“Bonjour, Madame” a young man greeted me as we came out of
our room at the Tafti Atlas hotel. It was 9 a.m. on our first morning here. This must be our
Berber guide, I thought. I have to
admit that reading our Inntravel notes prior to arriving in Morocco I had
pictured a Berber guide as being an older man wearing a turban and a djellaba or long robe and maybe thick
sandals carrying a walking stick.
He’d probably have a beard, graying hair, and tired looking eyes. (I read too many novels.)
Standing
before us was a man in his early 30’s, with no beard, short hair, dressed in
khaki pants, a bright blue t-shirt, baseball hat, and dusty running shoes
carrying a backpack. He could have
been from anywhere.
“Bonjour,”
I answered automatically as I shook hands. “Are you our guide?” I asked. “Do you speak English?”
“Non,
Madame,” came the answer while I suddenly panicked and turned to Art.
“Didn’t
the Inntravel notes say that we would have an English speaking guide?” I was
sure they had. “He says he doesn’t
speak, English,” I whispered trying not to panic.
“Of
course, I speak English,” the man spoke up suddenly. “I was just teasing you. My name is Azou Abdou and I am your guide,” he grinned in
perfect English. I breathed a sigh
of relief trying to imagine spending three days hiking while struggling to
revive my rusty college French. Azou,
who obviously had a sense of humor, turned out to be at least quadrilingual speaking
English, French, Berber and Moroccan Arabic…and probably a little German and
Spanish as well. University
educated, Azou told us he had wanted to be a school administrator but there are
few jobs in Morocco for young people who are not born to privileged families
with money and connections. So, he
turned to working as a guide for a tourist company, which is seasonal work and
dependent on tourists coming to Morocco.
He had tried to get a visa to immigrate to the US but had been turned
down five times and had given up. His prospects seemed discouraging and simply
shrugged and said “that is how it is here”.
We would learn more about Azou in
the next few days as he lead us through Berber villages, on donkey trails,
ancient paths, and sometimes simply across fields he was familiar with. We could
go at our own pace and stop whenever we wanted to. We could have never found our own way much less asked our way
because we saw few people on our daily walks and most only spoke a specific
dialect of Berber language. In larger towns and cities most Moroccans are
bilingual if not trilingual with French, Arabic, and Berber but not in small
remote villages where we were.
Our
hike began climbing up and down a strange landscape of heavily eroded
undulating red soil that is dotted with juniper trees, mastic and oleander. Parts of this dry arid landscape reminded
me of photos taken of astronauts walking on the moon. With no one around and only an occasional villager passing
us on a donkey or on foot we might as well have been on the moon! We dropped down to cross a river and
followed an ancient mule trail up through walnut, pomegranate and plum trees to
the village of Anraz.
Azou suggested we take a break and offered us the option of
having mint tea in a Berber house.
We agreed and followed him through the village climbing uphill until we
arrived at a simple house on the outskirts. As in all the Berber villages only
the very young and old remain – while teenagers and young adults leave to look
for work in the cities. Those that
stay behind, work in the fields farming without machinery, using hand plows as
has been done for centuries. We had noticed how quiet the village was and how
few people we saw except for some young children playing by themselves and
occasionally women down by the river washing clothes.
Azou went to find the lady of the house and then came back
to show us in. We walked through an entrance gate and into an open courtyard
off of which we could see a few small open rooms with no visible furniture. I
wondered if people slept on mats on the floor and shivered because it gets cold
in the desert at night. Azou indicated we should take off our shoes and then led
us into a majilis or sitting room
where we rested on a long bench with colorful pillows to wait for our mint
tea. I had learned from living in
the Middle East that a majilis is the
room in the house reserved for guests and special occasions and is therefore
more decorated than any other room in the house. This was a very poor house but the room was brightly painted
with deep blue and yellow and reds making it welcoming. There was no one around at all.
An
old lady brought in a tray with a basic metal teapot and small tea glasses. The
favored drink in Morocco is mint tea made by steeping strong mint leaves in
boiling water and adding sugar to taste.
She served us, as is the custom, by holding the teapot up high and
letting the mint tea cascade into the glass. Then she disappeared. Having drunk all the tea, we put our shoes back on,
gave the Azou some money to give to our hostess and continued on our hike
refreshed. As we were leaving, a
little girl arrived home and I guessed she had been in school for a few
hours. Perhaps she was the
granddaughter. She smiled at us
shyly but would not have her photo taken.
