Back to Marrakech ... and Silverado ....

From Missable Meknes to finds in Fes.  Giddy with delight at leaving mouldy Meknes, its dark walls and cranky people, we stopped again at Moulay Idriss to buy some more old coins.  A clutch of them later, we drove happily onto Fes, known for the largest, narrowest and winding souk there is.  We checked into Riad Alya, leaned against the magnificent mosaics, sipped our required mint tea, sighed at the orange trees, and bowed to the calling muezzin for giving us the fortitude to endur Meknes. Shocked at the twin room we were given, a single bead on each side of a long room, separated by a curtain, we were given a large red plush velvet suite with giant marble bath, for a night.  We ate a superb meal under the stars near the gurgling fountain,  indulged in a bone bleaching hamam in the catacombs of the Riad where a young woman assiduously applied her muscles to our tendons, and set out to explore the souks.  Happily for Reno, donkeys replaced motorbikes, the ATM's were accessible, the food was vastly improved, and if all else failed we could retreat to our riad in a few minutes.

 Which is exactly what Reno did after five minutes in the souk. A guide had been hired to escort us, assuring we'd be lost forever in that damp maze. He was a creepy one-eyed Moroccan who knew only his speech, but not enough English to answer questions. He was also desperate to get us into a carpet seller, to be cajoled and bullied into buying something we wanted less than another attack of food poisoning.  As soon as he realised that he a better chance of getting measles from us, he lost all interest in the tour and other than deliberately losing us among the olives, baskets, lamps, spices and dead animals hanging by hooks, grudgingly took us a long and twisting way home.  I'd seen a few jewelery shops I wanted to visit, on the hunt of the Algerian rare Kabyle pieces, but the shopkeepers told us immediately that all guides were on the take and there was no way we'd get a good deal. So we took a few business cards, promising to return the following day without a guide.

The next day, after a glorious long breakfast in the courtyard, we visited an antique jewellery  shop I'd surreptitiously photographed while with the guide.  As I walked in, the shopkeeper greeted me with "I saw you yesterday, walking past with your guide and driver.  Where are they? I can't help you if they are anywhere."  I promised him they'd been dispatched, and that the driver was being kept away by Reno.  I told him I was looking for Kabyle pieces.  They are very hard to get, said our new friend Mohamed, but my father had a set 40 years ago and lucky you, the woman he sold it to in Paris, has just sold it back to me.  Fancy that. Out they came from a broken box, from underneath a stack of old textiles, rugs, coats, dust and rags. The real thing.  I'd seen a Kabyle necklace in another shop but Brahim had called ahead to warn the shopkeeper that we were coming ... and that commission was due to him.

Fresh meat readily available in Fes

I took photos of the necklace and sent them to Sarah, my bead and gem goddess, who immediately blipped back to say they were fake.  Knowing what was fake, I could now trust my instinct to buy non fake.    After hours of haggling and feeling we'd insulted the Mullah of Magical finds, Reno and I took a huge financial punt and bought - for a lot of money - what I instinctively felt were a good purchase. Later, back in Marrakech, Sarah trembled when she opened them. She looked me straight in the eye, and said ... these need to be sold in a Parisien Auction house that sells at high end.  Phew. 

Mosaic in oldest university in the world - in Fes

As a reward for buying Mohamed's father's recycled pieces, he booked dinner for us in his favourite restaurant - strangely called Fes restaurant.  He chatted, we listened, we listened, he chatted.  When the bill came, he smiled, and said, thank you for a wonderful meal and folded his arms.  Hmmmm.   We had better get our money back from the auction of the cuffs.

Fun and games in Meknes

We picked up an Italian woman who was having trouble getting her credit card to work, who'd had to leave her husband behind in Bologna because his passport had expired. We gave her a lift back to Marrakech, bought her dinner, lent her 2300 dh, and hoped we'd meet up with her in Venice when we finally got there.  Leap of faith!

Moulay Idriss local dressmaker

Moulay Idriss

And so back to Marrakech ... a 6 hour drive through magnificent green countryside and then into the smog and fury of Marrakech, where once again we were assaulted by motorbikes and had to wage war with the traffic from our Riad.  This time our room was off the reception area, and painted black. So black we had to open the doors to let in light, so black I couldn't put on makeup.  Fortunately this time was to catch up with Sarah, buy silver from Faouzi and BH .. which I did, all 30kg of it, fossicking until my fingers bled and my nails turned black and the credit card melted. But a fabulous stash, paying decent prices for decent silver.

