Kenny Gilmore

The final chapter…The scent of Europe
The moment we arrived in Tangiers it seemed as if we had already left
Morocco. Gone were the stylized Arabic houses with the rooftop oases,
and the curling alleyways winding mysteriously into populated
labyrinths…instead we saw skyscrapers and t-shirts and people who
looked like us..the borderline of the West with North Africa seemed to
be right here in Tangiers rather than somewhere in the straits of
Gibraltar, as we had supposed.

The first thing that happened to me in Tangiers was that someone tried
to kill me with a sandwich. We were sitting cross-legged on cushions
in a sort of Greek themed café eating falafel and talking to a couple
of complete strangers, when I heard a loud crunch between my
premolars. The next thing I knew my mouth was full of tiny shards of
broken glass. I had no time for niceties or even outrage, but grabbed
the water bottle and quickly filled my mouth running for the street.
Out there on the steps, with no regard for public decency either I
voided as much of the contents of my mouth and oesophagus onto the
ground. I rinsed and spat, rinsed and spat, and cursed and wondered
how much had gone into my stomach, looking for tell-tale sounds of
blood. Upon returning into the café it seemed as though the owners had
temporarily disappeared, and our table were on their feet looking
horrified. Mike was looking especially scared, as he had just eaten
the other half of the same sandwich had thoroughly enjoyed it. We
tried to imagine what would happen if you swallowed a lot of broken
glass and then wished we hadn’t. Surely a horrible death would follow,
and we wondered about putting fingers down our throats right then and
then and bringing up all the food from that day as well. We didn’t,
and I had the calming thought that I seemed to have detected the
offending material in time and successfully evacuated it from my
mouth. The owners were still keeping a low profile, in the end we did
nothing and simply left without paying the bill. ‘Welcome to
Tangiers’, we grinned wryly and began to sight see.

We spent the rest of the morning waiting to die, and mercifully were
distracted by a hilarious scene involving a traffic policeman and a
Spaniard. The white gloved official, busy waving cars through a busy
intersection seemed quite friendly as the man approached him and asked
directions to the cathedral. Amazingly, the official started to give
directions…but apparently forgetting that all passing motorists were
fixedly following the motions of his white gloved hands and trying to
obey his directions with perfect civic obedience. ‘Go straight on’, he
pointed up the street, smiling warmly all the time. A car which had
previously been idling uncertainly accelerated wildly with the motion
of his right arm and sped past them in a fury.
‘Next, turn left’..he gestured across his body with the same hand,
making a chopping motion. The car passing by screeched to a halt right
on cue, almost causing a bumper incident. And so on, for a good four
minutes the directions were faithfully told, as many motorists were
completely mystified by the strange directions they were being given
and the four of us stood on the side of the road and laughed ourselves
silly.
Tangiers had a rather seedy nightlife element to it, and we hurried
off to our beds without really investigating the clubs too thoroughly.
Apart from that we found the best thing about Tangiers was the
beautiful cafés, most splendidly the café chica. This meeting point
mecca literally spilled in terraces over the cliffs of Tangiers above
the beautiful ocean view into Spain, and a very trendy crowd of
Moroccans drank mint teas and cheered the football. Having sited Spain
now, we followed the inevitable pull of home, like horses who have
scented their usual straw. But first we had to cross the mighty
channel, which was experiencing bad weather.

