bargaining on a much harder trip i'd stuffed some provisions--a sweatshirt, water-- into my backpack. as it was, i settled in for my last, and easiest, taxi brouse ever. the two mohameds sharing the back seat with me had looked suspicious at first, but after they shared their cookies and milk with me i decided it must be some kind of vitamin deficiency that made them look crazy. poor guys. in the front seat, mohamed lemine asked me what my story was. he turned out to be a french professor in dakla, one of the two larger cities in western sahara. when we got into dakhla past nine, he invited me to spend the night with his family and i took him up on the offer. obviously that's something people don't do outside of this part of the world, but people don't really share milk and cookies with strangers, either. before i left the next morning i found out that he'd grown up between morocco and mauritania, but had lived in europe and the middle east for 20 years, and was writing a book. he encouraged me to write one, too. after refusing to let me pay for breakfast, he walked me to the bus station to make sure i got a ticket. i promised to email when i got into marrakech.
mohamed lemine
i was on the bus for twenty-five hours. i watched the desert smooth out from rocky plateau to dunes next to the ocean, but these changes took hours. mostly i watched the people on my bus. western saharans are basically mauritanians with a higher standard of living and autonomy problems. (an aside: dakhla is what would happen if mauritanians built sidewalks, obeyed traffic rules, picked up trash, and developed an efficient system of mass transit). everyone getting on my bus in dakhla spoke hassaniya and wore mulafas and kaftans or boubous. hennae-ed hands reached up to adjust the air conditioning vents. it was a little surreal. at night the temperature dropped, and i curled up in my seat. i'd spoken to the woman next to me a little, so we were on good terms. seeing that i was cold she unwrapped the end of her mulafa and put it over me, actually tucking it in under my feet. i'm not kidding. throughout the night she was vigilant about my keeping warm.
the view for most of the trip
at midnight the lights came on as we pulled into a gas station and people got out for coffee. it was cold and windy, so i kept to my seat. only one other guy stayed on the bus--a young guy sitting a couple of seats away, across the aisle. he wore a long white kaftan with a track jacket, the kind of traditional/western style lots of guys pull off. he grew a beard, and his hair was a little long and under a cap. i'd noticed him because between listening to music he'd been murmuring verses from a koran. it's a pretty normal thing to do here, but earlier it had struck me that if this scene had taken place on an american bus, everyone would have dove for the exits. young devout muslim guy murmuring the koran on a bus? that's just how it would have happened. so i was surprised when he hung around, and then when he offered me his jacket. i accepted; he pulled out some grapes and i got out water, which was the only thing i had to contribute. then the mulafa-ed seatmate showed up with coffee for me (she was really playing the part of a grandma), so we shared that, too. he spoke a little french, so the conversation was basic: where are you from, what do you do... badra has six brothers and three sisters. he's 23. his dad owns a paint store, and he just opened a bookstore this year. i told him my dad manages radio stations, but the concept was a little vague. he asked if i read, and if i had read anything about mohamed. now i knew why he was talking to me, but the conversion effort didn't bother me the way it sometimes has. maybe i realized it would be the last time, for a while, and i was wearing his jacket afterall. so I told him i didn't read arabic, but that i'd read about mohamed and islam in english books. he asked if i knew muslims (yes- everyone in mauritania falls into that category) and if i prayed with them (no). but i told him what i believe is true--that islam is a peaceful religion. i was keeping things simple for his french, and putting things plainly made me honest. i said that my family was catholic, and it would be very difficult for me to become muslim. i said that i am not religious--that i believe there is one god, but that i am not clear on the details. i said that i try to do good. he listened without moving to interrupt, and just kind of nodded when i finished. by now a couple of people had climbed the stairs back into the bus. he told me he'd practice his french, and actually said, "it's good to communicate." i couldn't agree more.
in the morning the bus was twisting through the atlas mountains, and everything about the sahara had disappeared sometime while i slept. in agadir my mulafa grandma got off, and when we finally got to marrakech i said bye to badra and gave him my email address. in marrakech it's easy to get lost. you can get lost in the souks, or just lost in the tourists. on the bus i'd been the token non-moroccan... here i was just another white chick looking at leather bags. anonymity begins. another full day later i arrived in tanger and checked into my $4 room with the shared bath, and the balcony window that offered a sliver view of the strait of gibraltar. the medina was packed with tourist shops and street food, but wasn't as shady as the morocco book made it out to be. i ate dinner in a square and let some random guys join me at my table. the first was australian, the others were american and british, and one portuguese. they'd just crossed over from spain and were worried about the food and water. they wished there was beer. they wouldn't have time to get any further into morocco, but they were glad they'd made it to africa.
see the water?
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