Busted!
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| Agadir Express |
One
morning our Tamri idyll was sundered. Down one of the excruciatingly bad
roads that dropped over the cliff line above, more like gorges really,
negotiable, but barely, came a jeep. In the front was an Arab driver and the
passenger was, amazingly to me, a very spaced-out flippy-lippy Jamaican
via Harlem New York hep cat, with a fast line of bent gab. I had a bit,
OK, a lot, of trouble following him , but Tom understood him very
well.
“He
has authority to take us to Agadir. We are to be put into
protection. This Barbary coast is a bad place he says. We are in
danger. People disappear from here.”
What?
But we went. We piled into the back of the open Jeep, leaving most of
our gear in the sandy cell, after a quick talk with the fishermen about watching
over them and feeding Maya..A scary, lurching ride up the cliffs and then zap down the 60 odd kilometers to Agadir. Whoosh! Our lives turned on a dime. We rocketed through the new town and on up into the old city. Here we were taken into the presence of the Chief of Police and told we were to meet the Governor of the Souss. He was away. Meanwhile we were to make ourselves comfortable and wait.
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| A beautiful prison |
It was like a better class of hotel.
A beautiful prison behind locked ornate iron gates
We could not leave.
So we sat smoking kif with the old gardener, dangling our feet in the water, making God’s Eyes, playing flutes. Eating, sleeping. Waiting. ...and waiting..... three days.
Eventually, rather cross by now, we were taken in to meet the Governor of the Souss. Apparently we had been held in his palatial riad. He, a very intelligent official, but cool and hard, sized us up and told us that we were in peril. We were in a part of Morocco where tourists had no security and often disappeared. We replied we had no problem with our hosts and the local people had shown nothing but hospitality and kindness. We tried to set his fears at rest, not wanting to have to leave our adventure just yet. Then Tom was taken away, which alarmed me, but the Governor said he had to talk to me alone. He was extremely pleasant, calling for tea to be brought in while asking about my writing, why I had chosen to make the walk down the coast. Generally probing, but in no way threateningly. He was a skilled interrogator, putting me at ease and I responded openly to his charm offensive. I had learned a few things about interviewing back in Oz when I worked auditioning and casting actors in advertising. I recognized this man meant me no harm. Just needed the intel. I responded honestly. I had nothing to hide.
Eventually, after the tea and a happy chatty session, he came to the crunch. He told me he had been instructed to find me by Interpol. I was astounded. My father, apparently, had contacted the Australian Governor General, an old army buddy, who had greased the wheels of the long arm of the law to winkle me out with the aim of sending me back to my husband. Then I realized why we had been so well treated. Strings were being pulled from high levels. Somewhat stunned I paused to consider what to say next. After all this culture had very different values and behaviors to mine. I felt defensive, annoyed, but I had to be diplomatic, not put him offside. Not the time to be the fervent feminist which could be perceived as a threat, undermining the male dominated harems and power balances here.
So I responded, evenly at first, saying I was very happy exactly where I was and had no intention of returning to the man who had brutally abused me until I was ready.
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| My precious Klea |
I became more emotional and assured the Governor that I was in no way abandoning my daughter.
I then became steely, sterner, asserting that until my husband had come to his senses and understood that we were a family with responsibilities to show our child the meaning of love,I would not be returning just yet. I would. But in my own time. So far his hostile attitude thinking he could order me back was no enticement.
I showed him my pictures of our beautiful daughter Klea. asked him how or why any mother could possibly abandon such a child. I told him of the nightly Sangria-fueled drunken abuse in the remote finca on the Spanish island. How Klea witnessed her mother's abuse and how I feared he would kill me. I could not let that happen. He had to wake up to himself and his responsibilities as a father and husband. We both needed time. For her sake..
