...and with this grape, I die

(The title is a very apt favorite line from The Tempest.)

Here is a short list of potentially grave mistakes:

• Brushed teeth with tap water first night in Marrakech.
• Enjoyed single grape after dinner at great personal risk. 
• Did not slap henna lady who grabbed my hand within 2 minutes of entering bazaar (more later, promise). 
• Sat in front seat of car thru Atlas mountains (mom just added this to my list).

Tonight we are sleeping in the same bed Jimi Hendrix once did. Not really, but this place (in middle of picturesque Todres Gorge) is hippie heaven and our waiter quoted Hendrix to us at dinner. ("Tomorrow you're goin' up the mountain.") We are indeed hiking with a teenager named Mohammed tomorrow, to see cave dwelling nomads and other interesting stuff, then, Y promises, a free afternoon (hooray because it just so happens that we also have a free bottle of wine!).

Today's entry will focus on just one aspect of our exciting day. After cold bread and jam (and cafe nuss-nuss) for breakfast, we hopped in the car and headed to a "pharmacologie ecologie" - a natural plants and herbs place in Ourzazate. There, Y entrusted us to an oily young man (who I suspect is considered the "handsome one" of the sales guys), named Zachary.

Zachary was mildly capable of converting his French to English. Imagine me, speaking English very slowly with heavy French accent. See? It was the reverse of that. I say this not to disparage his language ability - which outpaces mine considerably - but so that you can understand the language barrier that compounded the cultural one.

We rise very early by the standards here so it is not surprising that at 9:30 am we were the only customers in the shop. It's got a lot of white shelves and row after row of glass jars, large and small, consisting of all manner of things. Some have just bright pigments (colored sand) or colored water. Others have small jars and bottles of product. Still others have herbs. The traditional large woven baskets of loose sachet type materials are also present, as you see in most public markets.

So we two are seated in a mid-sized room lined entirely by a white painted wooden bench. Like a park bench, only less comfortable. It's clear to me that this is a performance usually reserved for much larger groups. Zachary stands before a large butcher block cart of pots, tubes, jars and plastic baggies. Many of these products, we are soon to discover, are quite pleasant. But our presentation does not begin with those. Instead, Zachary unzips a baggie of black cumin seeds and shakes a small handful into a miniature white handkerchief.

He crushes the tightly wrapped bundle of seeds to crush the pods. With no warning, he then presses the bundle tightly to my left nostril and exhorts me to inhale forcefully.

My God. It is not only unpleasant but actually painful.

"Seenuzes!" Zachary smiles excitedly, keeping up his constant patter.

My right nostril is then assaulted in the same manner.

If I had ever toyed with the idea of snorting cocaine, this experience has been enough to guarantee that I will not. The nasal passages are not to be taken lightly. While none of the substance actually entered my being, the harsh odor alone was enough to make my eyes tear up and my nose run.

"Wow! Great!" I smiled encouragingly at mom.

While undergoing the sinus treatment was not particularly pleasant, watching someone else do it was HIGHLY satisfactory. I understand why Zachary would not deprive himself of this small pleasure in what otherwise must be a tedious sort of job.

Once Mom was through suffering, we sat through an absolute barrage on the medicinal value of damn near every herb on offer. Some were lotions, others teas. Some were oils to be massaged into your temples, which Zachary was kind enough to demonstrate at considerable length on my own head. (Mom estimates my general face massage lasted approximately ten minutes. I assumed it only FELT that long.) It was completely embarrassing, in part because Mom's mastery of the camera has improved. But, it was nicer than having my head straddled by a monkey.

After an eternity of having my face gently stroked with musk oil, we learned that Zachary was deeply concerned about our stress, our hot flashes, our menstrual cramps, our digestion and our eczema. He was also not at all shy about homing in on our physical imperfections. I do not think it was just my imagination that he spent an inordinate amount of time lavishing us with praises of the "weight loss tea."

And, can you imagine walking up to the Clinique counter and having the sales lady cluck her tongue and point out the age spots on your forehead? Well, my forehead received a large dose of complimentary lemon oil and some sympathy. And did you know eucalyptus is good for your seenuzes as well as under eye bags?

We also had to endure a brief sales pitch for gypsum (crystal) and how beneficial it can be. So MANY uses! Deoderant! Antiseptique! Let me vouch for the fact that it is excruciating to sit next to your own mother and listen a young man describe "bath gynecologique." Oh yes. Zachary was attempting to educate us about douching. And the complete lack of embarrassment was on his part, not ours.

After this painful interlude, Zachary got out a tube of green "magic lipstick" and joked that the color it turned on you indicated whether you were "frigid," "normal" or "hot." (Imagine those words in quotes in a French accent for full effect.) Oh yes. I am SO NOT MAKING THIS UP.

