10 Days in Paradise: A Reflection on My Vacation in Morocco
All right, so we’ve established by now that I’m the world’s worst blogger, and this post isn’t necessarily an indication that I’m going to do this any more actively than I have been — I just want to write a bit about my time in Morocco, and this seemed like the most appropriate place to do so. I purposely decided not to keep a travel blog; though I did consider it, it seems to me like one of the benefits of traveling by yourself is that it gives you time to reflect on your experiences before you need to commit to a distinct impression of them. However, now that I’ve been back for a few days, a lot of people have been asking me how it was, and it’s been very difficult to explain, so I figured I’d try my darndest to put it into words and put those words all in one place. This is my attempt at that. What it is not is a day-by-day digest or a fully-inclusive account, as there are still things that I’d like to keep to myself — for no other reason than that this was my experience alone, so I’d like to keep a few of my memories that way as well.
For the sake of putting everything in context, I should probably spare a moment first to explain how I wound up in Morocco in the first place. I was in The Netherlands for winter break because my paternal grandparents were celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary on January 3rd, and given their age and health, it was likely the last big family party. Luckily, I had enough frequent flyer miles that I was able to book the flight to Amsterdam for free, and when I booked my trip way back in September, I ended up scheduling my trip for a whole month, from December 22nd to January 22nd.
At that point I had already decided I wanted to do some traveling while I was in Europe anyway. It’s not that I didn’t want to spend time with my family, but it’s frustrating when I spend all of my travel money to see family — either my parents in Houston, or the rest of my family in The Netherlands — especially when I consider travel to be one of the greatest joys in life. I had thought about trying to go somewhere new for spring break this year, but the popular spring break destinations of Florida, The Caribbean, and Central America don’t interest me at all. The appeal of those places is generally the sunshine and beaches, and I’m not a beach person; if I travel, it’s for the culture and rich history and art.
In terms of destinations, I was originally thinking of exploring south-Eastern Europe by train. I read a book a few years ago that had beautiful descriptions of Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Croatia, and Slovenia, and I’ve wanted to visit those places ever since. At first I had this idea that it would be magical and beautiful in the wintertime, but as the weather got colder in New York, I began to realize that it might be very cold and unpleasant, and that I wouldn’t be as energetic and do as much on such a trip as I might in warmer weather. So then I started looking for vacation offers from Dutch travel agencies (which are actually still a big thing there), and narrowed my options down to Turkey or Egypt — both places with rich history and more pleasant weather. After hearing several people advise against Egypt due to the current unrest, I settled pretty easily on Turkey, even though (aside from Istanbul) it had never been on my places-I-want-to-visit-before-I-die list. I planned on doing a one-week group tour through Cappadocia (as a way of seeing some cool landscapes and kind of getting a grounding in the culture), and then a second week by myself in a hotel in the Turkish riviera, where I could do my own thing.
Unfortunately, it seems like few other people want to go to Turkey in January, because a few days after my arrival in The Netherlands, I received an e-mail from the travel agency that the group tour had been cancelled due to lack of participants. They offered to put me on a different tour through Turkey, which I grudgingly agreed to, but then that one was cancelled as well, a day later. Thankfully, they were not difficult about giving me a full refund for the entire trip, even though the hotel portion of the trip wasn’t technically affected. After doing a bit more searching, I wound up booking what was essentially the same trip (in terms of content) with a different travel agency for the same price, and this one said it had a guaranteed departure. The travel dates were January 7th through the 21st.
On January 4th, I received an e-mail from the travel agency that this trip had been cancelled, too. I complained, because of the “guaranteed departure”, but apparently another participant had cancelled, and now they didn’t think the trip was worth continuing. So here I was, 3 days before I’d expected to leave, suddenly without vacation plans. I basically spent that entire day online researching various alternatives. I quickly decided I didn’t want to try for another group tour — it wasn’t worth it. I briefly debated a cruise, but discarded that idea too — and a good thing, too, because I could’ve easily wound up on the Costa Concordia in that case. I decided that I generally placed no more faith in travel agencies, and that I preferred to just do my own thing, which did open up my options to more destinations. I also decided to place nice weather higher on my list of priorities — it had been gray and rainy and windy during my whole stay in The Netherlands, and I was just sick of it. So with the criteria of “warm weather”, “rich history and culture”, “art”, and “less than 4 hours flight time” and “affordable travel”, I very quickly came up with Morocco. I was quite happy with that, since Morocco, unlike Turkey, had actually been on my list of places-I-want-to-go-before-I-die.
