Holiday Diary Morocco - Chapter Nine - The Last Day

It could be a function of getting older, or trying to keep a better ordered life, but the starts to the days seem more even, more alike. The variations in the days come after Breakfast. I thought that we should be out of the hotel and onto the road for 9.30. Anthony had different ideas where the nearest he got to sharing them was appearing to not want to leave the hotel with any haste. I could get the luggage to the car, sort out the empty water bottles. But he sat in the hotel room browsing The Guardian on his smart phone. 

When he got to the car and was prepared to leave, then he was openly underwhelmed by how we were blocked in from making our exit but poorly parked cars. The car that was the worst offender was a taxi, which Anthony scrapped ever so slightly, trying to get past it. This delayed our exit by ten mins whilst the junior manager who I privately called 'Mr Bon Appetit' for his overuse of the phrase took it upon himself to stop us leaving whilst he tried to report the damage to the taxi driver who he could not get the attention of on the phone. In the midst of. us waiting on of the hotel staff presented Anthony with the scissors he wants rid because they would otherwise be binned at the airport and his smart phone. Evidently he did not realise that he had put it down on the bed when he left the room which took the edge off how the manager of the hotel had detained us with his concern for his reputation as a manager.  

Reunited with his phone, which Anthony had not realised was not with him before, and Mr 'Bon  

Six dogs hiding under a van from the sun
and from the pinched spirit of the locals
in Asni. Another dog joining them.  

Appetit' had proved relieved that the damage to the taxi was practically non-existent-though he still remained uncertain about how close or far he had been from seeing his honour damaged, we escaped the hotel. 

We soon escaped the town of Asni which Anthony had quietly disliked anyway. He recognised tiredness and a meanness of spirit when he saw it, or rather when it pursued him.

We got to the airport in very good time to complete the arrangement for handing over the car-11 am. The car park was huge, something we had not anticipated and several attempts at ringing the car hire people and getting them live on the phone ended with us being left with the option of only leaving a voice message. Anthony wondered if he had the right number, and to be doubly sure rang the number on their card which I had been keeping from the first time we found them, a different number from the one he had. Nada, Nothing. At 11.30 we left the car unlocked with with keys etc in the glove compartment. We got in the airport and joined the right queues to check in, to exchange our dirhams for euros, I got 85 euros in the exchange, if it should have been a hundred euros the main point was to get to France in one piece. 

We girded our loins up for security-two or three sets of it. The queues were huge, half to two thirds of a mile long in great zigzags packed close together. But somehow we found the humanity in the queue. The women in the queue were better at seeing the panic on men's faces than other men were. As the time ticked by and our flight time got closer and the queues moved but so slowly, that they seemed to not to move, we were let through the worst queue to the front of passport control not twice, but three times, by mature women from mostly Latinate countries who recognised the look of plight in our body language and faces.

Even after that great leap forward through the big queue, fifteen minutes from our flight supposedly leaving there was another layer of policemen checking passports and boarding pass slips which was thankfully much shorter. Then as passengers we were made to queue outside in the open air in single file by Ryanair. On the plane relief mingled with regret as we sat down in our seats and divided our attention spans into the books each of us had to hand to distract ourselves with.

Getting off the plane, Anthony made me go first with my luggage, perhaps wanting a bit of space from me given how little space their might be after, and I watched as he struggled with his case going down the steps, and a young man with some foresight took the case from him and gave it back to him when Anthony had reached the bottom step. It was at that point I realised how fast and reactive travel plans have to be with modern travel; if Anthony had thought beforehand and left his luggage in the hold, the better to be able to walk down the steps....  but that discussion about what to do never happened, part of the promise of cheap flights is that you can have what you want and it does not cost the earth. We are encouraged to think we are omniscient and can manage all the costs well enough. 

Getting out of Toulouse Blagnac Airport was okay. Anthony still had to stop for a pee in the airport toilets, having been denied a pee on the plane because he wanted it towards the end of the flight. I found my block of ten metro tickets. We got the bus, joined the tram for two stops and then found the car where Anthony had left it locked. I don't know how much I portrayed that I was tired, after all anyone changing the country they are in and getting home in one day flat is bound to feel tired, but I strove to be attentive, Anthony bought pancakes and some special treats at a butchers in urban Toulouse that was near closing, and the return journey was without incident. The sunsets were blander than they had been the last time Anthony had driven us from the airport. Getting off the motorway and returning to narrower, more familiar, roads was a relief. Each small road closer to home was more relief.

Our meal of pancakes plus different savoury leftovers from the fridge was surprisingly uplifting. The white wine helped. And so to bed, but not without me giving him a back scratch to ease his sleep before going to my own bed, where I lay wishing for my bed in Ireland. I would get there soon enough.

Holiday Diary - Morocco - Chapter Eight - The Descent

One of the themes emerging from this holiday seemed to be that it was becoming a survey of the many styles of hotel and auberges that tourists would stay in, a survey that looking at the images of the hotels online could only be a poor imitation of, by comparison, for all that the online images could be seen by millions more people. 

The food changed far less than the hotels did, the standard meal being the tagine, where the variations it offers being the choice of ingredients though even that limited variety reduced with the vegetarian option. But the hotels and auberges varied a great deal from old to new, to when-did-this-building-last-have-an-upgrade? As it was The Auberge Targa, Mninoun was a new, modern, and earthquake proof, hotel with more than acceptable amenities where how modern and secure it was made it seem to lack character.