Throwing caution to the the winds I elaborated my wider agenda, more intense now, that in our culture women were not slaves to husbands and I would not be treated badly, by anyone. It was not the lesson I wanted to pass on to my daughter, that, as a woman, she was to be subservient, the lesser being, subject to a lord and master, a slave. Women in our culture were supposedly free and equal. I would not be ordered back, by my father, by the King of Morocco or by God.
Having delivered all that I returned to my calm charm mode, In a less defensive way I elaborated on our journey thus far. The joys of walking with the donkey off piste amongst the real people of Morocco, the lifeways, the beautiful scenery. Yes the cities and towns had so much to offer the traveler, we were certainly not oblivious to that, but we wanted to get off the tourist tracks, away from the touts and shops and find the real heart and soul of the wider country. How we perceived ourselves as ambassadors of western youth, here to spread the word of freedom and love, the unity of one people on one planet. I told him as a surfer I found the surf and beaches here amongst the best anywhere, and I would certainly be pipe-lining that good news through the international surfing culture. I asked if he knew that, as surfing was not high on the tourist agenda (then), surfers will cross oceans and continents in search of the perfect waves. He responded that it was not something he thought about as he did not swim himself.
As far as recording all I was experiencing, I went on to say that my writing and illustrations would be the basis of a book of our experiences of Morocco to take back to tell people in Australia, many of whom considered Morocco to be a little-known and mysterious part of the Sahara. Known mostly from the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby 1942 film, "Road to Morocco"; hardly a the real Morocco, which I intended to showcase. From the way the Governor replied I gathered Australia was a little known and mysterious part of another planet to him.
Finally, after the Governor had noted all we told him, he said we could go. But first we had to be processed, finger-printed, photographed and sign release papers. He granted us a permit to stay in Morocco as long as we liked, with temporary citizen status. Hadn't expected that! As we left we shook hands and he wished me well with my book. He just nodded at Tom.
Well here it is, 50 years later. Memories and diaries of an epic voyage from hell to heaven, through the magic of lands exotic and mysterious to some, mundane to others. Perhaps a Moroccan would find a journey across Australia in search of the Dreamtime also an epic of mystery and magic, whereas to that Aborigine who lives there it is just home.
We wandered around Old Agadir, an interesting hilltop fortified town. The earthquake had wrecked so much of it. But I found it intriguing. I would like to have seen more, but Tom was keen to get down to New Agadir, the rebuilt town. I wanted to get away from the concrete and noise, back to Tamri, anxious about Maya and our little nest of possessions. Needing the peace and solitude.
When we returned we found nothing had been touched, which was a relief. I am guessing our escorts had probably had a word with our hosts. We were to be respected. Our world had been opened much wider. Now those sheer wave-assaulted cliff walls of Cap Rhir in front of us did not bar our way to the south. We now knew how to access the fast main road to the big city life again. I wasn’t interested, but Tom was, and he took himself off a couple of times in the next weeks, selling God's Eyes, bringing us back new colored threads and beads, new flutes, books, vegetables and of course more kif.
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| Old Yank Tanks used as taxis |
One morning I was out surfing and saw a cloud of dust coming down the road from the clifftop and made out, to my great surprise, a procession of big old American fifties-type tank cars, the sort used for taxis in the Moroccan cities.
Old Fords, Chevvies, Buicks, Oldsmobiles and so on. About five of them.
It was an invasion.
Club Méditerranée had found a fun new tourist playground.
Damn. Damn and DAMN !
We were surrounded and interrogated by about twenty rich obnoxious French people, condescending, patronizing, they treated us like some sort of sideshow. A value added aspect of their day-trip. Up to this point in my life I had, on the whole, loved & respected the French. So at first I happily welcomed them, wondering what it was all about. But the treatment I received showed me another side of French behaviors. Repulsed and disillusioned I withdrew and shut down, not welcoming this type of attention. Watched by a couple of them who were photographing my every move Tom, however, capitalized on it, getting out his Son of God act and the kif, getting some of them stoned, selling God’s Eyes, poems and drawings to them. Then they went off en masse onto the reef and started stripping it of shellfish, which they brought back and barbecued like snails. I retreated into the ocean, losing myself, and them in the blissful waves .
