I've left a few things out. Ismail had an endearing habit of adding "inshallah" to most sentences. It means, "If god wills it," of course. And it's interesting to think that someone is in constant fear/awe/respect that even something like "We should be there in ten minutes" needs an "assuming the lord allows it" tacked on.
It was more of a vocal tic, though. I lot of people I met there or spoke to there had it.
So, the way it worked out with with the old man who now had my things in the wagon was...
I had told Ismail the street I was staying on. Cars are forbidden in the old medina so he couldn't take me there, but these old wagonmen are allowed in. I had preferred to walk, since I had decent directions, but Ismail thought he was doing me a favor.
He paid the old man twenty dirham, i saw the man take it, and told me that was a fortune and not to give the man any more money. I thanked him. "He will get you right to your door, inshallah."
As it turned out, Allah did not will it.
Wagon Man had a close-cropped white beard, wore a tight-knit white skullcap, and had a long brown robe. It's the sort of thing I've read is called a dishdasha or djellaba. And I had a djellaba time keeping up with him.
The bag in his wagon, which was really just a pull-cart, had all my clothes and souvenirs in it. The "important" stuff was in my seeksack on my back. So, if he had made a dish-dash for it and taken off with my trousers, it would have been annoying but survivable. Losing the backpack would have required a visit to the embassy.
The sun was setting as I caught up to him. In the distance I could see the enormous tower of the Koutoubia Mosque and all around us was the seething crowd of the Jemaa el-Fnaa. The Jamaa el-Fnaa is the main draw in Morocco. It's like Times Square with cobras instead of Elmos and apricot sellers instead of hot dog carts.
It's cartoon Morocco with dudes in white robes playing the flute in front of baskets and men with jack o'lantern smiles spreading out their arms to show you a rainstorm of silver necklaces. Grilled meats, and braying donkeys, and blind cripples begging for your coins.
Massive open-air plaza with men telling stories on top of date crates, men offering to pull your teeth, men sewing up the leather of torn soccer balls, and everywhere tourists from everywhere. This is where Africa comes for action. It was cool to see non-Europeans taking selfies and acting crazy, running around and drinking fresh orange juice and telling their children to get the hell away from the snakes.
I would have time for all of it later (inshallah) but the quick-stepping Wagon Man was making a bee line for something called the Cafe France.
I had hoped to leave him there, since it was a good landmark on my directions, but he wouldn't listen to me or stop. I was trying to watch him and the directions on my phone at the same time, and I was also trying not to be burnt by waffle batter. A man with a bunch of garbage souvenirs was selling the exact wallet I'd bought at the Airport of Donkeys for one-fifth of what I'd paid, and while I stopped to shake with rage, Wagon Man moved on.
In the wrong direction.
He was lost. I saw him whispering to strangers asking for the street I was supposed to be on, and the way he was going was contrary to the instructions my host had written out, so I ran up to the wagon, took my bag out and thanked him. Shukran, my man. He lost his ancient mind, yelling at me, probably cursing. He spoke no English.
I was like, "Shukran, shukran," like it was a magic word and walked off. He wagoned after me and in front of a hotel started yelling at some kid in a jazz hat who sat smoking on the steps. Jazz Hat said, "This man says you didn't pay him." I was like, "He's been paid. Can you tell him to have a nice life and sweet dreams?" Ismail warned me there'd be days like this.
Wagon Man waved his arms like a figure from a political ink drawing in Punch magazine circa 1850. He made a snow angel of bullshit in the air. I just turned my back on him. I had seen Ismail pay him, AND he hadn't done his fucking job. I wasn't anywhere near my hotel. I wasn't over Morocco yet, but seeing I had been cheated on the wallet, and the constant emotional strain of telling people "no" were all embodied in this liar. And I was getting close to being over it.
They're all such wonderful actors. It's weird that their soccer team stinks, since they must all be excellent at faking injuries and getting free penalty shots. This dude knew he'd been paid and knew he didn't know how to do the job he'd been paid to do, so his new and actual job was to try and get a few for bucks out of me, using social pressure as a hammer and my weariness as an anvil. I had just enough strength to escape him.
And then, there I was, off the main drag, somewhere in the maze of the medina. With all my bags. With the light fading. I looked like a tourist in a political ink drawing in Punch magazine circa 1850.
The directions were very good until they weren't. Like everywhere I'd been, the old city is a rabbit's warren of danger, but Marrakech is especially difficult, since they haven't banned motorcycles from the walking areas. I guess I got spoiled in Fes where all you have to do is dodge the occasional donkey laden with lightbulbs. Here, it was Saudi Arabian women on a joyride in Louis Vuitton headscarves. It was like something out of an M.I.A. video.
So, you'd go a few feet, hear a roar, and have to jump to the side to avoid being run over. But as elsewhere, the only "side" is a store selling tea sets or wedding clothes or spices or leather bags or sheepskin rugs or rugs or rugs or rugs or rings.
And being with the bags meant boys are always running up to you asking if you're lost and can they help you. Liars, I thought. Demons and liars! Ifrits! Djinns!
I would blank them, and they would get angry. I'd left all my shy smiles up North. One yelled, "This is my country!" which I took to mean "I'm local and know how to take you where you want to go," and not "Get out, man whose ethnicity I can't determine but who is obviously lost!"
It would be particularly tricky to walk by someone, ignore them, realize you had gone too far and then have double back and walk past them again. They have infinite patience for your nickels. They'll wait all day and night like a bear at a stream waiting for the one moment when the loose change leaps suddenly out of the water and into the air. And into the jaws of their purses.
Eventually found the little opening between cafes that resembled the map. The rest of the directions said, "Take a right and then a right and then a right."
Which wasn't even remotely close to being true.
And yet, as if guided by some desert spirit, and though there was less light than in Carlsbad Caverns, I somehow found the tiny wooden Wonderland door with the same number as the address where I was supposed to be. It was simple, all you had to do was turn right and turn right and turn right and then dissolve into evaporated hate-crystals.
I rang the bell and waited. My bags, though light, were heavy now. I was a wildman from the mountains, hairclad and slick. Dark-eyed and blackbrowed, devoted to strange gods.
A tiny Frenchgirl opened the door and asked if I was Simon. I was. I was once again Simon.
She let me into a fabulously decorated two-story flat from a dream. Gazelle-shaped water faucets, crazy-quilt wooden picture frames, exposed brick, random splashes of paint, spiral staircases and piles of books. It was complete Bohemian majesty, and I floated up to my room.
A blind old maid, a kind of reverse-Fatima from Tangier, asked me questions in French. I just said yes to everything. Oui to everything. A thousand times oui.
And then I went to bed without any supper.
There is a famous logic problem in which you're faced with two doors and two guards. One of the doors leads to paradise, the other to death. One of the guards always lies, and one always tells the truth. You get one question, and then you must choose a door. That's Marrakech.
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