Morocco Trek

For spring break I left the sands of California for the sands of Morocco.

Spring break “treks” are very popular for business school students — one might almost say expected. Classmates of mine traveled to such places as Ghana, Costa Rica, and Tulum, but I settled on Morocco.

I was to travel a long way in just a few days, lots of flying and driving. Was I ready? I didn’t know. But it was happening.

Arrival: from the Desert

The day after returning from Palm Desert, where I’d spent a few days with my girlfriend and her family, I woke at 3:30am to fly out of LAX. Two six-hour flights later — first on American and then on Royal Air Maroc — I touched down to a misty sunrise in Casablanca.

On the way out through customs I located a few classmates and we walked together to our bus, on which we ate dates as we hit the road for Marrakech.

Along the side of the highway we passed kids playing soccer, a man herding goats, lumbering donkey carts, many palm trees, and unfinished housing projects. Then the landscape shifted from green to red, and not long after that we crossed a dry river into the city.

Marrakech

Arriving to our hotel felt like arriving to a palace in Dorne; maybe it was the orange trees lining the neighborhood’s walkways. By the time we stepped off the bus, it’d been twenty-six hours since I’d woken up in LA. No, I hadn’t slept on the plane.

I sat by the pool while waiting for our rooms to be ready. I was surprised, given my lack of sleep, to realize that I felt calm and contented. I’d actually made it! For the first time in over two years, I was overseas.

After settling into my room, it was time for cooking class at La Maison Arabe, each station outfitted with a tajine. Tajine, I’d learned from my girlfriend’s brother just days before, is a North African specialty in which meals are cooked and then served in the same earthenware pot. Following the head chef’s lead, I heated the mix of chicken & onions in water, adding spices such as ginger, turmeric, and saffron before topping it with caramelized apricots:

Ascending to the rooftop, we enjoyed our creations along with Moroccan wine. While alcohol is taboo in Muslim culture, Moroccans apparently feel little enough qualms dosing it out to foreigners. The small meal revived my energy and I enjoyed getting to know a few new faces.

It didn’t take me long, upon returning to the hotel, to collapse into the warm cradle of my bed. After thirty-three waking hours, I finally closed my eyes for a much-needed rest.

I woke to darkness and looked at the clock. It was only 4am, but I’d already slept for eight hours and was unable to fall back asleep. Eventually the birds started chirping and as dawn approached I went downstairs looking for some kind — any kind — of sustenance.

Turns out they had an open buffet, where I enjoyed such foods as sausage mixed with veggies, black beans diced with olives, and a Moroccan pancake topped with honey. Then I woke up my jetlagged roommate to ensure he didn’t miss the group outing to the Musée Yves Saint Laurent.

Walking through the exhibit, I was struck by the snake imagery, the bright colors, and the sketches of women that were motion made static. Seeing an elegant green dress made me feel wistful, and I realized it’s because it’s just the type of dress my late mother would have worn. A pink floral dress, on the other hand, made me smile as I imagined it on my girlfriend.

A museum attendant addressed me in French, my “bonjour” apparently being convincing enough for her to rattle off a few unintelligible sentences before I asked her to switch to English. It reminded me of that last time I’d been overseas, in Venice and Milan, when my “ciao” or “buonasera” would often prompt my interlocutor to spill out some Italian before I’d stop them with an embarrassed laugh.

Anyways, the attendant provided fascinating context to the artwork, so I decided to make a second pass through the exhibit. This time I read much of the fine print, and learned how NYC, Casablanca, and Paris found common ground in Marrakech though Fernando Sanchez, Tamy Tazi, and Yves Saint Laurent. They brought the kaftan to couture and reshaped the boundary between masculine and feminine.

I walked out of the museum to stroll in the Jardin Majorelle. I felt full of longing, but couldn’t figure out quite why. Perhaps I was mourning the last two years of relative confinement; perhaps it was because Morocco, being a place unlike any I’d seen, recalled fictional scenes that I’d read years before and had hitherto existed only in my imagination.

Throughout my stroll, the birds cried: “oh-oo-hoo oh-oo-hoo” “mier mier mier mier mier”

The buildings and pots in this garden seemed to have been introduced by an artist’s brush. I reflected that Yves Saint Laurent & Pierre Bergé’s partnership was a bit like Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera’s, Jardin Majorelle a foil for La Casa Azul.