But that still left me to decide what to do within Morocco. Since I was going without a tour guide or a comprehensive plan, I figured I should book a hotel in a single city, and then do day-trips from there. I can’t explain what made me decide on Marrakech except that it was sort of an accidentally serendipitous decision — it looked pretty central on a map, was an actual city and not just a beach resort town, and advertised warmer weather than Casablanca. Beyond that, I knew nothing about it. In my mind, the decision still feels like rolling the dice. But it wound up being possibly one of the best decisions of my life.
So, on the evening of January 8th, I arrived at Marrakech-Menara Airport, armed with an overly heavy suitcase full of clothes (I had no idea what to wear, given both the culture and fluctuating temperatures), a laptop, a DSLR, and a little tourist guidebook on Morocco (not even specifically Marrakech; the Marrakech section took up maybe 5 pages) I’d picked up in Utrecht for 4 Euros a couple of days before. I had no idea what to expect, and I didn’t really have a plan.
Those who have already heard me talk about Morocco in person have probably heard me use phrases such as “amazing”, “paradise”, “life-changing”, and above all, “I want to go back.” I know I’ve painted a pretty picture of watching the sun rise into a clear blue sky over the Atlas mountains while fog blankets the earth, leaving only a faint silhouette of palm trees. These are all true, but I fear that they also suggest an overly rosy picture of the place and my time there. Two words I would also use to describe my trip are “hard” and “challenging”, mainly because Morocco is the kind of place that makes you acutely aware of your own privilege as well as your ignorance, turning logic upside-down and causing you to question everything you think you know.
One of my first impressions of Morocco was chaos — but controlled chaos. I had arranged an airport transfer to the hotel, Kasbah le Mirage, which was located just outside the city near the Palmeraie. We needed to drive through the city to get there. One of the first things I noticed was that there were no traffic lights, very few stop signs or road signs of any kind, and in some places, no road markings on the street to delineate lanes of traffic — only a line to separate the traffic going in opposite directions. There was a vague sense that three rows of cars would fit abreast, but some cars were driving right on top of where you would’ve expected to find the lane lines. It also became evident that there are relatively few traffic rules, and that the only things required for a drivers license in Morocco are knowledge of the location of the wheel and the gas pedal — and yet, it works. Never once in my time in Morocco did I witness a traffic accident. Because there are no traffic rules, drivers have to be highly aware of each other. In a way, it makes driving a much more social experience. This is one example of Morocco turning everything you think you know upside-down.
Once we were inside the city, I was impressed by how clean and neatly-paved the sidewalks were — and then I watched somebody herd sheep across the road, from these very same clean sidewalks. A few times, we had to stop because somebody pulling an old-fashioned handcart was blocking an intersection. There were also carts pulled by donkeys sharing the main road — and tons of motorcycles, perhaps more motorcycles than cars. And then, at a certain point, we left the city and ended up on what was essentially a dirt road through rural villages to get to the hotel.
The hotel was situated within one such rural village. That was a somewhat disorienting experience in and of itself — staying in relative luxury at a 4-star hotel while around you people live in poverty. Some people probably wouldn’t enjoy that sort of thing — you couldn’t close your eyes to the gritty and hard truth that this is how many people in the world still live. For many, that’s not what you want in your ideal vacation. In my case, I treated it as a gentle reminder not to take too much for granted.
In a weird way, I think the poverty was somehow a relief — we talk about it all the time, how privileged we are in the developed world. Sometimes we see images in the news, or depictions in movies. But it’s one thing to talk about it and another to see and experience it for yourself. Suddenly, it’s real. You can’t go back to the ignorant person you were before. For most people, that’s probably not a desirable thing. But then, I also didn’t come to Morocco to close my eyes to the truth. I came to see something real.
And that I did. Coming to Morocco felt like seeing the world in high-definition for the first time — that moment when you realize you’ve been seeing life through a fog up until now.
When I paint my pretty picture of the sunshine and clear blue skies and silhouetted Atlas mountains and palm trees and the birds, it sounds like I’m describing a dream world. But the funny thing is, it never felt that way. It felt like my world “before”, my “other life” — that’s what it felt like — that was the dream world. A half-remembered dream. And there, in Marrakech, that was the only thing that was real.
