Book 1: # 16 Donkey Walk 3 - Tamri

Book 1: # 16 Donkey Walk 3 - Tamri

TAMRI UNDER CAP RHIR

Imswoune's Rights - looking south to Tamri & Cap Rhir

Cap Sim to Cap Rhir. Google Maps.

This map shows the present day walking track from Cap Sim to Tamri that takes mere hours to complete. 

We took weeks but went inland and were forced to find shelter for many days in a highway roadstop by a deluge.

For us it was the journey as well as the destination.

The further we walked into the tunnel of the gorge, which seemingly had no end, the more silent seated figures we were able to make out in the gloom.  What we could see was that they held rifles.  Turning, I saw them behind us.  One by one as we passed they descended the cliffs and walked behind us, silently, not approaching, keeping pace a hundred metres or so away. No way back now. Ahead a distant sporadic soft booming of surf beckoned..

We were followed by an unknown threat, but ahead, Atlantis. So close.

Eventually we stopped and so did they.  We called out “ Friends of Allah come and meet your brother and sister”.  Then they came.  We moved to meet them, empty handed and they greeted us, coolly, but politely.   They beckoned that we should keep going and made eating motions.   Another half a mile and the canyon opened out onto a tiny pocket-handkerchief of a coastal plain, with sanddunes and a beach, a reef and an enormous rearing impressive mountain of a cliff behind it, onto which the Atlantic thundered and boomed, throwing a constant curtain of spume some fifty to a hundred metres high.  The way to the south was blocked.  A mammoth headland with a steep cliff drop to a pounding roaring Atlantic. Smashing waves sprayed  way up its' face. Impassable.

We had come to Cap Rhir.

Looking sourh from Imswoune to Cap Rhir today.

On an elevated walled area back from the reef and overlooking a shingly beach under the cliffs was a two-storey cement rendered building that looked like it belonged in Casablanca (the movie).  An old fortified French colonial outpost.  It was empty.  But it was not for rent.   Around a fire on the beach, where fishing boats were pulled up high, our companions from the gorge had been joined by more men. Fish were being grilled. The flickering firelight made grotesque mask of the faces of as fearsome a bunch of men I have seen anywhere.  I was the only woman   But my Ozzie charm still seemed to be working and they accepted me easily as we all sat around for what was to be the first of many pipe sessions over the next weeks, months. I felt no threat and relaxed, enjoying the moment. Exhausted. It had been a long day over rough trails. We had come to a place we didn’t want to leave. 

Explaining this to the fishermen wasn’t easy.  They seemed put out that we wanted to stay.  But eventually we were taken to some tiny cells below the big building, just burrows in the sand, untended for many years and probably used to house motor bikes, or prisoners.  I didn’t care.  I was too tired. I took my bedroll out of the donkey’s pannier and dossed down immediately in the largest & cleanest, leaving Tom to the hospitality of these wild looking men who were preparing a feast.  He ate royally, fish and sea snails and a tajin of spicy vegetables and goat.  Then he too joined me, waking me as he climbed in beside me.

He cuddled in, holding me closely “Like it?” 

 “O, yes, this is IT” I mumbled drowsily. He had brought me a khobs bread filled with fish and a spicy sauce which I devoured hungrily. Then we slept like babies. Outside the surf thundered on reefs, headland and beaches, promising rewards of that surf I had ached for, for so long, on the morrow.

I crawled out of the cell at first light, eager to investigate this impressive place. 

Behind low dunes I found a tiny surf beach. How different from the warm aquamarine dolphin tubes of Crowdy - here it was cold surly grey jade rollers. The sand was a dirty brown compared to our crystalline white gold. I wasn’t to be deterred by anything. It was surf.

Tamri beach surf - recent view but as I remember. Such sets of sweet tubes on good days.

 I assessed the general layout for hazards but it seemed a clean run with no submerged rocks onto a sandy beach with only a shallow gutter, no  lethal rips.  With a whoop I threw off my clothes and plunged in as the sun rose above the eastern cliffs behind, hit the clouds above, throwing a rosy light all around warming my back.  I hadn’t  surfed for more nearly three years. 

 

The old friend welcomed and embraced me.

http://bodysurf.over-blog.com/article-bodysurfing-girl-s-57878838.html

Soon I was barrelling bigger sets, riding  back to shore, turning to catch the rip out to the back again.  It was heaven.  I felt like a captive pool dolphin must feel like when it is at last released back into the ocean to ride those waves again, free, alive, at-one with it’s natural element.  