There is a very fast service to the beautiful Tarifa, but the seas
were currently too high for this boat and we were forced to take the
bigger slow vessel into Algeciras. After a mighty long wait, we loaded
onto the ferry which had a sort of gentle dilapidated feel not unlike
the old ferries from Dover into Calais used to feel. After 30 minutes
at sea we realized that the seas may have been to high for this boat
as well, for torrents of spray were hitting the windows of the upper
passenger deck and the whole boat was heaving in an alarming way.
Things deteriorated from then on, with more spray and more heaving
rolling of the deck, until the chairs and tables and coffee cups were
sliding back and forth and everyone began to look quite green. We had
the bold idea of climbing up onto the open deck to watch the action,
which was thrilling and made you feel like you where in a film about a
shipwreck. However the cold drove us back below, where we found to our
dismay that several people had vomited onto the floor in the corridor,
causing us to have to jump and skip to avoid the mess. The atmosphere
in the cabin deteriorated, and suddenly we had to run for the stairs,
as everyone remaining began to puke like their lives depended on it.
Entire families voided the contents of their stomachs, holding onto
each other for support, and those well enough scurried for the door
with one hand up to ward of the smell and the alarmingly coloured
pools of chyme. We crowded densely into the stairwells, and sought a
comfortable seat for the 5-6 hour journey. Luckily I found one better
than that. A horizontal plank of wood had been fixed to the wall, and
well above the noise and clatter was a gentlemen sleeping stretched
out on his back, covering only half of the available space. I lost no
time in jumping up to grip the edge with my fingers, and spent the
rest of the journey covering the other half of the board. As the ship
was still rolling quite violently we both had to sleep while gripping
the edges of the board tightly, and wrinkled up our noses to avoid the
smells rising from below us. As we arrived in Spain there was a
surprisingly orderly exit from the boat, without any assistance or
help from any of the crew who seemed to have wisely stayed in their
quarters for the trip.
We took a taxi to Tarifa at 4 am, and then spend a pointless half hour
arguing in the howling wind about which part of the highly exposed
beach would be best to sleep on. The answer was of course, none of it
and we climbed a small hill to investigate an apparent ruined castle.
About half way up a policeman in a patrol car turned a spotlight on us
and we had to get down behind a rock and hide, well aware that the
Spanish police were often rough on travellers. When we got to it we
were in no state to deal with the fact that the small castle resembled
something out of a Bram Stoker novel and quite frankly gave us the
creeps. After the ferry crossing we had very little will left to deal
with unpleasant surprises, and we opted against squeezing through a
narrow window gap into the dark tower. Having no other option to hand
we decided to sleep next to it on some comfortable looking sea-weed.

We awoke in the bright sunshine in the pleasant tourist surfing town
of Tarifa looking and feeling like we were deserters from some north
African conflict (I still had a hooked knife in my hand). We rose and
saw the hills of Morocco..already far off but somehow beckoning still.
Africa, the oldest of continents. Battered and chaotic, run down and
mysterious, but smiling at us like an old mother bidding farewell to
some wayward sons, knowing full well that we would come back to her
arms one day when we could resist the pull no longer. We turned our
backs against the magical effect of the sunlight on the distant hills
and headed into town to hunt for breakfast, our thirst for adventure
for the time being fully sated…

The Dash North- 4 days to the Spanish coast

After two days of rest and recovery and some musical evenings at our
hosts establishment we broke camp and headed for the city. Buoyed up
with confidence we struck a shameless and outrageously conspicuous
profile in Marrakesh train station as we stumped down the platform in
our great packs and adopted Arabic headgear, running boyishly through
the Morroci to hunt an empty carriage. The night train to Asilah
seemed to have no beds, and we were suddenly gripped with the terror
of being pressed upright into a full seated carriage between
strangers all night! With relief we dropped our bags in an empty
carriage, which consisted of two parallel benches facing each other
(long enough to sleep on comfortably we calculated). And then we were
invaded by a gang of 4 South American girls, who had their own fears
about being pressed in between North African men all night long (which
their infamously optimistic views on the chastity of foreign women).
Having spied our t-shirts and packs, they decided we were the safer
option and made a bee-line for our carriage. They burst in and
immediately dropped coke on the floor, apologizing in Spanish as we
budged up to make room begrudgingly, knowing our chances of a good
nights kip were ruined. We attempted to make polite conversation as
they wolfed smelly hamburgers, and after a while the ice melted and we
began to compare stories and photos of travel in Morocco. They told us
about the wariness of travelling as Latin women in a North African
country, we told them about the strangeness of living amongst the
Portuguese. After a while we began to laugh, mostly about the
absurdity of cross-cultural misunderstandings and enjoying the sound
of their high pitched laughter I began to crack more jokes just to
hear the sound of it again. How strange it is when two groups of
travellers meet, and so amicably yet so transiently bond.

