44. TIZ THE SEASON OF THE LIZARDS ... and the Flies

Tiz the season of the Lizards was initially written after a day into the hinterland with an American woman and her Moroccan beau who had the idea to bring tourists to his family village to experience ... well, in all probability, what I wrote about.  I told the warts (actually, flies) and all, experience, and that didn't go down well in the eyes of future tour directors who would have liked a sanitised version of the village and a rural Moroccan culinary adventure. In fact my truth telling went down so badly, she asked me to remove the blog, erase the day as if it hadn't happened.  And, sweet and accommodating person I am, I did.  But that really rankled me.  

I've had a lifetime as a travel journalist, and I got and sold the stories because I told the truth.  Truth tells, and truth sells.  The best stories are those that prickle.  The worst are those that are sanitised. Hey it's my story, and it happened, and I should be able to write what I want. I never intend to hurt people, but we were taken there as a touristic day, and those involved knew what was happening, and it was part of my journey.  

So here it is again - back to Morocco while I share this experience with you.

Now is the season of the lizards.  

So said our driver as he peered intently into the desert,  when we felt he should have been looking at the long and winding road ahead. 

At what stage does truth telling interrupt storytelling?  A few posts ago I alluded to an evening spent with some women who live in the Tiznit souk - and I said the evening was “interesting”.   There was a lot I didn’t write which made it “interesting” - like cats walking through our tagine while we were eating, and that the woman had a tattooed chin and hand but looked like a Sunday School teacher  -  but I held back because I didn’t want to compromise or hurt anyone’s feelings.  

But this is a real journey, a real adventure, and I must be courageous enough not to sanitize events so as not to offend those I pass along the way.  If I do, I will apologise in advance:  but also bear in mind that every experience is subjective.  Sometimes my spirit is high and my temperament forgiving; other times I’m hungry, tired, unwell, hungover, itchy, lonely, irritated, over this ... whatever ... all reasons to see events in a different way.  When my daughter Liza was blogging from Tanzania, she had to split the blog in two when the various stratas of her experience were not always complimentary and she didn't want a machete through her skull. I’ve decided not to do this.

In my life journeys, a few ordeals stand out like scarification on my skin.  One was travelling through Kenya when I was doing a story on female circumcision and on the way to interview some women, I found myself trapped in a tiny car with six hysterical, very large African women who'd offered to take me to their "sisters". Drum music blasted out of the radio, heat and dust poured into the rusty jalopy, other people's sweat dripped onto me as I was squashed between bosoms and bottoms, and the proposed two hour journey lasted six agonising hours to an unspecified destination where I had no choice but to sleep on mats on the floor with these women, and their reunited children, and a few, noisy, male nocturnal visitors.  

The second was an assignment covering the oral tradition of an aboriginal tribe, where they killed a kangaroo for a feast for me even though I was vegetarian, and I had to sleep in a swag while this creature cooked on a fire two metres from me. The third was the Casa to Marra train ride in this story.  

Our trip to the hinterland was advertised/promised to be a day of traditional pre-wedding pampering. We'd be treated to henna tattoos, saffron hair washes, we'd learn to cook couscous and tie fabric the correct way, and spend soulful time with our "sisters".  We'd walk through a Berber village, and see how a simple life can be fulfilling.

Life is seldom like the travel brochures.

We're in a dusty hotel in Zagora, on the Sarahan desert fringe,  called Riad Lamane.  The garden beds are scrubby, the paths muddy, the two inches of water in the 'fountain’ is slimy.  Luda had to remove her bedspread because it was covered with suspicious stains, and I had to climb on a chair to take my shower head out of the rubber bucket it was suspended in. I'm miserable because I was bitten badly at “lunch”  yesterday in a Berber village where batallions of flies with kamikaze intentions made those of us not used to the invasion look as if we were participating in some ritual mating dance - waving, swatting, beating, spitting and smacking skin then scratching till we bled.