After about an hour I had spent my main passion and on the last wave in noticed I was not alone.  Lining the dunes were heads, about twenty of them, peeping over the crests, then ducking down again.   

Our friends had been watching me.  Oh dear.   

My clothes were well up the beach.  I beached myself, staying low and covering myself with serendipitous seaweed made a run for my clothes and thrust them on while keeping my eye on the dunes, ducking every time I saw a head, which would then duck when it realized I’d spotted it.  It must have looked very amusing, because then I noticed Tom who was standing on the reef, looking at it all from a distance, laughing his head off.   But it was worth it. 

 

I’ll never forget that swim, that first grey morning at Tamri, the name of this place at the base of Cap Rhir.  I had many other wonderful surfs there, with and without audiences.  Terrifying gigantic waves would come in, roaring and rearing after having traveled the Atlantic, a cold, angry surf, usually pale grey tinged with green.

http://bodysurf.over-blog.com/article-bodysurfing-girl-s-57878838.html

A far cry from my home surf, that aquamarine crystal wall shot with golden rays and dolphin dreams you find at sunrise on the Australian east coast.  But exhilarating, bringing my body back to top form again after the years of London, the towns, the cities, the houses.  Inside living.  Here I was again free, a creature of the sun, wind, stars.  
Sand in my hair, toes, groin, up my nose, in my ears.   
A place to run free and smell the ozone on the spindrift. 

To let the great roar of this mighty ocean against this indomitable cliff speak to me of Atlantis.

Diary entry.Tamri 060368

One forgets so completely the joy of the surf - at last to return to that physical joy of sun, sand, salt water -

Body surfing freedom again _apologies to original artist

to immerse and cleanse after the city influences of smoke, soups, bread, sweets that clog the mind and body.  To sit and sorb the sun, the warmth erasing the smoke-filled recesses.  How I long to be eating my food again: yoghurt, fruit, honey, milk, eggs, raw vegetables.  Instead we will be eating khobs, condensed milk, soups, rice, cookies and endless sweet mint teas. Thankfully with a lot of fresh seafood. Free of others now my mind exploration returns.

My child, my small animal, created on another beach, Crowdy Head, another continent half a world away. We were sleeping in a hollow behind the dunes on the beach - will I again conceive on this Moroccan sand?  Such a long process to bring the life to the point where the pleasurable companionship of a small loving body, a sweet face, a warm heart beating with mine is just beginning to be truly understood - and I leave it - I rip myself apart and cry as I write this for I have sacrificed my entire id - I leave her to one who would also be broken apart as I, but perhaps worse, for he would destroy, break, ravage in his rage - I can reproduce more easily than he - I am wounded now, but happy too - he has my soul projection, my greatest gift - she will love him as I never could - discarded by his parents and now, he probably feels, his wife - no Colin I do not discard you - I love you - but I cannot be destroyed by you.  I leave you with my all, my child, our love child, Klea. In the hope that this will make you understand the true meaning of love is giving not taking, nurturing not hurting.

I found we were amongst Berbers.  Fishermen, some with small holding farms up the surrounding cliffs, way way above us. Steep rough tracks wound up them hundreds of  feet and emerged onto a vast plateau. Up there they all had families.  Well, nearly all.  There was one I called Ratface, and another who had half a leg missing.  They seemed to be loners.  Both very rough diamonds.  But among them was an actual sheikh who had  a harem in a kasbah on a substantial holdings of land above us.   The families did not often come down to Tamri, I was told.  Just the men and boys.  I didn’t wonder at that. 

But one day, about three days after we arrived I saw a flock of brightly colored ladies fluttering in diaphanous finery approaching from the piste to the north, through the canyon.  They had come to find me.  They were going to take me back to his kasbah and entertain me, I was told by a courteous sheikh, who introduced them as his wives and daughters.  I was entranced.   They guided me up a steep side path out of the canyon and I found myself up on the plateau.  Barley fields wrestled out of the stones on cliff edges,  Stone walls of the stones from the fields.  And, the kasbah.  A sort of mini palace.  Here the sheikh was indeed their lord and master. He graciously indicated I should go with the women to the harem.  Enchanted by the whole event I complied and was led into a long colonnaded room by the flock of exotic noisy ladies where we sat down on satin embroidered cushions around a fabulous brass table laden with fruit, sweets and more sweets.  More women came in and soon I was surrounded by about twenty women of all ages, all peering at me closely, fingering my plain cottons and making remarks to each other. 

