Homeward Bound, Many Rugs Richer

“Without change something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.” ― Frank Herbert 

I woke up on the last day to some interesting messages, one from my body. First, I was told the picture I took of the cat in the desert had been posted on tumblr and had been shared many tens of thousands of times. It was exciting to see. I hadn't been credited, and a stranger lamented that I should have watermarked it, but I really don't mind. I've certainly "borrowed" enough media in my time. 

The body message was a rumbly, watery gut. Tummy Tumkins knows when he's not feeling well, and I suppose I'm fortunate it was the first time this trip. The guide book suggested it would happen sooner or later and I'd almost dodged the bullet. Was it the dates from last night? Was it the accumulation of tajines? Whatever the case, it seemed the right thing to do would be to take it easy today so I wasn't in distress on the plane in the morning. 

It meant I wouldn't be going to Essaouira. Which can be the sacrifice I made, since I wasn't here to help kill a sheep on Eid. This last day would be for writing and casual exploring. Like, super casual. 

Drank a ton of water, ate some crackers, took the longest, hottest shower, and went out in search of coffee. 

By now I knew the turns of the medina very well. Sped through the maze like a local and went right to the post office to buy some stamps. They insisted that the pretty ones would never make it across the ocean and only the ones with the picture of His Majesty would do. So, that was what I put on the postcards. Found a cafe, ate an avocado, drank coffee, and wrote. My relationships have all taken a turn for the platonic, so the content was all very suitable for His Majesty.

Went down an alley I hadn't been down and found myself in a covered area full of spice merchants and soap merchants. Good prices on things I had no use for. Vast buckets of kohl, bottomless barrels of indigo, pyramids of saffron.

I needed a razor, and I was able to negotiate for a package of disposables from a super-old dude. He didn't understand me until I moved my fist up and down on my face and said, "Rzzz," like a Frank Zappa album cover. Then, out came the Gillettes! Apparently, my rzzz had an American accent, because the guy in the store across from him started putting the hard sell on me in English.

"Hello, hello, my friend! Come drink tea with me and see what I have to show you. Can you guess what this is? Can you guess what I am holding?"

He had a bunch of crushed rose petals in his hand.

"Roses?" I said.

"Yes! You have won some tea. Come drink with me."

Well, why not. Why not indeed. It was a good pitch, right? Make the mark feel smart by asking them an easy question. I've seen lots of banner ads like this. They show a picture of something obvious like a kiwi fruit and say, "98% of Americans can't name this fruit! Click to prove you can."

I clicked on his banner ad and drank with him.

"Do you know where you are?"

The jungle, baby?

"No, this is The Mellah, home of the Jews. Jews were here."

Ok.

"Yes, but now there are no Jews. Can you guess what this is?"

Mint?

"Yes! You have won another guess. What is this?"

Cinnamon?

"No, it is aniseed. Aniseed. Smell"

Do I owe you a tea?

"No, you get three misses and this one was my fault, because I didn't let you smell it. Smell this one. What is it, can you guess?"

We played this for a while. I knew paprika, pepper, and ginger. I did not know cumin or turmeric, though to be fair I was pretty tired of the game at this point.

He could tell he was losing me, so he brought out a little baggie with some crystal-meth looking stuff in it. Finally!

"I will not make you guess this. It is eucalyptus."

It was very hard not to say, "What am I, a fucking koala?!" I just said, "Eucalyptus!"

He took a speck about the size of a grain of rice, like literally a tiny speck and dropped it in my tea. I took a sip, and my head exploded. It was the smallest amount, and I had taken the smallest sip, and it was like I'd broken into the Halls Menthol factory and fallen into the vat where the mix up the drops.

I wanted to buy some, but it was a lot of money. I ended up just getting a cake of solid "musk." You know, something for the sock drawer. He thanked me and said, "I will tell you a secret of The Mellah. Leave here and make a right, and then a right, and then a right."

That is, famously, how you make a left in New Jersey, and also very similar to the directions my host had given me to find her place. Maybe it's a Moroccan thing. I thanked him, waved my musk bag at him, said goodbye, and made a right.

Saw some dudes fixing tea pots and, like with the guys I had seen sewing up soccer balls, marveled at how we just buy new stuff back home. Like, when I was a kid we bought a new basketball when the air got low. Who has time to pump it?

After a few rights, I came upon three woman working on some beans. It was a kind of assembly line where they were, in turn, husking them sorting them and mashing them. To get the oil out. They were argan fruit, a product exclusive to Morocco. Apparently, it only grows here. How about that? My mother had asked me to bring her some back.

There was something weird about the women's process, something kind of theatrical about it, and it occurred to me they were probably only doing it because I was watching. It was like I had put a quarter in to watch the Country Bear Jamboree go through their animatronic motions.

Of course, I also related them to the Fates, spinning, measuring, and cutting the thread of life.

They sat in front of a store with a bunch of argan products.  I laughed about how, as usual, the thing I'd been sent to check out was a store. Come meet my family = rug store. You must see the fine things in this museum = leather store. Something special = shampoo shop.

So I bought some shampoo. Apparently, I'd also been served argan oil every morning in Fes at the riad. I'd been dipping my bread in it. It's a dessert topping and a floor wax! They use it for everything. You can eat it and reverse aging with it!

I headed back the way I came and imagined the women going back to their cell phones as soon as I was out of sight. When I got back to Musk Man, he was like, "Did you see the cemetery?" and I was like, "I did not, sir."

Apparently, he really had been sending me to something cool, an old Jewish burial ground. That was probably the first and only time someone meant what they said in Morocco.

