Dawn. Somewhere in Atlas Mountains, Morocco.
Jim stares out at the mist-soaked valleys, which lie like the fallen limbs of sleeping giants, tangled in a duvet of fog after some Brobdingnagian orgy. I honestly think if I hadn’t been there, Jim would have just walked and walked, till he landed in the giants’ arms or the belly of a canyon.
Over the last two and a half hours, as we’ve trekked up this pathless mountain among dozens of other pathless mountains in the Moroccan wilderness, he’s been talking non-stop about his wife. Or more accurately, his divorce.
He’s been telling me he wants to leave. To just go and keep going and never come back. He’s been saying that nothing makes him want to run away from life more than being in love. But secretly, though Jim isn’t ready to admit it yet, we both know that’s not true. We both know that really, it’s the other way around. Being out of love is what drives you into the unknown, being in love is what calls you back.
Jim’s not exactly what you would call an emotional man – at least, not while sober, and not to his face (not if you wanted to keep your own face intact) – but over the course of these last few hours he’s opened up his massive and somewhat-unhealthily-masculine heart to me. It’s one of those things, walking does that to you. Especially half-planned, last-minute walking like this.
8 Hours earlier. A cosy tourist-trap restaurant on the classy side of Chefchaouen, northwest Morocco.
The four of us are sitting beneath the stars: Jim, Jo, Feather and I, nestled amid a small avalanche of cushions on the carpeted floor, waiting – stereotypically – for our tagines. There was probably mint-tea and incense too.
Jo is Jim’s new girlfriend; Feather is my ‘it’s-complicated’. Honestly, the idea of a double-date in Morocco had sounded like fun at the time. But after five days of nothing but shops, hostels and restaurants, we were feeling restless. Suddenly Jim looks up, and I can see he’s got mischief on his mind.
“How about that? Tomorrow? Up for it?”
Jim is pointing to a peak across the valley, opposite our comfy rooftop seating. The moonlight shines off the cliff-face with alarming clarity. It seems to dominate the night sky in such a way as to appear unsolvable, unconquerable, invincible – all of the things Jim wants himself to be at this moment. I recognise the challenge in his eyes. Not to me, to himself.
“Alright,” I say. “Why not?”
Dawn again. Back on the mountain.
Two hours stomping madly through bush and scree in cheap sandals, torchlight and pre-dawn gloaming getting us past chained-up dogs guarding goat shacks and braying donkeys. Now at last, the sunlight begins to burn the haze away.
Another half-hour or so. Then, as we stumble along our goat-trail path, we begin to notice something remarkable emerging from the landscape. Tiny spears of shadow reaching up from the white dawn all around us. Pretty soon, the path is surrounded by these pointed shadows, and it takes us a long time – a ridiculously long time – to realise what they are.
Cannabis buds, proud as flags in a parade.
Jim and I have unwittingly strolled into a mountain-sized weed plantation. I can see the valley beneath me glistening with dense green leaves and thick, succulent buds. There’s a weird sense of Eden.
At first we run our hands through the plants, making jokes and taking great lungfuls. Then we get serious and remember where we are. We have visions of a repeat of that scene in ‘The Beach’, where Di Carpio and his crew run joyfully through a weed-plantation only to come face-to-face with an angry dude carrying an AK47.
Out of nowhere we hear Moroccan voices ahead of us on the path.
We tense, holding our walking sticks like weapons. As the voices get closer and closer, I can’t help it, my mind flicks back to Feather, still asleep in our hostel bed in the town. I don’t quite know how to square with the feelings that run through me at that moment.
Then we see them, or more accurately, they see us. A troupe of lads in bright coloured djellabas, chatting amiably with each other. Their smiles widen to grins when they see us. They wave their arms (not an AK in sight) and begin haggling gleefully.
“You want to buy? I give good price!”
3 hours earlier. A cheap hostel in Chefchaouen.
I rise to the call of the muezzin outside my window, amplified tenfold by modern speakers: “Awake, awake! It is better to pray than to sleep.”
Silently I step out of bed and pull on my clothes, throwing salted peanuts, fruit and water into my rucksack. I brush my teeth and pull back my hair, using a string of prayer-beads to tie a topknot; trick I learned from a Hare-Krishna back in art school.
As I’m about to leave I glace over to Feather one final time. Sprawled on the sheets, snoring lightly. Her eyelids flicker for a moment, and I catch myself hoping she’ll wake up, just for a moment.