The stray dog that followed us around The Auberge Targa showed more of the kind of elegant but shabby chic that we admired the country for than the hotel did. The dog also knew what distance to keep us at from it whilst still being content to follow us. Though the hotel scored higher on the shabby chic scale by having a swimming pool with no water in it, and a small parched looking orchard with orange trees in it. I picked one of the two oranges that were on one of the trees for a future lunch. 

We were only an hour's drive up the road from our next destination, The Hotel Safran so there was the usual gap of about a couple of hours between one hotel closing and another opening if we were out of the first hotel in good time for the cleaners to be allowed into our room, and unhappy cleaners they looked too.

But we were leaving behind their unhappiness and the empty sense of modern comfort of the place for, well, we did not know what until we got there. If it was like The Auberge Targa we would go along the same road three times before we found the sign for it, which when we finally saw it seemed obvious to us that it made us feel like fools. It remained consistently strange how the signage seemed to be so directional and well hidden before we saw it.   

The Hotel Safran proved to be at the far end of a large town. When we arrived the weather was hot and the town looked busy as we slowly drove through it, our passage through delayed by roads that were choked by busy traffic. The slow passage allowed me to view the life on the pavements. The town seemed to be quite poor. I have often been drawn by examples of cheapness suggesting choice, so when we passed a pavement sale of clothing I thought 'I have not seen a stall like that since I was allowed to roam small town France on my own.'. That said, I knew I had too many clothes, and even at a distance far enough away to not see clearly the clothing looked well past it's best.

The Hotel Safran was a large old hotel with plenty of room for parking at the front and a pleasantly sheltered area at the front and to one side of the hotel where the guests drank chilled freshly squeezed orange juice very slowly in the late afternoon and studied their smart phones for news from home. At least that was what we did after checking in and getting our cases and bags to our room on the second floor.

This was going to be one hotel stay where we ate every meal at the hotel, because the food was good. I also like the appearance of the guests. It was obvious that the hotel attracted bikers both young and old and they brought to the shared eating spaces a faint air of friendly unpredictability that regular tourists like ourselves did not generate.

Picture left; Anthony's jalaba, a traditional men's robe that it was common for men to wear in Morocco, waiting for him to put it on. This was one of many pictures taken in the room, which had many details and fixtures that practically invited us to photograph them, as the light and shade of the day changed what the room looked like hour by hour that first afternoon. The heat outside, on the street, was forbidding and since there was really nothing that we wanted to buy beyond cool drinks we were best staying in our room with the room temperature bottled water that I had brought up three flights of stairs.

By this stage of the holiday-one more hotel to stay in

before we were to leave Morocco, and an awareness of the regularity, of how repetitive the life around us was, Sleep, eat, walk, read, sometimes write a few notes on things that seem different or interest or go for a drive to pleasing scenery I had lost interest in writing any notes of what there was that seemed interesting and new.

On the second day in the hotel we looked around the local market. For a down-at-heel town it was good, Anthony bought some spices to take home from a stall, I looked at a lot of things but not with any interest in buying. If I saw a hat stall I might have been curious but the hats that were for sale were made for tourists to buy thinking they would wear them at home, Very few Moroccan men took any in covering their heads with the sort of thing the market sold. Though maybe the locals made their children wore the hats at the behest of their parents, for practical reasons like protecting the child's head from sun stroke in the heat. 

The time went by for us at reasonable pace, but it must have gone by much slower for the locals who saw the same things every day. On my own I bought two small bottles of saffron less because I needed the spice more because I recognised that we needed time apart.

In the end recognising each other by our shadows and the slightest variant of our image was the best way around being together in us being together in a place which we found it difficult to explain to ourselves and each other what the place we were in was for beyond how it made us consumers among other consumers. The image left, of Anthony at the table of his evening meal on the last night with me absorbed by the shadow of the tree on the right sums up the days in the hotel Safran perfectly, In the light of life we are all passing shadows where all the images we cast are dependent on the light that creates the shadows and all shadows are ephemeral.

There would be one further hotel, in the small town of Asni. It was several hours drive away and the drive was going to be enjoyable, the amount of money the French government poured into Moroccan roads through epic landscapes was generosity beyond belief. How well we engaged with what there was around us at the hotel might also improve. But whatever happened was a matter of us having the self discipline to engage in spite of the familiarity that surrounded us.

Please left click here for the last episode on this holiday diary series. 

Holiday Diary Morocco - May - Part Seven - Downhill From Here

Leaving the Kasbah Imini Hotel and Restaurant, Douar Taourirt was as smooth and pleasant a departure as we could ask for. Anthony wanted to photograph more of the rugs and soft furnishings before we left. I thought 'okay, that is one way to respond to how you know you are not going to be back this way again'. I was happy to leave behind in the room the bit of quartzite and the stone I had found wandering in the plain behind the hotel restaurant. I knew that a lot of the pictures I had taken were duds but I had the storage on my camera to live with that and sort out later. We had paid up, got everything packed and said our 'Goodbyes' in good time.

Anthony was in for a long day's driving. Our next destination was The Auberge Targa. To get there we were going through the areas where the rug making family communes lived. He had got the details of the location for where they were from our last visit to Morocco, which was well before the earthquake had struck. We did not know that we would be driving through where the earthquake had destroyed either the means to a living of many families in the family based carpet making communes, or worse; it had destroyed many of the buildings that sheltered people, where because the foundations of both the lives and economic choices of were weak, nobody knew how little it took for desperation  to take hold.

