Crystal Balls and Moroccan Walls

by David Fletcher

  CRYSTAL BALLS AND MOROCCAN WALLS

  DAVID FLETCHER

  Copyright © 2014 David Fletcher

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  For Peter (Tom) Thompson

  Contents

  Cover

  2012

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  2012

  1.

  When Crosby, Stills and Nash composed that catchy little classic by the name of Marrakesh Express, they had in mind a train journey and an exotic destination. Happily, they could never have imagined that only a few decades later, droves of people would be making their way to that same Moroccan city, not on a romantic railway through the desert, but on a packed, three-hour flight from Gatwick. Just as Brian could never have imagined that, a little to the south of Marrakesh, it could be quite so cold, wet and dismal in April – and dismal in more ways than one.

  With his wife, Sandra, he was in a party of “Nature-seekers”; amateur naturalists who had, the previous day, flown in from faraway Sussex, and who were now on their way to southern Morocco for a bit of desert birding and a bit of African sun. They had now stopped in a village called Taddert for their first “Maroc” lunch, and so far, it had all been a bit... well, a bit dispiriting. First, a drive through flat farmland with too many eucalyptus trees (all under an overcast sky). Then, where the farmland had taken on a slant (at the feet of the Atlas Mountains), an unrewarding (cold and windy) walk through a grove of sterile pines. And, after this, the onset of rain as the party’s two minibuses stopped again in the hope of discovering some Moroccan endemics, who clearly preferred it rather warmer and dryer... Then, as they’d climbed into the Atlas Mountains proper and had finally reached their lunchtime destination, the rain had passed its onset stage and was now into “settled”. Along with a strengthened and now incessant wind, it looked as though it could have gone on for hours – or even days.

  So, when Brian made the shelter of the chosen restaurant – and nearly tripped over the decapitated heads of two sheep (their now redundant blood dripping down its rough concrete steps) – he felt more dispirited than ever. Two years earlier, he had travelled around a then peaceful Syria. So he was no stranger to animal carcasses around the entrance to eateries. But there was just something about the treatment of those heads... and then there was the interior of the “restaurant”; it was as gloomy as a UK economic forecast. And the room upstairs to which the Nature-seekers were led for their meal... well, that wasn’t just gloomy; it was bleak, as bleak as a Greek economic forecast.

  It really was pretty awful. It was like a long, high-ceilinged corridor with a big grubby window at one end and, on its bare floor, a string of low tables and a collection of cushioned benches, most of them against one of its long, unadorned walls. And, for illumination, there was just one filthy, ceiling-suspended light and that big grubby window, which, as it was now lunchtime dusk beyond it and it was covered on its outside with a film of rainwater, wasn’t making much of a contribution in the enlightening stakes. All it was doing was reminding the assembled company that the weather was no less than foul – and with all that liquid without, it might be a little heart-warming to have some liquid within. Like, for example, a glass of beer. But no. Brian and Sandra, in common with the rest of their companions, didn’t get so much as a glass of water. All they got was a Moroccan tajine...

  Well, maybe somewhere in Morocco, this traditional national dish is something to relish and something that earns it its elevated reputation. But in this restaurant in Taddert, it was basically just a stew – served in a clay container with a conical hat – and it had about as much wow-factor as a traditional school dinner – in a school where the traditional school catering budget has just run out. And the bread wasn’t much to write home about either: a big tasteless bun that could have been made for a big tasteless burger, and, of course, without butter. This was a real let-down for Brian. In Syria, the bread had been exquisite and almost an art form, and an art form that had a great deal more appeal to it than the “banjo and wail”.

  He had arrived uninvited. Towards the end of the meal, when all the Nature-seekers had discovered the standard of the cuisine, and, many of them, the standard of the restaurant’s loos. So it was never going to be anything other than a very hard gig. He was old, very smiley and very eager to make eye-contact, but, at the same time, his banjo playing was just intrusive and his wailing even worse than the bloody weather. Rather than trying to make a few dirhams from his performance, he would have done significantly better to have demanded a few dirhams for his withdrawal. And if only he could have found some bootleg booze, he would have made a killing.

  Ah well, it was bound to get better, because when they left the restaurant and its discarded sheep-heads, they had before them the famous “Tizi n’Tichka” Pass, the High-Atlas route that is noted for its stunning vistas and its dizzying views. Or, more precisely, for its stunning vistas and its dizzying views when the weather allowed...