We ate lunch at the Amal Association, a non-profit organization empowering disadvantaged women through culinary training. As a cat or two looked on, I enjoyed a very tender beef tajine, trading a few bites for others’ chicken curry and rack of lamb. After dessert, I decided to walk back to the hotel rather than take the bus.

The streets seemed ruled by initiative — with barely any stoplights and little regard for crosswalks, the right of way generally went to he who took it, pedestrians needing to walk out into the street in order to gain any respect.

I passed motorcycles & cats, my walk smelling alternately of gasoline & flowers. Crossing the final street before reaching the hotel, I spied what looked like an ancient fort wall lining the hills in the distance. The sight transported me back seventeen years to when I’d stood atop the Rock of Gibraltar with my brother and parents, looking out across the strait. On a clear day you could see Morocco from there, but that day it was cloudy, so instead of catching sight of Africa for the first time in my life, I settled for gazing wistfully off into the haze. I’d been to Tanzania in the intervening years, but in my imagination, Morocco continued to represent what lies beyond, a foreign port that stretched on into a vast continent, a land unknown.

Now that I’d arrived, however, I actually felt quite comfortable.

Yet the place still did feel exotic to me. So exotic, in fact, that some of the Americans in our group that I’d never met in LA took on a foreign shading in my mind, even though I knew that they weren’t Moroccan and that the real bond that tied us was the USA.

For dinner, our entire group of seventy people dined at Le Kilim. They served a mishmash of Americanized food fusion.

What I mean by that is: fries & hummus, cauliflower & couscous, heirloom tomatoes that burst like gushers in our mouths. But the centerpiece was a dish I didn’t know they served in Morocco: fried chicken strips. I must say, they were both perfectly crispy and perfectly tender, and topped with a green sauce that balanced spicy & flavorful. My table loved them and couldn’t get enough, crushed when they ran out and then overjoyed when they unexpectedly brought out more. We sang the praises of “the most surprising fried chicken” — for who indeed would expect to find a Nashville rival here?

After dinner, I went with a group to the So Lounge, which on this Monday night we at first had completely to ourselves. We ordered a hookah, its pipe circling the table like clockwork. More foreign nationals, some from the UK, flooded in before the end of the night. I returned to the hotel very late — either my jetlag was now over or my body truly had lost any sense of time.

I slept late but thankfully my roommate returned the favor and woke me up in time to make the bus for that day’s events.

We began our walking tour of the Medina at the Kutubiyya Mosque, which, named for the booksellers that surrounded it, is the tallest building in Marrakech, giving it similar status to the Washington Monument in DC.

From there we strolled through the marketplace, passing monkey tamers and snake charmers. I took a picture of the cobra and a guy ran up to me, frantically exhorting me in Arabic and then in French. I shrugged and kept walking, the classic New Yorker response. Only later did I learn you’re expected to pay for such pictures.

We walked past jars of dates, baskets of nuts, pyramids of spices, and platters of olives, the smells of which periodically overshadowed the leathery smell of donkey. There was virtually no boundary between pedestrians and vehicles, as motorcyclers squeezed through narrow covered walkways.

We soon found ourselves at the Bahia Palace, named for some Grand Vizier’s beautiful wife. As we walked over tiles, past arabesques, and under muqarnas, I wondered at how long it must have taken to commission all of this, much less finish it.

Departing the palace, we passed through the Mellah and its old synagogues, walking into a hole in the wall for lunch at Cafe Dar Touareg. They served up a meat pie, its crunchy & flaky top sweet with cinnamon.

After the group tour concluded with a visit to a spice store, we freely roamed the medina’s marketplace. At one kiosk, Nikhil and Ayesha got ready for the Sahara while Kushal and I got ready for fashion week.

As we wandered through the endless labyrinth of stalls, merchants would often run after us, offering price cut after price cut. Already things were pretty cheap, but as Kushal said, “it would almost feel disrespectful not to haggle.” Sometimes we’d see the same vendor at different stalls throughout the maze. How was this business run anyways? One monopolist pretending to compete against himself? We agreed it’d make a good business school case study.