A dab on my palm showed I was "normal," while my furiously blushing mother was pronounced "experienced." This is the moment Zachary found a special place in my heart and I determined that, yes, absolutely I would buy the mint tea, some eczema treatment for Aaron, and about $50 worth of other assorted herbal cures. Worth every damn penny.

Desert Karaoke

The camels were waiting outside the hotel, on the edge of the dunes.

All eight of them were lying down (their knees bent backward in that freaky camel manner). One of them was collapsed completely, its long neck and giant head laid flat to the ground. Really, this particular camel appeared so lackluster, I actually worried it might be dying. Of course, this turned out to be the one assigned to Mom.

We were told that one of the camels was named Jimi Hendrix and one Hammoud (a local pop star). I choose to believe that I rode Jimi into the desert.

Y helpfully tied our totally unnecessary and expensively purchased scarves around our heads, making us look like Lawrence of Arabia wannabes. Then it was time to hop on. Three adorable young couples from Holland, Canada and Austria would be riding with us.

Mom got to mount her camel first. I was next. They were one hump camels. (The two humpers dwell in neighboring Algeria. We HATE Algeria here in Morocco and have been told many bad stories about its terrible people.) Specially-constructed “saddles” made from what looks suspiciously like the highly-priced “antique” rugs on offer in the shops disguise the hump, and also come equipped with small metal handlebars in front. The kind you might see at an amusement park for small children.

Straddling the hump like it’s a super-sized horse (because I have SO much riding experience), and gripping the handlebars very tightly, you cling on as you are forcefully thrust first forward (as the rear legs rise suddenly to like six feet in the air while the front stays stationary); then backward (as the front legs join the rear).

No one actually fell off during this procedure, although the Belgian girl was so terrified she shrieked throughout. (Her husband didn’t actually shriek, but he wanted to. I could tell.)

Camel mechanics operate thusly: There are four extremely long and heavily jointed legs which do not appear to ever actually work in concert with one another. It’s like each leg sets its own pace and slightly varied direction… and somehow the whole operation manages to move slightly forward. For a while I was certain that my camel’s rear legs were cantering while the part of the beast I could actually SEE was plodding steadily along at a snails pace. “Your camel is skipping!” Mom confirmed.

Riding upon the very first camel in the caravan means one of two things. 1) You’ve lucked out and gotten the best behaved camel of the bunch – the “leader.” Or, 2) Your camel is so rotten that the guide doesn’t trust it to follow along behind as the other camels do, tied loosely together… no, he will personally lead this naughty beast, walking along on foot, the rope lead ever in his grasp.

I believe the second scenario was at work, and began making contingency plans for bad camel behavior. It may have been my paranoia, but it felt truly as though my camel wanted to gallop across the dunes. If he were to suddenly break free and make a dash for it, my plan was to somehow swing my left leg up over the bicycle handlebars and bail out – regardless of the six foot drop. I would leap clear, and then hopefully roll, scrunch into a small ball and wait for the stampede to end.

If my camel were to spit – and it did – I would cover my face at the first sound of phlegm. I’m not sure what I expected the trajectory to be, but it turned out that without so much as glancing to the side, the disgusting glob of camel snot landed neatly at a 90 degree angle from its mouth. Camel lips are fascinating, floppy things and camel teeth are singularly intriguing. They bite in circles – first clockwise, then counter-clockwise, over and over. It’s sort of mesmerizing.

Once I had finished thinking about the various scenarios that could go terribly wrong with MY camel, it occurred to me to start worrying about Mom’s. I don’t mean worrying about Mom’s welfare, because I was certain she would handle herself just fine in a dromedary emergency. Rather, when I felt a soft nudge on my shoulder, I realized that Mom’s camel (directly behind me) was tailgating to a very great extent. What if it (____________________) fill in the blank:

• Nudged me right off the back of Jimi Hendrix?
•  Managed somehow to spit on me or wipe its flubbery camel lips on my hair?
•  Got hungry and decided to bite me?
•  Pissed my camel off creating a showdown with Mom and I helplessly attached to the saddles?

After about an hour of going over various scenarios in my head, we arrived at camp. I could tell we were about to arrive, not because I sighted the rustic rug tents (which were nestled deep between tall dunes, well out of the wind), but because of the impressive amount of droppings in the camel parking lot.

Our camels were eager for us to dismount and so we repeated the “giant heave forward, then backward” maneuver and all stretched our legs by walking up a nearby dune to watch the final moments of a spectacular sunset. Walking up the dune gave me new respect for Jimi Hendrix and his cohorts – particularly the silent guide who walked our caravan the entire hour. The sand was almost impossible to navigate and we ended up exhausted just climbing this one small dune.

