Word Of Mouse

From Ouarzazate it was a further six hours' ride to Er-Rachidia. The bus was very cramped and dilapidated, making the previous day's bus look positively luxurious by comparison, but at least we made it out of the bus station without breaking down this time. Strangely, we found the journey much easier, despite the six hours without toilet break and no drinking: after a while I found that I could achieve the same Zen-like trance of my fellow passengers in which time slipped by almost without noticing it. My bottom became so numb I ceased to feel it. Kasbahs passed outside, and periodically we would stop at small towns, there would be half an hour of busy activity outside while mountains of things were unloaded and reloaded, and off we would go again. As evening fell, we drew into the military town of Er-Rachidia; in the words of the guidebook "a boring town but with useful amenities". We only planned to stop there as a convenient place to break our long journey to the desert.

Leaving the bus station, we were immediately beseiged by the usual crowd of hustlers. Two of these were much more persistent than most and followed us through the back streets and ignored all our attempts to shake them off. Ali became increasingly firm with them. Finally after some twenty minutes they gave up and withdrew, shouting at us, realising that we were not going to be persuaded. We returned to the hotel we had chosen, very near the bus station, and I was a little disturbed to see one of our new friends turn up a short while later in the hotel foyer.

We slipped out later under cover of darkness to try to find something to eat, but in a military town locked in the grip of Ramadan, options were limited. We did eventually find a cafe that was serving food. We sat down to await the arrival of our food, and again I was alarmed to notice at the next table one of our friends quietly watching us. He waited for us to finish our meal, then he and his pal moved in, dragging their chairs over to our table and making a determined attempt, skilfully using everything from charm to Western affluence-induced guilt to persuade us to accept their offer of accommodation and camel trips in the desert. I was called "Ali-Baba", on account of my beard (currently bushy and wildly Islamic-looking) and they dubbed Ali "Fatima", apparently a character beside whom the toughest hardest-nosed Berber tribeswoman appeared docile and gentle. We made conversation, but avoided committing ourselves to anything. It was a bit creepy, the thought of having been thus shadowed through the streets of this dusty desert town without having been aware of it.

That night we agreed between ourselves that on no account did we want to spend any time in the desert with these people, one of whom had already demonstrated a clear tendancy to become aggressive when he didn't manage to get what he was after. I lay awake worrying ineffectually about what might become an unpleasant scene the following day when we told them that we did not want their services. In the event, however, they had both managed to secure themselves another couple of victims, and when we encountered them at the bus station the next morning they took the news witout flinching. People, we found, are definitely much more irritable after a day without food or water- a fact which comes as no surprise to Ali and myself....

We spent the next night in the small town of Erfoud before going on to the desert. We thought we ought to go there so we could say we had travelled from Hereford to Erfoud.

From Erfoud, we caught a bus to Rissani, one step nearer the desert from where we hoped to catch one of the fabled minibuses to take us the last fifty km or so to the desert village of Merzouga. However on arrival at Rissani a couple of touts appeared, offering to take us there for a very reasonable price. It gradually became clear that this price was conditional on us staying at their particular accommodation once in Merzouga. They were not pleased when we insisted that we already knew where we wanted to stay; however it still seemed that they would at least transport us for the agreed price. Things fell apart, however, when Ali inadvertently mentioned to the Japanese couple who had got off the bus with us, and who were being subjected to the full force of their sales technique, that we were only planning to get transportation from them without accommodation. Ah yes, they said, that was what they wanted too.

The touts were furious with Ali "for breaking their business". It became clear that our transport deal was off, and we headed for the centre of town to try and find a minibus to Merzouga, as had been the original plan. Several times one or other of the touts would zoom up behind on a motorbike and inveigh against Ali for having stopped the Japanese from taking up the accommodation deal that they had, in their minds, been on the verge of clinching. Ali apologised. "You bloody English. You are sorry for everything - like war in Iraq. You go to Iraq." We reached the middle of town eventually, after what seemed like an age, and managed to find a minibus full of Berber tribesmen that was going to Merzouga, passing on the way by our chosen (and Berber-run) accommodation. Once in the bus, Ali was shaking and holding back tears, going over in her mind what had happened. It cast a sour light on that day for us both.

The journey to the accommodation took us via the small village of Hassi Labied. I cannot imagine, on the face of it, a more depressing place to live. A village of single storey cinderblock houses built in the stoney desert, no roads, one or two flickering streetlamps. One by one the passengers alighted from the minibus, taking their bags of shopping with them: a bundle of herbs here, a sack of vegetables there. The contrast with the comfortable standard of our accommodation, once we reached it, was stark.