I think it was the night I returned to Marrakech from my daytrip to Casablanca that I said to myself (perhaps even out loud), “Nothing will ever be the same again.” I didn’t even know what I meant by that, but it felt like the right thing to say.
This probably all sounds very strange and abstract because I still haven’t really talked about what I did, or anything concrete that happened to me. But even that’s very hard to describe. On the one hand, I did many things — I definitely didn’t just sit around at the hotel enjoying the sunshine and quiet (although there was certainly quite a bit of that, too). On the other hand, I didn’t do a lot of things — typical touristy things. Rather than dida lot, I walked a lot, saw a lot, felt a lot. Lived a lot.
Perhaps one of my great contradictions is that I love to travel but hate being a tourist. I dislike the role and the expectations of a tourist, and I especially hate the feeling of being spoon-fed somebody else’s idea of a place or a culture. I’d prefer to discover it on my own. That’s how I tend to view myself when I travel — not as a tourist, but as an urban explorer. A dilettante anthropologist. I like to walk a lot of places. I like getting lost, and then getting myself un-lost without any help, but just by my own sense of direction and observations of traffic patterns, etc. Clues. I like to leave myself open to those serendipitous discoveries that you’ll never read about in a tourist guidebook.
The irony is that Marrakech is not exactly a great city to try to not be a tourist. Many of the locals make their living (or at least some extra cash) by offering themselves as guides to anyone who looks foreign, to the point where if you even remotely look like you’re not sure where you’re going, you’re going to be approached — and always with the expectation that if they help you in any way, you’ll pay them. This was, of course, the last thing I wanted. I didn’t want to be given directions (unless I explicitly asked for them), and I definitely didn’t want a guide. Living in New York, I’m used to ignoring randos who talk to me on the street and just keep walking, but it’s still irksome when you can’t even stop and look at a map for 10 seconds without being approached.
It would’ve been easy to get really upset and frustrated with the place and the culture at that point, to give up on trying to have the kind of vacation that I wanted to have. But I didn’t. Somehow, my natural reaction was to view it as a challenge. I think I realized fairly quickly that it wouldn’t be fair of me to get angry with them for impeding my preferred travel style — it’s simply their culture. If anything, I was the one impeding on their way of life. But that made it a challenge — figuring out how to get them to leave me alone without offending anybody.
I didn’t disguise myself outright (although I’d bought a hijab, but didn’t think it was worth the effort because my height would still give me away), but there’s a sizeable population of European expats who live in Marrakech, and I did my best to appear as one of them. It mainly meant planning out routes beforehand, always appearing confident and sure of myself as I walked, and leaving my camera and tourist guidebook in my bag (if I even brought them at all). Politely nodding to acknowledge greetings when it seemed appropriate, rather than ignoring them all outright. Observing certain cultural habits, like always giving other people the right of way, especially older women — but not traffic. Always cross the street straight away when you have a chance; don’t hesitate on the sidewalk. Etcetera.
In a way, I turned it into a game in my head. 0 points every time you pass an idle man and he doesn’t look at you. 1 point if he greets you. 2 points if he uses the phrases “over here”, “it’s this way”, etc. 3 points if he starts to walk beside you or behind you. 5 points if he follows you for more than 200m. Seek to minimize your score.
Looking back on it, it seems a little crazy that I enjoyed it as much as I did. But it kept me mentally active, probably kept me from feeling lonely — though that was generally not an issue at any time in Morocco. Actually, the attention, in some sense, helped — compared to Tokyo, where I feel like foreigners are, to a certain extent, ignored. In my experiences there, the older generations, especially, dealt with us “foreign intruders” by just pretending we didn’t exist as much as possible. Sure, it makes sense with their culture and values, and it didn’t keep me from loving it there anyway, but I did often feel lonely and isolated. I never felt that way in Morocco. It’s easy to dismiss the attention as “bothersome”, but I think it also reflects a great deal of curiosity toward foreigners, and at its core, a certain warmth. My overall impression of the Moroccan people is that they’re very friendly and warm.