Sarah had a few of her goddesses from the last trip, and organised a wedding dinner for us in a trendy restaurant;  started out as great fun with a horsie ride but so many people smoke in Morocco our eyes were burning after an hour. Sarah had reserved a quiet area for 10 of us in a booth, but a Moroccan billionaire who had parked his gold Bentley outside, watched over by a black Hummer and two snoring chauffeurs, bribed Sean (Sarah's husband) with two magnums of champagne to get us to move so he could take over our great spot.   After that we couldn't hear ourselves swallow .. but the music was fabulous - a saxophonist and a wild drimmer - and Sarah was dancing her heart heart.  She made a very touching speech for Reno and I and gifted me another bracelet ... which I will never take off.  The following night, dinner at Sarah's riad, where she verified that the Kabyle bracelets were the real thing .. to sighs of relief as we'd invested a lot of money and faith in this purchase.  Go to the Paris auction houses, Sarah suggested, they are doing well at high end.  YEAH!

Moulay Idriss

 The last few Marrakech days were spent shopping and shopping and shopping for silver... to my usual friends and dealers - and giving Faouzi a 12 kilo parcel of our winter coats and the argan oil that we'd carried from Essaouria, to post  The final night Faouzi invited us to his magnificent home  for a splendid dinner accompanied by his personal musicians.  We sat in his ante room on velour pillows admiring his tiles during a long, long wait, from 7pm to 11 when the food was finally served, then walked back through the dark lanes of the souk, fumbling around in our dark riad to pack, and finally chugged out of the choking traffic and chaotic airport to ... ISTANBUL!

Moulay Idriss, an ancient city built about 600 years ago.

Don't look now, you're being photographed in Fes

The Kabyle silver cuffs - 1800's.  

The road to our Riad

Braving the souk to reach the silver

Secret camera work in Fes

Along the Atlantic Coast

On the road from Essaouria to El Jadida

That night, petrified of anything that resembled food, Reno and I booked a meal in the Riad.  Alas, they forgot we had. We walked through the lanes of leather workers, silversmiths and carpet dealer, past the hippies selling rip off of Bob Marley, into a deserted restaurant run by a skinny, bald man who looked as if he hadn’t eaten for a year.  I wanted nothing, but needed something to eat. We sat on big carpeted cushions along the wall and considered our recent brush with death.  So we ordered a simple meal of soup and plain pasta.  Almost an hour later, some weak gruel with bread arrived … and still no other customers.  The pasta arrived, steaming, covered with cheese. But was so overcooked it fell to glue off our forks. We complained to the owner, who with an insulted, incredulous look at our impudence, snatched the almost full portions from the table and stomped into the kitchen, where we could see him shovelling it into his mouth as if he hadn’t eaten for days.   For a couple of dollars, we weren’t prepared to demand a refund, but realised that was a great way to eat for free .

Partially recovered and considerably weak of body and definitely weaker of mind, I set out to buy silver from Hakkim, whom I’d bought from during my 2011 trip.  He was easy to find. Just ask Sarah via Facebook. I love technology, sometimes.  He happened to be a hundred metres from our riad.  Sitting on big fat pillows and sipping mint tea, I found piles of old, collectible, and gorgeous “new” pendants, those that don’t have the dings and grime of old age but are beautiful pieces in their own right.  A beautiful heavy silver Jewish temporal piece, adorned with chains and coral.  Two large Yemen silver, coral and amazonite necklaces. Lots of Berber pieces, a coral necklace with Jewish silver hamsas.  Some bracelets, two Algerian kabyles that I fell in love with, and a pile of old silver beads.  We shared a tagine on top of a pile of rugs, with silver around my ankles, and silver up to my shoulders, and silver all around.  Hakkim’s “uncle” came to share the food and enjoy my spoils, and realising the new wing on his Riad had become a reality. Hakkim’s old Moroccan amber was going for ten dollars a gram, which made an amber necklace $12,000.   Silver had skyrocketed 300% since I’d last been there.  They had all gone mad  … or rich.