We knew before we got anywhere near them how easily fatigue set in at seeing too many rugs, from how our visit to the fourteenth century fort had gone. There every other house on the route from locking the car to the first sight of the fort itself seemed to be a place of high level sales pitches where the tourist should never take the pitch at face value; either the item was overpriced or it was not the age it was sold to be, or it was not the thing it was sold to be.

Having been through all that, we thought we knew, between us, how to deal with the high pressured sales pitches better. So two and a half hours on the road from Douar Taourirt  and after another later lunch of items rescued from the breakfast tray that was brought to us retrieved from my bag, we reached the town where Anthony expected for there to be families businesses where the family made and sold their own rugs.

And yes, there were clearly many buildings where the rugs on display outside, in the sun that were for sale that may well have been made inside the building. But it was a very scrappy town overall, and the most forward people in the  town were the male owners of the businesses who took one look at us and went into overdrive to attract our attention and disliked it when the limit of our attention span was us getting our cameras out and photographing rugs we liked the look of but would never have bought and it would have seemed rude to say so.

When I thought of the carpet shop from the last holiday where it took us two attempts at choosing the rug we wanted. With the first try we narrowed our choices down to two or three rather handsome rugs. The vendor knew he had a sale from then on. We went away and worked out which we really liked, and got money from the hole in the wall to complete the purchase at the second attempt. With this present holiday we realised how much of a world away we were from the carpet shop, with it's slowness and ease.

Carpets for sale... ...in Agunce 

But Anthony was right in one way, he wanted to see what life looked like when we were close to where the carpets were made. 'Bare and uncomfortable' was the short answer to Anthony's question. After a couple of near encounters with some Moroccan men who were more hostile than we expected for us attempting to photograph their rugs we stopped at one house that looked more promising.

 There we went through the ritual sales dance where we were shown many carpets and given mint tee. It was much easier to say what we did not want than to be able to decide quickly what we did like. The mint tea was rather good, not as sweet as some would have made it. It could have taken us forty five mins at the first attempt to choose what to buy, and another thirty minutes to decide with the second attempt what we were going to settle upon. Anthony had an idea that whatever he bought he wanted it to be all wool, no synthetic fibres. But how could tell what fibre was synthetic and what fibre was natural in the short time we had to see all these rugs and weavings? There was some respite to choosing when we were shown the grandmother of the household actually threading some weave on a carpet. It may have been her age speaking but as a process it looked quite meditative.

Having seen the elderly woman with the lines on her face and delicate wrinkled hands working we settled on what to buy, paid for it and got it wrapped before leaving. The purchase being complete was a burden lifted. We could concentrate on finding Auberge Targa Nmimoun in the two hours after that. We found it easily enough, but we had to go through the usual routine with finding our hotel. The map and online info that Anthony had noted down said one thing but all it took was for the sign to be facing the opposite direction to the one we were going in for us to pass the sign and not know we had passed it. At the third attempt at finding the Auberge we found it.

Anthony was somewhat weary when we stopped and went in to find the hotel manager and were met by some serving staff who were rather all over the shop. Still the first order was for afternoon mint tea in the dining area and enjoying not moving anywhere. I took our bags to our room when we were shown it, and took the passports to the manager for him to fil the form in for the government as to who we were, where we had been and where our next destination was. I lied on the forms, said we were going to Marrakesh but these forms, well who knows what it worth to the government for us to fill them in with any honesty?

The hotel was rather large and had very few guests, must of whom seemed to be rather detached. There was a dog that seemed to not have an owner whom we quite liked when it followed close to us. When we went on an afternoon walk the day after arriving, and saw images like the one here it followed us for fifteen to twenty minutes of the walk and as we headed back it found it's own entrance to the hotel car park, well ahead of Anthony and I who had to take the long way round.

We spent two nights there and we liked the food, repetitive of Moroccan cuisine as it was. If it is repetitive to say that the hotel seemed isolated, then it can be said that the isolation felt different to the isolation in the previous hotels that we had been in. The walks outside of the hotel were more engaging and there was a small rather parched looking orchard which had a orange tree on it. I picked one of the oranges and when Anthony had it declared it to be delicious. Next stop Hotel Safran for one night.

Please left click here for part eight of this diary.  

Holiday Diary Morocco - May - Part Six - Rough To Smooth

Day five of our holiday started with a surprise. We were given semolina porridge for our breakfast. I had seconds and enjoyed it, I'd probably not had semolina since my school days. 

Anthony was less keen on the porridge. More likely his mind was led by thoughts that made the food seem relatively uninteresting. He was equally restrained about leaving the

auberge with any haste. Less because we did not want to, though we knew we should

leave. More because the journey to our next hotel was about ninety minutes, relatively

short, and we/he did not know the area and had no plans for how to fill the spare time

were we to leave the auberge with any promptness. Our next hotel opened it's doors

between 1.30 and 2 pm. One thing this slowness did give us was time to do was triple check that we had left nothing in our hotel room which left us feeling more settled as out car descended the driveway.

Our next place to stay in was called The Kasbah Imini Hotel and Restaurant, Douar Taourirt. It was clearly an  upgrade on the auberge we had just stayed in, but it was still very affordable. It was nearly as isolated from the few surrounding buildings as the auberge had been, and it was on a road that looked much more likely to go from somewhere that mattered to somewhere else that mattered.

