I first set foot on the African continent on a bright May morning in 1992. Our cruise ship, the Royal Princess, had anchored a mile or so off the coast, near Tangier, just across the strait of Gibraltar from Europe, and we had tendered ashore. Tangier looked like a busy little city, and most of our fellow passengers were content to spend their day there wandering around the shops. Not us. From among the available tours, we had chosen the one that would take us farthest into the Moroccan countryside. So we piled onto the single bus bound for the town of Chaouen, about 60 miles south.
There were about 30 of us aboard the bus, which had seen better days. A young man of Morocco stood at the front with a microphone. He offered some basic information on Tangier, which we left behind in no more than five minutes, the one lingering image being that of the beachfront, with camels sitting on the sand. Our guide, trying to establish common ground, told us that the expatriate novelist Paul Bowles had spent many years in and around Tangier, and that the area we were about to traverse was the scene of his most famous novel, The Sheltering Sky, written in 1949 and filmed (by Bertolucci) in 1990. (I have since read the novel and seen the film. Don’t bother.)
Tangier has no suburbs. One minute we were in the city, the next minute we were tooling over a two-lane highway in desert flatlands. On the distant southeast horizon were the Rif Mountains. (As an operetta buff, I was reminded of “The Riff Song” from The Desert Song. The Red Shadow had hidden in these very mountains!)
Soon we were reminded that we had entered the third world, as women by the roadside were washing their clothes in little streams. The bus then started gaining altitude as it climbed the foothills of the Rifs, and the road became so twisty that my stomach was begging for the journey to end. Just in the nick of time, we reached our destination, the hillside community of Chaouen.
As we dismounted, we were greeted by our local guide, a smiling Berber of indeterminate age who introduced himself as Toto. Toto, dressed in a white jellaba, had a sunny disposition and spoke better English than one has a right to expect in Chaouen – but with certain idiosyncrasies, such as the overuse of the word “normally” (pronounced “NAHmally.” Later I was able to extract from Toto the fact that he had learned English by listening to the BBC. The word “normally” had obviously fascinated him, and he must have found that it worked like a charm in the tourist trade.
Chaouen was nestled beneath two mountains, not very large but nonetheless imposing because of their proximity. I asked Toto the origin of the town’s name.
“Chaouen means the two mountains,” Toto explained.
“But,” said I, “I have also seen the town identified on some maps as Chefchauoen. What does Chefchaouen mean?”
“Chefchaouen means, Hey, look at the two mountains,” Toto grinned as if he thought this was funny, or rather, as if he knew that I’d think it funny. He was a born tour guide.
The first order of business was lunch, which was served in a very comfortable restaurant in a modern setting. Chauoen, like many tourist towns, has old and new quarters, to provide its guests with whatever amenities they need as well as a look at the way the town was in bygone times. After lunch, Toto led us on a walking tour of the old town – narrow winding streets, houses with whitewashed walls, big blue wooden doors, little children eyeing the strangers, and the market where exotic spices were on display and women’s faces were not.
The old town also had some tourist shops that were obviously favored by Toto, and at one of these a large circular brass piece, serving as a table-top, caught my eye. The brass was about two feet in diameter, and it bore fancy decorative inscriptions that were authentically Berber, according to Toto. After a few moments of haggling, the brass was mine. But I did not warm to the idea of carrying such a big package back to the ship, the airport, etc.
“I would like to have it shipped,” I told the proprietor.
Toto, standing nearby, looked doubtful.
“NAHmally,” he said, “people carry these with them to the ship.”
“But I want this shipped to my home in the United States.”
“No problem,” said the proprietor, and I wrote down my address. Then, since I figured that Toto was somehow related to the shopkeeper, I suggested that I was counting on him to see that the thing was shipped as promised. (Note: A month or so later, the item arrived safely in Massachusetts.)
After the shopping and the sightseeing, it was time to reboard the bus for the long ride back to Tangier. But when we approached the appointed pick-up site, a crowd was gathered outside the bus. Crisis: The bus had a flat tire. It also had no spare. It was now mid-afternoon. The ship was scheduled to sail at 5 PM.
Cruise ship passengers, when choosing land tours, have two choices. One choice is to buy a ship-sponsored tour. The other is to strike out on one’s own, negotiating a deal with one of hordes of taxis clustered around dockside. People will tell you that Option A is better, because you are guaranteed not to miss the boat, while Option B could leave you high and dry. The people who tell you that are absolutely right. In this case, a quick phone call to Tangier alerted Princess that the bus from Chaouen would be late. The Royal Princess would absolutely, positively not sail off and strand us all in Morocco.
A new tire finally materialized, the bus zipped back to Tangier, where a single tender stood by to bring us to Royal Princess, still standing a mile offshore. The seas had been building, and before we could board, the 45,000-ton ship had to reposition itself to place our tender alee. At last, we pulled anchor over an hour late and made for Lisbon.
In recent years Morocco has become trendy, with some of Hollywood’s biggest headliners zipping to places like Tangier and Casablanca and Rabat. Some of them may even have made it to Chaouen, where Toto NAHmally hangs out.
The brass disc, meanwhile, hangs proudly on our living-room wall, a treasured memento of our pilgrimage to the land of the Berbers.
