Marrakech

Although the flight from Morocco to Bristol took only 3 hours and it took me less than an hour to drive home from the airport, it is taking my mind and spirit far longer to get here.

Three days later the vivid after images of Marrakech are slowly fading. Initially it was as if the intense heat, colours, noise and chaos of the dusty city were overlaid in my mind’s eye. Obscure flashbacks, as I drove along the quiet country lanes of Somerset or walked through the gentile streets of the small market town I live in.

The cool autumn air now in such contrast to the night we landed in Marrakech. The moment Dan and I stepped off the plane the heat wrapped itself around us, penetrating, sauna dry, spicy in my nostrils, my bones relaxing, my body surrendering.

We navigated landing cards, tense, lengthy queues at passport control and an angry female toilet attendant who for reasons unbeknown to me hurled the bin she had just emptied into the toilets and stormed off in a huff. We found our way into the spacious, air conditioned airport. It was immaculately white and I felt like I had entered an under used waiting room for heaven. We exchanged pounds for dirham and then wandered out to the taxi rank in the full knowledge that we would be paying three times more than we should to get driven to our hotel. By the time we were unsuccessfully attempting to haggle a good price on our Mercedes Grand Taxi, night had fallen.

I had forgotten how much quicker it gets dark the closer you get to the equator, so much so that even in southern Egypt, if you blink you could miss the sunset. How unlike the long drawn out farewells to the sun we have so often in Britain, sky stained red, orange and pink for what seems like hours. I love watching the sun set. Some of the happiest, most contented moments in my life have been spent breathing in the sublime colours, the intense glow of the sleepy sun, bathing in its beauty.

By the time the taxi had dropped us in the small square near to our hotel darkness had fully arrived making the unfamiliar surroundings all the more threatening. The moment we stepped out of the vehicle a young teenage boy was asking us where we were going, trying to give us directions, offering to show us the way. I felt extremely wary but the reality was that we didn’t have a clue where our hotel was and so we took a leap of faith and followed the boy into the dimly lit alleyways.

All of my alarm bells were ringing, my instincts telling me not to go into the dark tunnel following a complete stranger who may be leading two incredibly gullible westerners into a dark passage where we could be ambushed by the other gang members. As it turned out, my worst fears were not realised and we arrived safely outside the door of our Riad. After negotiating the not so small fee for being shown the way there we bid the boy goodbye and entered the peaceful haven of our beautiful hotel.

By 10pm we had settled in to our room and decided to take a walk and maybe find a restaurant for a late dinner. Stepping out into the city in the warm night air we retraced our steps through the dark tunnels and alleyways back to the square where the taxi had dropped us off. And now we had to navigate this place.

The city is teeming with mules and motorbikes, donkeys, beggars and horse drawn carriages, cars, buses and trucks, all pushing their way through the traffic. You take your life in your own hands every time you step out to cross the road. At first I was petrified to put even my big toe out into the street for fear of being run over but after a couple of days I was hurling myself into the path of oncoming vehicles and animals with the best of them.

It is alarming to note how rapid and efficient human adaptation is, because within three days we were really starting to enjoy dodging the traffic, “My, how we chuckled when that motorbike drove over your foot”. We actually did see an old man drive his scooter into three teenage girls, they fell about laughing as if it was all jolly good fun and wagged their fingers at him as if to say “ooh you cheeky old man, you, trying to run us over....ha ha”. I thought he was a complete nutter, in England there would have been shouting and insults and possibly charges made.

Walking the streets of the old city is an onslaught of sensory stimulation, every step you take, the smell changes. One moment, donkey dung, the next, the aroma of delicious spices, two more paces, what I can only assume was human urine swiftly followed by a whiff of meat cooking on open coals. I noticed I was starting to hold my breath, not knowing whether the next inhalation would be delightful or disgusting, or a mixture of both which made my stomach churn. Be that as it may, as the hours and days go by, you succumb to the city and its smells and noise and chaotic hurly burly.

Being in Morocco, which after all is still a third world country, I was confronted with the discomfort of being highly conspicuous as a white, affluent, westerner. In Marrakech it seems there is extreme poverty and extreme wealth but not very much in between. So you step off the crumbling pavements through the doors of luxury hotels onto the polished marble floors of the enormous foyer with chandeliers sparkling. It is most disconcerting. We were happy to pay over the odds for certain things because it is so obvious that to us ten pounds is not a lot but it is a lot to the person we were buying from.