Apr 18, 2021
Finding Paradise
The following is based on a true story about a journey I took with my boyfriend. We traveled through Morocco in the 80s and it didn’t quite go as planned.
Chapter 1
The City of Tangier seemed to emerge slowly out of the sea as we approached it. The whitewashed houses rising up in front of us shone in the bright May sunset; the mountains behind them the perfect backdrop. It certainly was breathtaking — and a relief to see land again.
As the ferry got closer to the dock my heart sank in my chest and a certain feeling came over me that I could not quite explain. It wasn’t fear or regret, or maybe it was. There it sat, like a stone, or like a sweet potato that had given me indigestion. That was when I had started to have my doubts.
I hadn’t really wanted to come on this trip. Not really. It had been Ray’s idea all along. His big trip to Islam. I mean, it was Morocco! Not Mecca. I hadn’t shared his enthusiasm and to be quite honest, I was sorry that we had left Portugal. There, we had spent the first six weeks of our travels working and playing just as hard. We had also met lots of wonderful people.
I could have written a book about it.
We left Portugal and traveled by train to Seville where we took another train to the coast to catch the ferry over to Morocco. It had been a tiring journey and now, here we were.
It all seemed so sudden.
We had spoken to a few people on the boat on the way over, an American and two Swiss girls. The girls had simply closed their eyes and stuck a pin in a map, so not a great deal of planning there. The American was totally different though. He was relaxed and it was obvious to see that he was an accustomed traveler.
Ray had been shocked by the Swiss girls.
“They obviously have no idea what they are doing,” he had said to me, concerned.
We had brought a book with us, telling us all we needed to know about traveling through Morocco. Ray had practically eaten it. He now thought he was an expert on Islam and Morocco. These girls were acting irresponsibly according to him and his book.
Yet, here we were about to travel through a country without making any hotel reservations looking like European tourists and carrying our traveler’s cheques in our money belts. We hadn’t exactly planned our journey particularly well either. In the mid-eighties we didn’t have the Internet and online bookings; I must say Ray’s book did cover all hotels, it was helpful, but I still could not shake this strange feeling.
I recalled what a rather nerdy work colleague had said to me before I had embarked on my journey with Ray. He had never really liked Ray and I think that secretly the nerd quite fancied me. He once told me that Ray might lead me astray.
“I couldn’t just go off to a foreign country like that,” he had said, “not without careful planning first. You must be mad.”
I could imagine his planning, meticulous, even down to the way he packed his underpants. At the time I had thought he was a real nerd, he was one of those people that when he spoke to you, two little white spots of spit would accumulate in the corners of his mouth. It made it hard to take him seriously, but I must say, seeing Morocco in front of me, I agreed with him now. I suppose it must be a little crazy. But I guess that had been the initial attraction.
It was going to be an adventure.
The ferry docked and we all trundled off the boat. When we showed our passports to the customs’ officers, they told us to wait. It seemed like we were waiting forever, to the side, as everybody else walked straight past us and made their way to the customs gate. I felt like I should have been shaking their hands and welcoming them to the country. The Swiss girls and the American passed us and waved as they went.
Finally we were led up a narrow staircase into a very small office. We were asked to fill out a form. Basically, they just wanted to know what the hell we were doing there and how long we were going to stay. After we had filled out the forms, our passports were stamped and we were shown the way out.
Suddenly we were at a door looking out onto the car park. All the other passengers were still going through the customs gate. We thought that maybe we had taken a wrong turn. Nobody came after us so we decided it must be okay.
Now, before we had embarked on this journey, our faithful well-traveled hippy friend, Nigel, had told us what to expect. He had told us that as soon as we got through customs the madness would start, that there would be donkeys, chickens and Moroccans all over the place, hustling and bustling, people trying to sell you everything from hash to their own children. I was expecting something like a scene from ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, Harrison Ford racing towards me on a camel. Okay, maybe imagining a bit too much, but what we saw was quite different.
There was nothing but an empty car park, with a taxi rank over the other side of it.
“Maybe we missed rush hour?” I said to Ray.
We headed towards the taxis. Ray knew what hotel we wanted to go to, ‘The Grande Socco’, thanks to his book, so it was just a question of grabbing the taxi and heading that way. The taxi-driver spoke English, which was a relief because neither of us could speak French.