In the middle of the night a strange man tried to advance upon them
even in our carriage, to our disbelief and no small amusement. Having
no luck, and disliking our cold stares he attempted to ‘order’ the
Argentinian girl to come speak with him. She declined plainly, and he
seemed surprised as if he had expected her to obey him. He returned
after a while to inform us that the girls should get off at the next
stop with him. I made a few discreet enquiries with the conductor and
was horrified to find that he now lying about the train itinerary, and
in fact the girls were not due to depart for three more stops. They
had obviously made a shrewd decision joining our carriage and we
defended them from further unwanted advances until they were safely
off the train at the correct stop. We waved goodbye to our charges and
wondered how they had survived so far without being sold as camel
slaves in the Sahara desert. We lay down in our slightly sticky
carriage and slept briefly for the last few hours of the night,
awakening to see a line of soft rolling green hills extending
unendingly by the train. We rubbed our eyes at the announcement of
arrival in Asilah, and stood peckish and yawning in the soft morning
light of dawn.

Asilah was lovely, so relaxed after the pressure of Marrakesh and full
of nothing but artists, merchants and shopkeepers – and hordes of
Spanish tourists. We found private lodgings in a simple rooftop room,
where we had to share the bathrooms with our host, and our bedroom
with a large number of impudent children who came and left as they
pleased; One small boy upon seeing me joyously grabbed hold of my leg
and hugged me like I was his natural father, and we quickly became
friendly with the residents of the adjacent buildings too, in a free
way which simply would not be possible in the Western world as we know
it. We discussed this wonderful apparent social freedom of the third
world with renewed bewilderment (having drawn similarities between
many such countries we knew), where warmth is customary instead of
conditional, and wondered how it could be possible to inject some of
this infectious human openness into western cities such as the ones we
know. After debating at length we found no solution, except that whole
communities in apartment blocks in London and New York be moved
temporarily to Morocco and Vanuatu and such places so that they could
learn how to treat one another in day-to-day life.

After deciding not to buy anything in Asilah, but ogling the colourful
art galleries, we decided to investigate rumours of a Paradise beach
somewhere south of the Medina. We first attempted to find this on
foot, and subjected ourselves to the parody of asking and being asked
directions by groups of other tourists, all of whom were looking for
the same thing. We slumped dustily back into the Medina only to be
scolded by a young man who accused us of undermining the tourist
trade.
‘You have to let us take you their on a horse and cart’ he said
sternly, ‘it is our tradition!’ We were seriously taken in by the
prospect of such antiquated transport. In our minds we glided gently
on an ancient cliff top track, the pleasures of the rich countryside
rolling slowly by as we relived the timeless experience of a Morocco
unchanged for centuries. We could drink cokes and snooze, dangling our
limbs playfully off of the sides or on the horses flanks…SLOW? No NO
NO chuckled our driver gleefully as we set off from the Medina with a
suspiciously athletic looking horse. We ARE GOING TO TAKE THE
MOTORWAY!