Headed back to the Jemma and followed the flutes to the snake charmers. I'd read, to my disgust, that they sew the cobra's mouths shut to keep from being bitten. The older I get, the more animal cruelty paralyzes me. I would probably faint if I saw someone kick a dog. And the idea of them starving the snakes to death for a few coins was so disturbing to me.

Apparently, the government tried to put them out of business, but they said they couldn't make a living any other way and that making snake "charming" illegal would be like sewing their own mouths shut. And I guess the King on the Stamps threw up his hands, so, it goes on.

As I approached, however, I was relieved to see the snakes with their mouths open and fangs bared. But also sad to see how they were being treated.

Scary cobras mixed in with some poor, battered rat snakes. One dude walks around with a snake in his hands and tries to put it on people's shoulders, another dude flails at the cobras with his ball cap. It could not have been less artistic. It could not have been more medieval. The poor stressed-out things.

In Romania I'd read about the dancing bears and how badly they were treated by their Romany trainers. The government put them out of business and opened a reservation just for the abused bears to live out the rest of their lives. It's hard to imagine these guys being rescued and set up in some cushy herpetarium.

Laughing tubby with a hand full of serpent came running up to me and I ran away from him backward. Did. Not. Want. I did want to take a picture of the cobras with their hoods up, though. I knew I would have to pay for this. And I hated to contribute to the abuse, but... I did. No principles.

I asked the guy flapping the hat how much a picture was, and he said he would take it for me and we could negotiate later. This was a bad idea, but I handed him my phone. He took about forty (40!) pictures while I crouched in the distance.

It took a long time. He got away from the cobra, gave me back my phone, and asked for 300 dollars.

I told him no way. He was like, "I take many pictures for you! I must feed my family! You are thief!" Jesus. A thief. I was pretty numb to this shit by now. I wondered again how differently things would have gone if I'd landed here first. Would this have freaked me out? I put 100 dirham (about 9 or 10 bucks) on the ground and walked away without turning around.

He shouted after me, but I don't think he meant it. Maybe later, he and Wagon Man would team up and meet me in the back of the medina. The wagon would be full of cobras.

When I was safely far away, I looked at the pics. They were all terrible. Most of them were of me. Like, instead of the snake, he was zoomed in on my face watching the snake. And then there were some almost completely black shots of the snake in a shadow. Worthless. I got a coffee and sat and deleted them all. It was, I thought, what I deserved for wanting them in the first place.

I bought a smooth wooden camel from a bowl of wooden camels and headed back home. No one bothered me, but there was still the terror of the motorcycles. In Hanoi at least you knew if you got hit, you would immediately be run over by thirty more motorbikes and your misery ended. But here, you would probably just lie groaning in the street for a few days until a donkey ate your wallet.

Back at the place I packed everything up for the morning. Very early flight. I was out of books, so I took one from the decorative spiral. A collection of Chuck Palahniuk's short stories. British edition printed on that cheap paper they use. I replaced it with that Where the Jews Aren't book I'd finished a few cities ago.

Would if have been funny to take a picture of myself reading it in The Mellah? Probably not.

Took a nap with my head on my duffel bag. Dear old duffel.

Some hours later, I heard conversation, woke up, and headed down to the common area.

It was Kiefer with Cecile, my host, and a French couple. They invited me to join them, and I did. Listened to them speaking in French and marveled at Kiefer's interesting life. He'd picked French up in his travels and was just.. using it. I tried to follow along from the emotions.

Something about how shopkeepers in Paris are grumpy but shopkeepers here are nice. It was cute. The man in the couple was really animated making deep frowns for the Parisian imitation and broad smiles to represent the local guy.

I was meeting Cecile for the first time. These airbnb hosts are usually either all in your face or absent, and I liked her casual mix of the two. Pretty much just showed up at the end to make sure I had a nice stay and to stand me to some tea.

She arranged a car to take me to the airport in the morning, So nice!

It made me hungry, though, so I excused myself for dinner. Back out into the medina for what I figured would be the final time. Went out with nothing but my last 300 dirham. No wallet. No camera. No phone. I was winding all the way down.

Played with some cats, which was good for my heart, and ate a tajine at a hole in the wall. My gurgling stomach had settled itself hours and hours ago, and I figured I'd take one last roll of the dice. I really like the preserved lemon peel they top those things with. And the olives. My god, the olives.

When I walked back out, a shifty dude sped up to get up to my side and whispered, "Massage? Hammam?"

Well, why not?

The sun was starting to set and I followed him through an alley I hadn't seen before. I must have passed it seven times. The guide books all went on and on about Moroccan spas and how they were an essential part of any trip. I'd seen them advertised everywhere for weeks. Some people come here just to hang out in the hammams. I was down to about twenty bucks and wondered how much it would all be. And if it was really going to be some kind of sex thing.

Like it was in Cambodia.

We went through a beat-up old door where a stout woman greeted me, sent the shady guy away, and asked me if I wanted to be massaged by a man or a woman. I said a woman. She said a woman was 150 dirham. I paid her. Down now to 50. Five bucks.

I was led upstairs and shown a locker where I could put my valuables. I had none. I was taken into a room with a massage table and some candles. I was told to take off my clothes and wait. I undressed, wrapped a towel around my waist, and waited.

A sixteen or seventeen year old girl came in. She looked European and not Moroccan. When she smiled I saw she had braces. She was dressed like a nurse. She gestured toward the table, and I lay down on my stomach.