“What name?”  was the first question, from a bold flashy beauty who had some rudimentary English and a little French.  At that stage my French was hopeless, ill-remembered from only three years of it at a school I had left behind some thirteen years before.  “Jan”  I replied.  The reaction was amazing.  They all burst out laughing uproariously, attracting some servants who clustered around the doors to find out what the joke was.  
“Jan,  no you can’t be Jan here.  That means stone.   No you here will be Ayesha.” 
 And so was born Ayesha, my littlest witch.   

The next stage of my visit was a bath. They must have decided I needed one, I thought, wondering how I could smell badly after surfing so much in the past days.  But I enjoyed it so much I didn’t bother with the why’s of it all.  
To my surprise the room I was taken to was actually a hammam.

It was a hammam. Very basic

 A small interior room, very basic,  dominated by a  largish pool some metres long, with a fountain inset at the end in a niche and showers coming from spouts at head height in one corner. Sitting benches around the wall.  Hot water and lots of it, although it could have been a little more private. Less crowded.  It was one in, all in, and no modesty from anyone. When in Rome!

 I emerged all pink and fresh then found the reason for the bath.  My own clothes were gone and in their place I was presented with gorgeous silk caftans. 

A heavier fitted  of aqua sky blue with elaborate beadwork and embroidery around from low scoop neckline to floor in front, and on the sleeves.  Over this went another rainbow shot finest sheerest floating overdress, this one less opulently bejewelled.

Another in deep indigo  with elaborate embroidery inlaid with crystals in a luxuriously soft unfitted style. So swish!
Decided it was more my style & twirled around in it feeling so free.
 Back into the main room we went and out came flutes and drums and we all danced and sang, very convivially.  Then I became aware of one particular woman who seemed to fancy me. The other women seemed to be snickering behind their hands at this.  I realised I either had a drag queen or a lesbian paying me attention here and retreated into the heart of the estrogen safety zone of the married women. But the look in his/her eyes, briefly, was of one who had, at last, contacted Earth after a voyage lost in space.  
Sorry, wrong planet my friend. I dialed back my apparently too open warmth a notch.

We feasted!

 After the dancing and music came dinner. A scrumptious tajin with cous cous. A mountain of delicious bread.  Side dishes of stuffed vine leaves, humus, olives, cheese.  Pomegranate juice.  I hadn’t eaten like this since my own feasts on Formentera.

So this is the harem, I thought. The real thing. Not the houri slaves of the lascivious western imaginings. This was the functioning household of the shiek's estate. I contemplated this beautiful flock of women, with their babies and small children and their older children, mothers, daughters, grand-mothers, great grand-mothers and who knows what degree of “great great” was the old crone propped in the corner with the eternal smile frozen on her potato sculpture face.   This was the way it was.  Before cities divided families.  This was the old natural order.  Now it is still a natural order, but a new order.  I find it strange how some don’t like to admit that everything is natural,  that somehow evolution is unnatural.  How can it be ?  Everything in the universe is natural, including the way humans have and are evolving.   People look at me weirdly when I say that.  It challenges too much it seems.  Well I ask you, how can it be otherwise ?

That evening we sat around drinking mint tea, smoking kif.  The women picked up on my interest in their bead work and they showed me how to weave the beads into flat geometric patterns which we turned into necklets and bracelets.  Several were having their hands and feet decorated with henna paste, giving an effect of tattoo patterns.   They asked me if I would like it done to me, but I declined.

Wandering back down the track to Tamri the next morning I was  still wearing my Berber finery and carrying my now-washed clothes in a bundle like an old snakeskin, no longer applicable to Ayesha, she had transformed, become a Moroccan princess. 

Tamri Sets

 


But she still liked surfing.

I thought of the household I had witnessed.   The whole running of it, with major wives and lesser husbands, servants, relatives maintained on all levels, the whole running as a self-contained unit.  No doubt they had their own laws, ructions, punishments.  But I saw none of that.  Only the warm open generosity of curious beautiful people. Looking back up at the huge kasbah structure up the cliff I marveled that such  world existed within. A village in miniature. All around the landscape throughout Morocco such kasbahs existed. I never would have suspected if I hadn't experience it, the riches that lay within.

As I peruse the images of Tamri today, some half a century later I am in suspended disbelief!. Can this be the same place? I am astounded at the development, the crowds. A whole town has sprung up where there were just dunes and fishing boats when I was there. Wow!

