(Article featured in the July 2018 edition of L’Officiel, Switzerland: click on the images above to read it in French and below written in English)
I traced the dusty façade of the Dar El Bacha with my fingertips, imagining a time when it housed the royal court of the T’hami al Glaoui, Pasha of Marrakesh. During the early 1900s, this extravagant palace became the symbol of oriental splendor and romance, often frequented by all manner of characters of high class circles to whom it was considered the greatest of luxuries to attend one of the eccentric Pasha’s infamous banquets. This is Morocco – a land which has enticed pleasure seekers and escapists throughout history with a palpable spirit of hedonism and liberty.
During the 1950s, the city of Tangier was also a notorious rendezvous for all manner of counter-culture rebels, artists and outlanders who could be found roaming the lawless “international zone”. Any pleasure could be satisfied at wont. As the Beat generation poet William Burroughs wrote, “Tangier is one of the few places left in the world where, so long as you don’t proceed to robbery, or some form of crude, antisocial behavior, you can do exactly what you want”. Little wonder then that the other Beats – Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Paul Bowles – also followed suit and found inspiration for some of their most iconic works amongst its drinking dens and illicit haunts.
Then there was Truman Capote, Mark Twain, Henri Matisse, and the Rolling Stones – all at some point embarked on a rite of passage into Tangier, reveling in the creative process, taking stimulation from the cacophony of sensorial inputs the city delivered. The wailing of reed pipes, the clanging of cymbals and dancing monkeys, swirling dancers, sword swallowers, conjurers, storytellers and snake charmers, a swarming hive of human activity whose fairytale exotic activities elicited an otherworldly sense of abandon.
I too was about to embark on my own pilgrimage across this legendary land. A Swiss writer and photographer living in Mexico, I had come here to explore. Due to my time abroad, my tanned skin made some of the locals enquire as to whether I was of Berber descent and I didn’t encourage them to think otherwise. Any opportunity to blend in was more than welcome as after New Year’s Eve, I would be traveling solo out of Marrakesh’s elegant riads and meandering alleyways, deep into the ethereal Saharan desert, due south-east along the fabled caravanserai trading route.
A few days later and I was driving away from Marrakesh with my Berber guide, Hassan, and soaring into the Atlas Mountains through the Tizi n‘Tichka pass. A sense of expansive freedom washed over me. Descending into the Skoura Oasis (aptly named the Valley of a Thousand Palms), we wound through dozens of lush oases peppered with fig, rose and almond groves. We passed by the sweeping valley of Ouarzazate where the cultural heritage site of Ksour of Ait BenHaddou lies, famously known as the best-preserved fortified Kasbah in the country where Lawrence of Arabia was filmed. Dozens of these red mud kasbahs are found everywhere in this part of the country, with their slit windows and crumbling towers, deathly cold on the inside, penumbral mazes of light and shadows.
The next morning we carried onwards to the desert city of Merzouga, the gateway to the Sahara Desert. I pictured how thousands of camel caravans would emerge from the unforgiving desert laden with treasures of gold and ivory and slaves, ready to be traded hands in dusty desert souks. The energy everywhere was profound.
We headed into the bright orange sands of Erg Chebbi in our 4X4 vehicle and arrived by nightfall to the desert camp nestled amongst the dunes. Upon arrival I was instantly greeted with that pervasive Moroccan delight of fresh mint tea and succulent dates. That evening, I lay on the floor of my bivouac tent wrapped up in a heavy woolen blanket and gazed up at the elaborate prisms and arabesques on the ceiling, falling into a spell, forgetting entirely where or who I was.
There are several ways one can embrace desert life. For those photographically inclined, set out right before daybreak to catch the metamorphosis of the sensuous curves as sunlight floods across vast plains. Then, there’s usually a hearty breakfast. I would spend my mornings exploring the dunes for hours on end by foot, interspersed by the drinking of strong cups of sweet mint tea. Beware, as bizarre thoughts enter the mind as you traverse these lands alone, footsteps tracing in the virgin sands, surrounded by patterns of undulating rivulets of lost waters. Silhouettes seem to glide stealthily along beside you, your only companion, shapeshifting and emerging out of nowhere, taking on a presence which isn’t quite yours anymore but rather it is a desert shadow belonging to the sands.
A camel ride is a desert initiation in and of itself, where you must clutch on tightly to the saddle as these temperamental creatures sway to and fro, rising off the ground. At some point, my feisty camel ran away from us and had to be chased across the landscape. Others in the camp went sandboarding or roared out in buggies into the distance; some went to visit nomadic families and villages living in the area, combing the sand for ammonite fossils on the way.
I personally chose to embrace the silence. The hot, hazy afternoon air enticed me to lounge in the many cozy tents dotted around the campsite, lazily reading “Le Petit Prince” by that other great desert explorer, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I gazed out at the coral sunset light as I contemplated his words, recounting the lure of the desert’s burning ochre song: “Only the desert has a fascination to ride alone in the sun in the forever unpossessed country, away from man… That is a great temptation”. I closed my eyes as the rest of the world slowly faded away in time and space.
After dinner, desert tradition beckons camp patrons around the fire pit. Every pluck of the Berbers’ guitars and pounding of animal skins taut and dry sang to the voice of the desert and its resolute people, licking flames lighting up their faces, drumming to the moonlight as if the impenetrable silence of the heavy desert days needed an explosive release if they were not to consume us entirely.
After spending several days in this lulling and enchanting desert routine, it was suddenly time to go. Striving to make the best out of every minute I had left, for my last sunset I set out on foot farther than I had ever gone before. It was dusk, and I dug my toes into the hot sand as I made my way to the top of a particularly immense dune. The sun sank into burning horizon. The border with Algeria was just a few kilometers away. A deafening silence resonated, and I slowly surrendered, allowing it to envelop me whole.
It is here, in the desert’s primal solitude, under the bottomless infinity of night skies painted with clouds, beside roaring fires with pounding drums and the chants of desert tribes, that religions are created. Something, anything, to make sense out of an expanse the mind struggles to conceive. The ancestral name of the Berbers, imazighen, translates into “free people”. In the lone desert sands, there is no authority. There is no control.
I was overwhelmed by the urge to keep walking out, into the desert, forever. Perhaps this is what the rebellious spirit of Morocco secretly knows all along – that we all were, and still are, nomads at heart. That we too come from the sands, fashioned out of worn stone and glimmering mirages, aching to surrender to our ancestral calls for freedom.