Reno walked around Essaouria with a berber turban, wondering why nobody made eye contact.  We added up the total, and my frail state became precarious. I’ll pay you in the morning, when we have transferred funds, I promised, needing time to think.  I loved the Algerian silver, but I knew nothing of the really expensive (almost two thousand Euros) Kabyle pieces.  I couldn’t buy these without doing a lot of homework.

I’ve visited Essaouria three times, and each time wanted to spend days there, enjoying the harbour, the wind, the wild Atlantic coast, the space and colour and laid back, old hippie atmosphere.  But again fate played its mean hand so we didn’t have that luxury. I rushed back to Hakkim to pay him after I’d removed the bracelets, a bag of beads, and the Kabyle pieces from my stash, much to his horror.  We maxed the credit card, Reno added some funds, and we set off for El Jadida, via Safi.  Almost out the souk, “uncle” rushed up to us, shouting very agitatedly that he’d left off a zero in our credit card transaction:  could we please amend this.  AAARGGH.  We did, and “uncle” gave me a heavy old silver hamsa with a rooster on it … which I immediately gifted to Reno, a reminder of the rooster that crowed the whole night I was sick, that the riad owner bought to shut up, which was immediately replaced by another rooster.

Halfway up the Atlantic coast, nursing my financial wounds, calculating how I could possibly have paid so much for so little, I realised I hadn’t bargained – at all, with Hakkim. Not a sous. Not a couscous grain.  Not a chicken leg or fish bone or dirham or dollar or euro.  Not a drop of sweat or a bitten fingernail. Not a movement of a pawn on a chessboard.  I paid what the Moroccan silver dealer, in a tiny little windy village on the Atlantic, who waits for people like me to revisit his shop, asked me.  I held in my hand what I should have had to carry on my hip. Mistake. Big, big, big mistake.  Perhaps he was in league with the preparer of fish at the Fanatik restaurant, the doctor, the pharmacist, the taxi drivers and the pasta seller.  The next dealer would suffer, trust me, with Reno the rooster to watch my back.

From Essaouria, we travelled the coastal route to Safi, where we’d originally planned to stay.  The coast is bleak and brutal, windswept to its knees, populated by donkeys, herds of goats and sheep, crumbled rubble walls, forts of prickly pears and olive groves almost as old as the land.  Crinkled men in hoary djelabbas, veiled women, exhausted mules towing wagons laden with wood walked from nowhere to nowhere.  The few towns we passed could have been movie sets for frontier towns, where the barber, the chicken killer, the lamb slaughterer and the axle forger all clustered together on the dusty road to catch any bit of trade they can.

Mud houses seemed abandoned at every turn, and half built mansions stood sentinel overlooking the crashing misty surf, waiting to be completed as holiday homes or hoping a village will move in nearby.

Brahim’s phone rang as we were negotiating overtaking a donkey cart and a flock of sheep, on a road where a ten ton truck approached.  He answered it. It rang again later and Brahim answered it behind a laden bus.  I told him if he answered his phone again while we were driving, I’d throw it out the window. He laughed.  When it rang again, Reno went off his face and we gave Brahim a tirade about decapitations, deaths, and destiny, laws in Australia, crime and punishment, and who’s the Boss.  From then on, every time it rang, Brahim glowered at the phone as if it was a mortal enemy, while trying very hard to see the name illuminated under the console.

Reno became known as Big Boss, and I became known as Prunciss.  Because a donkey is a dunkey, and a bad smell is a big smile.  As in, if you go to Safi, you will get big smile.  Oh, yay! What a friendly place … let’s go Number One.

