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We left at least half our luggage in the lumber room of the Hotel Ali in Marakech, within earshot and certainly within range of the delicious smells of the Djemma el F’naa, and headed south to the Sahara. It was seven in the morning, still relatively cool, and our driver, Mohammed was waiting with the car which we had hired for the week. A white Renault four with the proper number of wheels, some sort of engine and pretensions to being a roadworthy vehicle. It proved to be a thirsty Renault, demanding, and getting, large quantities of petrol and water; but it was to survive the heat, and to conquer the Atlas Mountains; we became quite fond of it and expert at negotiating its little awkward habits, such as getting the tailgate back in place and closed whenever it fell off. Still, car plus driver was to cost only 2500 dirham for the week (less than £200 between the three of us), and the driver was to pay for his own food and accommodation.
An unrequited ambition to ride camels in the Sahara sits uncomfortably on a 50 year old English woman, and I had decided to requite it rather than take it to my grave. We had had a fortnight of relatively comfortable acclimatisation, touring the country. We had slept in gardens, on roofs and even when necessary in hotels. But this was to be the real thing. Three middle-aged English and a crazy Berber camel driver and an as yet unknown number of camels, and heat and dust, and scorpions and sand, and tajine and couscous, and etc. and etc., seemed a daunting enough idea, but we still had 400 kilometres to drive in our Renault, in temperatures of 50º C and an unknown Morrocan driver who spoke no English.
We had read about the Auberge Repos du Sable, and about Majid, the camel driver from the safety of an English January. Now in August, we were on our way to meet him. We felt genuinely intrepid.
South and up (the advantage of up is that the temperature drops in inverse proportion to the altitude), the road from Marakech winds its way through the Middle Atlas, across the High Atlas to Ouarzazate,
which for us was half way. Ouarzazate, sounds magic, but since the filming of Lawrence of Arabia it has become a tourist destination, and even boasts a Club Mediteranee Hotel. But it does have a supermarket which sells alcohol, and we stocked up on wine. The road goes on, apparently for ever, climbing, steadily, through a landscape so barren and so dramatic that Tolkein could have used as his model for Frodo’s journey to Mount Doom Huge mountains, their exposed strata twisted into tortured arabesques and hideous tangles, rocks hurled through the air by immense volcanic forces, intimidate and threaten us.
The country is vast and so sparsely populated that it is difficult to imagine how people survive here where nothing is green and nothing moves. But whenever we stop by the side of a deserted road to rest the car, people, usually children, appear from nowhere, trying to sell us stones,or cactus fruit, or water, or asking for money to allow us to photograph them. Once, the boys who came running carried what seemed to be plastic dinosaurs, which turned out to chameleons, iguanas and huge lizards, with pieces of string tied round their necks and legs. Horrifying - but what right do we have to criticise people trying to scrape a living in a country with no welfare system and unemployment at 60%. I don’t believe we can, unless we are prepared to work to make things different. Allah has provided lizards and tourists, exploiting either or both can’t seem so wrong to people who would starve otherwise. We gave them money but refused to take photographs.
By the time we arrived in Zagora (fifty two days to Timbuctu)
The hottest place in Morocco, where temperatures as high as 60º C have been recorded it was already dark. Even so it was unbearably hot. Finding the road south to Tamegroute was hard enough, but persuading Mohammed that we really meant to go another 40 kilometres was almost impossible.
The wind was getting up and the sand was blowing. We drove on. Tamegroute, with one of the world’s finest Koranic libraries (12th century manuscripts written on gazelle skin and the oldest known algebra primer), was small, untidy and gone in a blur of sand and headlights. Mohammed was really panicking now, this was seriously south, Algeria just up the road, and the wind and sand were getting worse by the minute. It was like driving in fog. The Romans would have been proud of this section of the road it ran so straight to the South, but they never came this far. It began to feel like Africa, and the Frenchness of most of the North was far behind us. It was difficult to see the road ahead through the blowing sand, and we might have been as lost as Mark Thatcher. Suddenly in the middle of nowhere there were lights - the Auberge loomed through the dust. We were there (fifty one days to Timbuctu).
The casbahs of North Africa, are built of local earth and straw, they look exactly like the sort of sand-castles we all dreamt of making as children, slightly sloping sides, with towers at the corners, and a central keep with even higher towers containing an inner courtyard. Mohammed parks the car and within the courtyard we have our first glance of the family who run the Auberge. They are playing cards, drinking wine, and smoking kif, in no particular order of importance, and have obviously
forgotten we are coming. There are no other guests. The kitchen has a fridge and the bottled water comes out of the freezer. We are promised food in 1 hour, and a variety of young Moroccans scurry about shifting mattresses and chairs for us. Its still about 48ºC and we sit, sweating slightly, drinking cold cold water and rich red Moroccan wine in the darkness, there are pale soft bats swooping low over the courtyard and our heads. It is wonderful.
