July 31st: Tangier

On July 31st 1977 I was in Tangier.  I was on my way back to Europe after a disappointing summer in Morocco. I hoped that Tangier would make a fitting farewell.

I arrived on the day bus from Casablanca just after sundown.  After a long search I found a friendly pension where the senora directed me to the nearby hamam for a strange bath in green steamy rooms.  I made a tour of the Medina and sat in a cafe with my notebook trying to raise my consciousness.

The medina on the hill here is pretty nice, better than I thought and distinctly nicer than the waterfront.  It's got a character quite different from other Moroccan towns I've been in, more open and lively, looking towards Europe, distinctly cosmopolitan.  Hustlers have laid off me for the most part.  I'm in one of several cafes around a little square, colour TV behind with French-dubbed American trash, a little general shop opposite reminding me of those you used to see in British minor high streets, it's selling drinks and biscuits, also shampoo, shoes, a couple of djellabahs and all sorts - a general store.

I tried to find some optimism again the next day with little success.  I was in a town on the fringes of Europe in the height of the tourist season, so I felt I got what I deserved.  I knew Tangier as a home of the beats and I imagined the author of the Naked Lunch there, as I sat among what I observed as "the flotsam and jetsam of the world, as old men in dirty overcoats and slobbery beards paced the streets mingling with the pretty tourists and innocent  backpackers."

The following day I made my exit.  I spent all morning hassling at the docks trying to get on a ferry to Spain.  I failed to get on one boat and stayed with about ten fresh-faced young backpackers around the kiosk as that ferry left.  We waited standing by the ticket desk and the man behind did nothing except tell us to wait just that little bit longer; suddenly there was some invisible sign and pandemonium all around, masses of Moroccans were at the desk and money and tickets were flying in all directions, until it all subsided and the same bunch of us were left standing where we had beenwhen the first boat left.  Finally the ticket-seller made me change more money into dirhams for some mysterious surcharge, and I made my way up the gangway, the last passenger to get on.  They were still loading cars on as delay followed delay and I summed up a few feelings in my notebook:

I'm with the European kids sitting around an empty pool but no one seems to have good vibes from their Moroccan experience; only the Moroccans happy, excited to get away from their stewpot.  Kids roughing it, too little sleep, far too many hassles and another summer's Eurailpass is completed.  One thin blond girl is the only European smiling, she's surrounded by Moroccan hustler types, one with guitar, one with fuzzy hair and yellow shades and they're having a ball.  But the rest of us sit around wondering if the boat will ever leave.

"Let It Come Down" is Paul Bowles' novel about Tangier, set safely back in the colonial days of the International Zone.  Even then he wrote:  "One rumour he could not have circulating was that he had become a guide; in Tangier there was nothing lower."

Tangier Medina, 2003:  Picture by Chris Yunker, CC

June 28th: Tafraoute in Southern Morocco

On June 28th 1977 I was in Tafraoute in Southern Morocco.

Tafraoute is a small market town which serves as a hub for the villages around.  The people live in the villages rather than the town.  Tafraoute is in the Anti-Atlas, which is the last range of mountains before the Sahara as you go south.  The area is dry and the people cultivate gardens in their terraces, designed to catch the rain when it falls, which is not often; in 1977 it had not rained significantly for seven years.

Ali in his house: My picture

I had met Ali in the souk one day, an old man with a sad lined faced who lived in the village with tower-houses you could see from town.  I was a bit suspicious at first, afraid of hustlers as always, but Ali was lonely and just wanted company.  I knewt a Swedish couple who were travelling in a VW camper and together we spent time with him.  I liked Ali's house which was one of the tower-houses, with a fine facade, a staircase which lead up to the cool rooms at the top and a terrace where life was lived.  Lower rooms were kept unrendered and only finished when the need arose.   I spent hours in the peacefulness of his terrace with just the noise of donkeys and the muezzin breaking in from outside, the endless mint tea, and the stories of his religion and his family, the 1933 pre-colonial history of Tafraoute and the marriage customs, all told between us to me in French and translated into English and Swedish.

On this day we drove Ali to visit relatives in the Valley of Ameln a few miles to the north.  We were made welcome outside in the garden, happy proud people, the children approaching us shyly, the wife unseen in the house.  I found the opportunity to write in my notebook:

The Valley of Ameln:  My picture

The valley of Ameln, sitting under the shade of argan tree by a little village where the asphalt road has ended.  Looking at the too sweet fruit and the smooth skins of the nuts and the frond patterns inside. There is a slightly cooler wind today which makes it a little more pleasant in the midday.  Only the sound of the wind, a few birds' noises, maybe a distant truck for the valley is quite well populated.  An argan fruit falls and a bee passes.