After sunset, we retired to our camp to inspect our surroundings. The tents were giant rugs thrown over metal frames, and real beds inside each. A single bulb was just inside each entrance, and it was already growing dark. We sat at a series of card tables set up inside the little alley of tents and were joined by five more guests – two retired French couples and one son. They were the life of the party – especially the mother, whose singing by the bonfire later was wonderful. She had a beautiful voice, a joyful personality and was simply a delight to have in the group… we dubbed her the “Chanteusse
of the Desert.”

A dinner of tagine, and Y came through when he recommended we bring a bottle of chilled white wine along… we were able to share with the French. The young people were well-supplied, particularly the Canadians, who regaled us with really funny stories from their pre-Honeymoon (France and Morocco). Everyone was friendly and amiable, which was a good thing, since we were stuck together for the evening.

After dinner, the three camel men lit a bonfire and began playing drums and strange metal oversized castanets. They tried passing the bongos around and encouraging us all to have an international sing-along, or sort of desert karaoke night. Mom wanted to sing, I could tell. Fortunately, she couldn’t think of any good songs on the fly and we were mercifully outnumbered by other nationalities. (Particularly the enthusiastic French.) We joined in on a grand round of “Frere Jacque,” which everybody on Planet Earth knows, apparently.

And we did a quick, impromptu verse of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire.” The bongos were playing it – I would swear to you. After hearing us actually sing, the Berber guides mercifully stopped harassing us to sing more.

They were great musicians! And who knew - our silent guide from earlier was a complete cut-up. They had us all laughing, and we spent a couple of really fun hours listening to music (if not actively making it) and watching the incredible stars.

Us “old folk” retired earlier than the young couples, and it was fun to listen to them laughing around the fire. The Canadians admitted that they’d been sick on their trip and purchased medicine in a souk. Eventually someone deciphered their pill bottle for them and informed them that they’d been taking meds for camels and sheep… “But we feel
better, so it’s OK!”

Sleep was not difficult for me – though it was so unbelievably silent that I could hear every sigh, snort, wheeze and pillow adjustment any of the 15 guests up and down the tent alley made. We teased the timid Belgians about having the tent next to the latrine – “Hope no one gets confused in the middle of the night!” It was COLD outside, and some
wind would gush through at intervals. I found this refreshing and calming. Mom, who didn’t sleep as well, said it made her feel insecure.

Let’s ponder that for a moment.

You say you voluntarily rode a giant beast into an unforgiving environment, putting yourself at the mercy of three 20 year old men who are more interested in figuring out how to make Bob Marley sound right on the Berber cymbals than in your personal welfare… you paid a great deal of money to spend the night among total strangers from all over Western Europe, strangers who derided your lack of language ability in that subtly smug way that only the French and Belgian have… you left all your belongings divided between a hotel room which may or may not be rented out to someone else in our absence and a car that is who-knows-where with our absentee guide… that is aside from the passport and credit card you have strapped around your middle under your clothes, which you are sleeping in… and hoping the guides were only joking about scorpions and trying to forget about the black beetle you spotted on the sand earlier – the one that was the size of a silver dollar…

… and the lightly flapping tent entrance is making you feel insecure?

We were awakened just before sunrise the next morning – enough time to scramble up a dune to see. Peaceful, beautiful. The camels and guests were eyeing each other with equal dislike, then we mounted up again and trod slowly back to the hotel, a hot shower, and a good breakfast.

So this is love...

We had the great good fortune to gain front row seats to Day Two of a Berber marriage in the very small town of Mezourga, on the edge of the Sahara, on the dunes. In the states, I would honestly just assume that the event was staged for the benefit of tourism… but considering we were two of only four non-Berber people in the vicinity (with hotels full of tourists nearby, completely oblivious), I have to conclude that we really were fortunate to be a small (hopefully unobtrusive – except for that awkward barging in on the bride just minutes before her groom arrived) part of this couple’s happy day… or days, as a Berber marriage lasts three days. 

There were similarities to our Western-style weddings. A fussy-looking photographer carried a camera mounted on a very tall stick. The bride wore white (with her entire head sandwiched inside a bright red square potholder - not even her eyes showing). And the guests were dressed to the hilt, which encompassed everything from dirty jeans to traditional black-with-embroidery Berber robes to stylish and lovely teen girls with their hair exposed.

The biggest common denominator was the happiness and excitement that clearly pervaded the event.

Y had entrusted us to the care of amiable Adair the previous evening before disappearing with the car. (No matter, we knew we would be sleeping in the hotel that night and the dunes the next, and the Hotel Moyahut, where Adair worked and was the only English speaker around, was fabulous.)

