Light a Fire

On the third day in Fes, we hired a car and driver/guide. A quiet and friendly man named Haj, he drove us on a three day trip through the countryside. We took a two hour camel trek on that first night into the Sahara desert, and slept in tents among the dunes. Along the journey, my camel, Maj, fell into a sand pit and one leg buckled under him. The two of us crumpled to the ground. Camels are tall and it is a long way to fall, but Maj did so with grace and I remained happily uninjured. I hopped quickly off his back and got out of the way as the guide and a fellow who had been walking with him tried to release the camel from the pit. They tugged his ropes and wobbled his body. The two men had to dig him out of the sand, and it reminded me of digging a car out of a snow drift. Finally, they got Maj out and onto firm ground, but the poor beast just didn’t want to stand up and carry me once more. They poked and prodded him, encouraged him, walked around him and nudged every angle. Maj wouldn’t budge. I offered to walk the rest of the journey, but the guides wouldn’t hear for it. So? They dug into their age-old nomadic Berber wisdom. They lit a fire under his ass. Maj rapidly obliged and leapt off the desert sands with a throaty squeak. And we were on our way once more.

The Sahara is made of deeply orange and very fine-grained sand. The dunes are art in motion, with swirling patterns in the ridges that cast painterly organic designs on the landscape. We entered the camp at dusk, and watched the pink orange sunset fade into a brilliantly moonlit night full of stars. The guide prepared a delicious Moroccan dish of chicken and carrots and zucchini, steamed in a ceramic dish with lots of good spices. And as usual, there were many glasses of mint tea to drink. The guide called it “Berber Whiskey” A group of men in one of the clusters of tents played a variety of drums late into the night. We slept in style on mounds of mattresses and carpets in a large black camel and sheep hair tent, the light from a single candle in an old metal lantern flickering as my eyes finally drifted shut.

For the next two days we have been driving quite a bit. We visited a deep gorge with a river that cuts through it. We visited an ancient village home made out of mud called a Kasbah. Mostly though, we visited a lot of factories and stores and outlets, where a man would take you on a tour of his merchandise and tell you the history of the people and the items you were looking at in a fervent bid to get you to buy something. We saw several carpet outlets, jewelry stores, and roadside stands selling clothing, scarves, fossils and meteorites. The sales pitches were interesting at first, and they always served tea. You definitely learn something. But the haggling is getting pretty exhausting.

This afternoon we finally arrived in Marakesh, our final destination. It is a city known for its old sector, called the Medina. It is full of souks, street vendors and stands. Today so far I have seen men coaxing cobras into dancing with their music, monkeys performing for tips, and a milieu of little carts being pulled by the cutest shy little burros. Marakesh is chaos to the extreme, and I found myself thinking today that this city easily tops any place I have been in China for craziness. The streets are stuffed with odd assortments of people, many of the women in full Muslim coverings. The scam artists are as thick as the tourists, and I don’t know if I can get my daily travel needs met without a scam, as I paid double the price of lunch this afternoon due to a menu technicality that the waiter failed to “explain”. Irritating. Thoroughly wiped out, the three of us settled down for a late afternoon nap. We will see what adventures the evening has in store for us.