The valley is less uniform here: we have passed beyond the highest straight ridge, at the place where there was a hidden side valley higher up, and past a place where the palms were thicker - they also have palm-bushes in this place.  Red earth mixes with the white, and there is more "green " grass and green bushes on the hills.  The traditional stone walls covered with brushwood surrounding watered fields and stone or earth terraces for that elusive rain. Villages on the edge of the hills or more rambling in the valley, like this one, old houses of earth, newer ones of brick and painted pink, sometimes with walled gardens, plenty of money here.  The life is simple and timeless, the few animals in good shape.  A house with a metal windmill, the traditional baked earth circle for threshing.

I liked to walk along the valley which Tafraoute sits in.  It was good to sit on the rocks in the early morning or late afternoon and watch the goatherds and the lizards and the bulbuls and the shrikes, and the women going to a well or collecting brushwood and the men riding on the tail ends of their donkeys to and from town.  I wrote this one day:

Tafraoute Valley:  My picture

Have walked out a couple of miles on the Irghem road, which goes through dry mountains along a dry river-course marked by a sandy stony bed and frangipani.  Not much out here but flies and argan-trees, and a few desert plants, a many branched cactus and what looks like tumbleweed.  A few squirrels on the way and I can hear tweeting birds in the background.  A grey shrike came to stop in the tree I'm sitting under only 3 feet from me - birds are so tame here.  A breeze blowing up the valley makes it cooler, though I left too late today and am getting thirsty.  Otherwise there is a nice desert silence, and only one car has come along the road.

Walking back now, getting thirsty, sitting on a water-chute by a dry well, just by the village of Donar Aguerd-ou-Dad, one of the Berber villages of Tafraoute.  All the women and children have gone up a little way in the rocks to pass the hot morning; maybe there's a well and they are washing.  Here there are tilled fields with nut trees, almonds I think, and date-palms and perhaps they grow a grain in the short fertile period.  More life here, but less than in the early morning.  Blackbirds and bulbuls and pigeons cooing.  The dusty incomplete rows of terraces which may be green in the rainy season but now just have a few palms and almonds. Where there are more crops the fileds are carefully fenced in with stone and adobe walls and brushwood on top, while inside they're green, with maize and squash, melons, palms and fruit-trees, and a little gate with a door and a lock.

Market at Tafraoute:  My Picture

There was a new concrete souk in the town with a weekly market.  Then it was full of white turbans and the men's heads turning to money as the animals changed hands.  They bought fruit and staples and luxuries for the coming week and had a good chinwag with people they hadn't seen since the last souk or maybe the one before, and then sat down for a tea and a 
soupçis to feel better about the world.  An old man who came up to me in the souk.  "De quel pays vous etes, Monsieur?"  He was very old with horn-rimmed glasses, a grizzled grey beard and a white turban.  "Do you know Southampton?" he continued in French.   "And Earls Court, big exhibition, nineteen hundred twelve."  "I have been there, and in Germany, with the circus.  We were acrobats, one year.  Very long time ago.  This is the first time you come here?"  "Yes."   "And you like our country?  Ah, good, I am glad.  Monsieur, I wish you good luck.  Goodbye."

I left with the Swedes on the direct route to Agadir, enjoying the opportunity to stop where we pleased as we drove along, something I could not do on public transport.  It was a beautiful semi-desert drive and we passed several of the kasbahs, fortified towns or villages, on the hills and ridges near the road.

 Ali outside his house:  My picture

Kasbah on road to Agadir: My picture

View tafraoute in a larger map

June 20th: Tiznit in South-West Morocco

On June 20th 1977 I was in Tiznit in southern Morocco.  I was just passing through, glad to have left the more northern regions.  Some Moroccans in Fez and Marrakech had told me that I would find things more easy and relaxed down south in the Souss and amongst the Chleuh Berber people.