At sunset I began a night to myself by strolling down a lush walkway towards Gueliz. My tranquility surprised me, for I’d never before been to an Arab country. To give you an idea of how little I knew of anything Arabic, consider my surprise when upon arrival the tour company gave me a bag that read:

لايل

and I learned that it translates to my first name. I hadn’t even considered whether Arabic is ideographic (like Chinese) or alphabetic (like English), and clearly I’d wrongly assumed the former.

After passing many dry restaurants with patios, I found one with the high hedges and tinted windows characteristic of boozy establishments. I walked into Azar, through its hookah lounge to the host’s stand, from which they walked me past camel wallmounts up to a balcony. The music kinda bumped, making the restaurant feel like an Arabian rendition of LA’s Toca Madera. I especially enjoyed such songs as Ederlezi and Bushiya.

A bottle of red wine and shakshouka preluded my main course of royal couscous. It was royal indeed — vegetable soup served alongside three types of meat. I mixed it all together.

All of a sudden the music turned up from bumpy to clubby, and as I looked downstairs a glint of metal caught my eye: a woman was balancing a metal platter on her head, topped with candles & tea kettles, as she spun in circles.

Thus began the belly dancing portion of the night’s entertainment.

People clapped to the beat as the women spread amongst the room, one dancing with a little kid, another jiving with a seated old couple. A man got up to dance with one of the performers, then turned around and shook his butt at her. Patrons and performers alike laughed embarrassedly, as if partaking in some fond national pastime that shouldn’t be questioned too closely. Even the hookah guy got into it, swinging his pot and tongs rhythmically before walking over to the table to refill the waterpipe with hot embers.

After the dancing died down, I walked out into the warm night, reflecting on how comfortable I’d started to feel in Marrakech. If only I had a few more days.

The Sahara

We rose before the sun to begin our trip into the desert, fueling up on guava juice and harira, a Moroccan soup.

From gloomy skies in Marrakech, our long line of SUVs twisted high into the foggy Atlas Mountains, descending to blue skies on the other side.

The towns we passed seemed as if they’d grown naturally out of the landscape, pots and huts alike made of the same red clay as the hills.

We lunched beside a massive palm tree grove along the Oued Draa. It surprised me that this snaking river could supply enough water, and I imagined that these thousands of trees were some kind of mirage.

It got sandier and sandier as we pressed on to Zagora — even the air was full of sand. Then we pulled off the paved road and into the Sahara proper.

A column of sand twisted in the sky, moving fast across the ground. Our car began to slide a bit back and forth; it felt like we were driving through snow, or through Colorado mudslides. As our cars spread into a loose V Formation, I started to feel a bit nervous, seeing naught but sand dunes in the distance. Where on earth was the camp?

Then we arrived.

"Polish comes from the cities, wisdom from the desert" – Frank Herbert, Dune

Our cluster of tents was nestled between the dunes. Sand blew fast & hard in our faces as we bundled into shemaghs. A scarab beetle crawled across my path as I took off my sandals, and for the first time in my life I walked barefoot on non-beach sand.

We sipped mint tea in the dining tent while waiting for the other half of the group, who’d stopped to make the final approach on camels. When they arrived, we walked across a dune to our caravans. I climbed aboard my trusty steed, who stood up so suddenly that I nearly lost my balance. Then we lumbered off, connected by rope. Our guides’ bare feet were swollen, our camels’ bare feet were like slippers.

To scale the dunes, the camels tilted their bodies what felt like ninety degrees, somehow keeping us neatly balanced on their backs. Other than that, much of the ride was bumpy and sandy. Between dunes, sand raged in our faces; above dunes, it was clear as could be.

The camel behind me kept nuzzling my leg, and at one point it even sneezed on me! When we returned to camp though we heard much worse had happened to Kushal:

“The camel bit me!”
“What!?”
“Yeah it just took a bite out of my leg!”
“Why?”
“I think it thought my phone was food. It also chewed through the rope and untethered Nikhil from the caravan.”
“Ahahaha. Oh my god. Did it hurt?”
“Yeah when it happened! Feels fine now. Didn’t break the skin or else I’d be worried I have camel rabies.”

