Up into the Atlas and then Down Again

I will tell you this: we arrived in Marrakesh three nights ago by way of a ride hitched in the back of a carpet truck. I wouldn't have had the ride through the snow capped High Atlas any other way, and in fact the city has seemed a mild thrill in comparison to the view from the back seat of the orange van, the smell of sheep enveloping us, the tapestries pressing up against our backs. Our drivers were three men all named Hassan with whom we shared oranges but not a common language.

Marrakesh is everything they said it would be...snake charmers, a square covered in tents with young men luring you in to sample their food-- fried calamari, fried shrimp, fried eggplant, French fries. One night we found the only hotel that serves alcohol, and curled up on the deep couches with the crowds of parched-looking European travelers. In the afternoon we lost ourselves in the souks, buying date cookies and eyeing trays of pastries that passed us by all to quickly. Men work in little ateliers mending antique tea pots, women behind veils bark out prices for knit caps. Tourists par tout, a young American girl pleading with a merchant "but you're only allowed one carry on bag! I'll never be able to get it home!" somehow, I'm not quite sure, I think she thought this would work as a bargaining tactic.

Before Marrakesh we were in the Sahara, and before the desert we were in a happy little valley visiting a friend of a friend who is now in the Peace Corps in one of the prettiest places I've ever seen. For three days we had the pleasure of following along on walks through villages, saying hello to the women doing their wash and singing by the river, laughing with farmers, and sampling saffron tea. By sunset one night we reached an old Kasbah, and just en face we circled around the abandoned complex of the conquorers who drove the original inhabitants out of the kasbah. The next night we were scaling a red hill at a nearly vertical angle as the sun went down and the very rocks we were climbing on turned to purple...and we were in the scene, so much a tiny spec in a grand landscape that quieted us all. An abandoned village in the mountain side, a family of women who painted our hands in henna, gave us olives as a good bye gift and laughed with me through broken French English and Tashelhite.

Tonight I drank jasmine tea and meditated on Jamaa el Fna from on high on a roof terrace, looking down on the white lights and craze of the disney-food frenzy below. Tomorrow we'll leave the palms of this city and the High Atlas in the distance and make our way to Fez...we are taking with us an enormous bag of cashews and the sweetest, plumpest dates I've ever tasted. Slowly but surely the bags are beginning to fill with end-of-trip souvenirs. I am looking forward to my own bed and Christmas parties, but one more week rests, so more food and more stories to come.