And then the “city” of Safi, huddled on the edge of the Atlantic rocks, embarrassed at what it was doing to the landscape.  Advertised as a seaside resort with fresh breezes, quaint homes and fresh seafood, the realisation dawned quickly as chemical fumed burned our nostrils that all was not as it was touted to be. Anyone in Morocco who has any sort of questionable social history – theft, jail, loss of job, disability, emigration, statelessness – is able to work in Safi.  They get a house – of sorts –and a job, and eventually, the correct paperwork to move to Marrakesh, or one of the other big cities.  For Safi is phosphate.  And phosphate means choking poisonous pollution, cumulus clouds of chemicals that belch into the sky and vomit yellow atrocities into the sea a million litres a minute. When Brahim stopped to ask directions, he was attended by a man with a thalidomide wrist, another with double cataracts, a third with most of his facial pigment missing.  A mother limped past, carrying her blind baby.  Reno and I did our best to keep the windows closed, but Brahim needed to know the way out, so we stuffed our mouths with my pink cotton wrap, a far preferable and less epidermal irritating alternative to choking on fumes.  The air was putrid. Even the donkeys - a worse than bad lot - were dismayed at where they were. It would be a donkey’s terrible karma to be reincarnated here.  A few kilometres either side of Safi the vegetation was lush, green, verdant.  Huge palms grew abundantly, but closer to town, the trees were scrawny, limp and brown.  At the epicentre of this horror, the landscape was vegetation denuded and adorned only with the most elaborate wrought iron street lights I’ve ever seen.

Jesus, I said to Reno. I am so glad we decided to stay two nights in El Jadida, instead.  His face was as bleak as the sky, which could never be blue in this apocalyptic place.  My eyes burned, my skin itched. Reno’s mouth had vanished into the back of his head again.  We would rather pee in a coke bottle than get out of the car.

“We stop here for lunch!” beamed Brahim, turning around from the driver’s seat with excitement. “My wife’s family live here, we are meeting them in ten minutes at La Corniche.” Reno and I were dumbstruck.

So we met Brahim’s family, all waiting for us at the epicentre of this hideousness, their long beige and grey djellabas flapping in the wind as they waved excitedly to their prodigal husband, and son in law from Marrakech.   His father and mother in law, his sister in law and her two children “lived” here, and his wife and daughter had sort of followed us up from Marrakech for this auspicious lunch.

“Let’s have fisjh!” beamed Brahim. 

“Fisjh?” I squawked. 

“Yes, many people eat fish, sardines over there …” (pointing to some men grilling less than a kilometre down wind and sea from the jumbo jet sized outlet pipe of poison) …

“Is there a McDonald’s?” Reno and I croaked in unison.  “Is there a hospital for afters?”

Brahim did find us a fast food outlet, but in this place, fast food outlet would quickly take on an Essaourian meaning.  We walked deeper into town, where the phosphate powder had settled on everything.  At a restaurant with plastic covered tables and dead plants, our first course before playing Moroccan epicurean madness was a litre of warm Coca Cola.  Brahim’s family got stuck into the salads, chips, cokes, and grilled chicken like there was no tomorrow.  We picked at a piteous piece of cremated rooster, paid for the whole gang, and asked to leave as soon as we could.  Brahim bid a teary salaam Aleichem and in Shallah to his gorgeous redhaired daughter and lovely wife, and we tore out of Safi as if our life depended on it. For it did.

The landscape came alive again twenty or so kilometres from Safi; fields of barley and wheat bobbed with red poppies and blue somethings.  Miles and miles of rubble walls contained fabulous olive orchards and fruit trees bursting with blossoms.  We stopped every ten miles or so for selfies and dances in the crazy madding wind as the Atlantic carved its way up Africa.

And then, El Jadida.  Brahim found his way in, but close the riad, stopped for directions. A fabulous old three-toothed man pointed with a knobbled finger and spat his directions at Brahim, a young boy leading a donkey pointed in the other direction.  Reno lost his marbles, having boiled over from the first day in Marrakech. “Brahim!” he shouted.  “Tell Driss - your boss - to buy you a gps! Asking directions like this wastes so much time.  You can’t stop in the middle of the road to talk to strangers! It’s ridiculous. Why is your country so backward? A gps only costs a few hundred dollars! I’ll talk to Driss when we get back to Kesh.” 

Brahim went white. I went white. Then I went red. Brahim’s generous, always laughing mouth was ominously silent. We called the riad, who sent a runner to fetch us from the Portuguese gate.  Brahim was sulking. I was disappointed Reno’s resistance to Africa had increased, rather than eased. We sent Brahim off to find his nightly lodgings and checked into Riad D’Oliel, a little miracle in the mid milllenium Portuguese city of fabulous ramparts and an important port, destroyed recently in an earthquake and rebuilt by Unesco.   In our room, after a great shower, we went to a candlelit room to have the most magnificent meal in the whole of Morocco.  We opened the bottle of Vino d’savage we’d plundered from a plane trip, and ate duck pate,  a sautéed chicken with stacked vegetables, and a fabulous flambéed crème caramel for dessert.

