41. Wedding Belles and no fly zone

Zagora is in the middle of nowhere.   The Saharan nowhere.  I  keep thinking I'm in a film set.  Just as we were checking out of the dusty hotel, picking sand grains from our ears and nostrils, two runaway still-hobbled farting camels scrabbled by on the stones under the wilting palm trees,  followed by their irate, puffing owner inviting cardiac arrest as he tried breathlessly to corral them. 

Every building, car, shop or even plant is in various shades of orange.  Suddenly a Berber will burst onto the visual homogeny, in luminous indigo, his robes flowing gracefully behind him, and again, I keep expecting John Malkovich in spotless white robes to appear gasping from inside a dark casbah, being carried out in the papoose of a trotting donkey as he dies of dysentry.

On the long, hot way to Zagora, when there weren't camels to count to absorb the time, passing through scrub, and desert, and thorns and dessicated bushes, we wondered what it would be like to change our names. Sarah is often called Sahara.  Luda's other name is Gemila. My name is often spelled with a Z.  I think Savanna Storm suits me down to the ground.  I asked Patti what she'd like to be called. She giggled and said she's always loved the name Rose. So between us we are now Sahara, Savanna, Gemila and Rose.  Pretty cool for a group of American/English/Russian/Slav/Australians ...  And I'll call my next venture - involving Morocco, of course, Savanna Caravan, for all the stuff gathered along this dusty road.

Herewith, the rose between the thorns buying up every piece of astonishingly beautiful Merhaff hand tie dyed cloth, at a minute shop down some sandbanks and across planks in the back streets of Zagora. Or perhaps it was the main street, who's to know?  There are few people who really know how to make the fabric; it's like touching rainbows. Opening the cloth is a bit like the suprise of a rohrsach test, as the fabric is stuck and stitched together to make the patterns.

Gemila and Savanna

Most of the commonly available merhaffs are printed on cheaper cotton; Luda and I cleaned out the shop buying the best pieces, and an hour later after the owner had closed and gone to the mosque, we realised we should have decimated his stock, never mind cleaned it out.  We have four each.  Fight it out, girls.  All the Saharan women wear them because they are as colourful as sunsets or oases in an otherwise barren landscape;  but it's been difficult to photograph any Berber women because they are  terribly secretive and spit and do that lalalalalaaaaa whistle thing with their tongue and throw stones if you try to photograph them.


I've never seen humans vanish as fast as the Berber women when there is a camera within a hundred metres. And the sisterhood looks out for them too: when I've tried to sneak a photo, someone, somewhere, spots me and I have to make a speedy exit.  The problem is that a photographer a few years ago took a photo with a tele lens, made a postcard and one day the woman's husband saw the postcard in a shop and came home and divorced her because he thought that if the  photographer could get that close to her he must be intimate with her. 


We walked up through the 12century casbah of Zagora, me literally shooting from the hip to avoid the whole cover, whistle, spit thing projected from those who didn't want to be photographed. Dome shaped openings in the mud buildings gave views of the spaces below, where, after marriage consummation, the happy young couple had to show their faces to the waiting crowds. The estimated wait time was 15 minutes, apparently. It's impossible to believe that people still live in this environment of crumbling walls and dust; no water or sanitation. Men were watering their donkeys from a common well; and inside the casbah, villagers whom you would expect not to have a dirham to their names have floors and floors and floors of incredible jewellery, pottery, woodwork, metalwork and fabrics. But this is also because the villagers are so poor that they bring whatever they can to swop for a plastic bucket or medicine. Sarah always brings useful items for exchange from the UK.

21st century, Sahara, Africa.

Yet children ambled from school, and grasses are collected for the goats, and women sift millet in shady corners.  The fabrics worn by the Berber women haven't changed for centuries; the lace and robes carried initially by those on the Saharan caravan route, and the only possible attire for those living in the hostile environment of the desert. 

Fibula making

I had a kerfuffel with my local Maroc sim card, as I'd turned it off one night, then in the morning to my horror discovered that I need its pin, which I'd thrown away, to turn it on again.  What a performance to a) get my existing pin b) get a new pin c) get a new sim d) get my credit transferred.  Note to various travelling goddesses:  do not throw away any paperwork.  You'll lose valuable shopping time, test the patience of fellow travellers, have to sit in a hot car for far too long, and risk insect bites because you've not moved for a few moments! 

Deep in the casbah, we visited a silversmith, who makes the Tuareg pendants so common of the region. He squatted on the mud floor using only the natural light coming from holes in the ceiling, as he poured and beat and  hammered the silver, even faking their age to look older than just made.

A few miles down the dusty road lived Said, who'd married Chassidy the day before.  We arrived to help  them celebrate her henna party.  It's quite a complicated performance to get married here.  Couples aren't ever sure about exactly when their paperwork will come through. Usually the wedding celebration follows the marriage by days or even months.  The bride is given a gold coin by the groom or his family to denote just how much the bride is adored. Here's Chassidy wearing the coin given to her by her new mother in law.   As usual in Moroccan families, there are millions of family members who appear from everywhere and nowhere and who shower all wedding crashers with love, kisses, almonds, tea and hugs.  Chassidy and I bonded over fly bites.  I told her about mine. She showed me hers. Holy Mother of Mecca, her legs were a war zone.  I showed her mine.  She did the Arab thing - a short of shrug, a sort of eh, a sort of Meh? no worries, Oklahoma style.  Not even her conjugal bed was exempt from these monsters. Hers would leave SCARS!  One look from her and the flies emigrated back to Ait Ouzzine.  We were blood sistas, 4eva.  

The happy couple and the groom's parents

A brother who was attempted to be married to me brought out drums, the mother bellydanced and whooped and whistled, the tea kept coming, the rugs were comfortable, the flies left me alone because they weren't into craters, and besides I'd bought some industrial strength repellent at a Pharmacia in Zagora when we should have been buying cloths for the GDP of Ouzazoute. 

Inside the groom's home, tea drinking

We'd made a request for a vegetarian meal, following the previous day's debacle, and lo and behold, a thoroughly edible vegetable tagine appeared on the low round table, with the big chunks of crusty bread, coca cola and bowls of fruit to end.  These casbahs are interesting because they look like piles of dust from the outside, but inside they are spotlessly clean, lined with rugs; there's always a wonderful old brass kettle for the tea ceremony. 

Adjusting the wedding headdress

It's a ritual that the mother and father tie the head pieces of the bride and groom, and it was lovely to see Chassidy kneel down at her new mother in law's feet to have her turban rearranged. We had to leave before the henna was applied because we had a very long drive to Ouzazoute and were running late anyway, but this time we all left feeling very happy and blessed to have been part of these nuptials.  Every time I wanted to take photos, the father in law asked to stand in front of his grape vines. I think they were his pride and joy.  Sisters and aunt's we'd never seen blew kisses;  Gemila and Sahara danced like Djinns, we all drummed up a Savanna caravan, the flies buggered off in search of supine females and then we all buggered off into the Saharan sunset in search of more adventures.  At the present count, Luda and I have between us more than 50 kg of Moroccan jewellery; beads, necklaces, pendants ... and there is no junk here. None. At. All.  We know, because not only are the dealers as hard nosed and unbending as the Saharan crystal they mine, but because we are both semi-bankROT.

We'd left just enough roubles left for Istanbul, in a few days.  In the meantime though, we rubbed wrists and swore not to spend any dirhams in Ouzazoute. No matter how magnificent or collectible the jewellery.

That's a promise. Gulp.