I sat with a few other Europeans in the square late in the evening waiting for a bus on to Tafraoute which was due to leave at 2 in the morning.  The television in the cafe had been showing BBC footage of the Queen's recent jubilee, but nobody was watching and they hadn't bothered to dub the English commentary.  A man with a French registered Peugeot was trying to sell me a seat for 80 dirhams.  Another man was curled up asleep near my feet, waiting for the bus.  I watched young Moroccans stroll around this modernised town, a girl in modern clothes following her boyfriend/husband and his friends at a distance of a few paces.  I was reading George Eliot and beginning to get homesick.  I reflected on the previous few days.

I had left Marrakech with a friend on an afternoon bus which drove along the edge of the hills to the west of the city.  We got out at the little town of Ijoukak, which was probably not the best idea, as there was no later bus out, and no particular reason for us to be there.  I am sure tourists sometimes looked in, but it soon became clear that there was no hotel for us to stay in and the people were accordingly, understandably, suspicious of why we might have come.  We found a Berber restaurant for food while people said their prayers in a corner, and later a different place to sleep, a cafe where we had a room to sleep on the floor while men said their prayers outside the door; the patron had tea and soup and a few general goods on sale; everything was at very low cost. 

Tizi N'Test Pass in 2006:  Picture by Britrob,  CC

From there it took us a day and a half to reach Tiznit, a series of slow lifts over the Tizi N'Test pass and down into the valley past Taroudant.  I don't remember all the details.  The road through the mountains was just fine, beautiful and quite unspoilt, the local people so friendly, proud, sticking to their way.  We travelled in quite a good fashion, with little steps and a variety of ways; there was a lovely ride on the top of a truck, the villages in adobe looking old and turreted across the green strip of a river, different colours in the sandstone of the mountains, greenish through to purple and plenty of flowers; even higher up there were cypress and little thorny oaks; down below there were goats climbing the argan trees in the Souss valley.  Somewhere in the mountains we had a long wait:  we stashed our packs under a bush and set off for an hour's walk across the dry stony hillside, with just little bushes and herbs at our feet.  Later near the valley a man gave us a short lift in his van and then provided shelter for the night in his petrol station.

View tafraoute in a larger map

June 16th: Marrakech

On June 16th 1977 I was in Marrakech.  It was hot, it was the beginning of the European holiday season, and I was beginning to find that although Marrakech seemed more open than Fes it was no easier to access.

The Djemaa El Fna was the centre of activity and there were even one or two spots where you could sit at the edge and watch the action albeit at a distance: acrobats, story-tellers, sooth-sayers, magicians, musicians, snake charmers, a strange act with pigeons I could never follow.  None of this had anything to do with the tourism industry, it was purely Moroccan.  Some fancy cafes overlooked the square on the first floor.  Behind the square were the souks, attractive and possible to find your way around, and the streets of the old town, alleyways that you knew would lead to houses beautiful on the inside only, sudden glimpses into courtyards full of goods being stored or traded.  I wrote this in my notebook in the square one day trying to sum my experience up: 

Hot midday in Djemaa El Fna, for yoghurt in the hustlers' cafe, everything really quiet, no entertainers in this section now; the souvenir sellers under parasols on the ground, the boutiques open as always, some hustlers look hungry but they know me now, leave me alone.  Not even many beggars now, kids hanging around, older men walking singly, and tourists.

Picturesque it is, Marrakech, the world of the Medina, the clothes of the Berber women and their independent smiles, the men sitting in the shade of a wall with their djellabahs pulled around them and their pipes.  Hard, dry country.  And interesting it remains.  The closed in, intense way of life turns tourists into an outcast caste.  To be treated as a tourist always, that is hard, to be an object of derision for teenagers, to be treated as a friend only for the money, to be pestered and hustled at every step.

Marrakech Medina: My picture

A city of pink washed walls, fortified, standing on the edge of the desert, like the meeting point of mountain and Sahara culture, a huge square as the centre of entertainment and all the life of the city, the focus of it all, a paradise for eccentrics and hustlers.  Seven blind beggars and a lady from the Club Med in a see-through saffron djellabah, who strolls across the square as all eyes follow her.  A snake charmer and a mixed-up boy with four golden teeth.  Beyond  are rich souks and dusty living blocks, the Mellah, the Kasbah, the different districts around the gates, I've had happy times wandering in these areas, finding my way through the labyrinths. A peaceful afternoon in a French garden, a drive to a watery valley in the mountains.  I sat this morning in the animal market watching the camels, men practising trying out a donkey, seeing if they want to buy, putting a horse through its paces.  Hours of sitting in this cafe or another.  Talking, sitting, watching.  Crowds of people passing, sometimes as dense as I've seen anywhere, India included, sometimes escaping the heat of the sun, bikes and mopeds, pushing, pushing, airless, the heat pushing these people into the hard surface of the Djemaa El Fna.

