1
Ahh... Morocco! Gateway into Africa and the fabled sands of the Sahara; land of spices and carpets, of sweet tajines and orange-rubbed couscous; a multi-cultural land, conquered and reclaimed and conquered again. Yes, everybody wanted Morocco. And I wanted it, too: date palms, camels, and kasbahs. I wanted to see one of the most exotic spots on Earth.
Tangiers was the northernmost city of all of Africa. Want the Atlantic? On your left. Lookin' for hot Mediterranean nights? Look right. Straight across rose the Rock, a scant seven miles across the Strait of Gibraltar. The amount of terror that has passed through that stretch defies imagination, from Nazi U-boat wolf packs to Napoleon's dread fleet, the Barbary pirates to the Spanish Armada.
Water hides its scars. Not so, the land: the successive waves of conquerors all left their mark. The sight of men wearing beards and turbans begat false ideas of Islamic isolationism. Morocco was a shockingly multi-cultural nation. In fact, when famed author George Orwell visited Tangiers in 1938, he noted post offices representing four distinctly different governments; he even bought British stamps using French coins.
The city started all messy, too. It was founded by none other than the son of Greek gods Poseidon and Earth. His name was Antaeus, but nobody cares about that. Of more interest is that he was killed by Hercules—by suffocation, no less. How one can suffocate the son of gods is logistically problematic, but stuff like that never bothered Hercules. He then proceeded to separate Africa and Europe—with a single blow, no less. The result of all this machismo was that Hercules took the city Antaeus founded. He also took the daughter he sired. But Hercules was a busy man, too busy even to enjoy such booty—pun intended—so he gave the woman to his son for a bride. Her name, Tinge, became the name Tangiers. All the best stories involved Greek gods and demigods. Or at least togas.
But for those who prefer a more secular history, know then that Phoenicians founded the place. After Carthage fell, Tingis—as it was then called—became a Roman outpost. Various rulers came and went after that, until the fateful year of 711. That's when Tarik ibn Zayid took his armies through Tangiers to conquer Spain. It took over 750 years to get them out. That's right: they remained undefeated for three times longer than the entire history of the United States.
So Tangiers was an old, old city with a surprising past. Some parts were strikingly modern, others not. Its high-rise buildings did not particularly interest me. Its three-millennia-old kasbah did. But if there was anything I had learned about travel, it was that you don't know what you don't know. That applies to everything in life, but particularly so in travel. I did not know what Tangiers, or Morocco itself, had to offer. I wanted to learn. Thus I hosted forty passengers from Wind Surf on a tour to find out.
It was hot outside. I figured it would be because we were, like, in the Sahara Desert. You know, the world's largest and most famous desert? Seeing nothing but sand and palms and Arabs was also a clue. Apparently such a supposition was not so obvious, based upon the gripes. Fortunately we were outfitted with a huge, modern bus with an effective air conditioner.
While the last passengers squeezed their collectively complaining bulk into the wide, cushy seats, I waited beside the guide. Hassan was a man who stood out in a crowd. He was tall and robustly chested, his skin dark, mustache wide, and face extremely handsome. His wardrobe was equally enchanting, with a floor-length jellaba flaunting grey and black vertical stripes, fez to match. His rich baritone voice fluently spoke five languages. I looked forward to hearing what this man had to share about his unique and world-famous home.
I was the only one. For within fifteen seconds of sitting down—almost as fast as Natalie gets bored in a train—the entire front three rows of passengers began spewing racial slurs at our guide.
A few of the jokes were only light barbs, such as 'never trust a man in a dress.' Tacky and rude, to be sure, but not particularly hurtful. Those were the exception. The rule was downright evil. Only Osama bin Laden himself deserved such hate. Of course Hassan had done nothing to these middle-aged Americans of above average income and above average waistline. Through the lash of insults he sat quietly, eyes straight ahead. Hassan took each blow with tremendous dignity, only flinching when someone shouted, "Your mother fucks camels!"
Someone started singing "Proud to be an American." Others joined in. Funny how at that moment I felt exactly opposite.
