Morocco Expedition 21 September - 7 October 2006

Yet another series of postcards in summary of an expedition, with sundry digressions and annotations. Unfortunately there were quite a number of good photographic opportunities that I felt compelled to pass over, because I was either embarassed to take the picture of an incapacitated beggar or retiring old lady like a Victorian gentleman anthropologist, or because I feared unwanted attention, or because it would leave me open to the ready extraction of dihram.

Tangier via Malaga

I entered Morocco by boat from Algeciras, after spending a night in Malaga. During my Spanish stopover I stocked up on cups of sweetened fresh orange juice and various pastries. Indeed, a week later I found a part-embalmed croissant in my rucksack which numerous tiny flies were mining.

Despite having been fully briefed on the attention given to those disembarking at Tangier's port, I was immediately taken virtual hostage by one man claiming to be an official guide and flashing his idenitification (in Arabic) at me. Quite probably he was a government guide, and proved very useful, if a little expensive (I actually gave him more money than he asked for) introduction to the foreign clime. I was first escorted to his motor vehicle, but, having been hemmed in on all four sides, he required my help to navigate one of the diagonals. After some painful conversation with the chap (and I forget his name) making sure that I knew his esteem for all Englishmen and telling me that he had a freind in London and so on, and some unecessary academic comments from me about the GDP of Morocco (or something of that sort), and after completing a taxi run with his mates in the back, we got into the Tangier Medina where he showed me around. He touted how he could offer much more than a tour of the old town, taking me camel-trekking, to fight Mahdi armies or see the wonders of the ancient world, but he really seemed to be doing this out of habit, and was quite content to be done with me in as short of time as possible so he could have his long expected dinner.

Algeciras.



















The Rock of Gibralta and Mediterranean spray.




















Tangier hawking into view.

Myself outside a Mosque (painted green, the colour of Sunni orthodoxy).

Inevitably my guide took me to a carpet shop, but I was not asked by the owner for my interest & custom at all. I assume that this is because the shop is for wealthy Moroccans and foreign diplomats, and the sales technique was correspondingly more mild-mannered. A few more academic comments to my guide, for instance about Tudor English lords displaying imported carpets on walls rather than ever walking on them, had no good effect watsoever and he wandered around distracted and clutching at his belly.

On the rooftop.

















The cultured owner of the establishment, chatting to me about the middle eastern religions: Judaism, Christianity & Islam (in his opinion Islam being the final and most advanced system), also speaking encouragingly about the advent of Ramadan and asking whether I would observe it, and about my onward itineary.
















A cafe scene with the men watching the universal coverage of Hassan Nasrallah's Hezbollah 'victory celebrations' in Beirut, a waving sea of Lebanon cedar flags.

Inevitably I wanted to go and take a look around the church of Saint Andrew, one of two (I think) Anglican chuches in Morocco, but after a few cursory moments in the churchyard, and on reaching the door my guide promptly instructed me that the church was closed. I had had to perusade him to put it onto the itinerary in the first place. Nevertheless, after leaving the guide for his crucial meal, I stole back to the church. Although locked, Mustapha (who appeared on Michael Palin's round-the-world series), the groundsman for forty years, living in the house next to the church, trained in the selective use of clipped English salutations and phrases, let me inside. The architecture is a mixture of Arabic and English styles, and the Lord's Prayer is written in Arabic around the chancel arch.




















An elaborate chancel roof made from cedar wood.




















The front pew reserved for diplomats.















The churchyard, where an Australian couple were tending to their young baby.















Mustapha, the trusted key-holder.



















With my final breath of (almost) English church air I made my way into the Moroccan streets.

I spent a good number of hours in both the new and the old town, arrested by quite a number of sights before making down the coast several miles to the railway station.

Up-market.

Arrived at Tangier train station, a pristine marble structure. I sat nervously for several hours before summoning up the courage to introduce myself to a large coral of English-speaking peoples. I was then introduced into a world of secret deposits of toilet paper & toilet squatting stategies, gap year curriculum vitae, & descriptions of around-the-world itineraries unmatched by Marco Polo.












The train was for Marakech and travelled overnight. I bedded down in a cabin alongside Osama, a tall Kasakhstani engineering student, James, an Englishman seeking the surf on the south coast, and a polite Moroccan gentleman, whose name I have forgotten, who was visting his family in Marakech. On attempting to board the train, James was blocked by an assiduous guard who refused his surfboard permission to stow. We negotiated its safe passage and custody in the cabin, whilst being amused by an attentive toothless cigarrette tout. Osama told us about Kasakhstan, a vast country (ninth largest in the world), and the wealth of many of its citizens, grown rich from natural gas supplies. James' aspiration was to be contracted to work on Nigerian oil rigs as a technical consultant, and he bemoamed the restrictive religous education of his girlfriend by her family. In response I & Osama had some measured comments about God & Mammon. I was expected to speak on the Archbishop of Canterbury's behalf.

Osama barricades the water closet whilst James indicates the signage.




















A room with a view (I).

Marakech.

