Kingdom of the West - 7 days in Morocco. Day 3

30th of March

A new morning in Morocco came quickly, bringing with it another day of travelling. The first few hours were spent discovering the Ouarzazate studios where many movies like The Gladiator and Cleopatra were made; studios left untouched - the columns and tombs resembling a world I only saw in films as a child were still there. Nothing was real: everything was made of plastic and wood, imitating stone and golden walls. But I was fascinated with the grandiosity of it and the feeling of closeness towards the great actors and the movies that took over my childhood. As I walked through the different rooms with jails, thrones and battlefields, I imagined the scenes of battles, lovers, courage and beauty, still present despite the crevices and breakages made by time. 

Another long journey driving towards Merzouga where the desert was waiting for us, still and silent, was about to begin. But I could not leave Ouarzazate without something to remember it by: after an hour of negotiating over mint tea prices, salaries, countries’ economical state and the Moroccan financial crisis, I left with a Moroccan drum made of camel skin and wood. 

And so, satisfied with my successful negotiation, and after receiving compliments about how I am a “true Berber fatima*” and about my “Moroccan blood and spirit”, I set off towards Merzouga: the last place of civilisation before the Sahara desert takes over on the last frontier of Morocco with its imperious high dunes and a vast emptiness of orange sand and an abrupt blue sky marking the edge of the earth. 

After five hours of driving, the views were unchanging: the mountains were watching our back and crimson rocks were sitting still on either side while on the horizon there was a nothingness curved by the road. A mad, straight road that seemed to go nowhere, traversed by no other people, guided by no signs, shaped by no curves or bends. A mad straight road, endless, endless. 

A mad straight road that squeezed all the hope out of my body, all my patience used up. And just before I could no longer bear the motionless, constant journey, a few houses here and there appeared, followed by more houses - a sign of life. Finally, I arrived in Rissani, a small village just before Merzouga and the Sahara dessert where the night was to be spent. But the eyes of the Moroccans in Rissani were not pleased with my pale skin and blue eyes - tourists do not end up there often. There is nothing to see: no marvellous mosques, no dark seas or orange mountains. I held onto my friend’s hand, and hid behind scarves and sunglasses, blending in with the colourful djellabas of their women. I was relieved to find a room to sleep in, some kind of hotel in a Berber family’s house, and to feel the desert so close that I could hear every grain of sand twisting in the wind and the air burning, burning like a fire of heat and a miraculous vastness. 

*fatima = woman 

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