I have clusters of fat pink craters in my skin and I hope they’re bug bites.    I wouldn’t mention this if we were not supposed to be travelling five star luxury, as I’m a relaxed traveller, and I truly enjoy the ride, and I always appreciate where I am, no matter how bumpy the ride, but I’m histamine hot.  I’m covered -COVERED in bites - either flies, fleas or mosquitoes which look like angry pink and yellow weals. On my thighs, ankles, cheeks, shoulders, scalp, behind my knees, and even my fingers.   It’s five am and I’ve been scratching through my medicine box for relief but calamine lotion was the only item of medicinal value I'd left out. There’s no drinking water in the room - the bar fridge is empty - so I can’t roll a nice icy bottle of Sidi Ali on my tortured skin. If it wasn’t for my mac to keep my fingers busy, there’d be pieces of bite skin flying around the room.

A reminder that with every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  A few days ago, we were drinking champagne and having our egos massaged as Princesses on the rampage.  Today, we are fly blown, flea bitten and unravelling. This is definitely down time after Taroudant. But let the story unravel itself.

Reluctant to leave the oasis of Taroudant, I bought a bottle of industrial strength Musc perfume to increase my bargaining leverage.  With Hussein as chauffeur in the black Mercedes, we followed the road to Agdz, through continually changing scenery where we did see goats climbing trees to eat the nuts of the argan trees, and yes the herder did rush up to the car for his dirhams payment for the privilege of taking a photo from an idling car. 

Deeper into Berber country, and closer to the edge of the Sahara,  the women’s clothing changed from the colourful billowing cottons, to head to toe black with tinsel edged aprons and bright wool bobbles on their belts.  We stopped at a Saffron Cooperative in Taliouine, in the heart of the Sirwa mountains, where saffron has been cultivated in Morocco  for hundreds of years. We were ushered into a hot room where we were able to smell and taste the real biological saffron deal and a blushing young lad explained in damaged English and halting French that saffron was an aphrodisiac, a liver cleanser, a hair restorer, a skin beautifier, good for the stomach, for weight loss.  

Just a spoonful of sugar ..

We were given a glass of saffron tea.  With sugar.  With enough sugar to undo all of saffron’s beneficial properties. One cup will cause diabetes, impotence, pimples, kidney failure, hair loss, bad breath, rotting teeth.  Here I am sampling the tea, far worse than my Marguerita face.  

From Taliouine, we wound through the mountains, glimpsing snow capped peaks, quite a contradiction when the ground temperature was 40degrees. Fields of flowers, herds of plump, contented, healthy goats and lambs, a few chubby cows, a couple of billowing bicycles, donkeys laden with grasses, tiny orange mud villages and beautiful striations of mesa, stones, shale, then suddenly we’re plunged into the green of date oases. Then stones.  Then winding roads, then straight roads, then nothing but heat on the horizon, then around a bend, back into an oasis and donkeys and turrets and people walking, walking, walking.  

Hussein had his eyes peeled to the road: Now is the season of the Lizards, he said.  Maybe we can find one.  It's also the season of young camels, loping through cactus fields, and snakes.

We lunched under fig trees, somewhere, where the owner was playing French scrabble which he relinquished to us for a quick game while we waited for our - yep - tagine and salad.  On the road again, in the middle of all this landscape, I needed a urgent toilet stop that a bush wouldn’t provide.  A kid rushed out of nowhere when we slithered to a stop near a hut selling gemstones, as it was silver, hematite and malachite country evidenced by the colours of the rocks, with a vertical mountainous backdrop. Verbal exchanges led me across the Roman Polanski road to the back of a village where a young girl led me (running) to a dark, mud walled room with a hole in the ground, covered with a ceramic plug as large as a kettle.  