When I returned to Tom he crowed that we had been invited to lunch.What an opportunist! The shellfish barbecue was apparently just an amuse bouche. From the taxis they produced several folding tables and on them laid out a feast from embarrassingly luxurious gourmet picnic hampers. Fresh French bread batons, lots of fruit, salads, pies, champagne and fine wines; cheeses flown from Marseilles just yesterday, fresh Brie and Camembert, pates, olives. The works. So we had been invited to lunch. Well. why not. There was more than enough to go around. I hadn’t eaten such food for years it seemed. Greed overcame reticence and I joined Tom who seemed to have no problems with his scruples and was busy charming a suave city boy from Cannes who wanted to find some kif. Tom was such an operator. It came naturally. Years of street smarts, having survived on his wits since early teens, this kind of scene was ripe pickings for him. Untroubled by their hoity-toity sneerdowns he just laughed and took what was on offer.
However I felt very repulsed by these people. They seemed so arrogant. Just came in and took over as if they owned the place. The Berber fishermen hung back, underdogs. The rightful owners who were just serfs under the Droit de Seigneur of French occupation. It put us in an interesting position on the pecking order.
Today's Activity Sheet. Cap Rhir & Tamri excursions. Photo-ops. Tick the box:
Berber fishermen, surf, beaches, dancing Hippies living naked in the dunes.
How do you rate these on a 1-10 scale of attraction & enjoyment.
Oh? Really?
When they left in mid afternoon they gave us all the leftover food and wine. Mounds of butter, bread, cheeses, fresh fruit and salad, tins of pate, smoked oysters, salmon. Nuts and raisins. Red and white wines and champagne. The Berbers immediately came up to us demanding their share. We suddenly dropped to the bottom of the pecking order. But these people had been our uncomplaining hosts and given us so much and we handed most it over quite happily. We ended up with a lot of the nuts, fruit and salad, some bread and most of the cheeses, but as neither of us drank we handed the wines over, plus the pates, as we were still vegetarian, except for now and then eating seafood. That night the fishermen were very noisy around their fire, grotesque shadows thrown by their animated dancing while someone played an upended bucket as a drum. They didn’t drink alcohol very often it seemed.
The Club Mediterranée tours became a regular weekly event. We must have had a lot of high scores on the Attraction scale. It was a complete nuisance, but I took it in my stride, avoiding them by going surfing or wandering with Maya, back up into the gorges, visiting kasbahs on the plateau above. Filling my mind with textures, forms, sounds. A sense of landscape. Rocks. Rills and streams. Finding fascination in the miniscule; tiny mossy undercliff grottoes with a tiny drip feeding a minute pool in which unknown lifeforms, wrigglers, shrimps, disappeared behind crevices the moment my shadow cut the light. Fractals everywhere. Clouds, rocks, water flows.Watching the behavours of the kasbah inhabitants. A newly born being washed. A crone weaving. Little boys being men while the men were out fishing or tending the animals and fields. Young girls holding babies sitting beside mother who sifts the barley grains. Roasting and grinding the grains. Making khobs.
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| Sifting barley grains |
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| Khobs |
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| Poor barley - drought affected |
On one Club visit Tom made a friend, Louis, a poet from Paris. An empathic man of about thirty, who wrote multi-dimensional verse in simple French that I could understand. I enjoyed his company, so different from most of the other tourists. Then I found he was actually part of the Club - hired for the season as a consultant cultural ambassador to provide a French/Berber go-between. He spoke about 8 languages. English was a second language so I had a walking dictionary to translate for me too. My French improved in a J-curve. I even wrote some poetry in French.He invited us to stay as his guest at the Club in Agadir. We thought it would be a good lark and went back with him.