And in increasing fear and incredulity we hung tightly to the
mercilessly hard frame as horse, cart, driver and two frightened
passengers thundered like Ben Hur down the freeway south of Asilah.
Sometimes we were just on the road, sometimes we were just off the
road. Mostly we were right in between, and we bounced sickenly
every time the wheels hit the tars edge, the traffic roaring close
around us and the horse foaming and thrashing like a devil at the
tresses. After a while, finding death not immediately imminent and
having successfully overtaken an 18 wheeler truck, our horror gave way
to a certain devil-may-care enjoyment and we began to grin toothily.
Our driver took this as encouragement, and urged our steed onto
greater efforts. A large gobbet of foamy green horse saliva streaked
past the thrashing mane and hit me full in the face. I smiled all the
more, and my sunglasses became suddenly opaque and I had to hold on
blindly until the turn-off to paradise beach. This breath-taking spin
on the fast tar road was followed by a back-breakingly rugged jolt
through a truly eroded dirt track, and for the first time since
childhood we felt that we had been spanked afterwards. We stopped to
pull a car out of the mud, hitching the horse and cart to the
tow-hitch and pushing ourselves. And this is Morocco, I thought..where
cars are rescued from the mud by horse and cart. The Paradise beach at
Morocco looked like it had seen better days, and the only Eden-like
effect was given by the luke warm water. After months and months of
surfing in the frozen Atlantic I played childlike in the waves for
hours, reliving my memories of Vanuatu as a South Pacific boy. We sat
on the scruffy beach and drank the sweetest Morocco tea to date, and
suddenly realized we could not drink the stuff anymore. We did our
best to protect our tender seats as we pounded back to Asilah the same
way, the driver overtaking another similar cart with ease and not an
immodest amount of pride. As we trotted through the narrow backstreets
of Asilah, built for the mode of transport we were using the rich
light gave the alleyways a creeping magical feel. The driver called
out greetings to many passers-bye, and various urchins climbed
cheekily onto the back unnoticed by the driver. We saw people drinking
tea lazily on the rooftops, and mothers taking in washing off of
home made lines. We hung on expertly now, seasoned cart travellers,
bobbing our heads and limbs in tempo with the rhythm of the horses
back..smiling back into open stares and even boldy calling out our own
greetings.

This moment crystallized in my memory into one of my precious moments
which I hope never to forget, and I felt a sudden flood of love for
the experience of life in all parts of Africa, North of South. Life
seemed to be somehow bolder, rawer, more vivid and sensually engaging
down here..it went for your throat and shook you as if to say…’DO you
now realise that you are alive?’ The freedom of communication between
all peoples regardless of petty divisions was also so apparent in
afternoon pleasantries. Noone in Africa is really a stranger, just a
long lost member of your extended family. A strange woman is your
sister, auntie or mother. A strange man is your brother, uncle or your
father. People are seen as worthy and welcome, until they prove to be
otherwise. The reverse is more true of the West, where some
commonality must be sought for before meaningful contact can be made
with anyone. Why is the West so cold by comparison? The problem still
puzzles me..and I still have no answer, but right then I felt such a
strange sense of belonging in that alien town I am unable to explain.
Upon returning to the marketplace this warm fuzzy feeling was sniffed
out by a wily tradesmen who induced me to trade almost everything I
was wearing for a few trinkets and a dangerous looking knife. I traded
my sunglasses, leather jacket, pen knife, Mike’s ballpoint and would
have lost my trousers too had not reason returned to me in time. Upon
reflection the trader definitely got a better deal, considering he
also walked away with my house keys which were in the jacket pocket.
This is a fact which I was reminded off unhappily upon returning to
Porto.

We struggled hard to get an English cup of tea in the café before
leaving Asilah. The waiter seemed a bit offended that we didn’t want
Moroccan tea. In the end we painstakingly explained how to make a
perfect cuppa, black tea with milk and one spoon of sugar. He went off
in a huff, and then returned with a steaming mug of hot milk, a burst
tea bag looming underneath a floating mat of loose tea leaves. This
provoked a long discussion on the essential hopelessness of trying to
obtain this simple beverage, easily made, outside of the British Isles
and former colonies of. Why, when the world had mastered coffee, had
they failed at tea? It’s a good drink…and according to Confucius

Tea tempers the spirit,
And harmonizes the mind,
Dispels lassitude and relieves fatigues
Awakens or refreshes the body
And clears the perceptive faculties.