When I took the train to Casablanca, I traveled in second class — the guy at the ticket counter had looked at me weirdly when I didn’t want first class, but I figured, I’ve been traveling in second class train cars all my life, why change now? As a result, I wound up taking the train with the locals rather than other tourists. In the beginning, I was worried they would react negatively to my presence — perhaps, again, somewhat based off my experiences in Japan. I expected them to avoid sitting in the same compartment as me unless all the other seats were taken. But almost right away, a young couple sat down across from me.
This young couple is worth a mention — though not really related to my current topic of Moroccans being good people — because they were so intriguing. The girl was wearing fairly traditional clothes: a long black dress over a dark red long-sleeved shirt and a two-piece hijab (black and bronze), simple and elegant, very fine fabric of obviously high quality. He, on the other hand, could’ve been any Arab youth in America; he was wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and a T-shirt. They were obviously a couple, but there was nothing in her mannerisms to suggest that she was unhappy or felt oppressed. In fact, she was helping him learn Modern Standard Arabic (he was doing homework exercises out of a textbook during the long trip), so she was more educated than he was.
It was another one of those moments when I was squarely confronted with my own ignorance. Although I try to stay open-minded, it’s still easy to adopt this attitude in the west that women are oppressed by Islamic beliefs and cultures, and they don’t rise up only because they don’t know better. Yet here was this girl, who was happy, wealthy, liberal, and educated, and from everything I observed from her behaviors, had every option to dress and behave like a modern, western woman, but who had deliberately chosen to keep her entire body covered (and on a warm day, no less) and wear a hijab. It was evident that this wasn’t forced upon her; she chose this herself.
And I couldn’t fault her for it, because even with all but her face covered (or perhaps because of it?), she was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
On the train ride back, I sat in a compartment with several cheerful, social, talkative locals. For almost the entire ride, I assumed that they all knew each other, until towards the end, they all disembarked in different villages. I realized then that chances are, they hadn’t actually known each other, but they had just been enjoying good conversation among fellow-travelers. I got the vibe that if I’d spoken any French, I would’ve been welcome to join into the conversation too. Unfortunately, I don’t.
So, Moroccans are good people. They just didn’t really understand me and how I preferred to travel. And I didn’t really know how to make them understand, in any case. At one point, I tried — when I arrived in Casablanca, I got a taxi to the Hassan II Mosque because I was afraid of being too late for the 2pm tour if I tried to walk there from the train station. The cabbie tried to convince me to hire him for my entire stay — 400 Dh for 3 hours, he was offering, not including the hour I’d spend on the tour; he would wait for me and then drive me to all the sights and give me a tour and even wait for me if I wanted to go shopping. (Ha, perhaps that was the real killer: “shopping”. There are few things I enjoy less.) It was a pretty good deal — I told him so — for anyone but me. To me, it sounded like the last thing I wanted to do. I didn’t want to experience Casablanca from behind the window of a taxi.
So, after the tour of the mosque, I walked back to the train station. It was some 6km and the cabbie had insisted it couldn’t be done. But I did it. I didn’t even have a decent map of the city (it took up half a page in my little tourist guidebook and didn’t even include the exact location of the train station, which was off the map). I probably got a lot less out of my visit to Casablanca because of it, in terms of “sights seen”, but I was happy. Very happy. It was one of my happiest moments.
That was a good day. One of my other happiest moments occurred that same evening, when I had to take a taxi back to the hotel in Marrakech from the train station. Because of its remote location outside the city, not all cabbies knew how to get there, and even the address isn’t a lot of help. And not only did my cabbie not really know how to get there, but he also didn’t speak English. So there we were, me trying to explain the route (which I knew very well by that point, thank goodness; but otherwise I would’ve looked for another taxi) in English with some broken, not-even-schoolbook French, with him responding to me in French, and me trying to guess what he was saying. It was crazy. It was exhilarating. It was a challenge, and I loved it. When I arrived at the hotel, Yassine looked at me weirdly; I think I was flushed and beaming.
Some people enjoy skydiving or bungee jumping. I get my thrills from challenges like this.
