by Annie Hawes
The whole thing is ridiculous. All those fat, healthy olive trees and not a dirham to be made.
Come, says Khadija, leading me on down the path towards something more hopeful – the terraced fields where the winter corn has just been harvested. They always used to plant a second, summer crop of wheat here in April, she says, and still end up hungry by the end of winter. You’re safer with a good cash crop, one that will make you enough money to buy the household flour you would have grown, and still to have some left over for necessities.
And what crop is that?
Cannabis, of course. Safer, maybe, but, Khadija says, not completely safe. Because your whole harvest can be rooted up and destroyed any time the forces of law and order, never too friendly with the Berber Amazigh, feel like making a point of their power. Or, of course, whenever the king and his government feel the need to gather a bit of kudos in the eyes of the Nazarenes abroad.
I am happy to report that not long after our visit, a fabulous piece of new technology appeared in the olive lands of the Rif. Some kindly genius has invented a massive mobile olive-mill and press, all combined into one, mounted on a lorry. An Italian organic-olive-oil cooperative, seeking uncontaminated groves, brought this item to Morocco: invented, no doubt, to make use of the wilder and farther-flung olive groves of Italy itself, where harvests are small and the mills distant. They have started a training scheme in modern olive-farming techniques, too, aimed at the women left behind in the villages. Hurrah. Hope at last. Electricity not required.
9
Our bus arrives fresh from Tetuan, pulling in beside the Portuguese-built red-sandstone citadel. We climb aboard. I can hardly believe it’s only two days since we were in that city. Though Tetuan seemed so exceedingly strange and foreign on that first day, now, after our brief sojourn in the heartlands of the Rif, I find I’m thinking of it as a positive paragon of cosmopolitan culture.
Guy, meanwhile, is marvelling that we’ve been staying with cannabis farmers for two whole days without even realizing it. And at how much all the middlemen must be earning from the business – because Khadija’s family were certainly not rolling in money, were they? They can’t even afford a radio of their own! You’d hardly think anyone would bother breaking the law to earn their living, if they were going to make so little out of it.
Gérard is maintaining that he knew it all along: it was obvious to anyone would who had bothered checking out the guidebook properly . . .
As dusk falls, we are heading eastwards once more, along high hairpin-bending roads through walnut and chestnut forests, a landscape that looks so thoroughly Ligurian that I keep forgetting I’m on the other side of the Mediterranean. This is the main road towards the east, running parallel to the sea, but keeping well away from it, sticking to the hills, just the way the old Roman road does back home in Diano. It may be hard to believe, in our modern beach-obsessed days, but once upon a time, when agriculture was still the staff of everyday life, a sea road was the last thing anyone would bother to build. Roads were needed to connect important market towns, which were up in the hills, naturally enough, where the fertile agricultural land lay, and not down among the meagre pickings of the seashores.
Darkness now, and a bright starry night. The warmth of the day is turning to chill, and our fellow passengers begin pulling up the big hoods of their jellabas and snuggling down into them. All the length of the bus, outlined against the windows, pointed hood after pointed hood now rises to mimic the dark hills beyond. We are heading for Oujda in a busload of sorcerers.
Guy, who is, I now see, a man of impressive foresight, follows suit, pulling up the hood of his burnous and wrapping its yards of woollen folds warm around him. Enviously, Gérard and I pull out our mealymouthed European fleeces, fiddling with cold zips and recalcitrant toggles.
An hour or two later, in pitch darkness, Gérard decides he needs a pee. Quite badly. I ask my nearest neighbour, the woman across the aisle, if we’re likely to be making a stop any time soon. But the answer is just to hold on – attendre, faut attendre! I pass on the sad news to Gérard. The wizard in front of us, with more French at his command than the ladies, turns round to explain that we wouldn’t want the driver to stop, not round here in these wild hills. This is a very lawless area. And the bus won’t be stopping at Ketama, either, although it’s the next official stop. It’s too dangerous.
Really? What sort of danger? Gérard’s alarm-antennae are out again. The cannabis farmers themselves may be lovely people, as we now know, but the business side of the operation will be another kettle of fish entirely.
The danger, though, our wizard reveals, is not hashish-connected. A bus was hijacked last week just outside Ketama. It’s happened several times in recent months.
