By Khaled Diab

For people living in cold northern climes, Morocco is the perfect winter escape. Wash away those winter blues with some Moroccan red.

Part II: Migrating to Marrakech

Part III: ‘Little picture’ spoilt by the movies

Photo: © K. Diab

March 2006

The contrast couldn’t have been more striking. On 30 December, we were battling through a snowstorm in Gent which we’d brave to buy some essential supplies before our departure. The next day, we were walking along the sunny Agadir beach in 24°C sunshine. Given the subzero temperatures we had just fled, we could be excused for stripping down to our T-shirts, despite the nippy wind and the bemused glances of locals who were wrapped up nice and warm.

Agadir’s main draw for us was the cheap flight we’d found and the opportunity to spend a couple of vegetative days there, enjoying sun, sea and sand. After all, there’s not much else to this Atlantic coastal town.

We spent the dying moments of 2005 in Morocco. We wanted to do something pleasant for new year’s eve but most of the decent restaurants and hotels were using it as an opportunity to fleece their clientele, charging astronomical – and frankly immoral amounts of money – for a meal and entertainment.

We wound up going to Agadir’s best restaurant serving Moroccan cuisine, where we were treated to a seven-course extravaganza – which evoked mixed feelings of seventh heaven for the first few courses, and the seven cardinal sins for the last few – while we watched people strolling by along the beach promenade.

The build-up to 2006 was spent on the sands of the dark and chilly beach watching a firework display with thousands of locals under the milky waves of the moon. At the stroke of midnight, a cheer rose up through the crowd, we exchanged a kiss, and dozens of boys inexplicably broke into a sprint and headed down the beach towards the source of the fireworks!

‘God, country and king’: an important trinity in Morocco

Photo: ©K. Diab

Not much to see here, move along

The old city of Agadir, which had interesting examples of traditional Berber architecture, collapsed following a mega earthquake in 1960. All that’s left of it is a massive mound created when the authorities, unable to retrieve most of the dead, decided to bury the entire town. Today, no one is allowed to build on this mass cemetery.

Although we’d read about this death mound in our guidebook, we nearly missed it because it looks quite unremarkable. It was only after our chatty, if sombre, taxi driver – who I thought was old enough to remember the 1960 quake but turned out to be only three years older than myself – pointed it out that we saw this haunting piece of terrain.

On the way up the hillside leading to the ruins of the old Berber town, one gets a close-up view of the most dominant feature of Agadir’s skyline at night: the Moroccan holy trinity of God, Country and King. Made up of an arrangement of large white rocks which are floodlit after dark, the three words reflect the accepted status quo in Morocco. At the top of the triangle is God who is above all. At the base of the triangle is Morocco itself and the King, which implies that they are of equal stature, although the nation has a slight edge over the monarch. A throwaway comment about the display and our friendly taxi driver would not be drawn on the topic of the monarchy. In other countries, one would reasonably expect a litany of complaints about the king, but not in Morocco, where Mohamed VI is above reproach, although not as much as his deceased father, King Hassan II.

The driver did talk at some length about the king’s achievements, including his granting of more political and social rights to Berbers. Now his children received Berber language lessons at school. When I inquired whether it was not a little un-PC to be using the term Berber and should he not be speaking of Amzeghi. According to him, Amzeghi was only one of three dialects, the other two being Berber and reif.

After seeing the ochre-coloured ruins of the old city wall, the taxi driver dropped us of at the Sunday market. Once we’d toured the souq’s narrow passageways filled with cone-shaped piles of bright coloured spices, galabiyas, pottery, mosaic tables, and much more, we realised that there wasn’t much else to see in Agadir and began to pine for Marrakech.

Nights of entertainment

Moroccans are generally welcoming and friendly people, especially so to Egyptians, I was to discover. Fed on a regular diet of Egyptian films, music and soap operas, many Moroccans entertain a romantic and amusing image of Egypt. The knowledge some of them had of what ‘reel life’ Egypt is like was truly mind-boggling. The poolside bar at our hotel in Agadir had a constant stream of Egyptian satellite channels featuring scantily clad Lebanese clones singing in the Egyptian pop dialect. It often made me feel self-conscious that some of the people we encountered knew all the latest songs and actors and I didn’t!

However, during our stay we encountered one ugly incident of discrimination. One evening, the only place which served alcohol we could find during our stroll was a so-called ‘English pub’. Normally we prefer local joints, but there were none around.

The waiter told me that I had to go inside the bar if I wanted to consume alcohol, but Katleen and all the other visibly European people were permitted to drink outside. I found this a ridiculous situation and insisted that he bring me a beer, but neither he nor his manager would listen to my protests, and Katleen had to disentangle me from the situation to avoid the scene getting uglier.

It was befitting that we then found another café/bar called Le Jardin d’Eau where we were served beer street-side – which I downed a little too rapidly to douse the flames of my fury – by a friendly waiter who was an encyclopaedia of Egyptian films and music and loved to banter in Egyptian slang.

Part II: Migrating to Marrakech

Part III: ‘Little picture’ spoilt by the movies

ã2006 K. Diab. Unless otherwise stated, all the content on this website is the copyright of Khaled Diab.