42. Wha waz zat? Or just a spoonful of sugar made the goddess go down

 Luda, getting adorned in melhaff fabric, as she's ordained an unofficial princess.

You all must think that Luda and I have been kidnapped and sold for our bodily parts as I haven’t posted for more than a week. The truth is that we’ve been as flat out as a lizard under a road train;  and today, before we leave for Istanbul early tomorrow morning, is the first time I’ve had time to put my feet up and write .  In fact ... I'm writing this on the plane from Casablanca to istanbul, flying over Taormina and some snowy mountains.

Ouzazoute

From Zagora, and Chassidy and Said's wedding celebration, we drove to Ouzazoute, through parts of the Draa valley  - spectacular mountain scenery and little villages clinging to mountainsides, bounteous citrus trees bursting with their golden fruits and donkeys at every turn.  Our riad was magnificent - a contemporary oasis in the middle of a larger oasis in the middle of a very large, hot, dry, sandy desert.  We headed straight for the strip of antique shops selling everything from old carpets, to calabashes, henna cloths, masks, broken pottery and more jewels than the eye can behold in a lifetime.  


The shopping began.  We scratched through vast chests of jewels until our hands were black, our nails broken, our clothes filthy, our fingers shredded and, when it came time to finally close the deal, our nerves frayed. Here, deep in the desert where you wouldn't expect the dealers, lying on pouffes in the shade, to know the hourly price of silver, we had to fight for our lives to bring the prices down to an acceptable level.  This involved throwing our hands up in the air, turning our backs, offering various parts of ourselves as bribes, or allowing a pat on the bum or a whiff of female perfume as we bent a little close over the dealers. 

In the case of the gorgeous twin boys (who made us think that we obviously had been affected by the mint tea because we'd negotiate with one, then go upstairs with him, come back and down find that he'd got there ahead of us) this also involved a trip upstairs ostensibly to see the vista but also involving a marriage proposal while his hand was on my shoulder then on my waist as he told me had many camels and was I married?  He was young and strong, he promised me, and I'd have enough jewels for the rest of my life.   I bought a basketful of various items, then Sarah rushed in breathless saying that she'd discovered a treasure trove next door.  

Ouzazoute

This Bel Hage had treasures so deep in his shop that it was difficult to get through the door.  We stepped over hills of silver, and peered into crates of silver, and tripped on ropes of silver.  Each one of us had a stash we were guarding with our lives, or at least I was because I was told later that my behaviour was most unusual and that nobody particularly liked me when I demanded someone's coke, snatched a piece from their pile and bought recklessly.  That night I woke at four with a terrible headache, and terribly dry mouth, and checked my blood sugar which was dangerously high.  I was yellow and gaga for most of the following day as I battled to get it down, just drinking water and having bland food.  I was sitting on a pile of antique carpets as the others were bartering, not really functioning and feeling more and more dizzy and becoming paler and paler when Sarah peered into my yellowing eyes, and insisted someone rush out and get me some food.  I was sugar crashing!  EEEUW!!   Three bananas later, my colour returned.  I'm sorry to say readers that I don't remember much of Ouzazoute and Luda is filling in some of my long blanks.  However I was reminded of my lapse into semi madness when, here in Marrakech, when we were packing up our goods to ship to Sydney, Luda gagged when she saw one of my pieces and exclaimed in horror ... "OMG!  That is the most hideous piece I have ever seen? When did you get it ..."  "I can't remember, I think it was in Ouzazoute!"  "Get rid of it immediately!"  (I did .. I traded it for a silver Hamsa pendant in Marrakech!)   And that when yet another vendor tried to lure me into his carpet emporium, I threatened to bite him.

Hossein and Alecia's ACT came through that day, and we were lucky enough to celebrate their nuptials with them, in an unusual restaurant called Rose en Sable which is more like a Moroccan theme park than restaurant with an indoor pool and a wall of lanterns and antiques.   Alecia donned her gorgeous turquoise sequinned gown that she is going to wear at her henna party and the evening finished well after 1am, which was then Luda's birthday.  

