On a drive from Rabat to Marrakech, October 2002
Colorful stands selling pomegranates, apples, tangerines, eggplants and live chickens for slaughter line the highway.
Most public restrooms, even in the European-looking gas station, have two sinks and two stalls, the stalls equipped with a drain in the floor to squat over. Though Heather declares she has to go so bad she doesn’t care, she comes back to the car admitting she chickened out.
Driving eight hours from Rabat to Marrakech in a rental car that doesn’t have a CD player, to entertain ourselves we make up lyrics to the Arabic music on the radio. When the keening hurts our heads too much, we decide to sing American songs.
Problem: The combined musical knowledge of the three women in the car does not equal one complete song. At most the three of us come up with the chorus and half a verse to Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline.
Maps in Morocco: futile. Streets change names frequently and the locals are never are told the official names.
When asking for directions at a gas station, men gather, some from other cars filling up, some walking by. Strangers to each other, they sound like they’re arguing as they point at the map in our guide book. Even when friendly while delivering directions with a smile, Arabic sounds angry.
Told in Spanglisharabic to veer at the circle, we don’t know which circle or in which direction to veer.
Problem: There is a circle at every intersection.
Something curious: No left turns. To turn left you’re directed into a right lane that turns and somehow you end up left.
Marrakech, an ancient city, teems with Berbers and Moroccans as well as English, German, French and Canadian tourists. Three New Yorkers trying to maneuver a sedan through centuries old streets at night: not a good idea.
We realize sitting at a red light when a series of cars pause and then drive on that, after dark, traffic lights are treated like stop signs. Street signals become suggestions.
Since our hotel is inside the medina, we should have called ahead and arranged to be picked up; instead we attempt to drive to the hotel. Problem.
The attempt is complicated by street sign’s placement at the top corners of buildings and they’re in Arabic. We decide to give the address of the hotel to a taxi driver, offering to pay to follow him in our car until he finds our hotel.
Driving up to a line of mustard-colored dusty cars at the taxi stand, a collection of drivers comes to our window and argues over who will take us. Maybe it isn’t arguing; maybe it’s the Arabic.
As we drive down a narrow, winding street, donkeys and people hurtle out of our way and some pound on the car yelling. A young woman with kohl-lined dark eyes wearing a yellow djellabah spits Arabic at us and waves her hands in the air, for a moment we think that we’re back in New York.
Forty minutes of crisscrossing the medina following the cab driver, leads to worry that he might be setting us up for abduction. We wonder if we have made a rather large mistake.
The cab driver suggests calling the elusive hotel for directions. Giving him some Dirhams, we watch from our car when he makes the call from a pay phone.
Something else curious: There are payphones in Marrakech.
The driver takes us to a parking lot, which is really just the alley behind three buildings, and in disjointed English instructs us to park the car there for 15 Dirhams a day. Kara, whose name is on the rental agreement, worries something will happen to the car. She first resists, then panics. Eventually she acquiesces.
After explaining we have “beaucoup valise” and “mucho luggage,” a man appears with a cart. He tosses in our Samsonites and Touristers, then vigorously pushes the cart through crowds. Following him, we’re not sure where he is leading us and are nervous that if we lose him we’ll lose our luggage.
We laugh that we’re about to become a State Department statistic, but stop laughing when we turn off the crowded street and continue down an unlit path.
We hear the sounds of the square just on the other side of the walls, where there are food carts and snake charmers and acrobats, but we are a group of five slithering through the dark. I wish I could remember all of a “Hail Mary.” I get lost after “Blessed art thou among women.”
The cart stops suddenly, a little door within a door opens, and there it is, the lobby of the Riad Enija, a garden with fountains, birds and soft music.
The taxi driver refuses our Dirhams. He is a university student named Mustafa majoring in Mathematics. He smiles big when I take his picture with Heather and Kara, then gives us his email address so that we can send him a copy.
When shown to our room we find rose petals strewn on silk linens and Moorish tiles.
The three of us sink into the beds. Kara tells us that while talking to Mustafa, when he heard we were from New York, he grasped for his French, struggling to remember the word désolé. Kara tells us it means I’m sorry; he was referring to September 11th.
Through out our stay we are continually touched by how generous and kind everyone is that we meet.
We fall in love with Marrakech.