Life was sweet.  We talked about life in the olden days, and Reno’s reminiscence of his father driving a plough behind a donkey, and the comparison now with his Queensland cousins driving tractors controlled by computers.  And desperation and sinister Safi.  “Reno.”  I began.  “In the olden days, women used to go to the well not only to get water, but to converse about childbirth, rites of passage, the best way to bake bread, typhoid treatments and wife beating. Unesco tried to put in plumbing in many parts of the third world, and many of these women rejected it because it took away their community spirit.

Brahim is doing the same thing.  He’s letting people know he’s arrived in this strange city.  He’s allowing the locals to show him it’s their territory. It’s his way of finding where to sleep and get his radiator fixed. Brahim made five friends on his way in, and some of them may see him somewhere and take him to pray.”

The crème caramel stopped halfway to Reno’s lips.  He took my hand and kissed it.  “Thankyou,” he said.

When Brahim collected us the following morning for an El Jadida hang out day, Reno apologised to Brahim.  Yes, you read right. Reno APOLOGISED.  For Reno to apologise, the earth needs to have spun off its axis a few degrees. Brahim was impressed. I smiled.   Reno also told Brahim that I had tilted the axis, or meaning to that effect.  Brahim hugged Reno and kissed my cheeks.  Three times.

Brahim became known as Number One.  And so we had a wonderful day. Brahim was on top of the world.  He parked where a new friend showed him.  He led us into the glorious, deserted, orange shadowy souk and greeted people on the way in. When his phone rang, he ignored it, as Number One was leading Big Boss and Pruncess around the souk.  I found some fabulous Talkahimt carnelian pendants, gorgeous, old and worn, in a dusty shop selling plates. The sellers’ price was ridiculous.  I used the “I don’t have money, I have to ask my husband” ploy which worked well all over the country and enabled me to evade a deal when necessary.  The price came down marginally, so I left, empty handed, and quite disappointed.

Brahim and the seller talked in Arabic/French.  The price plummeted.  The owner drove Reno back to our Riad to collect the payment, while Number One and I walked the ramparts. When Reno had returned with the seller, they’d exchanged telephone numbers and we’d been invited to stay in his plush riad with his family when/if we ever returned to EJ.  I asked Brahim what he’d said. “I told him you were a pruncess!” he laughed.  And thus it was reinforced that yes, people can make a LOT of money selling silver.

We walked the ramparts for hours, down to where the huge blue and red fishing boats were made and repaired, and watched as young boys leapt 50metres from the top of the fort into the icy water.  Brahim took us to a local restaurant, ordered our food, negotiated a non tourist price and we went back to the Riad, satiated, happy and with the world back on its axis to finish with another remarkable meal in an unexpected place.  

And onto Meknes.
Murky miserable missable Meknes.  Definitely a four hour trip to pump the tyres and have a rest stop.  Walk through the small local souk where you'd be grabbed and harassed.  Don't stay in a riad, a dusty, grimy, miserable riad with a minaret outside the window. We were stuck there for four days ... mistake big big mistake on my itinerary. I couldn't even buy silver because the one shop that sold silver was run by a man who hadn't sold a piece for five years and wanted to punish me for it.
Horrible place. We counted the seconds to leaving.  Our misery and pain was only eased by Brahim coming to fetch us for a day trip to Moulay Idriss;  great food, some rare coins bought from a seller on a carpet, the best roast chicken I've ever had in my life .. and a couple of divine hours at the Roman ruins of Volubilis.

Giving feedback in Essaouria

A FISHY TALE

On the third day in Morocco, we left for Essaouria, a seaside town that I’ve visited a few times, always wanting to spend longer there.  The brick road outside our Marrakech Riad was complete, the egg pattie seller waved au revoir, the bag snatching kid was harassing someone else.We left a bag in the Riad loaded with winter clothes that we'd collect on our way back, and set off for the seaside, for great food and heap big silver purchases. Driss, the owner of the company from whom we'd hired a car, suggested we skip Rabat where we had two nights booked, and instead spend four in Meknes, part of Morocco's Imperial triangle of Rabat and Fez.  We took his advice.  All was set for a fab 14 days on the road: sun, scenery, silver and great food ...  

