds like someone ordering sweet coffee and asking you to keep it a secret. It's all: "Cafe sucre shhh sucre shhh, cafe!" 

But somewhere in that, I heard "chaouen," and I was again the fifth in a cab. Chefchaouen? They outta call it Cabsharin'.

They pushed me in and off we went. So far, I'd spent a total of five dollars. So thrifty!!  Read a slight Paul Bowles book called Points in Time on the way. Kind of felt like something he owed the publisher and stapled together, but there was a funny extended section about a con man that I quite liked. 

The roads are in decent condition but full of abandoned wheelbarrows, donkeys laden with propane tanks, and sometimes weirdos on bicycles. Video game hazards. The driver just gunned it and assumed we'd be fine as long as we went as fast as possible.

Arrived at my destination just as I was getting a little motion sick. The medina I was there to see is famous for everything being painted blue. It's the only reason people go there. Hilariously (or not), I had to take another cab, a petit one, from where I got dropped off.

 

Very peaceful, quiet little medina with simple shops and cactus fruit and cats galore. I'd read that Muslims don't like dogs (though, I have to imagine a lot of that has to do with the economy. Dogs are expensive, another mouth to feed. Cats are better at scrounging and need less), but they sure love cats.

I saw one with a badly infected eye, and a man stopped to play with it, teased it with a sprig of mint while it batted at the air. I took a picture of it, but it's too gross-looking to post. But, god, that sweet cat seemed not even to know how bad its eye was. It jumped and napped and did all the normal cat stuff. I sat in a courtyard and drank a coffee and read The Prophet and watched it (and all the others).

A quiet little afternoon in a very beautiful place. The blue walls and doors are, I suppose, a gimmick now. At one point, sayeth the guide book, the color was used to demarcate that it was the Jewish neighborhood, but though they are long gone, the blue remains.

 

Refreshed from the coffee and the rest, my ribs back to their normal position (the harem guard's weight now a memory), I took another sweep of the area, blueing down a few corridors I hadn't tried yet. A nice dude in his 50s told me I was a good photographer, he could tell. He has seen many, but he knows I am a rare one and would I like to see something very very nice to photograph?

I was hoping it was his daughter's boobs, so I followed him. It was rugs. 

I had no intention to buy them, but he told me I had "the face of youth" and a "good heart" and that I was someone who loved his mother, and he kept hugging me and laughing, and he pulled out about twenty rugs.

That shit really works. You don't want or need a rug, but you start thinking, "Well, I do have wooden floors, and when will I ever have a chance to buy a Berber rug again, and these people could really use the money."

You get warned about this, and I was ready and prepared to walk away, but the price being low was something I wasn't prepared for. They were dirt cheap. I bargained anyway, which seemed to make him happy, and I bought two, which made him very happy.  

So, there it was. The knife went in so professionally, I never felt it. His name was "Honest Abraham" and he tore the packing tape with his teeth when he wrapped up my purchase. May the lord bless and keep him. Now I have to make room for them and carry them for another week. 

They outta call it Chumpchaouen.

 

Instead of cabbing it back to the cabs that take you to the cabs, I walked. Sweet little impoverished town with a brisk tourist trade. It reminded me a little bit of similarly-sized places in Vietnam. You don't see too much religious iconography anywhere but the skyline (minarets), and it's kind of nice not to have a bunch of Christs in your face like in Europe, like in Spain where I'd just been. 

Here, the Michelin Man is Jesus. You see him on the sides of buildings and at the ends of alleys. He's sort of everywhere. 

 

Rinse-repeated the cab-dance to get back. I got the front seat one time! Tried to read Edith Wharton's guide to Morocco, but didn't have the patience for it.  

Even with the rugs, doing it this way saved me money a guided tour would have cost me. I'm a fucking genius, a carpet-carrying genius. 

Back home, the "Polish girl" had arrived, but she was really Ukrainian. Gorgeous artist who travels the world painting "ground that has been impacted by war." That means rich father. She knew her stuff, and she's been all over. Maggie asked her if she'd painted Nagasaki, and she told us the bombs in WWII exploded over the cities which means as devastating as they were, people can still live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki today. 

Nobody will live in Chernobyl or Fukushima again.

She had just read Svetlana Alexievich's book, and so had I, so we were in immediate love. The cabs we could have shared together! The books we could have left on buses. I didn't see her again after that. 

Maggie said for dinner, I should have the "Gratin Crevette" at the Hotel Continental, and I asked if that meant "cheese with neckties." She called me a fool, and I left. Nice quiet dinner alone on the terrace overlooking the sea. A large moon in the sky. 

It's very easy to see why famous people used to hide out here. The Rolling Stones, all the gay Beats, the dude who played Rocky in the Rocky Horror Picture Show.  Enjoyed a "tajine" of chicken and olives. Thought about saving some of the olives to scare away beggars with, but I ate them. 

Back home, the elusive Spaniard had at last arrived. He was an artist and was with two more artists. They all make "mixed digital design" with "nature reflected in technology." So, rich parents. One was from Finland, the other from Canada. 

The Spaniard told an amazing story about meeting some of his countrymen on the plane here. On their phones, they were sharing pictures of cadavers with drugs in their bodies. Mule corpses. They wanted him to look, but he said he didn't like it. 

When they landed, they asked him to share a car with him, so he did, but instead of the hotel, they took him out to the countryside where they bought a giant brick of hashish (does it come in bricks?) and got high and drove suicidally. 

Then, he said, they took him here. Which is why he was so late. 

I told him I thought the story was going to end with him opening his jacket to show they had sewn hashish into his stomach. We all cracked up, and I went to bed. Finally someone laughed at one of my jokes! 

Traveler's Tales! There was, and there was not.  

Tomorrow, Fes!