The Different Faces of Morocco

To the Kasbah and Beyond

I think it was her long dark eyelashes that first attracted me to Ms.
Zagora. That's not to say she didn't have a classic profile with beautiful
brown hair, a slender neck and long shapely legs, but it was those
eyelashes that caught my eye. Then again, it might have been the way
she could suck up ten gallons of water in a single swig that impressed me
the most. But according to our Berber guide, Ahmed, most camels can
do this.

My wife and I recently spent two weeks in Morocco, mesmerized

by the fabled souks and medinas of Fez, Marrakech, Meknes, and Moulay
Indress, along with the more modern environs of Casablanca, Rabat, and
Tangier. But, before returning home we made a side trip to the remote
outpost of Zagora for a camel trek into the Saharan desert.

111 Let me say right off the Sahara can drive a person mad. The
insufferable heat, the vast expanse of nothingness, the relentless shifting
sands. Ok, Ok, we were there in practically winter and the temperature
was a balmy 80 degrees and we only took a 3-day trek of at most 40
miles. I can dream, can't I ?

But I did live out a childhood fantasy of crossing at least a tiny

corner of the Sahara on a camel caravan. It was a rather small caravan,
my wife riding atop Miss Timbuktu and myself riding Lady, both Mali
desert camels, while two smaller Moroccan mountain camels, Ms. Zagora
and Madame Butterfly, carried our provisions. We weren't really given
the keys to the camels but had two young Berber nomads, Ahmed and
Brime, who were born and raised in the Sahara, lead us in and hopefully
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out of the desert. Ahmed told me the camels didn't have names so we
named them ourselves. All four were females and we christened them
according to their personalities; although after I got caught downwind of
Lady on the second day when she decided to relieve herself, I wondered
if we had named her properly.

Many people believe that Morocco is just one big desert which is
far from the truth. It is a country roughly the size and shape of California
on the northwest corner of Africa with a mountain range, the Atlas
Mountains, running lengthwise through the country. North and west of
the mountains along the Atlantic Ocean is a rich agricultural plain with
adequate rain for growing a wide variety of crops, the climate not unlike
that of coastal California. The Atlas Mountains shield the moist coastal
winds from the desert conditions that lie to the south and east.

The first peoples to inhabit Morocco were the Berbers, who have
inhabited the area since Neolithic times. Nowadays, however, the
population is mostly Berber and Arab with the Arabs constituting the
majority in the coastal urban areas of Casablanca, Rabat, and Tangier,
and the Berbers being the majority in the rural mountainous and desert
areas. Although the Berbers might be called the American Indians of
Morocco and the Arabs, who came to Morocco in the 8th century, might
be compared with European Americans, the Berbers still occupy a
mainstream position in Moroccan life and in the rural mountain areas, the
culture is Berber.

We met Ahmed and Brime in a camel coral in Zagora where they

were already busy loading the braying and spitting camels with supplies.
A short time later tents, food, water and everything required for three
days in the desert was loaded, and we were on our way at last, down a
dusty road lined with mud houses, to the Sahara and past a small
unobtrusive sign that read: Timbuktu 52 Days. Ahmed and Brime lead
Miss Timbuktu and Lady, respectively, my wife floating along ten feet
above the ground on Miss Timbuktu and myself on Lady, with the
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Moroccan pack camels, Ms. Zagora and Madame Butterfly, bringing up

the rear. An hour later the houses and road trickled out and before us
lay, well, nothing. It was just a stony wind-scaped landscape over which
for the next three hours we would spend getting accustomed to the
rolling motion of our camels and taking in this surreal place. Then, all of
a sudden Lady stopped and Ahmed points to the ground. This would be
our home for the night.

I couldn't help but contrast the stark isolation of the desert with
the rush of humanity we had experienced over the past two weeks in the
medinas (old towns) and souks (markets) of Fez and Marrakech. We had
joined eighteen other Americans in Casablanca two weeks earlier on a
Maupintour grand tour of Morocco. I ask Frank, a retired machine-tool
engineer from Chicago, why he and his wife came to Morocco.

"We ate at the Moroccan pavilion in Epcot and it just us started

thinking," he said. Kim, a young lawyer from New York, traveling abroad
for the first time, told me she purchased a Moroccan vase in New York
and she too started wondering about the place. As for the rest of group,
they had been everywhere else.

So, for the next two weeks with our Moroccan guide, Said, leading
the way, we visited more souks, medinas, kasbahs, and mosques; saw
more Moroccan mosaics, handcrafted silver, and handwoven carpets;
and ate more tajine, cous cous and pastila (pidgeon pie) than I care to
mention. We also saw veiled and tatooed Berber women in colorful
gowns bedecked with tons of silver jewlery along the roads in the Atlas
Mountains, and visited Berber villages where people still plow with
donkeys and travel on burros. Apart from a rare satellite dish powered
by batteries, things haven't changed since biblical times. I wondered
about a person watching Bay Watch in a mud house without electricity or
indoor plumbing.
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We dodged burros bearing heavy loads in the medina of Fez and

listened to the constant drone of shopkeepers imploring us to just take a
look. Normally, an asking price of 100 dirhams ($11) would being sold
from from 50 to 10 dirhams. We saw the circus-like atmosphere of the
Djemaa-el-fna (large square) in Marrakech, entertained by its haggling
traders, snake charmers, spice merchants, fortune tellers, and colorful
dancers.