Brahim was our appointed driver: a smart, funny, approachable Moroccan. He loaded our bags into his 4x4 and we headed for the highway.  171km from the heat of Marrakech, via the argan oil orchards,  we stopped to photograph goats in the trees – and had to work out dirhams for the privilege to the goatkeeper's who appeared from nowhere at the sound of a purring car.   We stopped to buy some argon oil at a co-op where women sat on the floor in concrete bunkers. The work is highly labour intensive because it’s the way the women of the area are able to earn an income.  Our credit card wouldn’t work even after a woman stood in the middle of the road to try to get a signal.  It’s goat and maize country; where men still ride donkeys laden with huge grass baskets and men shelter against rocks from the blistering sun while their sheep graze.  The countryside is bleak and barren but spectacularly beautiful.

Reno sat back and enjoyed the ride and the countryside. I was thrilled we’d decided to have a driver instead of negotiating the left hand driving, and risking a brand new marriage to collapse in the heat and dust of a missed directions and diverse interests.

Having grown up in Africa, this is all normal for me.  The rickety cars that are normal here,  would be pulled off Australian roads. The belching fumes, the cattle on the road, the rocks and dust and rolling valleys are part of my early footprints.  We passed a few small frontier towns where market day was in progress: men sold just slaughtered meat that hung from huge hooks, a feast for flies ready to lay eggs if not sold quickly.  Women carrying bunches of carrots by their tops;  eggs in baskets, televisions on bicycles.   We elaborated on the “you set the world your way (the big picture), I see it in small pieces” discovery that had been going on since we began travelling together.  I told Reno I loved this way of life:  you can see the whole process of eating from start to finish;  the bare soil, the women planting and harvesting, the animals grazing, the animals to market, the live markets, the shopping, men harvesting reeds to weave baskets to carry the food.  There’s an order to this life, a respect for its hardships that I have osmosed into my system and that Reno is now allowing to percolate slowly into his. Mud bricks for mud houses; rubble walls and thousands of metres of prickly pear fences, tattered washing hanging on lines.  No television to interrupt the days:  life is work and work, life.   It's hard, and unending, but so far every person we’ve met has been utterly charming and sincere. No matter how rough their lot, they’re happy to oblige, give directions, have a chat, shake a hand.

We arrived late afternoon into the wild winds of Essaouria on Morocco's west coast, the little blue port where everyone earns their daily bread fishing or selling carpets in the clean, wide souk.  It’s long been a haven for dropouts and hippies, many of whom still hang around wearing Bob Marley t-shirts; where expat Brits bake scones and make chilli con carne for tourists tired of fish. Bongo drums, tie died fabrics, carpets, henna hands, brass pots, coloured lamps, scarves, leather pouffes, soft yellow slippers ... ah, what fun we'd have shopping.

We checked into the Riad Malaika, a mediocre place – compared to the web photos - in the middle of the souk, down a crumbly lane where cats stretched, men sold ironwork and wove carpets, but sold Chinese rubbish scarves, and women bore big baskets of steaming warm round breads on their heads.  Cats slept curled on the stones at the entrance; inside a small mosaic fountain burbled.  Our room was tiny - there wasn't even space to put our case. The bathroom was painted and tiled black,  and so small we couldn’t both fit in at the same time.  We opened the window expecting views of the vast sea, which I’d so wanted to impress Reno with, but closed it quickly after a big stink of fish assailed us.  We’d arranged for Brahim to collect us later to take us to a fish restaurant he’d suggested: I wanted to eat along the shore,  where I'd had fab fish on my two previous visit, but Brahim suggested the fish was better away from the beach, in a restaurant.

