excerpt from chapter VII. Life at the edge of Sahara
The bus had come one hour late to Fes, to a station in the suburbs of the city, and I wasn’t sure if I was waiting in the right place until it came, making sure several times that my eyes were working properly and that it really said “Casablanca” on the cardboard sign next to the driver. It was 1 am which, in Morocco, was as busy as 1 pm, or any other period of the day except the quiet sunny mornings. I was the only tourist on the bus, and other people probably travelled back home, or to work, or to visit friends and relatives. The bus was packed to the last seat, and some people even lay down in the passage between the seats, covering their eyes with their hands, trying to get some sleep, and it was easy to imagine their eyes pressed and wrinkled from worry and the commotions of the budget bus. In the darkness of the night, the tyres ran over distances between the famous cities of Morocco.
At some point in the night, we stopped in Rabat. Commotion began; people left, people entered, the bus was full again, and in ten minutes we were leaving the capital of Morocco. Fes already felt like the capital, and I knew the reputation of Casablanca and Marrakesh, and it seemed that there were at least four proud city candidates to easily claim that title. But after a week of city touring, I was on the way to Tagounite, a small desert town close to the border with Algeria, and one of the last inhabited places before the Sahara Desert. I had arranged a Workaway volunteering stay for the next 18 days, and my host was waiting for me to arrive there in the evening. Tagounite was a ten-hour bus drive eastward from Marrakesh, which was ten hours away from Fes itself, and with every kilometre further southeast the place grew in my imagination.
There wasn’t a moment on the whole trip when I had felt more isolated, exhausted, and alone than in that overpacked bus. The late-night confrontation with the guys in Fes had left a bad feeling in my chest, and there hadn’t been a single place to rest in the never-ending mazes of the city. I was tired but like a ghost unable to sleep, disturbed by the noises of people scrolling social media, blasting the sound. I put on the cloak of my jellaba over my head and closed my eyes, forehead wrinkled from worry and noises. The guy next to me probably noticed and started talking with me. He had visited his girlfriend in Fes and was going back to his family in Casablanca.
We reached Casablanca, and all that I saw of the famous city was a covered, concrete station, buses going in and out, drivers loading, unloading, and probably misloading cargo, now taking one bus over to the other side, then returning another to this side, in a complex system undecipherable to anyone but them. We exited the bus, and the guy stayed loyally by my side, getting information from the drivers and other passengers, making sure that I would board the right bus to Marrakesh. About half an hour past the schedule the bus to Marrakesh came. Without hesitation, he took my backpack to the bus and wished me all the best.
The first light came around six or seven in the morning and, as the sun was rising, the bus ride acquired some growing urgency to it. My next bus, and the only daily connection to Tagounite was leaving at 10.30. The landscape was barren yet rich, and villages sprang out from the ground effortlessly, like natural creations of their environment. Around nine, we passed through suburbs of Marrakesh, with nothing differentiating them from the villages before, except the density and the number of buildings, like all the villages accumulated into a massive one. The land beneath the buildings was dust-gold, but gold that had red infused deep at its core. From it, palm trees sprang out, pointing towards the mountains in the distance. It was the Atlas Mountains, red and barren with some peaks snow-covered and others barren rocks, encircling the valley of Marrakesh like giant city walls. Behind the mountains, somewhere far away, the vast desert lay, and that was where I was trying to get to.