The building showed no sign of having been touched by the earthquake, unlike all the previous places we had stayed The Berber style decoration throughout building, the throws on long seats and varied selection of antique looking rugs in many different colours were inspired by the owner being part of a family who had weaved carpets and throws for several generations, something Anthony learned from engaging him in conversation on one of the afternoon rest days we were there. I took my rest times by going out with my camera into the surrounding scrub countryside to look for images that I could take away. It could have been a sign of low level of disengagement from each other that I found the camera and the landscape to be my play space. But still we engaged well with each other and if a lot of my photos were not 'keepers' than taking them was a fine way to discover my fascination with light and shadow. The food was good and the living was light. If waking up to a messy bed, for having moved a lot in the night, is a sign of contentment then I was happy.

Anthony had a sight seeing journey in mind that he wanted to complete our first full day there. So we set off but whatever directions Anthony had in his head, had got from his smart phone, or got from strangers on the way, they proved to be inadequate. We took the same  route  three  times,  each  time  we  found variations on our previous route, but still we  could not find the road that he was looking for. There was one photograph that I chose not to take. Most of the landscape was  bright  and  epic  looking,  even  the different shades of red of the  earth/mud  seemed  to have a subtle variety to them with the way the  light landed on different parts of the landscape. 

There was one small place that was an exception to  the  bright light and shade. The area was  used  for  mining  the manganese and there was one building where the the rock from which the manganese  ore  was  extracted was processed. Because of the work there the building was covered in thick layers of a dark grey dust that covered the surrounding ground to a distance of a few metres, whereupon the colour of the rest of the landscape resumed. There was an, in my view, stunning photo to be taken of this grey spot in the landscape of the manganese extraction  building  surround the varying shades of red earth around it. I had one chance of taking the picture whilst Anthony was asking a youth for directions to this place we could not find. I did not take the picture. It was a trivial loss. No picture is worth annoying a friend over, least of all  on  a  holiday, but there was some small loss of opportunity at tuning into the landscape I wanted to be part of.

The food at the Imini Hotel and Restaurant was good, even as it was uniformly Moroccan in character. The thing that charmed me most was the smallest, least noticeable, thing of all by other people's standards-the toilet roll holder in the shower area.

Would that such effective and simple constructions were used for holding toilet rolls back home, and we could collectively return to leading such simplified lives again.

When we left there would be five more nights, and three more hotels before we got our flight home, but none of the other hotels had the same balance of charm and ease in relative isolation as we found at Douar Taourirt. 

With everywhere else we went the earthquake had quite clearly profoundly shaken the buildings, the people, and the economy en route, if not in the hotel itself. Along many of the roads we travelled there were piles of rubble at the side of the road, all of them former dwellings without foundations that were now building material for the next construction without a foundation on the site. 

The devastation of the people was expressed in the vehemence with which the many beggars begged in the small towns, like the places we stopped for a coffee. The people looked and acted like they had not even something as elegant as an improvised toilet roll holder to hold on to, and wonder at the elegance thereof as they put a toilet roll on it.

Please left click here for part seven of this diary.   

Holiday Diary - Morocco April/May 2024 - Part Five

Breakfast in the middle of nowhere was oddly calm, restful even. If the meal was not the premium meal we might have hoped for, then hearing the birdsong whilst we ate more than compensated for any indifference in how the meal was served. Some of the calm came from how, beside our host family, we were on our own. Fresh orange juice, and coffee, was not going too far with the liquids when there were soft boiled eggs, pancakes, flat bread, and a choice of four spreads to serve on the pancakes. I took my man bag with me so we had our lunch sorted. Anthony said he was rested after yesterday's stressful drive, out of respect for him I took him at his word. Though I could see that he was keen to make the most of the time in Morocco which may make him want to try some things even when tiredness might cloud his appreciation and judgement of the experience.  

We had to go out for the day for three reasons. The first was that we had to use the day well,  the second was that there was a site that Anthony wanted us both to see, the third reason was that close to this site there was supposedly a money point and we both needed some money to continue on the week. The site was called Aït Benhaddou and it is a fourteenth century fortification, a castle as we would think of it, built from impacted mud. The journey there was relatively straight forward, even though the weather en route was unobligingly hot. From then on our experience of the discomfort that everyday tourists put themselves through got rapidly worse, until the only solution was to stop under shade and buy something in a cafe. The touts were out and ready for all comers, I was ready to compare them to locusts, with a choice of collective noun for the touts, plague, cloud, or swarm. We parked and locked the car. I had in my man bag the car keys, some now warm water and our lunch. We had barely moved a yard before a tout apprehended us and tried to say he was the way to go if we paid him. We told him that we had our water and were going to see the fort, where is the hole in the wall for getting money out of? He gave us instructions for finding the hole in the wall, and how to find him online if we were ever interested in buying carpets. We thanked him and walked in the direction of what we thought was the fort, which was not as easy as we thought it would be. After one or two short wrong turnings and fifteen minute slow walk in the heat we got our first viewing of the fort. Walking fast was definitely a bad idea, it would have made us perspire rather a lot in a short period of time. 

The village, where carpets and other crafted goods were sold from  every  third  house,  is called Aït Benhaddou. The  fort is called  the Ksar of Aït Benhaddou and seemingly  most of the village and  people from  well  beyond the village occupied the rooms of the  fort  to sell their modern art and craft goods, because that is where the  tourists  wanted  to  go  and where the money was. 

We walked across the river in front of the fort at the shallowest point to go in, and were immediately charged the equivalent of ten euros apiece for entry. After being nearly misdirected by a youth whose aggression we had not recognised for what it was soon enough, we joined the regular trail of tourists ascending along long zig zags of paths with small dwellings, now shops, going upwards towards the highest heights of fort. At least four very long and crowded paths. We passed I-don't-know-how-many stalls and shops seeking to extract a living from the queues of tourists who passed them, including us. It was unpleasant and that was without taking into account the added effect of the heat.