Our first stop was a nearby town called Tetouan: a creamy smear of white-washed cottages filling a valley of eucalyptus, cypress, and orange trees. It claimed the distinction of having been so over-run with corsairs that, in 1399, King Henry III of Spain said "screw it" and razed the entire city to the ground. It remained scorched earth for another two hundred years. Only when the Jews and Muslims together fled the Spanish Inquisition did it get rebuilt by the refugees.
Americans love pirate stories. Some of us are attracted by the ultimate expression of personal freedom. Who doesn't want to hack apart their cubicle with a cutlass, or punch the face of an irrational guest? That hell-may-care attitude lurks within us all. Yet America has little enough pirate history of our own. Hassan shared Morocco's, narrating the romantic tales of derring-do with a thundering voice. I thought it was fascinating to hear about real pirates and see real pirate coves. Alas, nobody else heard anything after Hassan said the 'I' word.
Inquisition.
The bus shook with righteous fury as all the men and women cheered and jeered. Oh, how proud they were of the Inquisition for torturing and slaughtering Muslims. The fact that the church did it almost entirely to Christians—whose property they intended to steal—didn't faze the crowd in the least. They were gleeful to be reminded of the good ol' days when Christianity scared the bejesus out of everyone, especially Christians. And now that it was 2005, by God, it was America's time to start it all over again. Booyah!
Hassan urged the bus driver to escape the hate by skirting the beautiful Bay of Tangiers. The blue waters did, indeed, calm the rhetoric. But the busload of Ugly Americans had become impatient. They were hot and they were hungry and they were thirsty. They were bored of the desert and bored of the ocean and bored of the history. They wanted a shopping mall. Hassan ordered the driver to return to the city.
We passed a school and Hassan explained that in Morocco students were required to learn three languages. Nobody cared because "American is the only language that matters." We passed the lush Mendoubia Gardens, but nobody cared because it was "just a big park." We toured the Spanish-built Grand Socco marketplace, but nobody cared because it "looked Mexican." Exasperated, Hassan asked me what the guests actually wanted to see. Before I could answer, a man shouted "anything but rag-heads playing big city."
Finally Hassan dumped everybody off at the medina. Here was something utterly unlike anything the crowd had back home. Here, crowded within walls 3,000 years old, were spice traders and rug merchants; here were fire eaters, snake charmers, and belly dancers. "Come with me to the kasbah," ran the famous line. Though originally used as a trailer for the film Algiers—which itself prompted the making of Casablanca—the line was arguably more famous for being used by the cartoon skunk Pepé le Pew. This was all pretty exotic stuff, but apparently it was a lot more fun to mock the lack of Western-style infrastructure.
"Oh, the Walmart is around the corner, I'm sure. Ha ha!"
"How dumb these people are! Who cares how many languages you know if you haven't heard of Krispy Kreme!"
We labored through streets labyrinthine and narrow, through cramped stairwells, and through thick crowds. The streets were intentionally not wide, not straight, and not on a grid. Hassan explained that this was because they were designed by Phoenicians—a thousand years before Christ—in an effort to protect against invaders. The Ugly Americans had a much simpler explanation: "Before Jesus, people were so stupid."
Everyone complained bitterly and viciously about the lack of elevators and escalators. Though the tour was advertised as 'extremely strenuous,' over a dozen from the group were incapable of walking up a single flight of steps because they were so overweight. They complained loudly the whole time about how "foreign countries just don't understand American needs." In their creative efforts to avoid even a handful of steps, people became separated from the group. I had extreme difficulty keeping them together. Fortunately their bitching was loud enough to stand out in the crowd.
A boy of about twelve, barefoot and shirtless but clean, tried selling a bottle of Coca Cola for a dollar. He presented it to a forty-something woman of monstrous proportions and monstrous demeanor. And how did this American lady react to the boy's entrepreneurship? As if he was deaf, she literally shouted at him, "Why can't you speak English, like the rest of the world? I don't care if you speak three languages! You want our money or not? America has more money then Spain or France... learn English!"