Really? What, and did the hijackers hold the passengers to ransom? I ask.
But no! The wizard laughs at the very idea. They’re not after Western tourists! They know the Tetuan bus is always full of the duty-free goodies its privileged residents have humped across the border, which the enterprising among them will now be transporting for resale further inland. Making this particular bus a sitting target. An unpleasant situation, but nobody here in the Rif would either expect, or want, the forces of the state to step in. They prefer to resolve things in their own way. So the bus-drivers have come up with their own ingenious solution to the problem. They are simply punishing all the inhabitants of Ketama collectively. This will cause them to put pressure, in private, upon the hijackers, who will certainly be well known in the town. In a month or two, the service will resume, by which time the perpetrators will have been thoroughly chastened, brought into line by their own community. The hijackings will stop, with no need at all for the agencies of law enforcement.
An admirable solution, we agree. Simple, yet elegant.
So, on we go, through Ketama and out the other side without stopping. The place looks pretty decrepit, anyhow. I don’t think we’re missing much. Except, of course, a loo.
Now follows a confusing event involving local methods for dealing with the lack of loo-stops. I have noticed that a thin stream of liquid is now running down the centre aisle of the bus. The woman across the aisle sees me staring, nudges me and giggles. Men! she says. Not wait!
Can the locals really be discreetly relieving themselves from beneath their jellabas as we travel? Maybe so, if stopping really is out of the question. Presumably the bus company would just hose the bus out when it reaches the journey’s end? Should I pass this information on to Gérard? Though, without a jellaba, Gérard would have no veil to draw modestly over his business, were he to follow local custom. Unless, I suppose, he borrowed the burnous from our percipient friend Guy? Now, as we lurch round a left-hand bend, the trickle laps at the soles of my shoes. I move my feet squeamishly out of the way. My neighbour across the aisle slaps me on the arm, giggling. The woman sitting next to her, her mother by the looks of it, is hiding her face in her hands, giggling too. She holds up a plastic mineral-water bottle, and mimes emptying it onto the floor. Are they telling me the liquid on the floor is not pee after all, but water? It was just a joke. Thank goodness I found that out in time. Imagine how badly we might have brought Christendom into disrepute.
Some time later Guy wakes me up. Grinding and coughing noises are coming from the engine. Something seems to be horribly wrong with it. The driver is keeping going, but very, very slowly. Other passengers are waking up. Soon a whole cabal of hooded sorcerers is communing down at the front, deep in mechanical debate with the driver. Eventually the bus limps off the main road towards the lights of a town. Is this an official halt or an emergency stop? No idea. But it seems the bus will not be not going anywhere soon. We’ll have to wait for a mechanic to show up. And who knows when that may be?
A bad situation, you might think. But not a bit of it. As we pull into the main street of the town, we are met by a fusillade of random gunfire. The feast of Eid al-Fitr is still only on its second day. A short step away, in the town square, her
alded by another burst of gunshots so close that I jump out of my skin, festivities are still going on, accompanied by a lot of wild drumming. There is even a roadside kebab place – or two places, rather. We follow our fellow passengers to a butchers’ stall, at which you buy your meat, then to the stall next door, which has a glowing barbecue, and two cooks waiting to cook it for you. Impressive. Clearly Moroccans are as fussy as Italians about their meat. They want to see that it’s fresh, with their own eyes, before it gets cooked. Copying our friend the wizard, whom we now know as Abdel, I order a toothsome liver brochette. Once it’s been grilled, you lay it inside half a baguette, shut the baguette tightly, pull out the long metal skewer and hand it back to the barbecue-men. Bite in. Lovely.
We wander off towards the square, munching, still following the rest of the passengers, to join in the fun. There’s no choice but to sleep in the bus – no chance of a mechanic till the morning, not with Eid still going on. Nobody seems too bothered about this, even though every passenger we talk to, down in the square, is hoping to get home to their family celebrations before Eid is over. Not a sign of anger or frustration. Do people here have a much more relaxed attitude to life than us, or does this kind of thing happen so often that you factor it in to your expectations?