Rooftop from trader's shop

We tottered back to the hotel and shortly after lockdown Luda had a blue turbanned wide grinned, confident just past adolescence nocturnal visitor turn up at her door, who wanted her to ‘party’ with him.  She turned up at her door with a mouthful of toothpaste, but that didn’t deter him.  Apparently she patted him maternally on his very tall shoulder and sent him on his way. She sent me a text telling me that as she turned him down, she must be getting old even though it was a birthday.  I should have told her she should not have turned him down, as this was her birthday Berber strippergram, Ouzazoute style, but I didn’t have the heart. Anyway, she’ll never be too old, as she proved for the remainder of the 23.9 hours she had of her birthday.

Luda woke with the mother of all hangovers, but still the boys from the hotel flocked around her like goats under an argon tree, trying to nibble at her produce. She finally made it to the car, where we were waiting to leave for Marrakesh,  ruffled and flushed, and wearing a plaited bracelet given to her by her Berber Beau who did manage to get into her room, where, in a few brief minutes,  the delights of a mature woman’s pash. We can now confidently put on record that Luda, indeed, will never be too old to pash a 23year old well enough to make Arab skin flush deep purple.

Lu's birthday berber beau

I gave her a Panadol which knocked her almost unconscious for the journey back to Marrakech up through the High Atlas, but whenever she woke from her drugged slumber she giggled and settled back into reminiscing of an interlude she’ll remember on all successive birthdays. 

The scenery was spectacular, changing around every bend from shale to scrub to olive and citrus groves, to men herding their sheet and grazing goats, snow tipped mountains and shattered shale, mud villages and stony rivers.

Old village

We three at old village

The first attempts at stopping for lunch were deterred by dangerously winding roads, massive wheezing trucks that held us up for miles,  toilet stinks or filthy tables, and we eventually stopped, starving and grouchy,  around 3.30 in a strange little down winding down the mountain, that had dead animals hanging from hooks at every stall and mud homes clinging to rocks.  As those wheezing trucks we’d finally managed to overtake ground and grated and groaned past us while we were parking, men squeezed orange juice, minced sugar cane and flogged their carpets at the side of the road.  We walked the side show alley of flanks, legs, heads, and spreadeagled carcasses into a restaurant that surprisingly had a beautiful view of the snow capped mountains and contented sheep - later to be lunch - grazing on the banks of a river below. 

Lunch is ordered by pointing to various cuts of practically still twitching meat from the hooks. We asked for cutlettes and frites, chops and chips, favorite fare while travelling.  It arrived on the end of the arm of a singing and dancing toothless waiter, who pirouetted as he plonked the plates on the table. We tucked greedily into the chops, commented on the grazing lambs and oohed at the snow  .. but wait a sec ... what are those white things on plate? Fish? Non.  Pork? Non! Non! Muslim!  Eagle? Budgie intestines? Moroccan wolf?  Saharan Fox? 

Lunch

Non! Non! Non!  It’s ... ta daaaa ... sheep’s testicles, sliced neatly into rondells.  . All appetites fled as fast as the jewelery trader at the old village, desperate to sell something, had lured us inside, flung out his carpets, made mint tea, opened his treasure chest and spilled the contents onto the carpet before we could say Non!  The testicles were wrapped up in a serviette faster than they were dissected on our way in, while we tried hard to extend our gastronomic sensibilities, from a visual perspective, beyond chops and chips.  Local fare in which ever country I visit, is always a problem for me.  Locusts in Lombok, non!  Snakes in China!  Non! Buffalo bladder in Bukkittinggi? NON!  If you're used to it, fine, if not, not so fine.  

People in one culture always find it difficult to understand the customs of another culture, and vice versa ... and having differing tastes and opinions doesn't mean that one is good and another is bad - its a cultural collide.

Making argan oil

My hair has felt like the baskets made of olive branches for weeks.  My skin is like an olive left out of oil.  I am as creased as my undies after two months in a suitcase.  Argon oil promises relief from everything.  We stop at a co-op, where six very grumpy women sit on a carpet, shelling olives which are pounded into a paste that releases the oil that we buy by the tub to return us to our former unrumpled princess of status.   I’m looking forward to being able to put a comb through my tangles and smooth my itching, crusty skin, still traumatised from those fly bites.