She went to work. Long professional massage with soothing oils. Was it argan oil, I wondered. I kept my eyes closed. It felt good after weeks of being cramped in trains and carrying bags of lenses and bags of books, I needed it. I couldn't fully relax, though, because there was the tension of wondering if she was going to touch me... intimately. In one of our talks, Ismail had implied that was the only thing that went on in these places.

I didn't get an erection, because I'm circumcised. It's those uncut savages that can't control themselves. I would have if that had been what this was about, but this was all legit. I paid for an honest massage and got one. Her hands still had oil in them when she massaged my head, and when I was getting dressed I saw my hair was all wigged out like I was the Wizard of Oz.

A soothing way to wind this whole dusty, wild trip down. On the walk back, the shops were mostly shuttered, and I was unmolested.

Right when I walked in, Kiefer wanted to know if I wanted to join him for dinner. I told him I'd just eaten but I would hang out with him. I had kiiind of planned on getting eight hours before the flight, but one more adventure was in the cards. I washed my face and we went right back out.

Nice long talk about the world and its ways. He told me French typewriters are large and have a key with a letter they use for only one word. The letter only appears in a single word, and they need a key for it. I loved that.

We went to the Jemma and ate grilled meats and didn't eat snails. People were lined up to eat snails, but that was not a line I wanted to be in. We talked about our work histories and our lives. I'm over twenty years older than him, and there's always the trap when you're an older guy of bragging. Like, you're trying to get over being jealous of the other's youth, so you build yourself up with tales of your exploits. I avoided it, but it was touch and go for a while!

He paid for everything, which was a cool surprise. I think we were both kind of lonely and kind of desperate to just relax and speak English with someone who would understand your nuances and subtleties. And in that regard, we were a comfort to one another. It was really the perfect way to wrap things up.

We stank of charcoal afterward, the wind had blown the grill's smoke our way, and we took a slow walk home to let it dissipate. And then I said good night to him and Morocco at the same time. And almost certainly goodbye forever to them both.

In the morning I met my driver and it was an easy ride to the airport. Marrakech is one of those easy cites that take ten minutes to get out of. Started reading the Palahniuk book and found it wildly not to my liking. Almost offensively bad. Why is that guy a thing? He writes like an uncut savage.

On the plane I was seated next to septuagenarian Belarusian who asked me to fill out his customs form for him. I did, and he repaid me by talking for seven of the ten hours.  He kept accidentally summoning the flight attendants. The touch screen entertainment centers made this too easy.

Most of the time he talked about a prank he plays on his grandchildren where he gives them coins he's cut in half with some kind of metal-saw. That's so Belarusian! Whenever we were offered coffee or water, he would say, "I want one cup... and a half!" Then he would elbow me with pleasure, like it was a secret we shared, like I was his grandchild.

And that was it. When I got home I showed the new rugs off to the cat. He did me the favor of pretending to be impressed.

It was a good trip. A lot happened. Camels, hovercrafts, giant wooden umbrellas. I think the Cafe Hafa in Tangier and the Cafe Clock in Fes were my favorite city locations. Sleeping in the desert was beautiful, and seeing the stars the next night was very special. And my god, the High Atlas mountains!

Really glad I had that surprise week in Spain and Portugal. Seven more days in Morocco might have melted me. Mission accomplished with reading, not so much with writing. What are you gonna do? Everything?

Scandinavia next, I think. Thanks for reading, readers. This one took a lot longer to manifest itself than the others. Worth it, though. And a half.

White Nights in The Red City

"Their beards were white, and they had traveled very far and hard; it was the time with them when a man rests from labours and dreams in light sleep of the years that were and not of the years to come." - Lord Dunsany 

There wasn't much reason to be exhausted. I had mostly been riding in a car or sleeping in a tent for three days, and yet, I slept in. Probably because I could. No schedule. No driver. Just me and my bag of smelly clothes and my dwindling collection of books.

I'd done a lot of reading on the trip, justified lugging those heavy things across the world. I hadn't done much writing, though. Which was one of the stated goals. To leave Morocco with a play. Took some great notes, outlined a few scenes, but nothing you could have friends over for a reading for. Setting goals when you're young is a terrible mistake and setting goals on vacation is a close second. You just make yourself feel goofy in the midst of marvelous sensation.

And marvelous this apartment truly was. It was all the things you see at fancy home-accessories stores put to actual use. Shabby-chic doors, decorative hinges, strange shelves, reclaimed tile, old books stacked in a spiral five-feet high. Charming. And that old maid shuffling around with giant keys on a ring. Just beautiful.

There were four or five bedrooms, and the others were inhabited by French couples (who mostly argued in whispers) and a kid in his 20s named Kiefer. Actor handsome in a casual way. Leather clothes, reference-photo haircut. He was a technical writer for a website, and they let him work from home, so he defined "home" as: "Wherever in Europe I want to be."

He'd been in Morocco for several months and before that, a year in Hungary, a year in France, six months in Spain. Why not? I was, of course, jealous of his youth and opportunities in a way I wouldn't have been if he had been rich. Tech made it possible, of course. The electric messiah, the AC/DC god.

I heard his story in the breakfast nook, which was at that hour the lunch nook, and when I evaluated my thoughts, I realized I was again thinking about roads not taken, roads not possible, and not that I was in the city I had researched the most, the city I had planned to fly into, the city I'd been cheated out of by that Portuguese airline. It was time to get out into it!