  It was like driving through a long, precipitous car-wash. Brian and Sandra were at the very back of the second of the Nature-seekers’ minibuses, and not only could they see very little of the minibus ahead, but they could also see very little of the Atlas Mountains around. All they could do was catch glimpses of vertiginous drops through their steamed-up windows and the occasional glimpses of other vehicles as they came down the pass and squeezed past their bus with just inches to spare. Oh, and as with most roads through mountain passes, this one through the Tizi n’Tichka Pass wasn’t a straight one but one with a series of serious bends in it. So, all these intimate encounters with potential disaster were experienced with the added bonus of motion sickness as their vehicular transport swung around one hairpin bend and then another – and then another and another. Brian felt this and so too did Sandra. She told him so. And she also told him how much she now regretted eating that damn tajine. Which was only half as much as Brian regretted getting out of bed this morning. If only he’d lingered and had been left behind in Marrakesh. But he hadn’t. And all he could hope for now was an end to this ride. Preferably a safe one. Hell, it had to come soon.

  It did. On a high plateau. In the rain. And in a wind that was now blowing that rain sideways.

  However, it would be churlish not to recognise that this plateau situation did have its good points as well. For example, the ground was reassur
ingly flat hereabouts, without any of those scary drops, the visibility was marginally better now that they were stationary, and so too, of course, was Brian and Sandra’s feeling of motion-induced nausea. And furthermore, there were none of those tacky shrines one finds at the top of similar passes in southern Europe – and no Jehovah’s Witnesses, no charity chuggers and no heaps of spent uranium.

  So, all in all, it was quite good really, except for the fact that some of that outside inclement weather was now inside as well. That is to say that the rain was being blown in through the open door of Brian and Sandra’s minibus, because, as with the other minibus, the door was open to allow out all those Nature-seekers who wanted to get out – to spot faraway choughs...

  Brian was agog. For him – and for Sandra – bird-watching was all about finding and watching all sorts of birds, but, most importantly, only when a number of vital conditions had been met. And principal amongst these conditions were (a) there had to be an ability to see and identify the birds, rather than having to locate, with one’s binoculars, some distant spots in the sky, which could just as easily be specks of dirt on one’s lens, and (b) there had to be the facility to conduct one’s watching in warm, sunny weather or even cold, not-too-windy weather, but never when it was raining. Then, not only could one never see the birds properly, but one would also get wet in the process. So why bother? But now, here on this windswept and very wet plateau, the majority of the Nature-seeker party – and both its leaders – were out of the minibuses and pointing their binoculars at a small flock of... well, of far-off indistinct spots. And even if they were choughs – so what? Brian and Sandra had seen these wonderful birds quite recently, on a beach in Pembrokeshire. But there, they had been swooping low, overhead, and one could properly enjoy their form and their flight, as well as the beauty of the empty beach with its blue skies above... Whereas here, all one had were those faraway spots, cold rain – and great drifts of litter on the ground. (In better weather, this plateau was clearly some sort of picnic destination for the locals, who had yet to learn that bit about taking their picnic litter home with them.)

  Now, this – the eagerness of virtually all the Nature-seekers to see the choughs, not the scattered litter – was, for Brian and Sandra, even more dispiriting than the weather, the tajines and the banjo-player all taken together. Because what it meant was that they had fallen amongst “keens”. They had joined a Nature-seeker party that comprised almost entirely very keen birders for whom a tick on a list was their primary goal. So, very much secondary in their interests would be the simple enjoyment of birds, anything other than birds (including wherever they were) and, almost certainly, any substances injurious to one’s health whether swallowed or inhaled. In short, Brian and Sandra were not in the company of the sort of people with whom they’d shared their Nature-seeker adventure in Syria. For that group had contained some very earnest birders, but, at the same time, it had also included a majority of individuals who were just as “balanced” in their birding as Brian and Sandra were, and who could sort out their priorities very easily when it came to a choice between the remotest possibility of finding just one last “little brown job” and the chance of an early beer. Yes, whatever was to come on this expedition in terms of weather and environment – and accommodation and food – it would be nothing as compared to the prospect of the next eight days spent in the company of zealots. Not that it might not give it a try, such as when the Nature-seekers, having finally re-boarded their buses, were shipped down the other side of the Atlas Mountains and into the beginnings of the Dadès Valley.

  Crikey, it was grim. A grey moonscape under a grey sky, with the moonscape broken here and there by a cluster of houses – and houses that could shrivel the soul...

  Between Marrakesh and the Tizi n’Tichka Pass, Brian had already observed that rural Moroccan architecture was just a little bit blocky, and that many of the village houses were no more than cubes of concrete or breeze-block, with tiny windows and little in the way of decorative embellishments. And no great surprise there; Morocco is a poor country and, as in all poor countries, it is in the countryside that the poverty is at its most apparent. But these houses in the Dadès Valley... well, they were cubes again (often with compound walls), but they were a brown shade of grey, they were constructed out of something more vernacular than breeze-blocks – which gave them the appearance of the ground itself – and they were all well set up for the snap introduction of a window tax. If they did have any windows at all, they were all small, shuttered and barred. In fact, Brian quickly decided that these houses looked more like drab domestic mausoleums than they did homes, and that they must have offered a near mausoleum existence to their owners. And what on Earth did their owners do? Out here in this moonscape, there was nothing, and they can’t all have worked as extras in Ouarzazate...