After a dune-top sunset and a large buffet dinner we got the DJ going and commenced the desert party. We let paper balloons rise into the sky and danced the night away.

Later in the night we ventured into the darkness to view the stars. We laid down and closed our eyes for a couple minutes. When we opened them, starlight shone down as if through a sieve. Orion’s bow is so big!! And so obvious. Why have I never really seen it, yet always seen the belt?

In little more than half an hour, I saw three shooting stars.

On our walk back to camp we passed other stargazers, whom I imagined as spicers from Dune or merchants from Star Wars as they negotiated the desert with flashlights.

Back at camp I entered my dark tent, found my bed in the corner, and slept a sound sleep.

When I awoke the tent was still dark. To my surprise however, when I opened the tent flap, I was met with a curtain of light. Sand cold on my bare feet, I walked towards noise atop one of the dunes. There I found my classmates sandboarding, so I hiked up to take a ride of my own.

Back at camp we broke fast with curry bread, honey coated flatbreads, and freshly-squeezed orange juice, of which Nikhil drank at least ten. Then we returned to civilization, bags and pockets full of sand. I stared out the window as we drove back the way we’d came, eventually reaching the Restaurant L’Oasis D’or near Ouarzazate.

Lunch gave us a much-needed energy boost before we walked across the river to the Ksar of Ait-Ben-Haddou, a fortified village along the caravan route that connected Marrakech to Timbuktu. Now it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has been used to film such works as Lawrence of Arabia, Indiana Jones, Gladiator, and Game of Thrones.

We entered the village and climbed its twisting walkways, past shops and snake charmers, all the way up to the top.

The view from up there made me feel as if transported back a thousand years, or as if whisked away to another world. We could see all sorts of landscapes: snow-capped mountains with cloud cover, sandy plains under clear skies, fertile greens along the river.

Our hotel that night, La Perle Du Sud in Ouarzazate, was not a resort like the place in Marrakech. It did feel a little more authentic though, with its engraved wooden doors, its camels printed on the mirror. I went to bed early that evening, a long travel day ahead.

Departure: To The Desert

I began my journey home to the United States in nearly pitch black. I was leaving Morocco a day early to make my friend’s bachelor party in Las Vegas. Two others needed to leave early too, so we drove out of Ouarzazate together under the stars and the half moon.

Snow lined both sides of the road during our drive through the mountains — first a thin layer, then a couple of inches as we reached the top of the pass.

The drive felt ominous, mysterious. Would we make it out of this long trek alive? We passed a car on the side of the road that had flipped onto its roof as it crashed.

A more reasonable worry was whether I’d arrive in Vegas on time. After the drive, I’d board a first plane in Marrakech, a second in Casablanca, and a third in New York. That’s a lot of variables.

We pressed on through fog, the sky still black, until blue clouds peeked over the snowcapped peaks to signal dawn. As we descended, the frost line was consistent with the fog line, evoking the white walkers in Hardhome.

By the time the sky had turned from dark blue to light, we’d made it back to Marrakech. The city felt especially hectic after coming from the empty mountains at dawn, and our driver informed us it was even more busy than usual, as “the King is coming to town tomorrow.”

From the moment I arrived at the Menara Airport, it was all a whirlwind, yet smoother than I could have imagined. I walked out onto the tarmac and into a tiny plane that took me to a bigger plane that took me across the Atlantic. I was even able to sleep a bit before touching down, twenty-eight hours after I’d woken up, in the Mojave Desert.

When, the bachelor party over, my plane reached LA on Sunday night, I sat in my seat staring dumbly ahead, watching people file off the aircraft. It was as if I couldn’t believe my trip was over, or that it actually happened. I was the last one off the plane.

In some ways I felt as if on autopilot the whole trip, a spectator that couldn’t believe as he was whisked from place to place without hiccup or delay. It’d been a while since I’d felt, really felt emotionally rather than thought intellectually, that there’s a whole world out there for me to explore. In that sense, this trip reoriented me.

I returned home feeling far more relaxed than when I’d left. My faith that I’ll actually be able to see places faraway and unknown has been restored. I feel that if I just pack a bag, bring an open mind, and go, that I will be rewarded.