Word Of Mouse

We had observed, while sitting out the sandstorm in the sheltered courtyard of our accommodation, two British-registered camper-vans, of the size and shape that in our Bramble-cycling phase we used to detest as they whistled past us on narrow roads. Out came a friendly middle-aged man from one of them, on his way to ask at reception about something. We got chatting. It turned out they were planning to leave the following morning, heading back via Rissani and Erfoud on their way west to the coast. We begged a lift, relieved that we would not be having to face the difficult part of the journey back to the relative civilization of Erfoud via public transport again.

Alan and Shirley Wetherburn hail from the north east of England, Alan having the distinctions of being a Freeman of the city of Berwick-upon-Tweed, having been the victim of a stroke (which has left him lacking any concept of the numbers five and seven, or the months May and October), and managing to survive a horrific car crash, (following which he was pronounced clinically dead). They spend half of each year cruising in their huge 80,000 pound luxury motorhome in the company of their friends David and Jean, who follow behind them everywhere they go in their own slightly smaller version. "We always lead the way, and they follow us", Shirley said. "They´re not as adventurous as us."

We threw our packs in quickly to avoid the ingress of flies, of which Alan had a peculiar horror, and sat in air-conditioned luxury in the back of this leviathan as he drove out of the compound and back along the dust road through Hassi Labied back towards Rissani. From out of the desert, in all directions, small running figures of children appeared, converging rapidly on us. Alan and Shirley always travel prepared for this, and had stocked up with lollipops, pens and items of cheap clothing before leaving the UK which they handed out left and right through the windows of their motorhome as they drove slowly along. Ali and I glanced at each other, feeling that these actions convey the wrong message and turn Western tourists into mere walking fountains of plenty in the eyes of the locals, but said nothing. They were doing it for the best of motives, in their defence, and their largesse was certainly welcomed and would be used.

We were dropped off at Erfoud, at the point Alan and Shirley made the left hand turn to the west, David and Jean in their van close behind them as ever. We walked to the middle of town and caught a grand taxi to Er-Rachidia. These are a vital part of the Moroccan public transport infrastructure: ancient Mercedes vehicles that ply the long distance routes between towns, carrying up to six passengers: four in the back and two wedged into the front passenger seat. After fifty kilometres in one, I was looking forward to the relative comfort of a public bus for the rest of the route to the town of Midelt, where we had decided to stop for a few days in the possibility of doing some trekking.

Midelt is not a big place. We left the bus terminal, passed up through the market and onto the main street, heading for our chosen hotel. Once on the street again, we were admiring a street food vendor deftly making some things that looked a bit like large calzone pizzas, watched hungrily by a group of men obviously counting down the remaining hours to the evening break-fast, when we heard ourselves addressed in English by a bearded man beside us. He was Khaleed, and he soon invited us to come and share his evening meal with him. We had been sad that we had not thus far met any Moroccans socially, and we accepted with thanks, agreeing to meet up later in the evening before going back to his house. We returned to the market to buy dates as a gift, thence back to the hotel.

Once back in the hotel, Ali became aware of feeling increasingly unwell. It became clear that she was not going to be able to go to Khaleed´s house for dinner. I had to go and meet Khaleed at the appointed time and explain to him that much as we both wanted to come, it was not going to be possible that evening. I gave him the dates and agreed to meet up with him for a coffee later on instead, then returned to the hotel and set about moving Ali to a different hotel that had ensuite facilities, instead of a single Turkish toilet shared among nine rooms.

When I met up later that evening with Khaleed, we wandered the streets, down to a bar for a coffee, and back to his house. He is unmarried, and lives with his mother and two of his three sisters, getting a bit of money by guiding tourists round the mines that surround Midelt. The house was bleak, a three storey house with narrow stairs and bare concrete walls and floors, lit by fluorescent bulbs. His English was limited but serviceable, and we switched to French whenever necessary. It was clear from the papers on his table that he is busy learning German and Italian as well. I resisted committing to his offers to show us round the mines, saying I would have to consult with Ali and in any case she might not have been well enough to do anything the following day, but that night Ali and I agreed that we would like to be able to give him some money (feeling that we needed to do something to counter the rudeness of having had to bail out of his dinner invitation).