Once we left the car park we took a right down a narrow road, which led to another narrow road full of people hustling and bustling; now this was like the scene I had expected to see in the car park! Still no Harrison Ford though. The taxi suddenly came to a halt in the square. Ray asked the driver where the hotel was as he was looking for change in his wallet and the taxi driver pointed over to the other side of the square.
Not great directions but they would have to do.
According to one of the ‘great’ books that Ray had read, the Moroccans would accept any currency. This taxi driver however, proved to be an exception to the rule and was not at all interested in our pesetas or escudos. He started to swear at us, and told us to get out of the taxi. The upside was that we had a free taxi ride, the downside was that all this kerfuffle had attracted quite a crowd and a group of young men had gathered around the taxi.
As soon as Ray got out they surrounded him, taking advantage of his confused state.
“Wanna hotel?” shouted one. ”Do you want to see the museum?” asked another.
“Want some hash?”
They hung around him like flies around a watermelon as we walked across the square towards the hotel. Luckily they left me in peace, though I was rather offended that nobody offered any camels for me.
We found the front of the hotel but not the entrance. Our book failed to inform us of that minor detail. The hustlers just didn’t stop hustling and Ray was getting noticeably anxious. He paced up and down outside the hotel like a crazed lion in a cage, the hustlers keeping in step with him. I just stood in the same place looking at them. I swear, I thought they were going to burst into song. It was like watching a scene from a musical.
I think the hustlers had shocked him a little, they were not exactly as Nigel had described them at all. He had described them as little men of 5 foot 2, who you could just swat away with your hand, like a mosquito. But these men looked tough, like something from the Bronx. They wore leather jackets and jeans. One of them even had a scar on his face. It was so obvious to them that we were tourists, wandering around in a daze after getting off the boat, clad in shorts and t-shirts and clutching our duty free bags. The whole situation was bordering on comical.
Ray started to get aggressive with them. I told him to try and be as polite as possible, but he just gritted his teeth like Clint Eastwood and looked them square on, and said
“I know where I am going.”
They laughed. It was perfectly obvious that he had no idea where he was going.
Suddenly a little boy appeared, I was almost expecting him to burst into song as he got my attention and pointed towards the side of the building.
So that was where the entrance was, down the dark alley at the side of the hotel. Of course, I mean where else would it be?
I grabbed hold of Ray and told him I knew where the entrance was; he didn’t protest as I dragged him away. In all the confusion I didn’t remember to reward the little boy for his good deed. Our heads were just wrecked after this welcome.
We checked into the hotel, if you could call it that, and changed some traveler’s cheques in the hotel reception to pay for the room and for other necessities. Once we were behind closed doors, we had a chance to recompose ourselves; although the door wasn’t worthy of a great deal of confidence. You probably could have opened it with a bent fork if you had wanted to.
The room had three beds in it and a table, nothing more, in fact, there was no space for anything more. But then we weren’t exactly traveling ‘Club Class’. The view was the best thing about it. We had a view of the main square, where we’d had our very warm welcome and first true Moroccan experience. The architecture was very similar to Portugal, not surprising as the Moors had been in the Algarve for 500 years or so.
The place was buzzing. It must have been about eight o’clock in the evening and it was just starting to get dark. We couldn’t understand why there were so many people on the streets. More and more people were starting to appear. These people were dressed, as Nigel had described them, in the traditional djellaba. Men, women and children were setting up stalls, we even saw a man selling balloons. The American we had seen on the ferry passed the hotel on the street below us. Ray called out to him.
“Hi!”
The American looked up at us.
“Hello!” he said warmly.
“What is going on, why are there so many people around?” Ray asked
The American smiled broadly.
“It is Ramadan. One of the biggest festivals you could ever hope to see in a Muslim country.”
Ray gave an acknowledging “Ah!” even though he appeared to not have a clue what the American was talking about.
The American bid us farewell and off he went. We never saw him again.
Ray wanted to go for a walk, but I didn’t want to. I told him that I was tired, but the truth was, I just didn’t feel safe there, not at night.
Suddenly there was a knock on the door.