A band is playing outside a café – Andalusian music, if I am not mistaken. Outside another, an ancient man in a huge turban stands telling stories, some terrifying, some hilarious, to judge by the reactions of his audience. Abdel and most of the other passengers settle here, completely gripped. Short on simultaneous translators tonight, we foreigners give up on him and make for the musical corner. I am soon stoking up, as you do in an emergency, on plenty of strong sweet tea. The Frenchmen, their delicate digestive systems quailing at the bizarre dietary habits of the English and their Moroccan friends, settle for soothing mineral water.
Around dawn, only minutes, it seems, after we have finally drifted off to sleep, the muezzin starts up. All the men traipse off the bus to pray by the side of the road, and hardly any of the women. When he returns, I ask Abdel why that should be. It is less important, he says, for women to pray than for men.
Why, though? I ask. Is God less interested in women?
He has no idea, he says, looking faintly hunted. Still, I can’t resist asking him whether he was saying hello to his two djinns, or to the Muslim umma?
The djinns, of course.
Getting on for midday, the bus still behaving pretty oddly despite the lengthy attentions of two mechanics this morning, we pull into another small town at last. So much partying in one small high street! People are playing cards, eating tagines, changing buses, playing drums and singing; we even spot a woman with fishnet tights beneath her jellaba. There is a hostelry a short step down the road, still open, and still feasting. They have put on a traditional Eid lunch of mechoui, whole roasted sheep. Several of our fellow passengers decide that the only solution is to go and join in. And they lead us down the road to the best restaurant ever, where you sit on long low divans around knee-high tables inside waist-high wooden booths, each one with heavy velvet drapes for you to draw right around you, and dine in total privacy, if you so wish! We don’t close ours, of course – we’re much too interested to see what’s going on around us; though some of the dining areas are already modestly curtained off, people eating behind them, heaped dishes being passed in by the waiters. Is it so that wives and daughters can eat out in relative privacy, maybe? Or something to do with the anti-ostentation principles of Islam? Maybe it saves you seeming to be showing off how much you can afford – or indeed saves face by not revealing how little? There seem to be an awful lot of rules about ostentation. Even, Yazid told us, about the lengths and widths of men’s jellabas. The Koran tells you never to try to impress by the length and generosity of your robes. With voluminous fabric swirling wide as you walk, hem swishing along the ground, you may cut a fine figure, but you are risking your place in paradise. A truly devout man will use no more material than he needs to cover himself with comfort and modesty: no extra width just for show, and no miserly skimping, either – which can easily be another form of ostentation. A workmanlike length between knee and ankle. That is the correct path.
This anti-ostentation business isn’t unheard of in Christian tradition, either, though. I recall something similar in Granada, at the Easter celebrations, when the city hosts massive parades of saint-effigy carrying men who wear face-covering pointed hoods with eyeholes cut in them, horribly reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan. What, I asked Pedro, was the point of the hoods? Answer: there is always a risk, when you participate in a great religious display, that you are doing it not out of sincere conviction but from motives of ostentation. Concealing your identity ensures your purity of heart and avoids the Sin of Pride. And there was nothing so unusual about pointed headgear in Spain, after all, when these processions were still young. Somehow, the Moorish hood escaped the close attentions of the Inquisition.
Abdel the wizard, who knows his way about, takes us out to the small garden at the back to see the roasting sheep. There are two smoke-blackened ovens especially for mechoui: great open-mouthed tubes, like Khadija’s bread-oven with the top sliced off, each with a whole sheep hanging vertically down into it on a hooked spit, and a small boy basting them constantly with some deliciously spicy-smelling stuff. Pure butter and cumin, says our wizard.
Better still than the roasting mechoui are the two ready-prepared examples lying on the counter indoors, being carved and served – and we are more than ready to dig in. Meat lovely and buttery, falling off the bone, crispy on the outside and melt-in-the-mouth on the inside . . . and couscous to go with it. You get a given a little bowl of mixed salt and cumin to season it with. The boys decide to be brave and ask for wine. No problem, says the waiter: he doesn’t bat an eyelid over the request. The wine is Moroccan, too, when he brings it. Though the Wizard tells us that hardly any ordinary people here would drink wine; if they drink at all, they’re much more likely to have a beer. Wine is stuff for the francisants – the Frenchifiers – and ordinary people don’t feel right drinking it. They feel as if they’re letting the side down.