And some weeks later, returning to the city from the south and west:

Djemma El Fna:  My picture

Having an evening theiere with dates at the cafe by the date stalls.  There's a little clothes market going on, of the impromptu  kind I've seen all over Morocco, but they must have fixed days of the sort I don't know.  Mostly men selling clothes exclusively for men, they don't look like the poorest people either.  I can see smart Berber clothes and some of the slick kids, they have motos or bicycles and a briefcase or suitcase laid across the handlebars to hold the jeans or trousers or djellabahs or track-suit bottoms.  Now I've seen a woman selling a djellabah, she's with a guy perhaps they're regulars.  The tourist season is at its height which means the square is very busy, particularly the food stalls and the clothes booths and all the kids and beggars and touts and vendors, all the people who live off the vitality of the square.

Animal Market in Marrakech:  My picture

The hotel I stayed in was near the square; an old house down a brown anonymous alley, the ground floor tiled in blue and green and white.  You could go up to the roof and look over the city across other roofs where the local people also came up to hang out their washing or to relax or to look out over the roofs.  But the hotel, like most of the cheap ones, also had its resident hustlers.  I remember one here, who liked to be called Le Chef, in his twenties, partly educated.  We played cards and talked.  As I got to know him I asked him why he hustled, and he gradually explained; he resented the foreigners for their money, for their opportunities, and he was very happy to take anything away from them that he could, feeling no guilt for that.

Paul Bowles describes Djemaa El Fna in an essay published recently in Travels.  Elias Canetti's The Voices of Marrakesh is also good, especially at the animal market.  Both predate my visit.
 

Workshop in Medina:  My picture

Marrakech Medina:  My Picture

May 24th: Fes

On May 24th 1977 I was in Fes, the ancient city of Morocco.

I stayed in a little hotel just inside the Medina at a point before the road started to descend more steeply.  There was a stork's nest on the roof and there was always the noise of clattering beaks when the birds returned from feeding.  From the window I could catch a glimpse of the road: women going shopping, old men from the country on business, ponies, donkeys taking goods in or out or building materials or coca-coca bottles, the men who drove the animals, "Balek, Balek" they called.  I even saw a cow being taken down.  The sounds were of Moroccan pop music and busy voices.  It was a modern world, part of the attraction being that it was without cars.

The first evening I recorded some initial impressions:  

The Tannery:  My picture

I headed down into the Medina and got beautifully wandering there, avoiding tourist shops, very smart here, and the touts and pickup kids.  I went way out to the other side then back to the centre, glancing in mosques, much prayer, holiness and chanting going on, saw a few artisans, particularly the metal workers, one lot of dyers.  Stood on a little bridge over the foul river away from the hassle, watched a freak couple getting some metal-beating done, then managed to return without making a mistake.  Some very fine shops, you can see some traditional crafts being made to modern Moroccan tastes as opposed to tourist tastes, mirrors and brocades for women's clothes stand out in my mind, also the large cauldrons they make.  And it's a real city, so much available here.  I remember one shop full of pickles,  nothing else, the shops much more specialist.  It's also huge.  I had a quick look in the Kasbah, different style Arab shops.  On the journey here, one nice country market in new buildings.  Lots of donkeys in an arena, ponies being shod and having their nails chiselled; people coming and going on donkeys, riding with both legs on the left.  Ovens outside the houses, women working bending over.

The Medina was a difficult place for an outsider.  There was nowhere for instance where you could sit and watch what was going on, not for any length of time or in an interesting place.  I remained a spectator, walking through, trying to avoid undesirables or causing offence.  Others too seemed to be doing the same.  Just to walk down the hill attracted a small army of hustlers; to avoid them I had to protect myself and so protected myself from everything else.  Yet the Medina, Old Fes, was the primary attraction, the huge area growing organically from the middle ages, without cars, but rich and modern in many ways, the commercial heart of the country.

Later as I got to know the city a little better I tried to record with a bit more immediacy:

I am in almost the only cafe I know of in the centre, having expensive orange juice in dull surroundings.  But resting enough to see more souks before climbing the hill back up.