Of course, I wondered if I'd see the mean old Wagon Man, but it seemed very unlikely. Traced my way through the maze (I am the electric maze-siah), smiled at cats, dodged motorcycles and made it to the border streets that frame the Jemma el-Fnaa. The lamp people and the vinyl camel people and the decorative plate people waved flies away from themselves and toward one another, an endless game.

I went out without the camera, because I wanted to just freely move without any obligations. I did have my little notebook and remained amazed that the map function on the phone worked even without wifi or an active data plan. Why was it free?

Bought some crepes from a cart. An old woman (probably 35) fried them up right in front of me, and a tense guy with a black mustache took the money and made me some coffee. I sat on a plastic stool and watched people in the street. It was a day for winding down. I had ordered in French and thanked him in Arabic. Easy words.

This is where Africa comes to play, it's kind of their Disney World. Like, the rich oil kids come here to drink and fuck, since it's more secular than their home-country. The clubs have thousand-dollar bottles of vodka that you have to buy if you want a table. If you stand, it's you and six other losers huddled together watching the Petroleum Heirs aim champagne corks at female action figures in purple velvet.

Very strange to have crossed the country and seen only gentle shepherds and the weathered guys at the dry well and the women with their enormous burdens of donkey-grass and then here, the jewelry and the abdominal muscles and the sunglasses and the casual waste.

So many tourists from Saudi Arabia (I was told) and Egypt and Senegal (the coffee man said). Also, Europe, but I didn't need to be told. It's because, said the coffee man, they don't enforce the religious laws here. Drink up, and bring your little dogs too.

Thus fortified, I took a long walk to the Bab Agnaou, an incredible old gate with marvelous detailing and a majesty that defies the attempts of marketing or tour buses to drag it down. Stately and, I was thrilled to see, covered in actual storks. For two weeks, I'd seen nests in minarets or on Roman columns, but here the actual living birds. Very moving to see them and think they had been here for generations. The great great grandchicks of the ones I saw watched caravans laden with frankincense amble through the Bab Agnaou. 

Got lost in some kind of area where the cab drivers park. Enjoyed the cooking smells from their private grills. Got lost again in a pen where they keep rental scooters. There was no way out but to double back. Often when I'm in wandermode, I just wind up and go until I get trapped, and then I look for a hole in a fence or a crack in a wall, and they usually manifest themselves. But this scooterpen was air tight. Doubled back. 

Enjoyed watching some orange-juice guys squeeze oranges, got yelled at by a dentist for taking a picture of his sign. Gone were the days of apologies and "shukrans." I told him to fuck himself. The mask of civility was slipping permanently down. There's a weird kind of pressure here, an emotional exhaustion. It was much easier to roll my eyes at his concern than to respect his wishes. I mean, it was a public-facing sign, but there's some kind of cultural more I was violating. I usually respect it, but in the moment it was more sorrynotsorry. 

If he'd been a Tangier dentist, I would have bowed and deleted the photo, but by now...

All roads lead back to the Jemaa el Fna, and I poked around the edges. Lots of elderly British couples holding one another's fingers. Dates, raisins, figs. Phone cases, bells, scarves. A dark ebony boy selling selfie sticks. He sells selfie sticks by the seashore. People bought them. Nobody bought the fake wristwatches. That I saw. 

Had lunch at an "art bar." In the other cities I'd been to, the European investments were subtle. Riads behind gates or deep in the medina for example. But here, it was pretty obvious that some French dude or some British widow was like, "For the money, I can own a fifth of a flower cart in Piccadilly Circus, or I can have my own two-story restaurant in Marrakech." 

So, I ate smashed avocado on toast, the first real non-tajine meal I'd eaten in weeks. Reclined on a long cushion and read Emma. What a meddlesome matchmaker she was. It was, of course, fun to fantasize about moving here and opening The Romance Cafe and decorating the walls with my collection of Harlequin paintings. A lover of mine once had this idea. But it could be real here. 

What would it be like to actually belong. Would the locals stop grabbing at your sleeves? Or would the rug salesmen just be replaced with inspectors who needed bribing and gendarmes who needed greasing? Went home for a siesta. Wrote a little bit. Napped. 

It was still early afternoon when I stretched awake, so I got the camera and went out for one last round of snaps. Long walk through an open-air park, took a turn over to the mosque. Beggars wept on cue. I blanked them and one really screamed at me. It sounded like she called me a "wastrel." Wild how they can change on a dime like that. "Oh, sir, I'm so gentle and helpless, and... WASTREL!"

It was probably a gypsy curse. If it was, "You will return home to fall in love with a cat who bites you and sprays your clothes," then it came true. I didn't enter the mosque. You can't unless you believe. You must be at least this faithful to ride the mosque. Apparently the only one that lets you in the see the splendors of the architecture is in Casablanca. 

Prayed my way to a cafe and took notes and planned a trip to Essaouira for the morning. It's a seaside town where you can find a fisherman on the beach to sell you something he just caught and another man who will cook it for you right there. You buy the fish, give it to the cook, go buy some rugs for a while, and come back to eat it. Cool breezes.

It seemed like the perfect way to spend what would be my last day there. Home, so far-away seeming was suddenly approaching. A distant ship grown large. 

Cold dates for dinner. No one bothered me on the walk back to the Marvelous apartment. I must have appeared confident and resolved. They can sense when you're open and when you're closed. 

I saw the maid in the street. She was washing her feet in a bucket. Finally doing something for herself.  

The Snake Charmer's Union

Gazelles are almost the only animals that look good to eat when they are still alive, in fact, one can hardly look at their hindquarters without thinking of mint sauce. - George Orwell

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.