I did what I had to in a few minutes, thanking Allah for my years of yoga as I kept my balance holding onto a rubber pipe that ran along the mud and grass wall,  then spent the next ten minutes trying to work out the plumbing.   There was a bucket of hot water, a very large scrubbing brush, a cake of soap and a spotless towel, rigid from drying in the sun. I poured the hot water down the hole, holding my breath.  The bowl filled up.   And up.  And up.  After a few terrifying minutes I realised I had to use the ceramic plug as a plunger!  I plunged!   And plunged!   I refilled the bucket from the tap at nose level which dribbled boiling water and used that one on me. I washed like I was scrubbing for heart surgery, all the way up to my elbows. I scrubbed where my feet had been.  Wanting to leave hot water for the next visitor, I opened the tap, but by now the water, which I realised was heated by a very primitive form of solar heating by a rubber pipe on the tin roof (the one I had held onto) was cold.  My nightmares are made of events like these.

When I eventually came out, blinking in the heat and blinding light, the young girl was waiting for me.  She handed me a plastic covered artificial rose and a paper heart with the words I Love You. A gift for assaulting her bathroom?  Spend a penny in Morocco?  Fifty Dirhams was all I had.  About seven dollars.  I don’t think she’d ever seen anything like me, or that amount of money.  But it was worth it on both sides of the transaction.  When I crossed the road to the car, everyone cheered and clapped, shouting that they thought I’d been kidnapped by a Berber.  I gave the rose to Hussein.  He later gave it to his fiance, Alicia, who has tried every means possible to find where the rose came from. We are all mum.  A rose is a rose is a rose.  And by any other name would smell as sweet!

Main street, Agdz

Onto Agdz, and another jewellery shop in the dusty streets, hung with dusty faded carpets, where dusty men sat on dusty chairs watching the dust wild west of Africa, languid and dessicated in the blistering heat.  This trader once apparently had marvellous jewellery but his stock is low, his shop was dark and stifling until he opened the shutters with coloured glass and the dust and heat drifted in. The power blew when he turned on a fan and Luda had a heat meltdown and had to be “evacuated” to an outside plastic chair while I negotiated in my usual fashion for her.  We sat on carved chairs, piles of carpets, cushions and a carpet lined plank against the wall as we scratched through his trays and trunks  of coins, broken jewelery, bangles, henna dyed cloths and seed bead work. 

Never mind Marrakech prices - this man was charging Parisian prices, protesting about how silver has gone up, he has to travel far to get his pieces, they are getting more rare, he has three donkeys and a wife to feed   ..... too much blah blah, Mr Trader, I said, you don’t have to sell this to me, I’ve already selected it,  let’s just cut to the dirham chase. Sarah had found me a complete fibula, joined by a hand made chain with delicate motifs,  which she handed me with a nod and a wink.  His price was so outrageous, after he’d measured it on wonky old brass scales with little weights and a cigarette butt, that I dropped it as if I’d been burned. I struggled for a while to get him down then frankly got bored with the transaction, picked up by camera and bag, and said I was going to sit with Luda downstairs. Alakazam the price dropped by half.  But it still wasn’t good enough although Sarah’s eyebrows had shot up to her hairline.  I pulled out my wad of dirhams.  I stroked them across my Parvati chest.  I winked at him and said, if you give it to me for this price, kissing the notes, I will also give you a kiss on the cheek.  Or maybe one on each cheek.  

CRASH!  Price at my level!  Deal Done!  Sarah about to faint.  Luda had wanted a silver and coral bead which he wouldn’t budge on.  I took out some dirhams, fanned my boobs with them, held up the coral bead and pouted.  He laughed ...... he said I have said yes to you so now you must say yes to me!  Sarah in fits.  I replied with YES!  You will give this bead to me for the notes I am kissing.  Deal done!  Sarah offers me lifetime recognition award as Deal Closer Extraordinaire.  

