Morocco

Halfway through Morocco, back on the road solo and more acutely aware of my aloneness with every meal, long hour or lonely evening shuttered away from the unwanted attention.

Morocco has been, in some ways, a lot easier than expected. I wore a headscarf for three days and gave it up in Marrakech, where the number of Arabic women wearing one was about half. Seems silly for me to wear something that I think symbolizes women’s repression in Arab countries, particularly if they’re not doing it; wearing one almost seems to set back “the cause.”

I arrived at the bus station at sunrise on New Year’s Eve and headed off again, this time to Sevilla, a loud, expensive city that seemed to put a fine point on my loneliness. Language barriers tend to bring that out in me. I was happy to leave the next afternoon – Sevilla is gorgeous but way too expensive – and met a charming American woman and her chatty 12-year-old son, who was nerdy in a way that kids who are home schooled or conceived late in their parents’ lives seem to have. Still, the mom made for great company, although she was physically a bit slow and often seemed slightly unaware or even oblivious to what was happening around her. In a lot of ways, she reminded me of Aunt Bonnie.

The ride out of Tangier into the mountains around Chefchaouen was amazing, breathtakingly gorgeous and sometimes just breathtaking in the speed and recklessness with which we rounded corners, overtook donkey carts and otherwise climbed the switchbacks into the Rif. Everywhere there were donkeys, some loaded, some drawing carts, others pulling ploughs. The women dressed in white and red fabric, the men in ubiquitous jellabahs. It was like something out of a movie, a culture totally unafraid to be itself, in some ways unwilling to change.