Eventually the loathsome tourists were returned to the ship. They jostled and shoved their way out the front of the bus. The final guest contemptuously complained about the lack of acceptable souvenirs: "Not a single T-shirt shop!"
Hassan remained on the bus. He sat in the front row, hands resting gently in his lap, staring straight ahead. To the window he spoke, as if in a daze, "Nobody even looked out the windows. We drove past the summer home of the King of Saudi Arabia. So many beautiful buildings. Nobody wanted to see the new soccer stadium or the university that features seven different languages. Not one person tried the food."
Finally he looked up at me, and asked, "Why did they come here? All they will remember is the old, dirty kasbah, which hasn't changed in 3,000 years. They will think this is all Morocco is. They will claim to know, but they don't know. They had a chance to learn. I just don't understand why they came here."
Mark Twain famously said, "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people sorely need it on these accounts." But when you've already made up your mind, it doesn't matter where you are: you see what you expect to see. I had seen Ugly Americans before, but not like this. This wasn't ethnocentrism: this was hate for another way of life. America was at war with 'terror'—a vague phrase intentionally never clarified. But everybody knew an Arab man hurt us on 9/11, thus Arab men were the enemy. It was really that simple. Most Americans were too ignorant to know that a turban does not an Arab make, any more than a beard does.
And that's what really had me fuming. Not just the blatant rudeness and belligerence, but the sheer stupidity.
We had the greatest volume of wealth on the planet Earth... so why were we so embarrassingly stupid? We had no excuse for such ignorance. These 'rag-heads playing big city' required their students to be fluent in three languages to graduate. 20% of American high school graduates can't even read—English or otherwise. In fact, nearly 1 in 4 Americans can only read at a childish 5th grade level. Our math skills rank 21 out of 23. That's not a slip from the top: that's a plummet. That's a pathetic display of effort.
Our forefathers worked their butts off to give us more opportunity than they had. After scratching out a meager existence during the entire decade of the Great Depression, they went on to win the greatest war in the history of all humankind. And their children, raised fat and happy in houses two and a half times bigger—and with access to computers—can't handle four lousy years of college? When I graduated in 1995, America ranked 2nd on the planet for college graduation. Twelve short years later we dropped to 13th.
People like to blame politicians, blame corporations. I blame reality TV. We are all wrong. The dumbing down of America rests squarely upon the shoulders of those who demand nothing of themselves and even less of their children. Who to blame stares us in the mirror every day. Effort became passé, comfort became king. These Ugly Americans displayed the arrogance of spoiled children gloating over the accomplishments of their forefathers. I would argue that the privileged mocking the unprivileged is not an American virtue. But as has been so clearly demonstrated, I am wrong.
2
Terrorism struck the ship that day. Security wasn't technically breached because there was none. I can't fathom why that was. Usually a few security officers wander the pier to prevent any illicit boardings. Usually. But not today! I can imagine them letting security slide in, say, Monte Carlo... but in a third world Arabic port? That's a curious omission. But forget security they did, and into the ship someone got.
Emmet was the first to see the culprit. He'd been hanging over the side of the ship, painting the hull. Most ports did not allow the painting of moored vessels due to environmental concerns—dripping paint and whatnot—but Tangiers was not exactly enlightened. Thus Emmet was out in his boiler suit all day, paint dribbles streaking across his pretty face like Jackson Pollock touching up Mona Lisa.
From his vantage on high, Emmet caught sight of someone shimmying up a mooring line to squeeze through a porthole. No, it wasn't Captain Turner. Security caught the man within minutes, of course, hiding in the dining room. He was not an Islamic jihadist baby-killing devil, but just a desperate local boy willing to take a risk for a better life. For a young Mr. Turner, it was an admirable feat. For this young man, it was a deplorable overreach. He was escorted off without any hassles or reprisals.