Grass Camels in the High Atlas

"How sour the knowledge the travelers bring away! The world’s monotonous and small; we see ourselves today, tomorrow, yesterday... " - Baudelaire

"Alone with his heart at last, does the fortunate traveler find, in the vague touch of a breeze, the fickle flash of a wave, proofs that somewhere exists, really, the Good Place?" - Auden

In the morning, while the Dutch children's inner windmills whirred gently in their beds, I crept downstairs to use the hotel wifi. The lobby was the only place with a signal.

It was dark as I moved down the hall. Through the open windows I could see the stars had all paired off and gone home, but the moon lingered (still hoping to get picked up). The lobby floor and furniture were carpeted with sleeping men, the hotel staff.

I had experienced this in Vietnam as well. If you work for the hotel, you sleep in front of the front desk at night so you can be there for the bakery man in the morning, I guess. Or the fruit man. It's just how they do things. It felt weirdly intimate to tiptoe past the busboy while he snored. I think in Hanoi, I said it was like being in Sleeping Beauty's castle after the wicked fairy's spell.

But here, thanks to the folk tales I'd read in the Sahara and thanks to Ismail's stories, I imagined I was Ali Baba sneaking past the dozing thieves.

Wrote some emails and watched the sun rise. The staff snuffled awake and went about their tasks. They had slept in their clothes, so it was easy.

Breakfast was hard-boiled eggs, thin crepes, and mint tea. There was also coffee, which the Young Hollanders must have smelled, because they came clomping down the stairs in their wooden Nikes to slupper it all up.

Ismail appeared from nowhere, as was his wont and his way. I'd gotten very good at packing my two little bags, so we were out the door pretty quickly. Pretty light schedule planned. Most of it would be driving up and through the massive High Atlas mountains. I asked him to make it lighter by skipping the visit to Morocco's Biggest Silver Mine.

Because I was sure it was just going to be like the necklace kiosk at any mall in any city, and I felt like asserting myself early was a better strategy than standing awkwardly while a salesman showed me about "bracelets for my sweetheart." I mean, while I "learned about the science of metallurgy" or however they were going to position it.

This made it kind of silent in the car for a while. Like, we were kind of friendly, and I liked him, but there was this constant subversive tug of war. This whole country is a Sears catalog. Colors and objects floating in the air trying to entice you to buy them, market stalls flipping by like pages.

I broke the tension by asking for clarity on the Gazelles thing. I asked if "the gazelles" was a nickname for Ali Baba's gang or if they were actual gazelles. He said, "Oh no, gazelles are what we call beautiful girls in Morocco. He has forty girlfriends."

Yesterday, you said they help him steal.

"No, no. They are his wives."

Ali Baba and the forty wives!

"Well, he isn't married to all of them. He still likes to have his fun."

As we passed through villages and towns, he pointed out the capes the women wore. They were knotted at the shoulder to show they were married. "When they wear the knot, they are safe from snakes."

Like the horrible asp?

"No, men are snakes."

So, women are gazelles and men are snakes?

He laughed at this. The picture being painted was that if you're a woman in these traditional villages, you have to get married or anyone is allowed to abuse you. Once married, only your husband may. I had learned previously that women do all the work (and the optics bore this out), but he told me it's also expected that husbands beat their wives "lightly" to keep up appearances and because it's expected. 

So, Spain was a bad place to be a pig. Tangier, a bad place to be a mouse, and most of the world is a bad place to be a woman. 

We stopped at The Valley of One Million Palm Trees. It was pretty stunning. Golden mountains rising dramatically over a bending "river" of palms, most heavy with dates. The trees make a gorgeous curve as your eye follows them to the horizon, and the contrast of the green against the dusty valley and the burnt yellow fruit was marvelous to experience. 

On the other side of the highway was a centuries-old slave market.

We stopped for lunch in The Hollywood of Morocco. There's tons of film production here and has been for many years. Lots of famous movies, Lawrence of Arabia, parts of Cleopatra, Gladiator, etc. I can see why. Picturesque, cheap labor force, plenty of people who speak English, easy access to the desert, etc. Plus, there's the momentum of it having been here before. 

So, there's also lots of TV production. Over mint tea and a tajine (!!), Ismail told me the amazing story of how a dude from the show Prison Break was injured during a shoot and live-tweeted about how terrible the hospital was. He said the operating room was full of cats who licked his blood. I would, of course, have paid extra for that. 

He, Ismail, then went on to say the health care in Morocco was a scandal and a crime, and that most people's health plan was "don't get sick." I told him it was the same in America. It was so depressing, we got coffee. 

He asked me to choose between Tom Hanks and Nicholas Cage and say who was the nicer person and who was the better actor. I said Hanks was the better actor and Cage was the nicer person. He said I was half right, that Hanks was both. 

Apparently, he had been a runner for several recent productions, a job that involves having a car and knowing where to get whatever an actor needs at three in the morning. At the end of the Hanks shoot, he took photos with the cast and shook their hands. At the end of the Cage shoot, he told them to meet him somewhere and flew off in a jet while they waited. Classic Cage! 

We wrapped up. The cashier stood in front of a picture of himself standing next to Ben Kingsley. Ismail asked if I wanted to go into one of the studios to see a plaster Sphinx. I declined. So we were off once again. A fountain had a giant film reel that squirted water. 

As usual, just a few minutes outside of the city, we were in the wasteland, cruising through dark valleys or across barren plains. This region was known as The Road of One Thousand Kasbahs. Kasbah, apparently has several meanings: Fortress, castle, house. I guess a man's home is his kasbah. They can last a long time or they can be washed out in a minute. 