When we saw a path that descended, and one that went higher, Anthony guessed that that the lower path led to the bridge, which would take us back to the village. We took the descending path and filed slowly past ever more stalls that we did not want to buy from, and knew that if we had any thought about buying, then the next question would be where would it fit in our luggage? In our homes? The high spot of the excursion was the chilled orange juice we stopped for, in the shade on our way out of the village. It was not a new experience to be around younger people fiddling with their phones but it kept them quiet in the heat, something everybody needed. We were relieved when we finally returned to the car, I got the car key out of my man bag, and we got sat inside. Seeing the fort was an overwhelming experience, and not in a good way. 

Our next task was to find the money point. We had been told that it was on our left as we drove down the street. We expect the money point to be facing the street, and could not see it. What I could see but Anthony was less observant of, for him being an observant driver, was that there were two turnings on the left hand side of the road. We had to inspect down both turnings to find the money point, a column that stand apart from the wall behind it down the narrower second turning. It took Anthony four runs up and down the length of the main road for me to recognise the right to turn off. Being a tourist will do that to a person, scramble their ability to think and see clearly. We got our two thousand dirhams, equivalent to two hundred euros, apiece in the end.  

Reflecting later on the visit to the fort, I took at face value the idea of visiting the fort when it was put to me. I did not know what to expect. I doubted Anthony had much forethought as to what to expect either. With hindsight what that experience of being a tourist being slowly moved along with so many other tourists down the many narrow paths in the fort reminded me most of were the descriptions of purgatory I'd read, when wanting to get out is the one thing that those there want, and it is the last thing that they  can arrange.

We were glad of our rooms and beds when we found them, late in the afternoon. The Auberge was rather quiet when after our rest we sought out the landlord to say that we would be eating out for dinner. It took three attempts for me to find his wife, and get her to call the husband with the smart phone and tell him we would not be requiring him to make a meal for us that night. In the phone call we both overcame my speaking poor French and his speaking poor English, thankfully. I did not want Anthony having to do more than he needed to because I seemed to be helpless/useless.

Going out in the evening seemed to be simple business at first. We took the route where we had been refused a bed for the night two nights earlier where the hotels were all booked up due to online booking filling all their rooms well in advance. This time we looked for eateries on the same road. One eatery looked promising, but it proved to be full of belligerent Russians who were shouting at each other and the manager. When we saw the menu we found that it did not serve serious food anyway. In the working class town that had not offered us a bed before there was a restaurant that served us meaty tagines, mine was lamb, Anthony's was chicken. There was not much choice. Tired as we were, the food was filling and cheap, and we were happy. In our rooms for the night I read more of 'Confessions of a Fallen Angel' and Anthony did things with his smart phone including reading The Guardian. 

The day ended with a cuddle, both of us in our pyjamas, which was one of the treats of the holiday, and of most of the times with Anthony, for me.

Please left click here for part six of this diary                 

Holiday Diary - Morocco April/May 2024 - Part Four - Escape From Marrakesh

30th May - In the morning that followed my strange dream, leaving Marrakesh with our sense of ourselves intact was our main aim. We did not care when it seemed that our breakfast was served more indifferently than before, and there was not even any of the usual double strength Nescafe made with milk on offer to perk us up.

Anthony had already paid the hotel bill. We were packed by 10 am, and out of our rooms for 11 am, the room checked twice in case we had left anything behind before the cleaners went in. We sat in the foyer until gone noon chatting with the next person who was going to occupy our room. She was a wealthy middle aged English woman from the home counties who lived in obvious comfort. She had booked her holiday quite late, and had got a flight in to Marrakesh early in the morning. Whilst being tactful enough to not talk about money she obviously travelled in some style. There was conversation of how rotten the English government was, 'An election must come soon' and other Liberal nostrums. As always in these socially awkward situations, Anthony scrubbed up/better in the conversation than I did, he found more things to say than I could. It was less that my tongue got tied and more that my mind got snagged on the thoughts that it was obvious I should not share. Mostly I went sociably quiet. When she was was told 'Your room is now free' and the hotel manager took her rather large suitcase up the steps and we were more free too.

Soon after the lady went to her room we set off in our ten mins walk around the back alleys of Marrakesh to where a car there waiting for Anthony to drive for the week. We had time to spare and had a strong coffee whilst we were waiting. Nowhere outside in Marrakesh was quiet. Our experience of the cafe seemed fine at first. The busker sang several sixties songs in English which was fine. But when the busker played 'Knocking on Heaven's Door' I could have been figuratively doing the same. If there was one song that I could extinguish the universal memory of, then it is that song. I don't know what other song that Buskers the world over would grind into cliche to replace it, where they are all unaware of each other, but maybe it would be a more robust and cheerful song,

Our car was new, a diesel vehicle, white, and capacious. I presented the remainder of the money in euros, over two hundred euros, after we had paid the deposit. Getting in it to get out of the city was a relief. I will always be a passenger with cars. So if I was of any use then, then I had two small jobs, One was to look for the right signs for directions when I was told the name of what to look for. The other was radiate signs of patience when it was clear to Anthony that we had mislaid our sense of direction, this was easier than it seemed when it seemed to me like we were travelling via a sense of dead reckoning anyway. It was helpful that we saw signs for the airport on the way out of the city; I have often felt better for seeing where I am going before I actually have to go there. I can't be alone in this. The only persistent difficulty Anthony had with driving it was finding reverse, which with him being such a good driver was easily adapted around,

With only one moment of genuine doubt about our direction, and with every roundabout and section of dual carriage way passed we became more sure of our sense of direction, out of the city, the scale of which surprised me. I had not mugged up on Marrakesh before we got here, though Anthony drove away from the city as if he knew the way out of it of old, though the roads must have changed a lot since he last drove on the roads around Marrakesh. I did not count the number of major roundabout/duel carriage way combinations before the traffic got quieter and the development either side of the road more spaced out. What I did admire, which I have seen before, is the dogs basking in the heat on the grass of one well landscaped roundabout as the traffic raced around. The utter unconcern of the dogs and depiction of agreement among them, well, goes far beyond sentiment for me.