I will spare you the more general geographical, historical and demographic details about Marakech and will attempt not to crib the guide book. It will suffice to say that Marakech is an old imperial city, with grand walls and palace ruins. Its old town is a warren of little red streets, still with recognisable zones of trades (blacksmiths, weavers etc. etc.) working in tiny worshops in the souks (or markets), some opening out onto the Djemaa el fna, the great square of Marakech. This great square as a public forum, a feature dissapeared from the other cities, is where street entertainers, monkey keepers, snake charmers, orange vendors, and others perform for the sake of the local populace and to the large tourist groups which come there. The old city is brim-full with hassle, either the intentional hand-upon-the-shoulder and the grasping of apparent friendship, or the unintentional colliding force of over-laden donkeys or carreering motorbikes. The motorbikes are the worst of all. They wind in and out of spaces, as bycicles do in Cambridge lanes. Thank God that most cannot afford to have too great a horsepower.

The unwanted attention from many Moroccans in the old town is unrelenting. My defences immediately went up & did not really come down for the whole journey. I got lost several times because I refused in any way to be party to the guidance of a small child running beside me, taking the opposite turnings to the ones that he suggested that I needed to take. I distrusted many acts of seeming kindness, and those to which I relented, or was forced to accept, I considered traps to be sprung days later in towns hundreds of miles distant, when I least expected to be snared. Alone, and without the language (either Moroccan Arabic, Berber or French), I was especially guarded.

There are masses of tourists who come to Marakech. They do not come secretly, but dressed as caricature of western visitors. Yet the brashness of some of these types succeeded where my own quietness failed. I hated the culture of persuasion and physical negotiation which I was met with, as totally alien to my way of life, whereas many of these less discrete tourists seemed better able to healthily enter into negotiation for what they wanted from thier holidays.

Musical performers in the Djemma. Taking this picture was an early mistake, necessarily involving the consequent payment of dihram.















One of the Muslim cemeteries outside the city walls. Nearby men were shovelling plastic waste into large skips set on fire, and the smouldering, acrid fumes drifted overhead.



















The Koutoubia Mosque built in the twelfth century. The footprints of the previous mosque, torn down because it did not face Mecca, stand by it. The area around the Koutoubia was my favourite retreat whilst in Marakech, with several rose gardens adjoining it. Although most of these roses were dead and the gardens rather parched, it was pleasant, if rather melancholy, to sit on one of the benches during the dusk and watch young couples meet and sit together. Marakech is quite young and liberal in terms of the mixing of the sexes, the fashions on display and its liberality, but without the chique and wealth of cosmopolitan Cassablanca or Rabat.



















Sufficient proof of an occupying power.















This gentleman in the Djemaa was positing some relationship between a lady and a primate.

It so happened that the Deputy Registrar of the Faculty Office, Mr. Nicholas Richens, my colleague, was in Marakech that first night, and after chancing into some lodgings, I met him in the Djemma to stroll at discrete enough disatance from the amusements, and to have a spot of dinner. While enjoying his ironic wit, I also had the company of several young ladies from Christ's College in Cambridge and thier gentelman friend from the New West of the City, who were on the final stages of thier tour. The four of us compared notes on Morocco and Cambridge before making our seperate ways. I think we were all glad of each other's company. They wished me well on the eve of the onset of Ramadan.

Our table, the staff & produce.














An interminable boxing match where the showman attempted to raise enough money so that his sports could lay into each other for a short round. Nick kindly spent some dihram on our behalf to assist get the fight going.














A tentative fishing game.

The blue luminescence of a Teleboutique that evening.

These are pictures of the Riad in which I lodged for two nights. Riads are town houses based around an open courtyard. I shared with the patron, a small gaunt wiry man, and his family.

The courtyard and birds duifully taking the seed.



















On the coffee table: Marie Claire 1993.














Picture of a reassuring English country house.

The courtyard and the pastiche desert scenes.

This is the palace El Badi built by ahmed al-Monsour between 1578 & 1602 on a monumental scale.






















































































A minbar (not to be confused with a 'mini-bar'), Islamic preaching platform. This is a very old one, approximately, to my memory, five hundred years old, and eleborately carved. The Iman never stands on the top step of a minbar, which is instead reserved for Mohammad.This makes me think of how little pulpits are used in the Church of England for today's sermons, priests preferring to be on the same level with the congregation, with powerpoint and inclusive messages at the ready.

My second day in Marakech was partly spent attempting to find the location of an agency which would be able to post me on a guided trek of the mountains. Attempting in vain to find this I spent much of my day walking through desolate parts of the suburbs with thier concrete and iron strewn pitches and half-built houses. So many are half-built because of the expense requires thier inhabitants to construct them bit by bit whilst living in them, rather than because of failed speculations.

Various views of Marakech in the day time.

Typical alley in the old town with cobbled streets, studded doors and children kicking footballs. I suffered the usual embarassment of not caring a bit about football.



















Young men retrieving aerial coconuts, or at least having a try.



















The botanical gardens featuring bamboo with incised calligraphy. Here, like other places, appeared crowds of tourists, uncannily transported to each attraction without needing to pass through any of the intervening town.
















Election columns for political advertisements on the wall of an educational college.



















Sleeping cartsman.















Careering.