We saw many melted mud huts with satellite dishes. "So they can watch football." The Moroccan team is addicted to hashish "this is well known," so they never win. So, the locals have adopted the Spanish teams. They love the Spanish teams. I was told. 

Often on the side of mountains, we would see Arabic words spelled out in white rocks. He told me they said "God, Country, King" to remind you of the order of your obligations. I didn't tell him I despise all three of those entities back home. My mountain says "Cats, Records, Fernet!" Sometimes Pernod. 

We pulled into Ait Benhaddou, the cool old village of kasbahs that have been the background of a million shows and movies. Man Who Would be King, Jewel of the Nile, Last Temptation of Christ, and cetera. 

It was quite beautiful and very interesting. The sunlight made strange gilded shadows on the ancient walls. I was given to a tribesman in a Dodgers cap while Ismail took a smoke break. He didn't give me his name, so I called him Tommy Lasorda. 

I followed Tommy through a dry riverbed and through a gate that had been built for Game of Thrones. This place was used as one of the cities Daenerys liberates. Pretty cool. There was a long, winding walk through the village and up the hill to the lookout structure. Plenty of rugs for sale along the way. 

Tommy could tell I wasn't a buyer, so he didn't push. He did show me a very interesting collection of wooden locks that use a cunning system of pins to open and close. I was tempted to buy one. But it seems now ridiculous that I was. At the top, couples took selfies and asked other couples to photograph them. There was a glorious view of the valley and the mountains and the sheltering sky. 

It was fun to imagine being on top with a bow and arrow and firing down on goblin wolf-riders. 

I got my fill and Tommy took me back down a different way. An aggressive rug seller tried to get me to enter his home. I declined and he was incredulous. "Not even to see and not buy? Not even to know? Really? Really??!"

His voice pitched very high at the second "really" and he continued to say it to my back as I picked my way through the stones and back to the new village. We crossed a bridge Tommy said had been built to help people during flood times, and it was so strange to imagine the cracked earth beneath ever being a raging river. But apparently it is so.  

Gave Tommy a nice tip and hooked back up with Ismail. He suggested I eat the couscous at a place he knew (got a kickback from) so I did. 

And then it was many hours of driving. That was the end of the official tour -- if I was sure I didn't want to see the silver mine, that is. I was sure. So, we drove and talked and listened to more of the hot beats from Mali. We talked about girls. We talked about cars. He said the most important car part in Morocco is the horn.

"When you test a car in America, you kick the tires. Here we honk the horn. If it is loud, the car is good."

His car, the horn was great, had a turbo function and whenever we passed another car, I would shout TURBO! in a "Sunday Sunday Sunday Monster Trucks!" voice, and we would giggle.

We stopped at certain vistas to take some nice shots. Children would manifest from nowhere and offer grass camels. He had warned me not to take them saying, "I know you are good and maybe have pity for them, but if you pay them for grass camels, they will never go to school. You must refuse the camel, and if they force it into your hand, place it on the ground and say, 'Go to school. Go to school.'"

It was, of course, heartbreaking. The children were small. I couldn't make myself say "go to school," so I just murmured "la shukran."

This happened everywhere we stopped.

One area had weird rock formations that I was told were called Monkey Fingers. It looked more like droppings to me, but Ismail said he thought they looked like monkey penises, so I named that stretch of the trip "Escape From Dick Valley."

                                                                        (not my pic)

Then, long climbs, winding up up up, often passing strange double-decker trucks with terrified cattle on top. Lots of construction. Apparently, one of the world's largest solar panel installations is being set up here, huge international investment. There were signs of the roads being widened to prepare for the forthcoming heavy equipment.

We stopped for candy bars at a truck stop. Truckers drank coffee and played with their phones. Ismail asked me to make sure I left him a five-star review on a travel site. I said I would. Then he asked if it was okay if I paid him now. I said, "I ain't payin' you SHIT!" in a Brooklyn voice, which I thought was funny, but he looked legitimately distressed.

I paid him. It wasn't funny.

The road was slanting down now, and the mountains became hills and the hills olive groves and the groves small houses, and then... Marrakech. The Red City. Spread out and strange, palaces and markets and city sounds, crowds of men in white robes. Dark men with fists full of watches. Oil-rich bachelors in expensive suits.

At the Jamma el-Fnaa, we made our too-sudden good-bye. Through the window at a roundabout, he shouted something in Arabic to an old man with a wagon. While men on donkeys complained and men in cars honked furiously, the door was suddenly open, the old man took my bags, tossed them into his wagon and started off. I had to follow him or lose them.

Goodbye, Ismail. Goodbye and thanks for all the gift shops. I looked back once and he made an embarrassed smile, which I returned.

The wagon was now far ahead and disappearing into the crowd. Pipes played. The air was full of spices.

Ali Baba and the Forty Gazelles

Most illingest be-boy, I got that feeling
'Cause I am most ill and I'm rhymin' and stealin'

Ali Baba and the forty thieves
Ali Baba and the forty thieves
Ali Baba and the forty thieves
Ali Baba and the forty thieves (x4)

Torching and crackin' and rhymin' and stealin'

"There are still dinosaurs in Morocco," said Ismail. I played along.
"Impossible!," I said in the voice of a British explorer, "Stuff and nonsense!"
"It's true," he said, "and you will see."

In a few miles, we passed an enormous plaster T-Rex, and I sang the "Jurassic Park" theme in a Betty Davis voice.