The sense of relief as there was nothing, no buildings, either side of the road washed over us as we passed through some of the Atlas Mountains. Neither of us had to say 'I am glad we are out of Marrakesh'. We felt each other feeling it. But there was a crisis to be met. We had been in Marrakesh two nights. Anthony had booked a two night stay in a hotel along the road we were on. But the booking was for two days away. We had to find a hotel or auberge somewhere a decent distance from where we had booked-say two hours drive-en route to that hotel for two nights. We tried two hotels before we found a place to stay, both hotels were fully booked, We soon realised that the combined effect of Covid ending, as well as more bookings being taken in advance online reduced our chances of finding food and a bed for the night. One place-clearly a place where truck drivers stayed the night-seemed pointedly rude to us when we asked. We were taking a chance by the fourth hour on the road because only he could drive and we both knew that he was getting eye strain. 

I noticed the 'Auberge Dar Zara' stop first and he pulled in to the left, off the road and up the incline. Anthony could rest his eyes and start seeing single again, after the double vision /blurriness from driving four and a half hours. The place did not look much but it was cheap and welcoming, wonderfully Heath Robinson looking electrics, My single bed base was made from a pallet. Good mattress, poor fitting sheet. Anthony go the double bed. Our dinner was a green salad, vegetable tagine, fruit salad. We kept the banana for later. 

I read more of 'Confessions of a Fallen Angel'- Death sure stalks this character's life. His knowing that drinker talk bollocks/cliches so readily and don't notice they are doing it is well observed. I could say something about my family here, but why bother? I have observed the lives I led around them with enough acuity for me to know I am addressing myself more than any reader of my words. However well they are trodden, old sour grapes are, they do not make for mature settled attachments.

Please left click here for part five of this diary.         

Holiday Diary - Morocco April/May 2024 - Part Three

Tuesday 30th April - Breakfast was served on the roof top. It was served slowly by the hotel owner's wife, who like many such women overtly lacked confidence. This is a trait that it would be easy to be annoyed by, but saying so the men who cause the lack of confidence is not on. We had fresh orange juice, flat bread, a local recipe pancake, a choice of jams and tahini, a hard boiled egg, and served last, coffee with milk. It was filling, I had my man-bag with me in which to put items for lunch. Hard boiled eggs flat bread were the main items squirreled away.

Refreshed from breakfast we had two decisions to make. The first was what to do about the suitcase if Anthony declined to put it into the hold at check in on our return then he was likely to be charged another eighty euros, the second decision was what to do about hiring a a car. With the suitcase I knew what Anthony wanted; either to get through checking in and boarding the plane with his suitcase and not be fined, or get the offending feet and wheels sawn off the suitcase so it would pass. We agreed in the end that he would have my suitcase and I buy a new one for my getting through customs. We set out along market stall alley and looked at suitcases at a distance first, and then close enough to attract the attention of the owner of the hole in the wall/stall. There, as if we could not have predicted it, we got the hard sell fairly fast, where we felt the seller was going to be bored if we did not part with our cash fairly fast. We did not part with our cash at all, though we looked closely at what seemed right. The sticking point that stopped our wallets opening was knowing the right size of suitcase. We left that stall holder saying we would return later. At another stall a very kind young man whipped out his smart phone and looked up Ryanair regulations for the size of suitcases. which we memorised. Then we found another hole in the wall salesman who rented out cars. He seemed like the real deal, so Anthony went ahead and produced his driving license, and passport and I paid a deposit of forty euros. The balance to be paid later the same day.

Both of us went back to the hotel room and emptied our suitcases so that he could fill mine and I could go out and get the suitcase we saw and liked after checking it's dimensions. This was where things want wrong. My sense of direction and orientation has never been the best.

Some of the vernacular art photographed
when I was lost. 

 

At first I could not find the suitcase stall/hole in the wall I wanted to go back to, because on my own every stall/hole in the wall looked similar. In the end I found the stall that I had a visual memory of, and handed over 250 dirham, equivalent to twenty five pounds. I got the suitcase. Better oriented I would have haggled to pay 50 dirhams less. Then I bought two litre size bottles of water. and put them in the suitcase, to put it to good use. After that I got confused. could not remember the name of my hotel and walked up and down the length of the alley several times. Eventually I recognised the sign that was my turning and, tired and hot, returned to Anthony who said that I had been gone longer than he expected.

I helped myself to a small slice of humble pie for lunch by admitting to Anthony that I had got lost/disoriented. With the vital decisions made, my new suitcase packed, the balance of the money paid on the car rental paid in euros and the confirmation of when and where to be to collect the car we could go out and explore.