We bump along through the dusty semi-abandoned, now jewellery depleted town to a real desert Riad, surrounded by palm trees and dates, and clopping donkeys - the Riad Dar Quamar where the mud and grass walls and floors were studded with quartz stones and the shutters opened to astounding views of crumbling, abandoned casbahs too crumbly and aged to rescue or renovate.  I sat for a while on carpet cushions, refuelling with water, trying to catch up on a bead inventory, then we ate  - yep - tagine and salad - in the courtyard.

In the morning, Luda had marginally recovered enough from the rigours of Moroccan Manoeuverings, Vodka, jewellery shop-to-drops in desert terrain, to have an altercation with the slippers of the waiter. We thought she’d gone nuts in the heat and dust, because every time the waiter came near her she growled and snarled, baring her teeth. Tall, handsome and imposing in his long white cotton nightie, he seemed quite frightened of this crazy blonde as she bent lower and lower until she was face to face with his camel hair slippers that looked liked a furry white hamster with five toes -  enough to frighten the most brazen chiwawa.  (Go on - you spell it, covered in bites at six am in a desert room with no drinking water and only one waiter who couldn’t get the meal right .. I dare you.)

WOULD YOU LIKE FLIES WITH THAT?

We drove to the Berber village of the fiance of our driver, for the promised day of Princess pampering with henna, saffron, couscous and life in a Berber village. 

The scenery there was magnificent, imposing, astounding:  Babel was made here and you have to wonder how the spice traders survived until you see the riverine oases of date palms between the forbidding mountains of rocks and shimmering heat. Driving the Draa valley pocked with casbahs, fortified towns, silvery rivers and citrus plantations, you also have to marvel at the fortitude of the people who still live here.

We arrived at a Berber village  through acres of stones, the four by four inching its way deeper into the heart of the village. Villagers rushed out to welcome us, a wonderful, enthusiastic welcome and we were swamped in the love of strangers, all of whom kissed us on both cheeks, then kissed our hands, then kissed us again and we had to kiss their hands. Hand loomed carpets were brought out for us to sit on in the main courtyard. The mint tea was brought out.  Plates of almonds were brought ut. The dates were brought out. The flies came out.  Date branch switches were brought out.  The heat came out.  The biting flies came out. The daytime mosquitoes came out, so small they couldn’t be seen with the naked eye and no way could they be heard over the din of family.

More cousins, sisters, aunties and children arrived.  Men sat on one side of the large, beautiful (hot, dusty) courtyard, centrepiece of which was an orange tree, and women sat opposite.  The flies radioed for reinforcements from the neighbours.  Mosquitoes came to join the party.  They circled like fighter planes looking for places to land.  Smaller flies were shooed away, larger ones flew off crookedly when semi stunned. 

I went up to the roof for a view down into the neighbours homes, and across the village but could barely open my eyes from the heat and glare. When I managed to squint, flies drank giddily from my tear ducts.

We sat around.  The flies hovered around the dates, one flap ahead of the switch and hand shooing.  Flies sat on my nose.  The flies descended on the dates in a flyblown frenzy.  Would we like some dates? What dates?  It was a live fly fest.  No no fly zone here - it was every fly for himself, take no hostages.  No dates, thanks.  Definitely, no thanks.  Done with the dates, the flies start on me.  One bite. Two bites. Three bites.  Four. Five. Eleven. I escaped from them into the village where houses are made from straw and mud. A few followed me, most flew in front of me, acting as tour guides as they headed for the nearest goat or cow pat. 

Nobody knows

what time lunch will be served and it’s already close to 2pm.  I’ve had a tumbler of sugar with a thimble of tea and swallowed two flies. The village is spotless; few people are about because they’ll get fried or flied.  We walk through the lucerne fields, under palm trees to a dried river bed where Alicia has started a project to clean and recycle the ubiquitous plastic. One woman has her hands hennaed till they are black: they look amazing, prehistoric, and feel like leather. We walk with an eighteen year old niece and her 8 month old baby brother in a papoose on the back.  Older women have dotted tattooes on their chins and foreheads. 