We walked along the old fort wall, watching the mist roll in from the windy Atlantic, to the fishing area, where sting rays, sardines, slimy egg yellow eels, moray eels, flat heads, calamari, prawns, sea bream lay in straw baskets, sold by veiled women. Innards were strewn on the ground where motorbikes and cars pushed past.  Reno had an attack of his Italian “air”, and needed to walk back to the Riad covering his chest because he thought he was coming down with something foreign, and an icy wind was blowing in, determined to prove him correct.  Then Brahim drove us a few hundred metres along the beach road, to Fanatik restaurant.   “I don’t want to go there,” said, clutching Reno’s arm.  “I don’t like the look of it. Let’s go back to the medina, and eat at the stalls where the food is fab and fresh.”  Reno said Brahim would be upset if we ignored his recommendation – so we ate fish and salad on the promenade, watching dogs and pedestrians.  Mine was awful – mushy and a ripe smell.  I fed most of my mush to the scrawny cat that rubbed itself against my legs under the table. We left after the first course.

Four am and all was definitely not well.  My dinner time fish was swimming around my oesophagus, gurgling and thrashing for a way out.  I started vomiting. I vomited in that black bathroom while holding onto the black towel rail and the black sink. I vomited everywhere, without stopping, until it came out of my nose. A rooster started crowing at dawn, and still I vomited.  Reno called the manager who took me shaking, damp and almost passing out, in a taxi to the local hospital mid morning. It was a new looking starkly clean building, with few patients that we could see,  everything painted blue to match the sea, the flag, the furniture, the curtains, the caftans, the doctor's uniform, the chairs, the lamps.

The doctor, a fabulous fellow with a laugh that woke the dead, was head of medicine and owner of the hospital.  He was lean and fit, dressed in a natty blue operating coat.  He spoke only French Arabic and one and a half words of English. We of course spoke only English.  I was wheeled into his white and blue clinic and placed on his examination table.  It didn’t take much translating for him to understand my ordeal. Hands can be very expressive.   He asked me if I had any “dairy” that morning.  Of course not, I replied, clutching my bucket, breakfast was not on my agenda.

I don’t even have an oesophageal or stomach lining, never mind having an inclination for breakfast, I replied indignantly.  “Breakfast?” He said in French. You ate breakfast ?  No, I’ve been vomiting – aaarghrrr, aaarrghrrrrrr …agr argr argr AAAAARGHRRRR. Ah!, ‘cest bon! He felt my clammy head and stroked my soaked hair.  In French, he asked if I had hot flushes.  No, I said, I had a hysterectomy years ago! No, no, no, he laughed like crazy, hugging his arms and miming shivering and sweating, shivering and sweating.   Instead of trying to interpret my dazed replies, he turned on the ultrasound, slopped my stomach with cold goo, and  began some hilarious story of unknown origin that made the theatre sister, the triage nurse, the admitting nurse and the woman bringing mint tea into the room, all of whom had come to witness the white woman having a near death experience, convulse with laughter. He pointed to the writhing anacondas, octopuses and minnows frolicking in my eviscerated cavern of a stomach on ultrasound and patted pale Reno on the back.

How old you? Monsieur le dottore asked.   (always in French/Arabic) Reno counted upwards in French, hovering between mid century and octogenarian.  No, No, how old?  Reno showed his fingers again.  Non, non, he protested, not how many times you aaaargh aagh agh aarggg, but how many years! Reno showed fingers for the third time. The doctor laughed like a crazy person, squeezed my withered arms, and pinched my skin that was so dehydrated it stood up like the soft peaks of a meringue before baking.  He wiped his cool hands over my clammy forehead, pulled my ears, and asked about my workout routine.

You windsurf, oui? He asked.  You run? You marathon, oui?  You very strong! In our country, when you 70 you dead. He squeezed my boobs and rubbed my shoulders, rolled my damp shirt up and my panties down to my hysterectomy scar.  Your neck is sore, oui?  I said my back and ribs were. He pulled the lobes of my ears, ran his finger along my appendix scar, and called the cleaning lady, standing on her broom with a floppy mop with a rag, and her water bucket with Jeyes Fluid,  to have a look. Oui, oui,  very much more sore dimanche from the aaargh aarhghgh arrrGHRRRRRR. He doubled up laughing again.