We looked around the stalls of the central market trying to ignore the opportunities to spend money. We could sense the desperation of most of the stallholders, and most of the goods seemed so alike that any distinction seemed like the narcissism of minor difference on the part of the stallholders. We wanted to resist being seen as tourists. Anthony had memories of his mother buying items on her Moroccan holidays in the 1980's that when she brought them home did not compliment their final destination. In spite of this ready made lesson as defence, my eyes alighted on a stall that sold what I guessed were heavy woollen coats with 'ethnic' designs on them. In the end I bought one, Anthony watched and commented to help as the stallholder got different examples of the coats down

and said no to certain colours and designs. It was fairly easy to settle on the right coat. There was a millisecond of doubt as Anthony said 'The price is equivalent to £60' and I had to think. My reply to myself was that 'Grateful Dead T shirts cost £30 in Belfast nowadays and there are far less substantial jackets also for sale in Belfast that are also more than £60'. Discussion over, purchase made, we moved to look at where we might eat that night. We got the right direction for where Anthony thought we should go, but the crowds were too much for us. This led the touts to be more aggressive when they all said 'My restaurant is better than other restaurants'. The best we could do was find the tout with the least amount of aggression in their sales pitch and the best smile. That combination was what helped us look at the menu most objectively. 

That said, Anthony still had in his head a recommended restaurant the name of which he had found online that there were signs for. But the sea of tourists between us and  that  restaurant was too many for us to contemplate making it part before us, so that we could get through to the place. 

Going back to our hotel room, the thing we had to do most was dump the suitcase that had cost Anthony eighty euros in fines. After that we settled into reading more. 'Confessions of a Fallen Angel' is making more sense the further I got into it. It even made sense of the abuse of alcohol and made the problem of the abuse seem lighter than the problems that the alcohol abuse sought to mask. 

In the early evening we returned to the tout with the smile we liked, and the restaurant with the menu that seemed to be the most inspiring. Anthony had the dish he was most looking forward to, well almost. I had a tagine and he got a dish of grated steamed vegetables baked in crispy pastry case. At least the menu said his dish was vegetarian, and we asked the waitress whether the dish was as vegetarian as the menu said it was. But Anthony could tell that there was chicken in it when he was about half way through eating it. By then we were in a bind. The chicken was relatively flavourless and he had eaten too much of it to complain and force them to take it back. And if we had complained vehemently and insisted they get it right then it would have been easier for them to give us a refund and ask us to leave than for them to serve us the right vegetarian pastry dish. At the time I suspected that either the chef did not have the vegetarian dish that day, and did not want to admit that the pastry case dishes were all meaty or the waitress had made the mistake, or lied to the chef of what Anthony's order was when she put the order in, When there are two or three links in the chain of a mistake and you are not witness to any of the transactions that were part of how the mistake was made then it gets harder to attribute cause. I was also reminded of how meat eaters simply don't care and will lie very casually about what they want to serve vegetarians. 'Chicken is not meat really' is an excuse that slips easily out of their mouths. I'd heard my sister say it to make her life around me more convenient for her. Lies about food slip from dissemblers mouths as easily as their poorly disguises for their lack of concern of what they eat actually is and where it might have come from. Carelessness about food and language go together alarmingly well. But to the careless being alarmed by such casual dissembling...   ...well they don't mind being lied to so why should anyone else?

We got out of the restaurant in reasonable humour after Anthony lectured the waitress, and made mildly squirm. If there was any slight revenge it would have been how much smaller the tip we left was than it might have been.

That night I had odd dreams that a yodelling country singer resembling Slim Whitman had just died. I was one of the costumiers going through his stage wardrobe after, only to find a secret compartment where there was women's clothing that was nearly child size-as if as a heterosexual he had a major bondage fetish and had secretively found willing partners to indulge it. The dream was either about fetish wear, or the clothing in the secret compartment reflected the status of women in the lyrics of his songs.   

 If I had to guess where that dream came from it would be the demeanour of the waitress who had to listen to Anthony complain about the chicken in his vegetarian pastry bake.

Please left click here for part four of this diary. 

Holiday Diary - Morocco April/May 2024 - Part Two

29th April - We appreciated the rest when we were shown our room, had put our luggage down, and had surrendered our passports to the hotelier so that he could fill in the form that every hotelier has to fill in, to hand over to the police, listing his guests, where they have come from, and where they expect to be next.

Once we were rested we realised that the room was a little small, and that we had to do something about Anthony's suitcase and about food. But first we had to retrace our steps back to the market alley, to investigate that. Anthony led I followed and  had to take note of what I saw and limit how much I allowed myself to be distracted. Then we had to get some money from a cash point. There was only one place on the square where there was a cash point, and it had two cash points. That place was the post office. The queues were long at both of them. We got in the nearest queue and shuffled forward slowly about thirty minutes in the sun, getting quietly annoyed at the sense of entitlement in the comments of some of the people ahead of us, We both got our allotted two thousand dirhams, the maximum that could be taken out per day, equivalent to two hundred pounds.

Walking back, not quite ready to eat yet, we stopped at different restaurants and looked at their menus, where the they put one up outside the establishment. The menu that mentioned pigeon caught my eye. Whilst we looked at a couple of other places to eat, the restaurant the might serve pigeon was the one we returned to. It was normal but still felt good to have our starter of olives and bread, The earthquake of Autumn 2023 had done it's damage to the whole of Marrakesh and a tiny part of that damage was how uneven the floor was. I fixed the solution to the table rocking was for me to put some of my olive stones as chocks underneath the table foot to the near right corner of me, so the table rocked less. Anthony had the vegetable tagine, I had the chicken tagine. A tagine is both a serving dish and a recipe. The dish is a thick circular pottery base with a rim, diameter about ten to twelve inches, inside but close to the rim sits a conical lid. They withstand great heat. The recipe is whatever vegetables and meat are arranged in a conical shape for the lid to go over it comfortably. Carrots and potatoes are basic to the recipe, whatever else is put in. It is the spices that the Moroccans use that stop the dish becoming a hot pot in disguise.