Occasionally, an annoying young man would approach us outside

the medinas and offer his services as our guide. Fortunately, the
government of Morocco has started clamping down on these people, and
we didn't run into as many as our guidebooks had warned. These huslers
never bother me. I always pretend not to understand them no matter
what language they speak and simply talk back in my old college-dorm
lingo of Hofey-Scofey, which puts an of in front of the first vowel in every
syllable. Like cat becomes cofat (co-fat), and hello becomes hofellofo
(hof-el-lof-o). The language sounds like some strange dialect from god-
knows-where, although after you spend a day learning it, you can
converse with others quite easily. So, when this particularly annoying
guy bugged us outside the Djemma-el-fna, I gave him my puzzled look
and replied, Gofet lofost yofou crofeep. He kept asking me where I was
from and I kept telling him Ofamoferoficofa, Ofamoferoficofa! He
couldn't even understand America! After a while, he just shrugged his
shoulders and slunk off down the street, with me chasing after him
yelling, cofome bofack, cofome bofack! The poor guy couldn't get away
from me fast enough.

Now, all that seemed a distant memory as Ahmed and Brime

unloaded our tents and tied the camel's front feet together so they
wouldn't wander too far off. They then pitched our tent and prepared the
tajine, a traditional Moroccan dish of meat and vegetables, cooked slowly
in an earthenware vessel. A blanket was spread out under the stars and
while the camels munched on nearby thorn bushes, the four of us had a
feast of tajine, farina bread, olives, dates, oranges, and mint tea. Neither
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Ahmed nor Brime spoke much English, speaking their native Berber
dialect and French, but they knew enough English that we communicated
adequately. When I finally broached the subject about the bathroom
facilities Ahmed said "desert" and motioned that we could go anywhere
we wanted.

Of the eighteen people in our Maupintour group, only my wife and

I took the three-day side trip into the Sahara; the others opting for an
hour-long camel ride at sunset through the dunes near Erfoud, where the
group stayed one night. "It was fun but I've had enough camels for
awhile," Joan, a young woman from Louisiana, said after her ride.

Visiting a country like Morocco with a tour company is not a bad

idea considering the language and custom differences. We were lucky to
have an excellent guide in Said, who spoke excellent English and has
been leading tours through Mococco for thirty years. He also kept
anoying hawkers at bay with a few choice words. I don't know what he
said, but whatever it was, it had a great effect. They avoided us like the
plague.

"Mwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw," the sound seemed right in my ear the

next morning as I jumped out of my blankets. Ms. Zagora's head was a
few feet from mine right outside the tent, protesting Ahmed loading her
up with supplies. Ahmed and Brime had already prepared an elaborate
breakfast and were now already loading the supplies on the camels for
the day's ride. It was a cool sixty degrees and the morning sun gave the
desert a rich golden hue.

"This is the real thing," I thought to myself our first entire day on
the desert. Just me and my camel and the desert. Lady, rolling along in
her rhymic gait, her head bobbing in that noble camel style. Then all of a
sudden she shook her head and gobs of green slime she had been
chewing flew back and hit me in the face. Yeah, this was the real thing
all right.
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By the time the third and last day arrived, however, it was getting
to be the tired thing. Even with the varied terrain ranging from windy
rocky plains to lofty sand dunes to even an oasis loaded with date palms,
my wife and I were looking for civilization. We were supposed to arrive
back in Zagora at three o'clock, but it was already two and all we could
see was sand, sand, and more sand. It was starting to get warm and
with the exception of stopping briefly for a snack of bread, oranges and
mint tea, we had been riding since seven. Then, all of a sudden I saw
something on the horizon through the waves of heat. What could it be, I
wondered ? The desert doesn't have red. Maybe it was a mirage.
Maybe the heat was playing tricks on my mind. After all, it was 83
degrees by my pocket thermometer. And I was thirsty too. I now began
to make out some houses in the distance, and I could see that the red
object was a sign of some kind. And then I made it out: Coca Cola!
There is a God, I thought to myself.

Thirty minutes later Miss Timbuktu and Lady strode into the camel
coral and our once-in-a-lifetime Sahara trek was history. Two hours later
we were a hundred miles away in the Berber Palace Hotel in Quazarzate.
And although we learned that the desert camel has few peers in the area
of determination, it wouldn't have had a chance in hell that night beating
my wife and I to the tub.
the end -