No one in Morocco will and so we had to satisfy our photographic urges
with pictures taken of people’s backs or with a zoom lens when we were a
distance away.
We
passed by bamboo, carob and olives trees, through another Berber village and
back down to the riverbed where a few hours later, Azou announced we would have
lunch. Lunch? I looked around. There was no one
around, and nothing except a log to sit on under a tree in the cool shade. We
had not been given packed lunches at the hotel but Azou opened his backpack and
began setting out three plates and silverware. He then pulled out fresh tomatoes, carrots, cooked cold
potatoes, green peppers, onion, hard boiled egg, canned sardines and fresh
crusty whole wheat bread. I
watched fascinated as he expertly chopped up each ingredient arranging them to
make an attractive salad plate, which we ate ravenously. Apples were our dessert.
“Where
did all this come from?” I asked in amazement.
“The
market in Ouirgane, early this morning before I came to your hotel,” he
answered matter-of-factly. The
menu stayed the same each day. I
knew he didn’t have a car and asked how he got around from place to place. He simply answered “By taxi.” He seemed to know the local taxi
drivers in the area who all drove twenty- year-old white dusty Mercedes Benz
cars on red dirt roads.
Each morning Azou came to the Tafti
Atlas Hotel, where we stayed for four nights, to meet us. We would set off on
foot in a different direction for the day’s walk. He would consult with us as to what we were “up” for that
day and was more than willing to adapt each hike according to how energetic we
felt and how much we wanted to climb.
The second day’s hike took us high up on the Tarabaza Plateau
with spectacular views of nearby hills and valleys and by afternoon we could
clearly see the newly snowcapped High Atlas Mountains in the distance. (November
is when it can begin to snow in the mountains and is supposed to be the start
of the rainy season although we saw nothing but blue skies our entire time in
Morocco.) It was Saturday, which meant that many of the villagers were traveling
by donkey to the market in
Ouirgane to pick up supplies for the week so there was more traffic on the
paths we walked than we had seen.
Art tried out “ a Salaam Aleikum” (Peace be With You) in his best Arabic
from our years in Dubai and would greet villagers as we passed them on the
road. They looked up in
recognition of the phrase and responded.
Azou again expertly prepared our
lunch but we ate it in the majilis of
another Berber house where we were also served mint tea. I defied tradition by asking for my tea
with less sugar. I quite liked the
bitter taste of it rather than the cloyingly sweet drink that is more popular
with Moroccans. It is surprisingly refreshing when you are hot and sweaty from
hiking in the warm sun.
Our
third day with Azou began with an hour-long taxi ride along the Oued N’Fis
reservoir river valley, which is spectacularly scenic as it snakes in and out
of high barren mountains that come straight down to the water almost like
fjords. Our hike on this day was
through peach orchards by the N’Fis River, crossing tributaries that pass
through almond groves. Fields
around these Berber settlements are rocky and we occasionally saw a shepherd tending
a flock of goats and two women with their sheep in a field. Our goal was to reach the Tin-Mal Mosque,
which dates back to 1155 and is the only mosque in Morocco where Non-Muslims
are welcome. At one time it was
part of a thriving town and an important spiritual and cultural center. Today it is partially restored
although there were very few people around when the gatekeeper let us in to
take a look. The inside is
completely open but the beautiful arches are spectacular against the cloudless
blue Moroccan sky.
We
followed Azou down to the river where he prepared our picnic again. I now
understood why he was so expert at this. He had done this many times
before. Yet it felt special each
day as if it was being done only for us.
Our
three-day hiking experience through Berber villages with Azou is not something
most tourists do in Morocco. What
made this unusual was that the paths we walked and the fields we crossed are
travelled daily by Berber villagers and have been for generations. There are no tour buses and no foreign
hiking groups in the area. Azou
had no prepared script as most guides do, but we had meandering conversations
throughout our days about politics, education, family, customs, history, the
United States, and anything we asked about. He gave us his opinion on things as if we were friends. We did not encounter a single foreigner
anywhere on our walks through the foothills of the Atlas Mountains and so it
felt totally special to us. As if
this time we had come close to experiencing life in a remote part of the world
as it really is.