Because security—or lack thereof—had been breached, a full security sweep was warranted. I was ordered to complete a thorough check of everything under my jurisdiction, which meant searching for bombs in my art lockers, the gift shop, and all our storage. That didn't take long. Searching under all the animal hats in my cabin took forever. Interestingly, Eddie was asked to dive with Emmet to check the hull for explosives. Certainly Eddie was happy to undertake the task, knowing how good it would look on his application as diver for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Having the full faith of a senior officer in searching out bomb threats in foreign ports was nothing to sneeze at. They didn't find any bombs, of course.
Unfortunately for Eddie, that full faith didn't help when the hammer fell.
3
Mt. Capanne is the tallest mountain in all of Livorno province, Tuscany. At the top one is toe to toe with the gods. This may seem a bold claim for a peak standing only 3,343 feet (1,019 meters), but it is not one made blithely. I'd climbed dozens of mountains on multiple continents and never before felt so much like a Greek god atop Mt. Olympus—not even when I was atop Mt. Olympus! Part of the charm is that Mt. Capanne is not on the mainland, but actually rises from the Isle of Elba. The sea punctuates the experience, with islets dotting the I's and peninsulas crossing the T's. Perhaps the real reason for feeling so divine is how you get to the top: you fly.
Though dubbed a funicular, the ride more resembled a ski lift. But not just any ski lift, oh no. Those little cages didn't just soar above groves of chestnuts like other cable cars; they continued far out of sight, valley after peak after valley after peak. The stretches between ridges were isolated and lonely: just you in a tiny, open cage taking in the panorama. Or, rather, just me and Cosmina.
The cage itself was incredibly small—so small, in fact, that two 'American-sized' adults would not fit inside. Good thing Cosmina was dinky! Both facing outward, our bodies were pressed back-to-back. More accurately, cheek-to-cheek. Though supported by secured bottoms, we felt anything but stable. The cage bobbed and bounced merrily on the wires some thirty feet above the ground. I loved heights and thought it a delight, somewhat in the vein of an amusement park ride. There was little chance of us getting shaken out of the cage, but every surge felt like the cage itself was flinging off the track.
That's when Cosmina admitted she was terrified of heights.
I thought she was joking, maybe playing some sort of game for attention. One look confirmed she was on the verge of panic. She had turned to face inwards, both feet thrust outward and butt pressed against the cage to fully brace herself. She gripped the rail so tightly that her arms actually wavered under the strain.
"What the hell, Cosi," I said, looking at her pale face. "You really are scared of heights! So that's why you gave me the helicopter tour in Monaco!"
"Oh my God," she moaned. Her body swayed. The wind gusted, pushing us about. The cables jiggled up and down the mountain. Cosmina made a weird, squeaking noise and gripped ever tighter.
"Stop tensing," I commanded. "You're going to pass out if you keep your joints locked like that. You're in a cage, Cosi, you couldn't get out of this if you tried. You've got to relax."
Panting with eyes squeezed shut, Cosmina croaked, "Get my phone... out of my purse."
I pawed for her purse. Retrieving her cell phone was a difficult operation, considering our hips were locked together and there was no room for elbows. It was probably the most intimate I'd ever been with somebody while fully clothed. As a groping teen I hadn't the imagination to top this simple telephone retrieval. The tiny cage jostled along and we continued to play Twister in the sky. Finally I found the item and offered it to her. Because her eyes remained firmly shut, I tapped the phone on her body. But she would not release her death grip from the rail.
"Hold it up," she commanded through gritted teeth. I complied.
Peeling back one eyelid as little as necessary to see, Cosmina took in the situation. Finally she instructed me on the order of buttons to push. Again, I complied, finally finding the number for her mother—in Romania. When the phone began ringing, I pressed it to her ear. Soon Cosmina was yammering in lightning-fast Romanian. She spoke so quickly I understood nothing of what she said. Well, almost nothing. One word kept being repeated over and over, like a mantra. Pula.
"Okay," Cosmina finally said, indicating I could hang up. She took a deep, shaky breath, opened her eyes to look into mine. Hers were deadly earnest. Mine were amused.
"Did I really hear you say what I thought you said?" I asked, rather cryptically. "Pula... to your mother?"