Fes Medina;  My picture

The Medina was swarming with tourists this morning, more than I've seen before , but it wasn't as busy as I've seen it before.  I spent a while sitting in the tannery, and got stung for a dirham, then wandered through the residential districts across the river, still not attractive from the outside, but different, quiet, unfrequented, and out into the car area with donkeys strolling past the cars in the parking lot, people selling mint, it felt Morocco.  Men sitting against a wall, selling eggs and ducklings.  An area or souk for second-hand radios and so on, and some dealers pocketing money.  In the central area, there had been an assignment of second-hand clothes arrived - the passion for Western clothes and goods is overriding - and that was in the area of jewellers and fancy clothes.  I saw a new lot of shoes arriving, and leather wallets and that was a time for major excitement.  Some of the better bits of the medina are those long roads under bamboo shading  where they sell mainly food, meat, milk, everyday things.  And the fine souks in the centre, brocade, shoes, cloth, blankets, gold and silver, candles, brightly coloured thread, pottery.  Some strange spices, people hunched up in the street over a piece of cloth with strange smelling things on it. 

Covered Souk in Fes Medina:  My picture

Not much that is very exotic.  It's the country people who wear the strange clothes and they're not around in Fes very much.  Yesterday I saw in the supper restaurant a young girl of 13 or 14, kohled eyes and colourful mirror-work clothes, reds and yellows, an older woman also brightly dressed in red cloth with blue and white patterns, a short-haired man in a roughish djellabah, and a strong man who was doing the ordering, he didn't eat but controlled it all, white turban and dark djellabah.  Dancers or some such trade or performers? 

Square in Fes Medina:  My picture

May 21st: Chaouen in Morocco

On May 21st 1977 I was in Chaouen in the Rif mountains of Morocco.

Chaouen was a small country town, an easy place to stay in, with a handful of hotels to satisfy the trickle of tourists passing through.  I used it to get used to Morocco at a good pace after the hustlers of Tetouan.  I began to know my way around the bazaars, to be recognised by some people.   There was a square as a kind of town centre, some restaurants and some fairly traditional cafes in upstairs rooms, where Moroccan men could sit around, sipping mint tea and puffing their soupçis of kif.  This evening I sat in the square and recorded:

Chaouen:  My picture

The last little piece of warmth of the day, the sun only lights up the walls of the Kasbah and the minarets of the mosque opposite me.  I can see inside the front door, you go up a flight of stairs or a ramp, then there is a blue and white screen with a chandelier above to keep out the infidels, it's quite an attractive building though the architecture is simple, with an octagonal brick minaret tower, loud-speakers and a Moroccan star hanging at the top.  It is evening stroll time, few country people around now, one lady with a child on her back, in white robes and tight veil, vertical striped skirt beneath.  Old men in fine djellabahs, sitting and drinking mint tea, one man with white turban and pointed beard beneath round face has a hand gesture for everything he says.  Teenage girls in female djellabahs, one appears to be a pregnant bride, with fine brocade, tight veil and heavy kohl.

Earlier in the day I'd been out of town.  As it was a country town there were trails out into the hills.  I wrote in my notebook:

Have taken the trail out beyond the spring, gone over the first pass so that I'm now sitting above the first village large enough for a mosque.  I'm in the open sun as there's little shade until you're in the village.  The air is full of the buzzing of insects, the cicadas, and some crested larks singing.  A few voices from the green of the village.  The village is spread about a green depression, trees and fields, tin roofs over mud walls, some of them painted white.  A Spanish looking building nearer me with red-tiled roof and the stone turreted minaret of the mosque.  A child with some sheep passed.  Way down below the river valley with the road to Ouezzane and layers of rolling Rif way to the south-east.  Behind me the harsher forbidding mountains, grey stone capped with dark green pines, above the wheat fields cut into the stony scrub.

I liked these walks out:  following those hard stony trails, a great feeling of age and continuity in the relationship of town and country.  Country people trudging in on the trails, forcing ponies or donkeys along the steep paths, ploughing their stony fields with oxen or by hand.  Collecting the mint, cutting the wood on the mountain-tops, watching their sheep and goats.  Little oases of green, villages among fig-trees and irrigated fields, olive groves.  I liked the wildlife, the spring flowers, the lizards, the flycatchers in the orchards.  I liked the wall of mountains on one side, with buildings by caves and a huge flock of ravens flying around the ridge.

Market in Chaouen:  My picture

Chaouen - 2008, Picture by Belimbing, CC

Chaouen in 2007:  Picture by Gaby, CC