  Yes, at the end of the road through this bleak part of the Dadès Valley, the Nature-seekers’ buses arrived in this substantial town, which quite remarkably is home to Morocco’s film industry and its “Ouallywood” studios. Here they are able to provide convincingly “exotic” backdrops for movies supposedly set in ancient Rome, Egypt and Tibet, as well as persuasively cheap extras. (These guys apparently get between just forty and ninety dirhams a day – say three to eight pounds – and not anywhere near enough to improve those drab, earthen hovels.)

  Brian saw one of the studios from the bus. But it didn’t look too busy, and no way as busy as all the shops and workshops that lined the road. Here the local entrepreneurs were busy selling Calor Gas and meat – and coffee and fruit – and making wrought-iron grilles. It was a thriving business, this production of decorative “prison bars”, because all the houses in this town, whether of the traditional drab variety or the equally unattractive painted pink-terracotta variety, required these essentials. They were no less important than their “garage doors”, large metal doors forming their ground-floor frontages – and forming, in Brian’s mind, the firm opinion that few of them had ever been opened since they’d first been installed. But all this is to ignore Ouarzazate’s rather more positive credentials, or at least its singular positive credential – from a birder’s point of view – which is its “barrage”. Yes, Ouarzazate sits at the end of a comprehensively dammed stretch of the Dadès River and, at its barrage end, this stretch of quite shallow water is home to a number of birds, not least the much sought-after and rather uncommon “fulvous babbler”.

  So guess what: even though the Nature-seekers had been travelling all day and it was now late afternoon, it was time to pay a visit to the barrage. Well, the only plus point was that it had now stopped raining. And amongst the minus points were (a) the wind was still blowing (and it was now icy), (b) there was no shelter from it at the barrage, and (c) the fulvous babblers, if they were here at all, were a long walk away over some very claggy ground, which in places was bordering on the treacherous – and, had it been in England, would have warranted some safety warnings or even some bollards and a rope.

  Sandra, much to her credit, stayed on the bus with the other rational woman in the party by the name of Sue. But everybody else trudged off to find the babblers, including a fleeced-up Brian who, despite his fleece, was soon regretting his decision and wanting only to be back on the bus – or back in England – and had not only lost interest in fulvous babblers, but also in every representative of birdlife in the whole of the world. And he was now just desperate for a beer.

  Well, they did find one – a fulvous babbler, that is – and they did eventually make it back to the buses. But it was now so late that, under those unremitting grey skies, it was now almost twilight. Which meant that as they drove from the barrage to their hotel in a place called El-Kelaâ M’Gouna, further along the Dadès Valley, the general dismal demeanour of those block-and-compound houses was now more dismal than ever. And they were everywhere. For mile after mile they bordered the road, an unbroken line of brown or terracotta slabs – with big metal doors, tiny barred windows and an air of de
cay. For, despite the terracotta paint, many of these houses were apparently abandoned, or the walls they adjoined were all but collapsed. It wasn’t very edifying: a great swathe of ribbon development where Brian had expected only desert, and the sort of development that spoke of too little care, too little forethought (in respect of building regulations) – and far too many people. Shit, this was supposed to be a desert. And deserts should be deserted. Not built-up like Marrakesh.

  This desert situation was, however (and unfortunately), all too apparent, when, in the dark, the Nature-seekers arrived at what would be their home for the next two nights: an “interesting” hotel, where the muddy approach and the confused reception did little to inspire confidence in its facilities, and where the rooms removed any of this confidence entirely. Brian and Sandra’s was near the reception area, but very far removed from anything that could be construed as warm and inviting. It was a not-too-distant cousin of that room in which they had taken their lunch: long, high-ceilinged, with unadorned (clay?) walls, poor lighting, no heating, no usable TV and, instead of tables and benches, three beds covered in white, sequinned shrouds. Kirstie Allsopp would have had something to say about this room and none of it would have been very complimentary. Oh, and it had a cockroach as well.

  It wasn’t long before this room was abandoned in favour of the restaurant, an upstairs room in the hotel that was pleasantly decorated with various Islamic twirls and things, but was horribly over-lit. So, even though it was probably warmer in here than in the bedrooms, it seemed colder, and everybody kept their coats on, and some of them tried desperately to warm themselves up with a beer. It wasn’t too bad: a local brew called “Flag”. And it certainly had the edge on the local cuisine here, which was another simple stew masquerading as a bloody tajine, and which did as much in reviving Brian’s spirits as did the guys at his table...