We had left the desert after breakfast and were making our way from the Middle Atlas mountains to the High Atlas. Somewhere around here were also the Ante Atlas, but I couldn't keep them all straight. As the camel-riding places faded, they were replaced with "fossil museums," since there's tons of excavation out here.

But, as I learned in Fes, there's no such thing as a museum in Morocco.

We pulled up to one of these and Ismail encouraged me to go inside to learn about archaeology (is that the right field?) while he smoked. I knew this was going to be another gift shop situation, so I was resolved to have it be over with as soon as possible.

Dude met me at the door and led me into the back where an enormous Wile-E-Coyote-style buzz saw, something from Snidely Whiplash's porn collection was cleaving sections out of a giant cube of rock. Another dude had what looked like a giant floor waxer, and he was polishing the rectangles the saw was chopping out.

Inside the rock...hundreds of snails, squids, and trilobites. The stuff of a thousand science text books, the primordial soup that once was Life on Earth. Cool to think the desert was once the sea, that the world was once the sea.

Certainly fun and interesting to see but dulled after I was led into the next room which was about a mile-long warehouse of dinner plates, conference tables, coffee tables, and earrings all made from the stuff. Cool, I suppose, but it's hard to imagine paying more than a nickel for them after you see how very not rare all this stuff is.

Will be cool in ten million years to see coffee tables full of the cell phones and plastic water bottles from our oceans.

There were several busloads of (other) tourists pawing over the fossils, so it was easy to lose my guide and get back out to Ismail. And that's how I made my escape from the Etsy of Evolution.

He was like, "You weren't in there very long," and I was like, "I hope I didn't offend the trilobites," and we were off. The next leg of the journey involved passing through The Valley of Divorced Women to get to the Airport of the Donkeys. That all sounded perfect. 

For most of the trip, we were in something called the Ziz Valley. Ziz means gazelle, and many of the places we passed had little gazelle logos on them. The gas stations were called Ziz. It all sounded to me like one of the books L. Frank Baum wrote when he was tired of the Oz books. I asked a lot of questions. 

Why is this area called the Valley of Divorced Women?

A lot of them move here.

Do they marry again?

Only widows marry again. Divorced women are no good. Some do, maybe, but it is frowned on. 

That just made me want to ask more questions, but I didn't. I also learned that the goal of getting married for a Berber is so you don't have to do anything anymore. You can have up to four wives, and the women do all the work. In fact, if it's discovered a man has done any work, he is ridiculed. 

Children also work, but the boys try to get married as soon as they can so they can stop. 

The truth of this seemed to bear out when we passed through villages. Every man I saw was sitting in a doorway or with other men in cafes. Women had giant burdens on their backs and shoulders, comically large bales of alfalfa to feed the donkeys with. 

Boys drove the donkeys and dreamed, I suppose, of the lifetime of backgammon and free sex in their future. 

We pulled into a small market as I was telling him it was surprising the Valley of Divorced Women didn't have a larger population. 

It, the market, was fantastic, and I was very glad we were there. It was exactly what I wanted. A local place full of people trading spices and animals and vegetables. Very few tourists, it was a legitimate Market Day in a small-ish town. It seemed like real life. 

Meat hanging from hooks that would be in someone's oven that evening. Vegetables that would be in someone's salad that night. Animals being traded, dragged by the leg, tied to posts. Like, it's tricky, I'm coming from a position of privilege, so there's something a little... off about my taking the position of Magic Observer, but.. it really gave me a lot of pleasure, and felt like a Richard Scarry book. It might be wrong, but it's how I felt. I loved being there and seeing it. 

Cats were everywhere, of course. Well fed, happy. A man at a spice place gave us tea, and we stood there and drank it. It meant, I think, I was supposed to buy some saffron or rose hips or something, but I didn't want any, and I wasn't really aware of it, but... apparently it was the height of rudeness for me to drink and not even consider buying. Ismail kept putting me in these situations. Like, these kind of passive pushes to buy.

He knew everyone. At another stall, I bought an overpriced wallet from one of his friends. To make up for not having spent anything. It was a yellow leather thing, and I can't find it now. It's the one thing I lost from the trip. Besides my innocence. Haw! I made myself laugh calling the kiosk a Berber Shop.

The Airport of the Donkeys was a huge area where everyone parked their donks while they shopped or sold. Like, it was a parking lot for the villagers. They brayed and chewed and snored and displayed their concupiscence.

Over a hundred, it seemed like. Maybe it was kind of a glimpse into what it was like back when everyone took their carriage to the theater.

One was tied next to a wall with peeling paint and a long, looping sentence in Arabic. I asked what it said and I was told "Cleanliness is next to godliness." Ain't it the truth, folks. Ain't it the truth.

We left. I was in a good mood. I had hoped to get a sandwich there, but it was the sort of place where you buy dinner for eight for a weekend. So, I hoped we would stop for lunch soon. We did, but it was another hotel. He swore it would be better than the last one. I ordered the couscous. You can't screw that up... right?

They didn't. I hope the fifteen-cent kickback he got was worth it.

After, we listened to his music. It was "the hot sound from Mali." I quite liked that, listening to beats from a genre I wouldn't otherwise ever have heard. He said all the best bands were from Mali and that's what everyone in "the Maghreb" was into.

That's an old political term for this region (including Algeria, Libya, etc.) and there's some linguistic connection to it that gives us the word "Moors." I don't know how it all works, but it also used to be called The Barbary Coast. Berbers, Barbary. Shave and a haircut, two bits.

