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Marrakesh + Tanger + Tarifa + Xaouen = 36 Hrs.
(AUDIO: Big City Blues by Fadhili Williams Mdawida)
1. Night train from Marrakesh to Tanger, Morocco. 11 hours in an orange sauna-like cabin with burlap curtains, the shriek of night wind, the patter of strange feet outside the door. My Mom and Dad sleep on the bottom bunks, I’m on the top.
2. Hundreds of cars, thousands of people carrying bags, boxes, chickens, sheep, turkeys. Red fez caps, dusky djellabas, cops in green caps blowing whistles, the puff and industrial hum of smokestacks, ferries, cargo ships, fisherman, fish, cats seeking fish.
3. Spanish ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar. Blinding silvery sunlight, smoking cigarettes on the starboard deck, watching Spaniard tourists snapping photos of the disappearing haze that shrouds weird Tanger.
4. We eat lunch at Bamboo, near the port. Goat cheese, sliced pear, walnuts, sesame seeds and honey-drizzled greens. Mango-infused orange juice. Old men telling stories on the park benches through the window. Tarifa is full of beautiful women with bare legs (a stunning contrast to Islamic Morocco), bikinis, free-flowing hair and ideals re: gender empowerment.
5. After crossing the Strait, my Mom and Dad catch the train back south and I stay in the North. Spying the old relics of Burrough’s Naked Lunch back in Tanger, where much of the book was set and inspired. Old whorehouses in the medina, cafes with kif-smokers and carnival folk. No strangulation fetishes.
6. Plush but simple suite at the Rif Hotel on the main drag with a large window over the beach front and a hazy view towards Southern Europe. Ate Lebanese, smoked a joint, watched a BBC report about shady stem-cell transplants in the Ukraine.
7. Early morning bus to Xaouen (Chaouen in French / transliterated Moroccan Arabic) via twenty-minute break in Tetouan.
8. Met a lovely Italian girl from Roma named Julia who’s volunteering to help build a school outside Xaouen. It’s her first time in Morocco though she’s visited India and Syria and is sharp-ish and cute.
9. When Julia and I get off the bus to have a smoke in Tetouan, a tiny riot erupts re: numbered seating vs. open seating. We are forced apart in mid-sentence conversation, and a handful of other passengers are shuffled to accommodate the otherwise ignored numbering system on the half-full bus.
10. Impassioned, one man stands up and begins shouting at the driver, who’s navigating the bus through the busy Tetouan streets. Methodically, he stops the bus in the center of an intersection, drags the passenger out by the scruff of his collar / neck and into the local Prefecture to be arrested for disorderly conduct.
11. It’s weirdly hot in Xaouen and there’s a festive buzz in the usually lethargic mountain village air. Julia and I share a petit taxi to Plaza Outa Hammam and have a drink at the cafe with four Americans before I go.
12. In Xaouen, I book my usual room at the stylish and loveable Casa Yazid, Northern Morocco’s ‘Little Hotel That Could’ and see my friend Bilal who artfully manages the place. We have coffee and talk for an hour with his friend Yassine. Laughter, good intentions. Bilal ‘just wants everyone to be happy.’
13. At 730, I go to meet the four Americans in the square: one girl from Atlanta who looked sexy and cattish in a white Magrebi-style tunic, one who studies at Cambridge, a guy named Chris and a mustached Jew named Joshua. They’d all been studying Moroccan Arabic at a small school in Fez. Also, one Aussie traveler / surfer-type, one young Buddhist-monk originally from Brussels, one Milanese journalist who works at Vice Magazine / VBS.tv and produced ‘Toxic Napoli’ and his petit Italian girlfriend.
14. We ate dinner at ‘Restaurant Al Kasaba’ where I always eat in Xaouen: chicken and sweet onion salad with sesame oil, fresh yogurt and local fruit, orange juice, espresso, chicken / red pepper kebabs. As a group we discuss Morocco, Arabic-linguistics, etymology, communes, kibbutzim, Kasbah Moderne, the hash trade, sex, the joys and terrors of the post-industrial revolution era.
15. An unexpected sight in Plaza Outa Hamam: The International Chess Festival of Xaouen. 60 mixed Moroccan players rival two European ‘masters’ simultaneously in the cool but warm night air with insect-buzzed spot lights above.
16. Sufi singers perform mournful Pre-Islamic Magrebi ballads deep in the dull, matte night on a temporary stage with a couple thousand in the audience. All across the crooked half-lit rooftops one could hear the sweet sad music. They ended with a double encore at around 230am.
17. The Americans invite me to their roof at Pension Castellano (next to the ancient blue Hamam). We can’t find beer and settle for the subtle quiet of jokes and stories in the absolute dark. At midnight, we’re watching the stars on our backs, listening to the music of the Sufi-ists and telling secret sex stories in a weirdly Truth-or-Dare fashion. The Georgia girl in the white tunic is still sexy for the record but seems guarded and insecure. Chris is plain but warm and good. The Cambridge student is talkative and involved. Joshua is the slightly introspective, slightly self-isolating one. I’m the ultra-observer, taking mental notes and making quiet judgements as I smoke in the dark.
18. Back at my suite at Casa Yazid, the hotel is dark and hushed. I take a cold shower and meditate. The Sufi musicians are still playing and I smoke two big spliffs before falling asleep in the strange and crippling heat (Xaouen is usually mountain cold, or cool).
19. Just after dawn, I climb down the crooked white streets. The town is empty but I catch a lone taxi down the hill to the bus station, pay $5 for a ticket on the chicken bus back to Tanger. There are no Julias, no girls in tunics, no happy-go-lucky tourist types. Serious people in veils and smocks.
21. In Tanger, I buy a first class ticket on the day train back to Marrakesh. It connects at Casblanca’s Casa Voyageurs station at 9pm, and leaves in a hour. I have a coffee and chocolate croissant at the bar, smoke a Dunhill, and walk down to the beach. There are tens of thousands of people: 95%+ men and literally ZERO women in bathing suits!!
22. On the train, I get into a geo-political / theological argument with an Angry Turk wearing white linen from head to feet. He insists that Jesus Christ was a practicing Muslim. Having lost my patience with him, I fire questions at him about the ‘Armenian Genocide.’ We essentially disagree about agreeing to disagree, he gives me his email address and I tear it up and fold it through the narrowly ajar window.
23. Village kids throw rocks at the first-class train car (‘at the head of the train’) and smash two large windows. There is broken glass everywhere: in the carpet, in the hallway, in the cabins, in people’s hair, clothing.
24. Stuck at a dusty town in the middle of nowhere, a group of 10-11 year old kids climb aboard and demand that I give them cigarettes.
25. After connecting in Casablanca, falling asleep in a variety of unlikely places, countless bad train sandwiches, semi-aggressive political debates, and weird opinions about Barrack Obama, I wake up at the station in Marrakesh.
It’s 130am - 36 hrs after I left town.