In case you are wondering how we knew what he was saying, we had the united nations in the room, a conglomerate of languages, including Reno’s school French. Everyone had their fair share of translating.  He conversed with a bevy of nurses. One came in with a blue kidney dish and a hypodermic needle.  Another came in with a blood pressure cuff and a metre of plastic tubing.  The cleaning lady mopped.  The doctor shrieked and guffawed into his mobile phone. I thought I was going to faint or vomit, whichever came first, so I asked for a blood test.  The nurse who stabbed my finger (on a 6, when I do it at 1.5)  thought she was whittling argan wood, known since the beginning of time to be the hardest wood of all, impossible for even the best craftsmen to carved.  GROSSO! She shouted to the doctor. Sanguine GROSSO!  My finger bled piteously into the large swab she smacked onto it.

The doctor mimed vomiting and poo-ing, sweating and shivering, holding 3 fingers up. He pointed to the skies. I was going to be dead in three days?  Why didn’t I just die last night, curled up against that black toilet bowl?  Why did I have to endure the dawn, and the rooster that crowed his heart out, and the muezzin wailing about my abdominal fate?  Three days?  I hadn’t even bought any silver!

The wheelchair returned.  I was helped into it and wheeled to the lift, with the cleaning lady, the triage nurse, Reno, and a woman carrying a clipboard who kept smiling and patting my shoulder (was she a chaplain for the infidels?).

I’m being admitted! I hoarse whispered to Reno (I hadn’t had a voice since 6 am from the vocal trauma of vomiting. ) To a Moroccan hospital! I gasped in a godfather voice. With a riad booked in a souk for two days!  I was wheeled into the resuscitation room, as a drip was being hooked up. A new nurse arrived with a new blanket, still in its cellophane bag.  Crisp new sheets were placed on my bed, and soft white pillows fluffed up to rest my soaking head. A man in a grubby brown parka arrived, clasping his hands behind his back.  Conversations in Arabic and French. He watched as the nurse stabbed my hand and collapsed the vein. Found another place and stabbed again.  Taped me up, tied me down. The man scratched his groin and sniffed loudly … he was the anaesthetist, come to inspect the new recruit.  Saline was in.  Out came more needles: Stemetil, antispasmodic, painkillers.

No sooner had the drip started, lunch arrived on a tray: an apple, a banana, a kilo of mashed potato with melted cheese on top, and a pot of yoghurt.   Whoops!  again.  Who wouldn’t.  So out came the vomitorious cocktail and in it’s place a drip of antibiotics, which I watched drip by drip for the rest of the day, sweating and shivering under my new nylon blanket.  The lunch stayed where it was. The window cleaner came in to inspect me. So did the floor washer. The potscrubber. The lift maintenance man and his wife.  The woman who bakes the bread.  Nurses, a dirham a dozen. You get the point.  The drips ended as the day faded. I could finally endure the light through the blue curtains.  I could be discharged.  Reno and Brahim came to fetch me, Brahim white at the gills because he felt responsible. And guess what? Whoops again. Right into the bowl that Brahim was holding while he mopped my brow.   None of us dared tell the staff.

A driver acting way beyond his call of duty deserves a lot of respect.  So does a husband who didn’t bat an eyelid when we considered my level of care, and realised we would probably be the benefactors of a new hospital wing.

I was wheeled downstairs for another pantomime with the doctor and his comedy crew.  Another ultrasound and the mangled Arabic diagnosis that the anacondas had settled to crabs and butterflies in my stomach, and my insides were so bruised from the food poisoning, said the doctor, and turning to Reno, while winking at me and the nurses, instructed that that I was banned from sex for six months.   Reno had to be resuscitated with sugar water until he saw the others laughing.   Words that sounded like translations of apples, rice, fish, orange juice leapt from nurse to doctor and back again.  He told us the patient before him had just discovered she was pregnant (we passed her ashen face and pale husband on the way in) and he showed us her ultrasound. He unlocked his private room to show us a painting of him windsurfing.  We left with promises of the whole crew trying to come to the Marrakech wedding, a clutch of Facebook photos of some of my medical attendants, and not the faintest idea of what my post close-encounter-with-death diet consisted of.  When we returned to the Riad, we’d been moved to a much larger room, away from the rooster, who had been bought by the manager, for dinner.  The staff had baked a five layer pink and chocolate cake covered in sticky marzipan roses to herald my return.

Whoops!

Somehow, I had to get body and soul together to buy silver.   I'd waited three years to return to Essaouria.  And now I had half a day to search, rescue and evacuate.   I mean shop.