"It was her advice," Cosmina clarified with puffed breaths. "To take my mind off it."
"But pula means—"
"A nice big dick," Cosmina confirmed. She was nothing if not her mother's daughter. Cosmina suddenly slid downward, collapsing to sit on the bottom with crossed legs. The maneuver quite literally pressed her face into my crotch. I hastily sat down, too. The floor of the cage was too small for us to both actually sit, so we squirmed and wiggled until fully entwined with each other. There was simply no other option.
"This is absurd," I said. "Why did you come up here if you're so scared of heights?"
"I wanted to talk to you about your Romanian woman," she answered carefully. "Now you can't get away."
"What, what, what?" I whined. "I'm tired of the whole thing."
Was that ever true. I hated talking about Bianca with Cosmina. I couldn't even remember how the conversations went because I never really knew how things stood. At several points I recalled telling Cosmina that Bianca and I were done. Until Cannes, I hadn't actually believed it was over. The ending had been a long time coming, yet sudden all the same. Cosmina called me on it.
"From the beginning you said it was over," Cosmina accused. "You made a big deal about being done with Romanian women. Yet you were still all bubbly and moony when talking about her. So it wasn't over, even though you told me it was. Three months go by and you started seeing her again, in Messina, in Cannes. But now you act different. Now you don't talk about her. So is it over, or what?"
"I hadn't realized all that," I admitted. I was never a good poker player, and Cosmina read me like a book. She knew damn good and well it was over between me and Bianca; a story told by my body language, my silence. I was loathe to tell her I was single. Being taken was an easy out and I was sick of ship life's Green Card crap. "It's over. And believe me, I'm finished with Romanian women. Screw 'em all."
Cosmina eyed me warily.
"If you want out of Romania so bad," I finally said, "Why not go after Fabrice? France is nice."
"Oh, please," Cosmina chortled. "He's smaller than I am!"
"So what? It's not about love. It's about citizenship. Maybe go after an officer." With more than a little contempt, I added, "They're apparently suffering a shortage of white women."
4
That evening I was lured into the main lounge, near the boundary to the casino. The casino itself was empty, barring Dimitar, who loitered at a blackjack table as sentry. He frequently allowed his employees a chance to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes, which they did with wild abandon. At a corner table nearby sat two blackjack dealers and Cosmina.
To my surprise, all three women conversed in Romanian. A svelte brunette with high cheekbones and a killer body was obviously Romanian, but I never would have pegged the petite blonde as such. I was stunned to recognize her as the lady I'd seen at the Shipwreck Cathedral in Malta. I was again struck by her simple, delicate beauty. I was about to engage her when the brunette spoke.
"So you're the American who speaks Romanian," she said with a husky voice. "Say something!"
Waving the air clear of cigarette smoke, I replied with some banal pleasantry. She and Cosmina both burst into laughter. Seeing my frown, Cosmina patted me on the leg and said, "We don't say it like that in the capital. You say it very old fashioned."
"Say something else!" the brunette continued, waving her cigarette excitedly. "Something a peasant would say."
"I learned that from a retired colonel," I snapped, annoyed. "I'm not a performing monkey."
Through it all the blonde merely sipped her coffee, utterly aloof. Suddenly the brunette groaned, saying, "He's back."
All eyes turned to the casino, where a nondescript guest entered and sat at a blackjack table.
"Rude player?" I asked.
"Not really," the brunette answered, stuffing out her cigarette. "But he doesn't tip. Aurelia, didn't you say last night he stayed until two o'clock?"
Suddenly, to everyone's surprise, the little blonde—Aurelia—began raging in an exceptionally high-pitched voice. She rose to her feet and launched into a fiery tirade of squeaky doom.
"Yes! Why doesn't he go to bed? Doesn't he want to sex his wife? What kind of man doesn't want to sex his wife? I've got more balls than him!"