The fishermen were all out in the boats and Tom was alone when I returned.  He looked up from his drawing where he lay naked in the sun and jumped up,  delighted to see me in all the opulent finery. “Oh baby, you are my queen, my love, my beautiful beautiful goddess”.  He danced around me, playing his flute provocatively, Pan to my Aphrodite.  But later, in the dark of our snug underground room I was Isis to his Osirus. Dreamsharing.  Ah yes, do you remember when ?  Atlantis came in on the wind, the dreams of the ancient ones entering our eternal souls, binding us as one.

Ayesha was born in me. Here in Tamri I began writing the story of the littlest witch.  It has never been finished, because she has never found the yang to her yin.  If Tom was her wizard he stuffed up and became human, lost the plot.  No, somewhere her magician turned into Pinocchio or just plain John.  No magic witch goddess can live with a mere mortal or a puppet.  But somewhere, somewhere........

Ah yes truth.  What is truth ? Is it the garbled imaginings of a fable-ridden mind, obsessed with the virus of mythos ?  Can our wildest dreams be included in truth ?  Yes, my love.  The answer is yes.It is your own truth.  Do not hold on to your precious personal truth tho, It is subject to the modification of the ever-incoming reality of time and circumstances. Understanding our little personal truth may not be the real truth, that there is an all-encompassing  eternal One Truth. The Immutable. The Absolute. Unknowable. Our lives are lived in a constant readjustment, a Coming-to-Meet of the innocent self moving to the understanding of that Big Picture of It All. This may never be fully realized in a lifetime of searching, but just the knowing that it exists frees up the ego and its confining notions of certitude that our personal truth is absolute. Humility follows hubris. We are all learning.

These were the thoughts that accompanied me on my long walks, Along the coast, surfing, up ancient cliff path ways over rocky ground .

Tamri - courtesy Villa d'Hote

Climbing the gorge scarps, finding caves. Sometimes spending a whole day alone on a cliff ledge just gazing out at the roiling Atlantic, lost in contemplation.  Entranced in fascinatio, the wonder of curious forms; a marbled tiny stone, a mossy bank, a perfect leaf or minuscule flower. An ant, going somewhere, with purpose. Where? Why? My brain unwinding the knots of my past life, free now to let the present reality assert and imprint. How many thousands of years had these coasts been occupied by these people? Did Atlantis really exist and if so, was it here? Was I simply deluded? How could I prove or disprove either?

The child story of Little Ayesha, the Littlest Witch started taking shape.
I made rough notes and crude drawings.

Long ago in a faraway land.....

How she had grown on an isolated island her only friends the birds animals and plants; how the mighty all-powerful wizard had one day spotted her as he scanned the known world seeking her, sensing her presence. How the spell was cast that made her leave her island and seek him. The many testing adventures she had, the environments she passed through. Until she found answers in the caves of the highest mountains with the ancient hermit sages. How she was finally able to break he wizard's spell and emerged free, saving herself from his domination and showing other prisoners of his evil ways the way the way to truth and freedom.

This creative process immersed and obsessed me. Every day something happened in my living reality to stoke and fuel this fantasy giving me another character or setting, or puzzle or destination for my little witch to work through and solve. It started here and stayed with me over the years until I eventually returned to the place I still call home. I still haven't finished that story. I never will. It has no ending. It is humanity seeking its own salvation, freeing the mind of enslaving notions. Do you know who we are, where we came from, where we are going? You may think you do. Think again.

We had been enjoying Tamri for about two weeks,

Tamri, looking north to Imswoune

relaxing into our routines of exploring the cliffs and the plateau above, meeting the Berbers, surfing, nights around the fire outside or tucked in our tiny cell, drawing, making God’s Eyes, playing music. 


 

Exquisite Moroccan bead necklace

 Inspired by the Moroccan designs I’d absorbed in Marrakesh and the new skills the kasbah harem women had taught me, I taught myself beadwork, making bracelets and necklets.

As well as writing in my Journal and drawing, having no camera, I also started embroidering my old surviving indigo homespun cotton tabard with elaborate colorful geometric patterns inlaid with beads.  Tom worked on his Dieu et Humanité raves.  We felt safe, happy.



The shiekh came riding in again one day. Resplendent in a white burnoose on his fine Arab mare. Would we like to accompany him to a local suq?. A monthly market about 2 hours walk and ride up over the mountain inland. We could stay in his kasbah overnight and leave before dawn next day. Bring the donkey.

Moroccan Horseman by Rashid Hanbali

Yes, we would.