This shows clearly that the Chinese are going to take over the world one day.
In the end we decided the tea could be worse, and in our minds we
created a tea judging scale which could be used by the unprepared
traveller in conjunction with lonely planet.
Running 1-10, as follows:

10 – Really good cup of tea..perfect

8 – Bad tea bag, but made correctly..milk may be absent

6- Wierd tea bag, and dunked in some pleasantly warm water, cheap hotel style.
No milk, but coffee creamer is available as well as artificial
sweetener. Drink if
desperate.

4- Dodgy tea bag again, lukewarm water, polystyrene cup and plastic
lid. Straw optional. Pretty bad option.

2- Steamed milk, burst tea bag. (tea ala Alisa Breakfast café). Almost
the worst possible tea.

0- Waiter brings no tea. Instead he brings a tea bag on a tray, sticks
it inside your mouth and then slaps you round the face. WORST Possible
cup of tea ever (hypothetical but not impossible).

Tangine has a good train service, and the sweet rolling hills of
Northern Morocco slipped by on our morning train from Asilah with
glorious ease…

Day 4 -? (what is time on a mountain)

The High Atlas Mountains
It is in the rural areas of a country where a traveller faces his most
real encounters with the people of the land he is exploring, and for
us Morocco was no exception. We left the madness of Marrakesh and drove
due East across the hot plains, passing many strange new developments
involving a horse racing track. We landed at the foot of the high
Atlas in the tourist trap town of Setti Fatma, where savvy middle men
of the ‘tourist business’ immediately settled on our gawky western
trappings like vultures landing on a zebras corpse. It didn’t take
long to shake them off though, and the blood-sucking feeling
diminished as we settled into the grandeur and cold fresh air at the
base of the old mountains. We stormed up the amazing tourist trail
following the descending waterfalls and pools, through a medley of
tagine restaurants and trinket vendors until we had climbed higher and
more daringly than any other tourist and then we plunged in (or at
least I did). In a setting where you are bound to be a neon target for
entrepreneurial businessmen, I think a slight adjustment always needs
to be made after arrival,and for us in Morocco that involved
rediscovering the love of haggling prices. After catching our breath,
and coming down from deeper in the mountain (giving us a kind of
advantage which we lacked on first arrival), we were now ready and
willing to haggle over anything for pure entertainments sake. This
also seemed to be a fair way of getting to know people, and indeed we
found that long bursts of haggling were often interrupted by rests
were all parties sat and drank tea. During this civilized interval no
mention of the business transaction was made, and instead pleasant
small talk sufficed until customer and vendor had regained full
strength and could rise for another ruthless round of price-wrestling.
In this way we took our sweet time in choosing a good lunch spot in
which to lingeringly savour the day’s tagine whilst reclining on
carpeted sofas, our backs to a trickling waterfall. The night found us
more than ready for bed, with a headfull of fresh air and a bellyful of
organic food. Collapse we did, but not before taking one of two puffs
of a sweet hookah bubbly pipe and sharing a few songs and dances with
the hotel owner.

The High Atlas mountains promised immediately to live up to their
name, and our morning trail head soared straight up an orange buttress
into the fierce sky. We wrapped our heads in turbans as a precaution
and followed the curious little mountain guide Ahmed as best as could.
It was soon clear that we were going to have difficulty in keeping up
with him. Although he was a frail looking crooked toothed little
fellow twenty years our senior, he had been born and raised doing
exactly this! His blood was charged with powerful mountain air, and
his legs were buckled and reinforced with iron springs which drove him
skipping up the steep gravel like a 15 year old child playing on a
beach. We watched him disappear in mild disbelief, adjusted our
turbans and exchanged meaningful glances..how high exactly are the
High Atlas mountains anyway? We didn’t know. In fact we were not very
well equipped, only wearing shabby trainers, and I was injured in the
right knee.