Adair insisted on repeatedly introducing himself as “Idiot.” (“Elliot?” “NO! EEEEE-DEEEE-Oh.”) OK then. Honestly, I didn’t figure out what his name was until later, and felt extremely awkward referring to such a friendly, intelligent and helpful person as “Idiot” all afternoon. 

Adair.

Adair escorted us to the village in order to buy head scarves for our impending desert adventure (later that evening). We spent half an hour walking to town from the hotel (there are NO paved roads; NO sidewalks... just sand) through the village’s gardens. We followed this route either because Adair knew we liked gardens or because this is simply the way you walk from Hotel Moyahut to the village without dying of sunstroke. The small, hand-dug irrigation canals were interesting, the walk leafy and green, and the pointing at various vegetation and attaching names was delightful (us English; Adair mostly English and lots of picking herbs for us to taste). It became known as the Tour of the Frogs, as each amphibian was meticulously discovered, exclaimed over (“so large!” “so small!”) and then animatedly forced to jump into the irrigation ditch. (“Ha-hah! He like it!”) One got the distinct image of a much younger Adair spending joyful afternoons as a boy harassing frogs in the gardens.

As we finally arrived at the village (three or four square blocks – but some of the tribe live further out and the area has grown in the last 20 years to include many hotels); and heard a great commotion. “A wedding?” we guessed, having seen something similar from the car a few days earlier. A small swarm of people, men and women, in all manner of dress from fancy traditional to dirty jeans, was trudging very slowly up the street, the women chanting and shaking tambourines.

“Yes! Yes!” said Adair, pointing out a large tent we happened to be walking past, pitched in someone’s small, enclosed backyard. “The tent for the men. The women all together in different house. You want to see Berber wedding?” Adair seemed genuinely surprised when we said yes… we assumed we would peek discreetly from an alley as the procession passed – that would have been fabulous. Instead, Adair led us right past a group of women (who never did anything but smile at us), into a small courtyard, and then poked his head right into a large room filled with women… “This the bride! Come look!” Oh dear.

Notice the goat's party mask?

With lots of smiling, apologetic bowing and murmurs of “shokram” (thank you), we briefly peeked in. We were greeted with more smiles. No one seemed distressed by our presence. I sincerely hope that was the case, but we beat a hasty retreat to a further remove as the groom-parade drew nearer. A sheep in a fancy black leather mask was being dragged along reluctantly at the front of the group.

“This day, they take photo and sacrifice a goat. Then they are marriage.”

Oh. Wow.

I figured the groom-parade would merge with a large group from the bride’s side, and they’d go off to a ceremonial site… maybe that nice new town square? But no, they stayed right there in the street. The chanting never ceased… the group milled around as the bride came out. The groom was all in white (long robe, turban that hid all but his eyes – which were definitely smiling); and a red sash. The bride was in a white robe and red square headdress that hid her entirely. The sides of the robe extended like white bed sheets, and were held out wide on either side by other womenfolk. (“See – they show you how big is the bride,” Adair explained and/or joked.)

A clearly-professional photographer with a camera on a high stick took many formal photos which encompassed roughly 40 people, the bride and groom standing totally apart in the middle of their respective groups.

The bride in traditional dress.

Then a large man with a dagger took center stage and as I tried to keep my face neutral (though even the photographer was looking as grossed out as I felt); killed a sheep in front of everybody. Thankfully, I couldn’t really see the killing because everyone else crowded around, anxious not to miss it. It was silent. The man held up a super bloody hand, the crowd went wild, and the sheep flopped quietly for a minute before being carted off in a waiting wheelbarrow.

“A good killing,” Adair gushed. “He is the good man for this.”

Along with tambourines and chanting, dancing women, the groom’s entourage included an older woman holding a blue circular tray aloft. It was clearly ceremonial, and was now placed at the happy couple’s feet, in the blood of the sacrificed sheep. I'm not sure what it signified, but there was a large bottle of Fanta Orange on the tray. ("May your marriage never lack sugary carbonation?") Pieces of candy (or maybe they were nuts) were tossed in the air, and children scrambled (in the blood, I could not help but notice) to pick them up.

A smiling, happy Adair rubbed his hands together. “Now, they are marriage. Tonight is a BIG party.” And he whisked us down the street to see the communal bread oven, then to the gift shop to buy totally unnecessary and wildly expensive authentic Berber scarves.

“Are you married?” we asked Adair.

“Oh NO! I too young! Maybe five years when I am maybe 30.”

We then invited ourselves to his future wedding, which seemed to delight him. "YES! I call Youssef and tell him when I marriage! You come!" And so we now have legitimate pretext for a return to Mezourga. Inshallah.

PS) I am SO NOT making any of this up.