Driss's sisters were crying, his mother was crying. We shook hands and Driss's mother and I kissed eachother's hands numerous times. Driss's brothers and I kissed eachother on the cheek while shaking hands.
I walked out the door, not wanting to look back, embarrassed by own lack of tears, my own stoniness in the face of such unabashed emotion. A cry came out from behind me. "Don't go!" yelled Driss's sister Hadda. Another cry came out from Driss's brother, Younnes. "You forgot your sandals!" he yelled, waving a pair of Chinese-made flip-flops purchased at Old Navy for one dollar and fifty cents.
"Goodbye!" I responded, "and I meant to leave the sandals."
It was truly an emotional goodbye, and my lack of tears was in no way proof of a lack of interior turmoil. While I am excited and ecstatic about the next portions of my voyage, leaving Ksr El Barrani was in no way an easy task, and I did so with a heavy heart.
An hour later, I boarded a bus bound for Marrakech. The windows were broken and stuck, the tires were complelely bald, and the exterior paint was chipped and faded. I said goodbye to Driss and Abdelhak, who had accompanied me to the bus station, and with trepidation and a still-heavier heart, boarded the bus.
Luckily, my local Peace Corps friend Anne had given me some English language books to pass the time during my travels. And so, with the help of Carl Hiaasen (cheesy, yet fun, mystery writer) and Barbara Kingsolver (wonderful book--Bean Trees), I was able to ignore (mostly) the treacherous cliffs and mountain passes that our bald-tired bus was traversing.
Twelve hours later I reached Marrakech, tired and sore, and grabbed a taxi to the main square. I honestly felt something like a country bumpkin must feel on his first trip to the big city. Everything was too fast, too much, too new, too bright, for my countrified eyes. In the span of one bus ride, I skipped from dark roads and adobe homes to neon and traffic jams.
My response was multifaceted. Here is what I wrote last night in my journal before going to bed:
And so it all comes down to this--to the end of a portion of this trip. It is an end marked by moments of true splendor and amazement, of incredible shock that this city could possibly exist in the same country as Ksr El Barrani. It is an end of bright lights and smoke and a mass movement of people that shocks the senses, or wide-eyed excitement at the sheer glory of this towxn--the rising, backlit towers of the mosques, the inmpressive walls of the medina, the sheer number of people and cars.
It is also, unfortunately, a reminder of the realities of this country's tourist-filled cities. It is the annoyance of the hashish sellers and shop owners, pushy as ever, still hissing at me in the darkness. It is the waiter (to use a term loosely) at an outdoor grill who literally shakes his open palm in my face while telling me that the tip is not included. It is this same waiter who takes my reluctantly-offered tip (as far as I could tell, he had done nothin) and kicks (or feigns to kick) it into the teeming throngs of people in the famed Djeema El Fna Square, deeming it unworthy of his "work."
Tonight I fly to Madrid, officially terminating the Morocco section of this summer's traveling. I will spend the night in the Madrid airport, and tomorrow head for Lisbon on an early-morning flight.
No comments:
Post a Comment