It’s too hot to walk.  The flies follow me.  I return to the courtyard. The flies show me the way.  I keep getting kissed and pinched and hugged by all the sisters.  Luda has passed out under her dear human please feel me pashmina.  I try to steal a corner to cover myself from being eaten alive but she bats me away. I start to scratch my big pink and white weals and put spit and coca cola on my bites. Luda et al had given the children bubbles, balloons, frisbees and toy cars all of which landed on me at various intervals while waiting for Something to Happen. Where’s the henna? Where’s the saffron? Where’s the lying in a cool dark room feeling like a princess?  Good Heavens on a Sanddune, we could even be ... phthst, phtst ...fossicking for jewels. 

The food arrives at 3.30.  It’s ... no ... really ... try and guess.  C’mon ... stretch your imagination.  Remember this is Morocco - great fruit, plump animals, huge coastline, lots of water ... oooh .... okay, if you guess correctly, I’ll give you the whole lunch.  All of it. Every scrap.   Every bit of intestine.  Every chunk of sheep’s heart.  Every piece of gristle and hoof and sinew and wad of fat.   Every spoon of sausage made of intestine skin filled with whatever didn’t go into the .... oh, okay, we had .... ta daaaaa!  Tagine.  Sans salad.  But with couscous.  Cooked in the juices of above, which I won’t mention again because both Luda and I took one look at this feast we’d been anticipating for the past 6 hours and ... well, Luda gagged and dived straight back under her Dear Human don’t eat me Pashmina and I managed two teaspoons of couscous from the communal dish of unspeakable animal remnants until I started dry retching and had to have half a glass of warm coke to settle my insides.  The flies were gathering in batallions.  Bored with the offal, they continued to feast on me.  Luda is a definite whiter shade of pale.  I feel like I did in Kathmandu.  Kweasy.

I wish I had a tail to swish flies from my nose and eyes.  My scalp is bitten.  Do flies bite out chunks of skin?  I saw one flying by with a piece of fresh pink meat and now there’s a hole in my finger.

The sisters gesticulate that I should eat more tagine with intestines and sheeps heart.  I say no no no no no, I’m full up.  They bend over the food to hug me and kiss me and a posse of older aunties with hennaed hands kiss my hand. Language is one syllable English, fifteen minutes Arabic, two syllables French, three fly swots, seven bite spits, a few fuck fuck fuck fuck’s fucking flies in Australian, and thank you thankyou wonderful food fucking flies in sign language. 

Luda is glazed eyed and vertical, her handbag on arm, trying to extract the driver and his bride from their family so we can leave.  But wait! It's time for the henna and saffron treatment.  But I have holes in my skin, and welts and weals and am close to doing St Vitus’ dance, and Luda can’t look at the food because she's as green as the insides of a lizard on the road from Agadir.  It’s 4.15.  The henna et al will take another two and a bit hours.  No, no. no, no, we protest, we couldn't put you out, we should be leaving now. My hand aches from fly swotting and scratching.

Out comes a coal burner, a packet of saffron, a bottle of “perfume”.  Sarah is coaxed over the coals standing, her skirt is lifted and billows of smoke waft up to her derididons, as she’s squirted with what smells like goats pee on her inner thighs, her hair and up her shirt. To some this "aroma" would be divine - to me, a lover of Coco Chanel, this is definite goats' pee.   It lacks a certain degree of musk and Paris.   This is apparently supposed to make women unbearably sexually attractive.  Make men leave their camels and rush inside to practice hari kiri on their wives ... if they can get past the wall of flies. 