And what is so bad about Frenchification? We gather, once we’ve decoded the answer – which Abdel delivers over the next half-hour, perched hawk-like on the corner of Gérard’s divan – that French culture is a class issue here in Morocco. Unlike the French language, which is public property, its culture – from the drinking of wine to the exposure of naked female arms, legs and hair – is the province of the rich here, of the ruling elite, suspected of being the main bearers of the dreaded Western Corruption. Which goes some way to explaining the odd fact that, while rich Moroccans who would Frenchify the home culture are deeply suspect, ordinary French tourists – of whom many thousands turn up every year, supping their intoxicating beverages and sporting their naked hair and limbs – are perfectly well received in Morocco.
A pot of tea finishes the meal, the waiter pouring from a positively theatrical height into tiny thimble-sized glasses. As lunch draws to a close, more and more people are drawing the curtains around their tables, and we are surprised to see that some of them are actually stretching out on the cushioned benches as if they were planning to take a post-prandial nap here. But that, says Abdel, is exactly what they are expected to do. And, as the waiter removes our plates and heads back towards the kitchens, he gently closes the curtains around us. Amazing! You are actually supposed, once you’ve finished eating here, to lie back, snooze and quietly digest inside your snug enclosure. The most civilized dining arrangement we’ve come across in all our lives. Why don’t we have such a thing in Europe? Couldn’t we open one just like it when we get back? It would be bound to be the most popular dining-place ever!
Alas, we soon work out that in our own hectic lands a restaurant whose tables remained occupied, even if only for an hour or so per sitting, by non-spending nap-takers, would be doomed to speedy failure. We would go bust in no time at all. How right
Aytan was. Ours really is a dog-eat-dog world. Profit running wild, untamed by human values.
Among the various unexpected services this restaurant provides, it now turns out, is that of travel agency. After a respectable napping-period has elapsed, a certain Youssouf appears, sticking his head through our curtains. He is heading east, he says, and his turn-off is only a few miles before our destination, Oujda. So if we don’t want to bother waiting for the bus, which won’t get there till nightfall now, since the mechanic is waiting for a spare part . . . ?
Wonderful, we say. And we follow Youssouf, a tiny lively man with sparkling eyes – another of those ageless Moroccans, could be any age between thirty and fifty – outside into the brilliant sunlight, only pausing to settle our amazingly cheap bill and add a couple of extra bottles of wine, that essential aid to French digestion, to be packed away into Guy’s bag against future famine.
Our transport-to-be is a bit of a surprise. Not the car we’d imagined, but a small lorry so fully loaded down with hay that you can hardly see there’s a vehicle there at all. We clamber aboard – a bit of a tight squeeze, all four of us on the banquette – and Youssouf starts the engine, battling the gear lever into first. Roaring and vibrating, our travelling haystack sets off at a crawl. Something tells me this is going to take quite a bit longer than the bus would have done. But then, who knows how long we would have had to wait before it left? Or whether it would just have broken down again?
Youssouf seems a lovely man, shy and quiet, with an infectious sidewise smile. Moreover, he says his lorry never will break down. It is of a brand called Gak, he tells us proudly, a vehicle that was once often used for fire engines in Europe, many examples of which have now been recycled for agricultural purposes in the Maghreb.
Hardly anyone will be travelling today, with Eid still on, he tells us, but he himself has no choice. He has staked his whole future on this load. Prices for hay have almost doubled down south, on the fringes of the desert, where his family comes from – near Figuig, though he lives in Fez these days, where there’s more chance of work. Last year’s harvest was bad, and lots of people have run out of forage just at the moment they need it most, to get their livestock into condition for spring. And with hardly any rain this year so far, there’s not enough new pasture coming up yet to save them. So if Youssouf strikes lucky down south, and if he isn’t too late, because it’s taken him nearly a fortnight to borrow this lorry and get the load together, and maybe lots of others have got there already and the price has gone back down again, and if the lorry runs well, inshallah, he should make enough money to put a bit aside. And he will be able to afford the bride-price of a wife at last, to settle down and have some children.