Diary excerpt:
I must write for tonight we hope to get a lift to Agadir with Louis and the Club Mediterranée people and so much has happened in the last few days - the visit to Tasila and way up over the mountain on horseback behind the handsome sheikh, to the suq - the storm days and the walk around the beaches, sulfurous sunsets, mountainous seas, the children who came and monstered us, days of intense creativity between us, learning Berber, the word for Berber is Schl’ha, which I suppose means patois or “colloquial”. And now this day of perfect sunshine. The washing is done and we are clean. My burnous flaps in the wind, tied to the rope of the flagpole.
Today some uniformed Arabs came in on mules and some falconers, also on mules with their hooded birds of prey and a basket of pigeons. Then came the tourists. The organizer gave us a carton of lump sugar and the largest tin of Nescafé, as used in restaurants. A present from an Australian Italian who had been here on the last picnic trip it seems. I couldn’t remember her, but Tom did. We hope for more of their good fruit, salads, cheeses and butter as the eating has been very heavy and Moroccan this last week. Things get better and better here for us. The fishermen don’t plague us nearly as much and we reciprocate their kindnesses with gifts of music, beadwork and God’s Eyes. The semi-naked tourists are everywhere and once more I can sit out in the sun in my bikini and feel safe. Yesterday I was wearing some of my beautiful Moroccan clothes, a gold striped sheer over-caftan over a cream satin full length one Tom bartered his clothes for in Agadir and the beautiful beaded sandals he bought for me, masses of beads and a sheer shawl thing, (a stole ? a serape ?) over my hair. I feel so free. One day one culture, the next day equally comfortable and a whole new scene. My white pants look great with my newly embroidered Indian indigo top. So much for my clothes. Presently the sun is hot and the water is turquoise. Small waves on the reef. A mule tethered on the sanddune nearby. The fishermen cleaning their nets and emptying the boats - a blaze of orange and yellow waterproof djellabahs and white turbans against the blue nets. The falconer with his long cylindrical basket on his back with the pigeons inside, his heavily gloved hand supports the hooded falcon, he leans on a staff. Swerving across the front of the building and the scene radically changes to the pale blue and oranges of the bikini clad tourists, their skin reddening in the sun, preparing their picnic - and it’s so clear, the sand streaked mountains stretch way way down - the sea a beautiful milky turquoise, foam flecked from the storms.
Tasila, up on the plateau back from the cliffs, was a different scene from the houses we’ve been to - each in it’s own way a different compartment of Tamri life. Hamud and Fatima, a young family. I don’t remember the names of all the men, but the women were all Fatima, Fat’ma and Ayesha. We walked out of the fishing village back towards Tillilt, past the old well and the oasis, a few date palms with the abandoned ornamental garden midstream, then up the mountain where we had seen the outlined figures the first night we walked in with Maya, tired and delighted at the premonition of a coming to the end of the journey, but then we thought - “bandits!” and went on all sorts of trips of how the arabs knew our every move all the way we went and were setting a trap for us in this narrow gorge - for what I don’t know - but now here we walked amongst these phantoms of the mountain to kasbahs where we were given tea and bread with butter melted over it and dark blobs of asil - honey, on to other house with the same reception and finally cous cous and arwhoo. Tasila is the name of a few Moroccan villages and towns. This Tasila was more of a generalized area with kasbahs spaced well apart over the landscape within view of each other.
Looking over at Tom sitting smoking amongst the tourists I realize he needs the contact with that world, maybe I do too but I am afraid of its’ contamination - although I feel strong in myself I am shy of these people - I do not want the emptiness of meaningless words in my mind. I will keep silent, my energy is better directed elsewhere. Happier climbing cliffs, surfing.
Maya seems to have disappeared. Maybe he's wandered up onto the plateau. Looking for other of his kind. Must be lonely for him here. Only transient mules or the odd horse passing through.