Walking back to our hotel in the evening was a relative pleasure. There were no mini-dumper trucks ferrying hard core from sites where the earthquake had struck like there had been earlier in the day, I'd guessed that he felt rather put off by the scale and closeness of the traffic in that narrow space earlier in the day. I had coped, but did not really want to know how I had got through it. I guessed I would be finding out on my own at some point tomorrow. 

That night I slept well on my own in my single bed, as did Anthony. Particularly when  he got me to change position because with my sinuses 'being bad' I was snoring. I had the full compliment of company in my dreams, where all the friends I'd known in my twenties appeared in ways that lifted me up, whilst the family home was full of arguments. 

Find Part Three of this diary here. 

Holiday Diary - Morocco April/May 2024 - Part One

Monday April 29th. After last night's argument where I was at fault to the point where I was not allowed to help recover all seemed clear, the usual warm morning greetings. Breakfast was one and a half pan raisin and proper strong coffee, a very French breakfast. We were packed, the packing checked, and the suitcases and hand luggage in the car, and the car on the road out of Caylus, for 10 am. First stop Caussade, where Anthony stopped at his opticians to check when his next eye test was, not for a few months. He had hoped it as sooner. I looked at the bric-a-brac stall on the market market, and was happy that the one stall was all I had time to look at. 

Everything went smoothly after that until we got to boarding the plane. Anthony had no problems with the motorway tolls or the parking, where the care was to be left whilst we were away. We had no problems with the tram and bus to the airport. In the airport Anthony insisted on a coffee and slice of lime tart. He thought we were still in good time, though I would have not been so sanguine about the flight times. We got through security fine, together and apart. Me taking the lead. Ryanair boarding procedures are a subject for complaint all to themselves, as anyone who as put the word Ryanair into google will find for themselves. Yes, they are cheap if you book early enough, but I wonder how cheap they should be to justify a boarding process where those taking the flight are made to queue, repeatedly at different intervals to no obvious use or advantage. I have experienced this enough recently for it to remind me of some of the infant school trips I remember which were said to be about visiting a particular place but were more about the teacher's fear of disorder getting there to the point where the pupils collectively regretted leaving the classroom, and were not allowed to say so; it would have sounded too much like an adult response to being treated like a child.

The problem we had was Ryanair falsely reinforcing an old regulation of theirs where the feet of Anthony's suitcase made it fit awkwardly within the measure they used, but the body of the suitcase was well within limits. Anthony paid the eighty euro 'fine' for 'over-sized locker luggage'. He was not the only one to be made to pay and have his luggage put in the hold. He was more angry at the young female stewardess who feigned being harassed better than he could calmly stand his ground and insist he could keep his luggage for the overhead locker. Eighty euros poorer but knowing the stewardess had Anthony over a barrel we boarded. My book for the flight was 'Confessions of a Fallen Angel' by Ronan O'Brien. It described a Irish 1980's maladjusted childhood. It was easy to read, the main area where it diverged from my expectations was that the lead character was heterosexual and having no difficulty getting girls to like him, or dump him. He keeps getting dreams where people he likes die in oddly accidental looking circumstances. And the dreams come true. I got a third of the way through the book before we landed at Menara Airport, close to Marrakesh.

The airport was all on one floor unlike, say, Dublin airport or Toulouse Blagnac. It was also bigger than we, particularly Anthony, expected. The height of the airport ceiling being the height of some lavish palace the airport seemed to be designed  to  overwhelm  the  plebs.  The queues that we had  join  and  get  out  of  to  have  our passports checked were several and long. This gave me the opportunity to repeatedly contemplate the  message on the moving advertising hoarding   'Experience  Your Senses'. 

I was glad  when I  had  something  to  do, like look for the conveyor where Anthony's luggage  was,  to collect it. I was aware of my wanting  to 'Mother' Anthony but I was equally aware  that he  was tired and stressed and that part of what I had  to do was look out for what was meant to be happening next in this vast open space. We got out with our sense of  ourselves  and each other intact, but not knowing how close we might have come to the sense of us both feeling less intact.

Out in the open air just outside the airport we looked for a man holding a sign with Anthony's name on it, or said sign on a board. The smart young man who was our taxi driver into the centre of Marrakesh that afternoon was walking with his shoe laces undone, holding his 'Anthony' sign up with one hand, and holding his smart phone with the other. He was pleased to see us, and said that he had recognised Anthony via an image of him that was on whatsapp which confused me. I did not know that Anthony was on whatsapp, though he has a distinct and characterful presence  via his own website. I was struck by the question with partnerships/buddy ships how much do partners tell each other about their online adventures? It is on a par with recounting dreams, in both the activity is non-corporeal. In the taxi we sped away from Menara Airport and towards our hotel, pre-booked for two nights by Anthony.

Twenty minutes later we were dropped off with our luggage in one corner of Marrakesh central market square and the direction in which to find our hotel was pointed out to us with not much more clarity then the next few yards direction about where to go. We had no clear sense of how far down it was, where to turn off, etc. We walked for more than ten minutes down a crowded alley market place, down which motorbikes and cyclists weaved in and out between a constant flow of people, and clearly stoned men offered us dubious directions until we eventually located the left turn that after a couple more turns got us to our hotel, the Hotel Tamazouzt.

Find Part Two of this diary here.