I did do some typical touristy things — museums and palaces, mainly. As an art student, of course, I needed to see the art and architecture. I loved it — the attention to detail and the diligence of construction is just incredible, especially the details that we tend to overlook: ceilings, the edges of doorways, window frames… everything in such beautiful, exquisite detail. And the colors… I’ve never felt more inspired. There were days when I almost felt like rushing back to the hotel to do color studies and make business cards and 101 designs using the colors and patterns of Morocco. I didn’t, only because I didn’t want to waste any of my time there staring at a computer screen, but had I stayed longer, I probably would have. I’ve never felt so creatively alive and energized. Hell, I even felt like writing poetry, and I haven’t done that in some 8 years.
In general, I just felt so happy and energetic and alive while I was in Morocco, and also super zen. That was remarkable, too, because I’ve been a ball of anxieties and worries since the beginning of last summer. I’ve also been burned out mentally and creatively since Big Screens wrapped up, but in Morocco I felt truly revitalized. I don’t know, I just felt… full. I hadn’t even known that I was empty, until I experienced what it was like to be full.
I didn’t want to leave. It’s strange, but although I was only there for 10 full days, it felt like forever — maybe also related to that feeling that my life “before” was just a half-remembered dream. It felt like I had been there such a long time. It felt real. It felt right.
Starting 2 days before, my departure began to weigh heavily on my mind; I had a hard time controlling my emotions, and at certain points I found myself bursting into tears at least once every hour. It’s weird because I thought I’d finally gotten to a point where I was happy living in New York (you may recall it certainly wasn’t always that way), and I told myself I should be happy to go back to my life and my friends, but I wasn’t. Suddenly, I had a hard time imagining myself being happy anywhere else ever again.
But I didn’t have a choice, and on January 18th I boarded the plane back to Amsterdam with heavy heart. I think I spent almost the entire flight in tears. And, strangely, I think my body sensed my unhappiness. The whole next day, while I was staying at my cousin’s, I felt uncomfortable and ill; I threw up; I had no appetite. Before I knew what I was doing, I was spending all my time (while my relatives were working) looking for cheap airfare from New York to Morocco, and trying to figure out when I can next afford to go back.
Some people go back to the same place year after year on vacation. I’ve never understood why — why always go back to the same spot when there is so much left in the world to explore? But now, I suddenly get it.
My family often talk about the idea of finding your “place”, your “spot”. Your “home away from home”, I suppose, though as somebody who considers herself incapable of thinking of any one place as “home” (until now, perhaps), I don’t know what that equates for me. Anyway, I’ve always pictured my “place” to be a quiet tea pavilion overlooking tree-covered mountains in Japan or China. I never thought it would be the roof of a kasbah on a desert plateau with a view of the Atlas mountains and palm trees bathed in fog.
Coming back to New York has been harder than I’d ever imagined. I’ve had a hard time feeling excited about anything; I catch myself looking at flights to Morocco at least 2 or 3 times a day. I feel numb and somber. I wake up early every morning (while I was there I quickly developed the habit of waking up around 6:30am every day and being in bed by 11pm) and just lie there for a while, pretending, hoping I’ll really wake up in the kasbah to the sound of the birds and the adhan, put on my sweater, hurry up to the roof just in time to watch the sun rise over the mountains, then down to the dining room. I’m always the first guest there; Yassine looks pleasantly surprised to see me, the staff are just getting started preparing breakfast, and Mustapha encourages me to sit by the fire while he brings me a the a la menthe. Slowly savoring every sip of my tea while I mentally plan out my day… Those were the best mornings. I miss feeling so alive.
It’s frustrating, too, because I thought I’d finally figured out my “path” in life — what I want to do career-wise, my goal to go for a PhD but not until I’m in my 30’s, etc. — and now I’m suddenly questioning everything. I’m even questioning my thesis idea, and I thought I’d had that one pretty well squared away. I just have so much passion for Morocco right now, it would be a shame not to do anything with that.
But I do plan to do something with it. I’ve decided I’m going to take an Arabic class, as a way of both channeling that energy into something and gaining more insight into the culture. (It would serve more of that purpose and less of a practical one, since Moroccans speak Moroccan Arabic and not necessarily MSA. But unfortunately there’s nowhere to really learn Moroccan Arabic except… in Morocco.) That way, when I go back, I’ll feel… more worthy.
Yes, when I go back. I’ve resolved to go back to Morocco before the end of the year 2012. I’m not sure how or when (June? September? November?) but I’m determined to figure something out. I feel like I won’t find peace until I do. I don’t know why, just… suddenly, everything’s changed for me.
Nothing will ever be the same again.