Had a sumptuous lunch of herbed fish baked in foil on the coals, potato salad, bread and cheeses, baked flambé bananas. The wine flowed copiously. Their sideshow monkeys, we posed for pictures, Tom playing his flute, me yoga dancing and doing a salute to the sun. Yes, we paid for our peanuts. The tourists dozed in the sun while we packed up the feast leftovers and distributed food bounty to the fishermen. Then into the old taxis and up the mountain which we have walked so often without the thought of cars. At the top along the main road a bit we stopped at a small tea shop and the tourists all piled out and, ignoring altogether the snake charmer especially there for their benefit, rushed to the cliff edge to look out over the view - down, down, such a long way down, we saw the building we lived in, the fishing boats pulled up on the shingle and out, out, stretched the Atlantic Ocean to the horizon, uncharacteristically ultramarine, sparkling and beautiful in the afternoon sun. Then on to Agadir and the surreal other world of the Club Mediterranee.
It was indeed another world. My first and only experience of such places. Like a big Biosphere 2 bubble of France set in the palms on the beach. The world of Morocco went on outside the glass dome walls but inside it was like a spacestation of another culture, a Hilton atmosphere, elite. “Nicely removed from the grot of that filthy Arab culture”, as I heard one snotty French bitch put it. Why did she come here then ? Well she liked to experience the world it seemed. What a joke. All she was experiencing was a movie from the comfort of a lounge chair, she may as well have watched it all on TV from a Torremolinos condo.
Researching views of Agadir for this blog
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Agadir el-arba c.1900 |
I did find a lot of pix showing
Old Agadir pre- and post- earthquake
of 1960.
The main reference on Agadir I found is from a resident who has lovingly brought together a showcase of the city, past and present, 8n all its glory. I highly recommend anyone interested in exploring Agadir to go and browse there. Most rewarding
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| Agadir 2014 |
"From afar, from the beach, when you look up to the kasbah, you could almost think that nothing has really changed: the Kasbah of Agadir Ouflla is still there and continues to watch over us and the city.
An inscription draws however our eyes: Allah - El Watan - El Malik ( God - The Fatherland - The King ) in luminous white stones of the most beautiful effect; After the Green March , the Wilaya asked in the 80s, this inscription reminiscent of the popular drive that started from Agadir and allowed Morocco to recover peacefully the Saharan provinces occupied by Spain
I tried to find early pix of Club Mediterranee. No luck.
I did find a web page or two of the way the Club is now.
So different. Yet still a world removed.
But Agadir, indeed the modern Moroccan city, has morphed and the two now complement each other,with many similarities in modern luxury even in those seemingly ancient riads.
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| Agadir today, from Kasbah hill |
The Club is almost a city in itself.
A city that could be in Iran, UAE, India, except for certain decor details
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| View from Club Med today |
Louis invited us to join him on a luxury sailing clipper for an ocean day trip. Part of the Club Med perks. Sounded wonderful to me - hadn't been sailing for years..Tom was no sailor though and made the mistake of having a smoke on deck. The captain, a tough Irish woman of bulldozer dimensions and forearms like a blacksmith, wrenched his pipe and pouch out of his hands and threw it overboard and threatened to do the same with us both if we brought any of those “filthy drugs” on board her clean ship again. We didn’t enjoy that voyage.
In fact we didn’t enjoy the Club Mediterranée on the whole and were pleased to get out of its prissy righteous elitist atmosphere; despite Louis being a really nice man who brought the words of poetry and world views into my French vocab. A teacher, he taught me well. I started thinking in French.
The Ozzy girl from the Barrenjoey Peninsula was diminishing within. I felt myself becoming a citizen of the world. An International. The dawn light of my inner archaeologist was manifesting. I was pulling back from the lock-in of whatever culture I was in and seeing our species spread around our planet; the cultural variety, the commonality uniting us all in the human experience.
The next episode of this saga
takes us down the Saharan Atlantic coast of Morocco
to Tafaya.
Sunrise over the endless Saharan sandscape, Morocco