She doesn’t, of course.
Last night she touched her sunburnt-peeling lips against my chest, pressing dozens of tiny kisses across my ribs as we drifted into sleep. That’d been the first time she’d touched me in days.
Aroha mai, I brush her palm with my fingers.
Out into the stone avenues. Somewhere above, the muezzin still sings. Passing men on their way to prayer, robed and seemingly un-drowsy, we exchange heartfelt salaams. One thing about Chefchaouen that all the guidebooks write about endlessly – but it still comes as a shook and wonder when you see it for yourself – everything is blue. And I mean everything: the pavement, the plant pots, the walls, the archways and the roof tiles. It’s like walking into a city built with pieces of the sky.
5 days earlier. Another cheap hostel – the port-city of Tangiers. Just off the boat.
Been on Moroccan soil for less than a day, and already things have gotten interesting. Feather and I refused to stay with the others in the Hotel Continental; muttering vague platitudes about colonialism and white privilege, we both knew the real reason was price.
The streets were frantic and fragrant. Full of life and spices. The shops all had literal mountains of paprika and turmeric piled up at their doors. We found a cheap hostel in the interesting part of town. Spent five minutes convincing the man behind the desk that we were ‘of course’ husband and wife. Why else would we expect to share a room? Man not happy about our lack of rings, but gave us the room anyway. Half an hour later, we hit the streets with a plan to acquire a set of inexpensive rings and perform a private ceremony somewhere nice. Might as well make a night of it.
Hadn’t expected the lack of alcohol and what that does to a culture. Everyone super chill and respectful. Of course, this could also be the abundance of weed and hash wafting from every archway.
We found rings and a passable waterfall. Wedding was short and sweet. We laughed but didn’t kiss. Who knows what the hell this is?
An hour later things got seriously mad in the shades of the medina. We met a tree-wizard who chanted and danced and sang songs to us. We almost believed in him, but then he drugged us with jasmine oil and sold me a shirt three-times the normal price – “Hand-stitched by my Berber mother in the Sahara.”
He wiped the sins from my shoulders and blew the evil from my ears. He told me I was a very spiritual man. Again, I was almost convinced, but the vibe died when his Nokia rang with a beebeby beeb!
2 hours later. Back at the hostel. Still high on jasmine oil.
Somewhere around 2am, Feather starts teaching me Māori: her father tongue. She says her papa scarpered shortly after she was born, but he did leave her a few things: strong legs, frizzled hair like dark candyfloss, and a mouth full of poetry.
The first word she teaches me is friend – e hoa. Then sorry – aroha mai, which also means as ‘love here’. And then farewell – aroha nui – big love.
She walks to the open window and takes her clothes off. Sitting naked on the hot night balcony she rattles off sentence after sentence of the most exquisite words I’ve ever heard. Nothing is more beautiful than this moment. Nothing more honest.
She joins me on the bed and puts my hand between her legs. Still speaking Maori at full-throttle, she rubs my fingers between her labia, using my hand to masturbate while the sounds of the night flood in to our tiny hostel. I think, in some ways, this is our honeymoon.
After a few minutes she climaxes, and drops my hand.
It was as close as we ever came to sex, and it was one of the most intimate moments of my life. In the days and the nights after that, things got weird and cold, but for that one night, full of Maori poetry and Moroccan spice, it felt as real as it gets.
A week later. Coming down from the mountains. Leaving Morocco.
Things with Feather have deteriorated into mostly non-speaking interactions, but I am still grateful when she holds my hand on way back from Chefchaouen, the reckless taxi weaving zig-zag patters down the narrow canyon road.
Jim and I share a look as we glance the peak – our peak, far in the distance, misted and colossal. It’s the first of many walks we will do together.
The rest of the trip back passes with the usual level of boredom and drama – waiting at the port. Losing passports. Bribing the official to let us through anyway. Finding the passports tucked in some overly-clever spot. Getting to Spain. Having a celebratory tapas and being dismayed that we’re back in the world of European prices again.
When it comes to saying goodbye to Feather, I am oddly hollow. I walk her to the bus station without saying anything. I try to remember the words she taught me. Of course, I’ve forgotten them all.
As she gets on the bus we exchange the most casual of goodbyes. See ya. Ciao. It feels false and inadequate. What we should have said was: “Aroha nui, e hoa” – Farewell with love, my friend.