We are given rooms like stables, and mattresses on the roof where we will sleep under a sky so heavy, and so laden with stars that it seems as if we could touch its velvety darkness. Somewhere close by dogs are barking and howling but otherwise there is no sound, and the wind has dropped.
At 5.30 we begin to wake, it is light and the sun is already casting shadows over the baked mud of the roof. Looking over the surrounding landscape, we realise that we really have come to the desert, the land is flat, dry and empty all around us, except for a range of smoothly sculpted dunes about 1 kilometre away. At an inestimable distance to the south and east the horizon is bounded by lines of mountains. The only greenness is around the oasis of the Auberge with its palm trees and garden. Outside the walls camels are being fed and and watered. Our camels?
New bread, instant coffee and building heat. Majid arrives to talk about our trek. If I were a film director casting the role of a crazy camel driver, I would cast Majid. He is gorgeous, tall, clear eyed and dressed to kill in baggy white trousers, a blue robe with gold embroidery and a dark blue turban which sets of the silky brown of his skin. He moves slowly and gracefully. His eyes are dark and dancing, English adventurers amuse him. He speaks a little English, good French and Berber. Communication is no problem. In fact as he says himself, “What you like, no problem friend.” We will leave in the afternoon, and meet the camels who are already walking south. The luggage is being prepared - there seems to be a lot of it.
In the garden we find a ramshackle swimming pool, water is gushing in through a12” pipe, no fancy filters and chlorinators, - but who cares - we have to swim. It is heaven, the water overflows, and it is cold. There is a yellow, scrolled ironwork chair with three legs leaning precariously against a palm tree, between its legs the dunes appear tiny and surreal.
Cool now, we repack our luggage, half of the half
that we brought this far south will travel with us, the rest will wait here. We are spreading ourselves over Morocco. A lunch of bread and tomato salad, another swim, and clutching plastic bags with wet towels inside them, we drive to meet the camels.
Majid, M’barak (the camp’s boy) and half a dozen helpers are waiting by the side of the road when we arrive. So are the camels. They are big. They are noisy. But they do not smell, and their coats are as soft as - camel-hair. Half an hour later, and its time to get on board, and set off into the Sahara and the unknown, the band of onlookers draw closer together to share the fun. Mohamed stands a little apart, he looks worried, I think he feels responsible for us. The first ten minutes are terrifying, then, as if by magic, the rhythm seems right, the pace natural, the sounds of camel skin on camel skin and their intestinal rumblings seem the only proper sounds for this particular place and this particular time. I stop being afraid, I’m not going to disgrace myself, I’m not going to fall off, I start to sing softly - cowboy songs. There are the footprints of insects and lizards and mice on the ground, and the huge soft circles of the camel’s beautiful feet are left to tell that we have been here.
Majid and M’barak are walking ahead of us talking and glancing round occasionally to check that we are OK. The three of us are strung out in line, I am at the back. Wanda carries an open black umbrella for shade, Martin and I are turbanned, in blue, like Berbers. We are riding through an area of sparse palm trees and scrub, on sand. After three hours, I am tired and can hardly stand when I clamber off Goliad’s back. I have blisters in places where I did not know that blisters could be. Blankets are spread on the sand, mint tea brewed, and water bottles, still icy from the Auberge freezer are handed out. This is luxury. I lie in a haze of aching body and almost transcendental happiness. M’barak has collected wood, lit a fire and is baking the bread he has just made, and cooking soup. Majid has rolled his first joint, and from nowhere, produced a tape player and a Bob Marley tape. The stars are coming out, the camels are doing their favourite thing (eating whatever they see in front of them) and gazing at us, it is cooler now and my book lies open but unread on my lap. I breathe Majid’s smoke, nobody speaks, only M’barak moves. We eat to the sound of a band from Mali, and sleep lying on blankets in the sand, naked under a sheet and the sky, guarded by the Gods and the camels, and in a real world. Petits souris (little mice) run over our feet and rustle round us. Silence.
We wake with the light and doze, M’barak is bringing back the camels who have wandered off in the night in search of green things. Majid is still asleep, a mound of blankets, about 30 yards away. We get up when the sun touches us, dress and talk quietly, the heat is on its way, as if its hordes were marching toward us across the vast Saharan wilderness. Last night’s bread with jam, tea and camp is
struck, we are off again seasoned travellers now, we know how to sit, we don’t hold on the the pieces of rope which have been tied to the camels packs for us. I flap my arms in the breeze made by our movement, the sweat runs down my back. Camels roll when they walk, left front-left back-right front-right back. The rhythm is compulsive, it is in North African music, it is inexorable, they could walk all day if they had to, they would eat all day if they could.