So, today was working out very nicely (if you disregard the fossil shop).

We drove for about an hour enjoying the music, then down into a valley, a gorge, really, and I was given half an hour to hike. He drove away and left me to explore. It was like a national park sort of area. Locals picnicked and played in a trickling little river. It was cool down there, and the mountains rose high above. A very pleasant walk accompanied by birdsong and peace.

Men sold rugs on the rocks, of course. Women in headscarves checked their phones. The families here seemed more middle class. There was a hotel built into the side of the rocks, but it had been smashed by a boulder. That must have sucked. It looked like it had happened long ago.

I tried to imagine living nearby and coming here to relax or to write. I suppose if my four wives were scrubbing the donkey, I would have plenty of time. Maybe I'd bring three of our daughters if it wasn't prickly pear season and they weren't needed in the fields.

My reverie was broken by the sound of English being spoken in an American accent. Fat dude with a white beard was telling his Ismail that the "government was infringing on state's rights" and that people were tired of it. He said "liberal cities like Austin and Seattle are setting the agenda for the rest of us and people were tired of it."

It bothered me a great deal. Like, why bring that poison over here? Like, the grasping tentacles of the federal government must be wrecking your life. Times must be terrible. You must be drowning.  Oh... wait, you're on vacation in Morocco and have a hired driver to take you from one gift shop to another. Tell me again how the liberals in Seattle have stomped on your rights?

It was making me angry. And I thought what a surprise if I were to start yelling at him in English. But, he was just some gassy old man. It was a good reminder, though, that I mostly live in a bubble and that the goofy people they make fun of in news videos are real.

And, of course, I wondered if Ismail liked me more than his driver liked him or if we were all just whales and I was just money to Ismail. Like a donkey in a fairy tale that coughs up coins when you beat him.

The guy wandered off, and I found the car. Ismail could tell I was in a bad mood and he asked if I hadn't liked the gorge. I said "my gorge rose when I saw another American," but I don't think he got it. He said that he had also seen that dude, though. And heard him.

I decided to try empathy and decided the old guy didn't have anyone to listen to him at home, so he was getting it all out here. I'm glad he found his outlet, but I'm sorry I had to hear it.

We moved on, another hour, more magnificent mountains in the distance, more vistas and palm trees. Dates. Olives. Apples. Fertility. And then not. We came to a little station on the roadside where an old well stood. It was a Berber well and had been drilled by foot pedal. Pretty fascinating.

There was a tent made of camel wool (!!!) and two dudes. Ismail smoked with one and the other took me to the well. There was a cave underneath that used to be where a river flowed. It was a little like the Cu Chi tunnels in Vietnam, I suppose, but I didn't have to crouch, and there was a lot of light coming in from the well openings above. The well system went for miles. But we only walked for a little bit.

Back at the tent, there was tea. And I'd learned tea meant money was supposed to be exchanged, but... I wasn't sure what there was to buy. Ismail was trying to act casual but it was clear something was supposed to happen. The four of us sat in the tent without speaking.

Finally, I said, "thank you for the.. tea?" and we left. I saw Ismail slip one of the guys 20 dirham, but I don't know if he knows I saw. I guess I was supposed to pay for the well tour? The ambiguity of these situations, the suggested obligations were almost as oppressive as the desert heat. But they also made me kind of... resentful?

We drove for a few more hours. He wanted to hear my music, so I gave him my player to plug in. It was a funny mix of country and sappy Chicago love songs and hardcore industrial and "music for the summoning of male sexual potency." I didn't tell him that part. We just listened. He knew the song Turn Down for What.

Randomly, he asked me if "douche" was a bad word in English. I said it meant, like, a person who behaves badly. He said his last clients had been from Texas, and when they passed a car wash that said "auto douche" on it, they cracked up and wouldn't say why.

More small villages, more lazy men and women bent with age carrying large bundles on their backs. Like a Led Zeppelin album cover. Randomly, again, he asked me if I'd ever heard of Ali Baba. I said, "Sure, Ali Baba and the forty thieves? Open Sesame? That guy?"

He said yes, but that in Morocco, they call him Ali Baba and the forty gazelles. Which I loved. They love gazelles here so much!

So, I was like, "Gazelles and not thieves?" and he said, "Yes, gazelles. But they help him steal."

And we both laughed and smiled for a long time until the music turned into Italian horror movie soundtracks and the energy changed. I still don't know why he brought it up.

                                         
We drove up a "switchback" road until we were high in the hills, and we pulled over so I could see what we'd done. It was very beautiful to see how the road had been made and how it turned back on itself. I took a nice picture.

Then we left. Apparently, that's one hour of the trip, going up to see what I think is a famous view, then back. We pulled into our hotel for the evening. Nice place filled with Dutch students who I wanted to sleep with. I felt like a bearded lizard, though. And I was too tired to tell them I'd written Tulips of Fury. But later, oh but later, how I imagined their breakfast-waffle skin and their mouths of syrup.

Ate a tajine (surprise!) for dinner and fell asleep early. Woke in the middle of the night and went out on the balcony, since I had one. The sky was full of stars, the ones I'd missed in the desert.

It felt like a dream, like some kind of wish fulfillment. I was sure I saw Mars winking from the eye of Taurus. I was so happy. Some force awakened me and compelled me to go out to the balcony to see it. I breathed in the cool mountain air and felt clean.

Majesty.

I read until morning. A cloud of gnats rose from my toothbrush, but I didn't kill them. I pretended each one represented one of Ali Baba's gazelles.

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.