Dispatch XXXIV

We walked out of the Rabat train station completely clueless. My Arabic consisted of phrases like Salaam, Inshallah and Yella in an Arabic speaking nation, and we had no more idea where we would be laying our heads this night than a blind man plopped in a Moroccan medina. Our cell service was non-existent, but I had preloaded a map of our route to the riad on my iPhone and it told us we were about 12 minutes away. All we had to do was get a taxi to the right hotel.

Outside the station a cluster of taxi drivers clambered up to us ready to take us anywhere we wanted to go. A small boned driver with a dark mustache elbowed his way to us. “Yella, yella!” He said. Let’s go.

“How much,” I asked, rubbing my thumb and forefinger in the universal signal of dinero.

He spoke in rapid Arabic but I thought I caught the word for eight, and I had also roughly calculated that the trip would cost about 80 dirham. So I figured this was our man.

That was my first mistake.

Dispatch XXXIII

We headed through the citadel’s heat and labyrinthine passages and onto the Tizi n'Tichka, the Berber word meaning snake road. Its pass worms its way through the High Atlas Mountains that separate Ouarzazate from Marrakesh like the flanks of two shoulders. We headed through the citadel’s heat and labyrinthine passages and onto the Tizi n'Tichka, the Berber word meaning snake road. I  thought again how incredibly unforgiving this land could be, at least to me who had grown up in a lush Pennsylvania river valley. How Morocco’s Berbers, like the Bedouin of Arabia, have managed to survive, let alone thrive is beyond understanding.  It is dry enough that you can hardly find the saliva to spit. But then I thought of the Inupiat and Sami people of the arctic and Tueleche in Patagonia, the Fuegians of Tierra del Fuego and the Aborigines of Australia’s Outback and realized humans seem capable of laying down roots almost anywhere.

Dispatch XXXII

We sat with the Sahara at our feet, a land so vast that it extended clear from us to the pyramids of Egypt, thousands of miles away. I wondered about the man from another time we had passed, and the beggar Ismail had given water, and the old carved lion and the broken pillars of Volubilis and marveled at what a world we live in. How complex, how rich, how unfair, how spectacular and horrible and tried to make sense of it. I couldn’t. Instead, Cyn and I both sat before the sands, beyond relaxed, beyond amazed and humbled until finally a small group of local musicians sat to serenade us with their music. Eventually, it was time to retire into our palatial bed to imagine tales of sultans and bedouins and flying carpets, and finally sleep.

Dispatch XXXI

It’s not every day that you can wander a land where centurions, artists, builders and kings, Roman craftsmen, merchants and bureaucrats once trod two thousand years in the past. At the height of the empire 20,000 “Volubilitani” walked these cobble-stoned streets. I imagined the horse and mule carts clattering through the city, the bustling markets, probably much like those in the Medinas of Fez, without the air conditioning. It all provided a sobering perspective on the human race and I was humbled. Here we were at the southwestern rim of an empire that once stretched from the valleys of Morocco to the ancient city of Babylon. It reminded me that we are all simple blips in the human drama we call history.

Dispatch XXX

Looking for a great trip to Morocco? The storied city of Fez is a must. Its ancient Medinas are among Morocco’s nine UNESCO World Heritage Sites, brimming with stunning craftsmanship, architecture, some of the world’s finest food, most beautiful leather goods, and ceramics. It’s exotic locations and 1200 year history will make any Indiana Jones wannabe’s mouth water.