Accordingly the following day we left our hotel and waited in the designated spot. Khaleed didn´t show up. We waited some more, quickly becoming targets of determined fossil, necklace and geode-sellers. We bought a geode and a fossil. Khaleed still didn´t show up. After an hour, we gave up and went for a walk in the countryside around Midelt. It was very beautiful: a ribbon of cultivated green fields along the course of the river, a stark contrast to the surrounding arid landscape. Several old ruined kasbahs stood proud overlooking the river, set among a huddle of mud huts with corn cobs drying on the roof: occasional satellite TV dishes striking an incongruous note in a setting that can otherwise have changed little since medieval times. We walked along a dirt track, surrounded at times by groups of laughing children. They knew only one phrase of French, and we heard it repeated hundreds of times that day: Donne-moi un stylo. We had no pens to give them. Still it didn´t seem to matter, and they had a lot of fun laughing at the funny tourists. We walked on, passing close to an orchard where apples were being harvested. Two trucks stood at the top of a low hill, loaded to the rafters with boxes of apples. The workers waved us over, and pressed apples into our hands, in one of the few acts of straightforward uncomplicated friendly generosity we encountered in Morocco. We accepted six apples gratefully, and thanked them as profusely as we could manage, miming the rest. We decided that it would have been rude to eat them then and there in front of them, hungry as they were, and withdrew a couple of hundred yards up the track before biting into them. They were crisp and sweet, warm from the sun. In retrospect, maybe we were expected to eat them straight away. We don´t know.

Back at the bus station, we were finding the times of the afternoon bus out to Fes, when lo and behold, there was Khaleed, full of apologies for having overslept, and would we like to go to the mines with him? We were too tired to do this, but agreed to go for a walk through town with him once we had stored our bags at the hotel. We went back to the original hotel, as Ali was now feeling much better, no longer in need of instant toilet access, and neither of us could face the combination of pink sheets with orange-and-green blanket under fluorescent lighting that last night´s hotel had offered. The manageress of the Hotel Atlas was hap`py to see us back, and for sixty dirham (about four pounds) she gave us the Terrace Room, which delighted us: it was like a little doll´s house room, barely high enough to stand up in, right up on the roof and with a fantastic vista over Midelt and the night sky.

We met up with Khaleed again, and went round to his house for breakfast (the meal which is literally breaking the day´s fast, soon after six in the evening). We sat on his sofa in the room in which he sleeps, while he brought tea, pastries and harira soup, and debated the complexities of English grammar with Ali. I felt quite full after this, but it became clear that this was only the prelude to dinner: he was about to go out into town to buy the ingredients for his sister to cook, while we went for a coffee. We accompanied him, and paid for vegetables and a big rack of goat from a butcher´s shop (you could tell it was a butcher´s shop because of the string of severed goat´s heads hanging from the front of it: no messing around with little bits of anonymous meat neatly clingfilm-wrapped in polystrene trays here).

He deposited the meat back at the house for his long-suffering sister to start cooking, and we went for coffee. Coffee went on for a number of hours, during which Khaleed became increasingly stoned. Finally, about eleven o´clock, we returned to the house. The sisters were not in evidence but a delicious smell filled the air: the tajine, however, was not yet cooked. We decided we had better double check with our hotel that we would not be locked out: it looked like being a late night. Finally, about quarter past midnight, the famous tajine was unveiled. I realised a challenge lay ahead: I had hinted about being vegetarian, and wondered whether a separate one might be provided, but in the event the vegetables and meat were well and truly mixed. I decided that I had done the best I could in this direction and resolved to eat the vegetables graciously, studiously ignoring the surrounding chunks of goat. The tajine, in fairness to Khaleed´s sister, was delicious and one of the best we ever tasted in Morocco, but it was an effort to keep our eyes open. Khaleed was falling asleep too. He accompanied us back to the hotel, where we said goodbye. Ali and I are going to send him and his family some things as a token of our thanks, once we return to the UK.

We were on the early bus the next morning to Fes, both feeling somewhat sleepy from our late night the previous night. The journey was unremarkable, mainly across flat land dotted with occasional haystacks, made in the Moroccan style and faced with a layer of mud: we tried to get a photo of these as we passed by, but it was difficult.