I shan’t describe the landscape except to say that it is big, it would be monotonous to travel you would think at 5 Kilometres per hour, for 7 hours a day, through such inhospitable understated scenery, but the mind concentrates on the rhythm of movement, on the minute things around, a quick brown lizard, a strange apparently dead plant, a beautiful stone. And the colours of the reddish sand, the brown camels, the blue sky and the azure of Majid and M’barak's robes as they walk beside us. We speak very little. There is excitement when my camel stumbles down a maze of gerbil holes and tunnels, but otherwise peace.
We walk each morning for 3-4 hours, rest during the hottest part of the day and walk for another 3 hours in the late afternoon, that is the proper procedure for summer travelling. Every night is spent round the fire which bakes our bread and the gas burner which cooks our soup and tajine. Every morning the camels have disappeared and have to be brought back by M’barak. In the cooler parts of the year Majid uses a dog to help round them up (the dog rides the camels during the day) but now it is too hot for that.
We find a palmeraie with a well for the third night, the well is good water we are told and we can wash ourselves and our clothes. It is in a mud walled enclosure, and is concrete lined with a concrete trough beside it. The camels are delighted and drink thirstily,
then it is our turn. I am standing naked, in the trough with clothes around my feet, and pouring buckets of deliciously cold water over my head, when about 20 small goats trot in and make straight for me. They are here for the water but eating my wet clothes adds a certain interest to their visit. It is with difficulty that I retrieve my things. Wanda complains that I should have called her to take a photograph.
As I am walking, with my torch, to find a palm tree as my bathroom, I narrowly miss treading on a huge brown scorpion M’barak kills it with great glee, saying “Morte. Morte.” But Majid, well into his fifth or sixth joint of the night shrugs, and says “No problem friend. A little pain. A little fever, but no problem.” I do not believe him. We all lie awake for a while wondering if the creatures moving around us and walking over us are not the petits sourirs, but the scorpion’s relations out for revenge.
The afternoon before the last camp Majid and M’barak collect firewood, which is loaded onto the baggage camel, who objects noisily to the indignity, we see herds of goats in the distance, and once far far away a line of about 30 camels heading south. There is a massive range of sand dunes ahead of us and it seems as if Majid is planning to spend the night in their shadow. As we turn into the dunes we see a Berber tent and a young man steps out to greet us.
Ali is a friend of Majid’s, although they have not met for many months. They are obviously pleased to see one another, our camels are less pleased to see Ali’s, which are smaller, darker and more woolly. Mint tea is brewed and we settle down for the evening. Ali and M’barak walk off to fetch water from a nearby source, they are gone two hours and it is very dark when they come back.
By now the fire has heated the sand sufficiently to bake the bread which will be buried and then covered with sand and ashes, we sit and lie in the sand, about 200 yards away from the tent, we can hear Bob Marley through the still and clear air. It is one of those nights when people speak from their souls, nothing is trivial, nothing unbearable, though many things are unbearably sad, and we all weep a little. So much has the desert done for us, that it seems the only way to be is on the ground, in the dark, with companions who live the same life, and are subject to the same rules and limitations of nature, - and the same freedoms. I know why these young men never marry, never stop travelling and “making commerce”, they can never give this up, never live without theses certainties and these spaces. Our “normal” lives would kill them.
We sleep outside the tent, our last night under this sky. It is raining a little. How strange. The Sahara weeps to loose us.
When we wake the weather has changed, the sky is grey, there is a wind, the sand is blowing, everyone is edgy, the camels are bad tempered, they hate the sand to blow, it gets in their eyes, despite their beautiful long lashes. We will ride in the dunes this morning, no baggage, just saddle blankets. We wrap our turbans over our faces, and ride for the first time with our bare legs against the warm soft hair of the camel’s bellies, rather than the panniers which carry our camp gear. We move more quickly than we have done previously, but the camels keep turning away from the wind. For two hours we alternately ascend and descend the dunes. Coming down they are sometimes so steep, that we slide rather than walk. The camels are noisy, this should be a rest day for them, they must sometimes hope for bad weather days when they are on longer treks. At one stage, I lose my rhythm, and become afraid of falling, why am I doing this? I can’t cope, I am too old. I don’t want to remember this, I want to remember the other days, - then we are on the flat hard earth again and I regain my
balance, knowing that this and these feelings are what I will remember, and that I have been put in my place, the desert belongs to desert people not to tourists.
In the late afternoon we reach a road where the cars are waiting for us, how sad and strange to be detaching ourselves from this. Back at the Auberge we brighten, and swim.Majid has gone to Tamegroute for more kif? One more night on the roof, one more tajine.
Now we must reattach ourselves by stages to our belongings and to the lives we lead at home. We repack our bags with the things which we had left behind and which we have not missed and at 6.00am we load the car and head back to Marakech, where we will collect even more possessions (which we have not missed), and carry them unnaturally, through the air, in confined and noisy spaces where there are no camels to England and the material world (which we have not missed).
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