It’s my turn.  I stand over the coals, and my derididons increase in temperature a good twenty degrees.  I’m squirted with industrial strength goat’s pee.  On my scalp.  On my hair.  On my neck. On my inner thighs. My derididons are smooooookin'................ I stink.   I truly stink.   I stink worse than a Calcutta brothel, though of course I'm just guessing, I've never been in one, but I read Shantaram.   When I move, this stinking smoke emits from my armpits, from under my skirt, from my neck and sneaks up my nostrils. Like some weird gastronomic invention involving dry ice and liquid nitrogen, without the burst of evaporated strawberry and lamb mousse.  I’m gagging at my own smell.   But hey ... guess what!  The flies are keeping away.  The fucking flies won’t go near this smoking, goat’s pee concoction and I’m supposed to be sexually attractive to a man!  I'm not even attractive to myself!   I can’t wait to get to the next hotel for a shower. Luda is holding her nose and has turned quite green as she stands next to me. You tink!! She says behind her pinched fingers. I can't ride a hundred kilometres with you tinking like dat!

The car is packed to its eyeballs with a lot of stuff that Alicia needs to take to Marrakech, as well as all our purchases..  An extra passenger also wants to come along for the ride to Zagora.  She suggests sitting in the back with three of us.  There are only three seats.  She says that’s okay, we’ll squash up.  How far to Zagora?  Over a hundred kilometres.  And I stink.  Sarah Stinks.  Patti stinks. We all stink of smoke.   Luda refused to be smoked and stinked, but she’s still suffering from being too close to intestines and sheep’s hearts and a pair of furry slippers, winding roads and Vodka. The extra passenger suggests leaving some (of our) luggage behind so that we can upend a rear seat for an extra passenger.  We’ve spent over ten thousand dollars in jewels ... and we have to leave them behind in a village of flies and goat intestines.  I ask how we’ll get our luggage forwarded to Ouzazoute.  The answer? Don’t worry, there will be a solution.  I said, so, tell me the solution.  He said .. "will be one."  I said, not interested in "Will be One."  Want to Know What Solution Is.  My box had disintegrated when I picked it up, probably nibbled by flies and camels.  A nephew was summonsed to the house to find another one - after looking totally nonplussed as to how to create a new cardboard box from fresh fly filled air, the nephew soon reappeared with a new box and some packing tape. The solution was that a nephew would drive the jewels to Ouzazoute the following day, and they would magically reappear in our rooms.  Here is an illogical solution we have to trust.  

We leave the village after five, stinking, smoking and fly blown.  We can’t keep the windows closed because we stink. When we open them, flies come in.  We put on the air con, and the bloody flies come through the air con so we have to open the windows and those flies escape but more come in.  Alicia doesn’t talk all the way to Zagora - 1.5 hours.  Moroccan hip hop plays on the cd.  Somewhere on the journey, Patti, who is warming up to our antics, and who is part of the continuing joke of finding me a new husband who is tall, moustachless, owner of many camels and a riad  or two, and definitely dark skinned, comments on a pedestrian:  Oh, look, he’s very handsome, very dark, very tall and very erect - he should do for you!  ... then we call crack up.  Patti breaks into peals and peals of hysterical laughter,  Luda says we should use Patti for our erecto-meter as she can obviously spot one at fifty paces.  Patti tries to explain her gaffe .. but she’s one of us now.   

The hotel is horrible, dirty.   I fling down my cases on the dusty floor and rush to the shower.  Water dribbles out of a broken shower head.  I scrub and scrub and scrub with my shampoo like I’m going to do brain surgery, until I squeak.   My stinky clothes are sealed in a plastic bag.

Emails have come through suggesting I have my next shop in Moroccan colours.  The meal is a disaster of organisation but we have ... tagine and salad.   We meet a couple who have just “married” today ... got their ACT, I think it’s called.  She’s an American woman in her late thirties, he looks in his mid twenties. He’s gorgeous and articulate .. they met in September, on line.  She’s from Okalahoma.  He’s going back to live there in year or so, when his green card comes through. She’s leaving in two days back for the States. She’s having her Henna party today, and their official Berber wedding.  We have a choice of a Koranic library or attending their wedding. With a bit of luck, I’ll photograph that. My bites are crusty. I hate flies.  I hate flies. I fucking hate those flies.