“Ya-La” shouted Ahmed and we lurched after him, as we did the
adventure started pounding in our chests and we sucked in more of the
sweet mountain air. Everybody we passed looked pleased to see us, and
refreshingly uninterested in selling things. What they did want,
andwith the same careful observance of ritual which was customary
everywhere in this land, was to have tea with us. Even the lonely
goatherd we met at the first peak made us a brew, boiling the water in
a tiny pot on his fire and toasted us cheerily as we butchered the
Arabic language trying to reply. ‘Bisahaawarraha’ (to your health and
mine). In thanks, we sang and I played a little on my travelling
harmonica. His grinned fiercely, his brown face creasing into so many
weathered wrinkles and I felt somehow privileged in the exchange. Our
man Ahmed cackled and stamped his feet, and from then on demanded
music almost every twenty minutes of the day. A row of children behind
us appeared and made silent hand motions with their hands in front of
their mouths in a silent request for more. Delighted by the good
cheer, we agreed to continue entertaining the people of the Atlas
mountains, and sang for them whenever we met them. We also refused to
give them money, but dispensed small English lessons whenever we
could; we reasoned that this was probably the most helpful thing we
could do for those who obviously were going to get ahead in future.

The tiny villages rolled by, wedged into the side of bluffs or nestled
in beautiful green river valleys below. Exhilarated by the sights, we
picked up speed and smiled all the more. The people of the mountain
were everywhere, poor, but radiantly dressed and always accompanied by
donkeys or goats. We sang for them, and laughed at their surprise, and
Mike began dispensing first aid. Whenever we passed a group of men,
one of them always seemed to ask for aspirin, and in the spirit of
generosity that had overcome us at the sight of such pleasant and hard
working folk he opened his first aid kit and began doling out large
square tablets which he thought were painkillers. It was only later to
his horror, that he realized he had actually been handing out nicotine
flavoured chewing gum for his patients to swallow whole with clear
water! There were many tears of laughter over that one, and a wonder
at how many troubling headaches had disappeared only to be replaced
with belly aches as he night came on.

The drive to the summit was relentless, with endless sun, high
gradients, more tea ceremonies, more goats, and more tagines. We slept
in small mountain shelters called ‘Jittes’ of variable quality. We
didn’t care and always slept gratefully on any surface available. We
struggled a little to fully adapt to Arabic toilet traditions and
experienced a lingering attachment to toilet paper, which we burnt
afterwards while our guide watched us curiously as if we were making
small strange offerings to the God of excrement. Suddenly, there was
snow everywhere. I instantly regretted my flimsy trainers. With a
delicate right knee awaiting corrective surgery, I really couldn’t
afford to injure it again. I trod gingerly on the glittering surface.
My foot slipped instantly under my heavy pack, almost toppling me in
an instant. I changed tack, and stamped hard hoping to make an
impression in the stuff. Immediately I broke through the crust and
sank up to my knee on the bad leg. What a nightmare! I looked
despairingly around in the ridiculous hope of finding some unused
crampons lying about. In the end I crawled mostly, making short and
undignified dashes up the firmer parts. When the shoulder did become a
ridge, it was like ascending into nirvana.

Mighty snowy cascades of purple peaks shot into a blue horizon,
cloaked in swirling clouds, revealing peaks of emerald green from the
valleys below. Mighty Toupka was on the left, and everywhere was the
gob smacking immensity of time and the eternal beauty of this planet. I
sat down suddenly-stunned and fish-eyed. ‘This is it’, I thought,
speaking my thoughts out loud because there was nobody else there to
hear them. ‘This is why we climb’, and let out a great shout of joy
which soared into the mighty spaces unheard by anyone (but who?) It
was some time before I found my feet and the path ahead of me, and
when I followed it was somehow a new-born spirit which came off that
ridge and into the next valley of life. As I walked I philosophized
happily …’life has valleys and ridges, and steep uphills which are
hard and treacherous. But then every now and then, you get to the top
of a high ridge and then you see God. That’s why we live’. This heady
euphoria lasted on the way down and when we thumbed a lift into the
Ourica valley we were both men of whole hearts again, having burst
free of the sneaking hooks and bindings of the world below, healed the
subtle cuts of our everyday snipes and failures, laughing and strong
and blessed by the mountain.