I instantly took a liking to this suddenly not-so-quiet blonde. With her falsetto voice she could be as sassy as she wanted and get away with it—and was she ever sassy. A strangely alluring and amusing dichotomy, this mousy woman. Not done with her harangue, she turned to the lounge, shook her little fist in the air, and furiously cheeped, "I've got bigger balls than you! Look at my balls!"
5
Of equal height to Mt. Capanne, but much greater danger, was Stromboli. The island and the volcano were really one and the same, for there was nothing to the place but steep flanks rising up to the crater. Actually there were three craters. And actually there was something more to the island: a tiny community of bat-shit crazy fishermen hugging the shore. Stromboli erupted more regularly than Old Faithful in Yellowstone—every twenty or thirty minutes—with the added oomph of major explosions every few months. If living on the side of a live volcano that's erupted continuously since Christ isn't bat-shit crazy, I don't know what is.
Stromboli was famous for several reasons. It was probably the most visited volcano on Earth, lovingly called "the Lighthouse of the Mediterranean." Its eruptions were so distinctive that vulcanologists used the word 'Strombolian' to describe similar activity in other volcanoes around the world. So famous is Stromboli that Jules Verne mentioned it in his famed novel Journey to the Center of the Earth, when Axel and Otto Lidenbrock emerge from their subterranean journey via the volcano.
Wind Surf's arrival to Stromboli wasn't quite so exotic. We sailed past the peak just after the sun dipped below the horizon. The waters lost their gold-tipped turbulence and turned to black chop. The beast rose from the dark, black on black, silhouetted only by stars. Red vapors issued from the tip of the dark triangle, yet catching the sun swallowed by the sea.
I had wandered up to the top deck to watch Stromboli do his thing. Boy did he. The first eruption was simply huge, with fountains of molten rock hurled high, high into the air. I desperately wanted to know how high the lava was thrown. But to me it was nothing more than a flaring patch of orange floating in the black.
"Two hundred meters, I'd gauge," Emmet said from beside me.
I started, having not known he was there. Nor did I realize I had spoken my thoughts aloud.
"I only know because I've climbed to the top," Emmet explained. "I've seen it dozens of times during the day, during the night. That was a big one."
I nodded in the dark, unable to tear my gaze from the frothing lava. Lava was awesome!
"The mountain's fitful tonight," he said. Clasping his hands behind his back, Emmet then strode off into the night.
I understood fitful, but no longer felt it. When I first signed on, I had reflected John Adams when he wrote in his diary, "I wander alone, and ponder. I muse, I mope, I ruminate." Ever had I done so over Bianca. But from such activity conclusion comes, followed by a sense of peace. At times I loved her more than anything else in the world, at times she vexed me beyond my capacity to tolerate. In the end, I could do nothing but thank her for showing me just how exciting life could be, and how to chase your dream. Sometimes you even catch it. Fortunately, more often than not the journey is its own reward.
Certainly my journey was rewarding now. Yet doubt lurked. I was disturbed by Janie's firing—disturbed by both her accusations and those of the officers. It could have been an isolated incident, yet seemed not. Mere days later another was fired. This time it was a Filipino named Juan, whom I'd enjoyed a casual acquaintance with. Like Janie, he was abandoned in Arabic North Africa, penniless and distraught. Perhaps he deserved it. Perhaps, as a security officer, he was responsible for letting the stowaway on board. But again, like with Janie, management refused to discuss anything with anyone. Nothing was certain, but one fact.
Crew members were dropping like flies.
My newfound joy was being stripped away. I had mistakenly thought the source of my newfound happiness was the magnificent ports. Certainly they helped. But I had to finally admit to myself that I'd seen many a fantastic spot alone and not been pleased by the experience. Joy didn't come from places, it came from sharing them with others. Oh, big ships had plenty of people—changing like underwear. Penetration was easily achieved and just as easily forgotten. Connection was the hard part. I had struggled to find my place with the various cliques, but never fit into any. On Wind Surf, I didn't just find a clique that fit: I found a family.
For the first time, I was feeling protective of my fellow crew members. I didn't want to see any more disappear. Well, maybe Yoyo. But disappear many would, and there was nothing I could do to protect any of them... or myself.