Chapter 18. Marrakech, Morocco
1
A week later, a minor miracle occurred. Two, actually, if you count my not going to a Moroccan prison. But the real miracle happened in a place and manner that was most surprising. It involved monkeys. That, in and of itself, is not surprising. Everybody knows a good story must have monkeys.
The passengers had changed, but Eddie still felt haunted by the two injured boys. When with others he was his usual chipper self, but would grow uncharacteristically quiet when he thought others weren't looking. I desperately wanted to cheer him up. It was a rare moment of accord between Susie and myself. Working together, we even succeeded. It happened at Gibraltar.
If you've heard of Gibraltar, you probably know it has a rock. Boy, does it. The Rock of Gibraltar is the stuff of legend. It's impossible to not be impressed by at least one of the many aspects of the Rock. Even Cosmina would get off on that old rock.
The history was staggering. After all, the sole access to all of the Mediterranean to the outside world was through the Strait of Gibraltar. He who ruled a mere seven miles of waterway—from the tip of Morocco to the tip of Spain—ruled the Mediterranean. As if the Strait wasn't easy enough to defend, the north shore was anchored by the famed, impregnable Rock. This natural, solid stone fortress rose a thousand feet high. Well, not solid—it was riddled with no less than 350 miles of tunnels and oodles of caverns.
In fact, the interior of the Rock was more interesting than the exterior. One chamber was so big they made it into a theater. Behind the stage were natural rock formations stunningly lit in several colors. Pavarotti himself sang there. Most amazing of all was the underground lake in the Rock—still five hundred feet above sea level! But, really, it wasn't about the history or the caverns. It's all about the monkeys.
The Rock of Gibraltar is home to Barbary Macaques. They are the only wild population of monkeys in Europe. They were most likely brought over from north Africa by the Moors during their seven hundred year reign. There is considerable debate about how that happened and why. What is undisputed, however, is that they were already a problem when the British took over the area in 1713. Also undisputed is that they are feisty, thieving little bastards.
Several hundred monkeys live on the Rock, divided into five troops that live at the top of the Rock. Once in a while a few might make a brief foray into town at the base of the Rock. This results in a bit of hassle to protect property from theft or damage, but most locals believe the presence of the monkeys is worth the trouble.
Certainly the British monarchy would agree. According to legend, as long as the monkeys are on the Rock the British will own it and keep their monarchy alive. Legend or not, the British take it seriously enough to keep tabs on the monkeys at all times. In 1942 the population dwindled to just seven, and the great British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill ordered the numbers of monkeys be replenished immediately from both Morocco and Algeria. The order was enacted in what was surely an efficient, if loud and exasperating, military manner.
In fact, for centuries the entire monkey population was taken care of by the British Army. The military controlled their population and even appointed an officer to supervise their welfare. This included disciplined food allowances of such items as fruit, vegetables and nuts—all included in the monkey budget. Yes, the British military had a monkey budget. The officers recorded the births of the macaques and, in proper military fashion, named every single new infant, usually after some high ranking official or other. Should any macaque fall ill, it was taken to the Royal Naval Hospital. In fact, Gibraltar Monkeys received treatment equal to that of any other enlisted person.
Tourists loved the monkeys, of course. The feeling was quite mutual. How else would the monkeys get their greedy little hands on treats like sandwiches and candy bars? Obesity was the leading cause of death among Gibraltar Monkeys.
Our tour van chugged up the steep road that wound higher, ever higher, to the Upper Rock. Just off the road was a plummet straight down to the sea. Those of us on the passenger side of the van—or driver side, rather, since it was British territory and a British vehicle—tried not to look down. Susie and Aurelia both hunkered down over their tour-provided boxed lunches. Cheetos were safer to contemplate than a vertical cliff of 1,000 feet. Eddie and I, however, strained to see past them and into the great abyss of sky. The driver, a small, middle-aged Englishman in a hat, stared straight ahead at the long, long line of brake lights. There was only one road to the top and everybody was on it.
We heard a thunderous thump. Something large hit the roof of the van. It was so loud that several of us nearly dropped our lunches.
"Stow your food," the driver ordered. "Put it away good."
"What was that?" Susie asked, rather alarmed.
"Him," the driver answered, gesturing a thumb out his window.
There, sitting complacently on the driver's side rearview mirror, was a big monkey. He was a burly animal with cocoa-colored fur covering his entire body. His face was 'clean shaven' and a lighter brown. He had no tail. He seemed quite complacent. Another heavy thump rattled our roof and our nerves, and this time we heard a scrambling. We could follow the sound from the back of the roof all the way to the front. Then the antenna began waving madly. Occasional flashes of a small, hairy paw could be seen playfully batting at it, exactly as a cat would paw a length of string.
We exited the vehicle and oodles of monkeys were immediately all over us. They jumped into our not-so-waiting arms and onto our backs. Susie, being a rather sturdy lass, was the target of a particularly big and ugly varmint. It leaped onto her back and immediately scrambled onto her head. With the living, squirming monkey mask blocking her vision, she began flailing her hands and running around. This would have been hilarious, had she not been several steps from a precipice a thousand feet down. Eddie rushed over and steadied her. Though he tugged on the beast, it refused to budge. It absolutely loved being on Susie's head. Indeed, it even began batting Eddie's hands away as he reached for it.
And then the miracle happened. Susie suddenly composed herself, consciously setting aside her knee-jerk reaction of fear. She stood a little taller. Peering from beneath the protruding, hairy belly of the monkey, she smiled. It was a radiant smile, reflected in her eyes. They'd never looked so pretty.
Eddie smiled, too, and exclaimed, "It's about time!"
All three of my companions were targeted for monkey business, though I was avoided for some reason. But my moment of intimacy came soon enough. A baby monkey leapt up onto Aurelia's back and—no doubt having watched others of his kind—began grooming her sweater. It was adorable. Delicate little fingers poked and prodded through the weave of her sweater. Perhaps he wanted to smooth the patterns into the uniform elegance he found on his family. More likely he wanted to find a bug to snack on. He had yet to grow up into a sugar and fat addicted, corpulent freeloader like the others. Aurelia thought it was cute, but grew mildly alarmed when he wouldn't stop. Try as she might, she couldn't shoo it off. Finally I held out my hand and the baby monkey took it just like any little kid, and jumped down. The skin on his palm was not rough, as I suspected, but quite soft and supple.
Leaving the van behind—it would catch up, as there was only a single one-way road—we walked to the top of the Rock. The views of dry Spain and even drier Morocco were stunning. Unfortunately, the weather was not dry. The thick clouds above had begun to spit at us. Meanwhile, monkeys bounced all over the place.
Eddie seemed truly happy. He was having a blast and, amazingly, so was Susie. Not all things were perfect, however. When Susie saw Aurelia and I cuddling—Aurelia was a very clingy lover—she tried the same with Eddie. It didn't work.
After a while we'd seen our fill. The van came easing up to us, a monkey sneaking a ride on each side mirror. When we approached the vehicle, they scrambled up onto the roof. I opened the door and suddenly a monkey struck. It was astoundingly fast. In the bat of an eye, the animal swooped into the van, reached deep into the seat back pocket, fished out Aurelia's bag of chips, and leapt back out. The whole maneuver literally took about two seconds. Even if he'd seen the chips in advance, that would have been amazing. Obviously he knew what people did with their uneaten food. I thought it was amazing. Aurelia didn't.
"Hey!" she shouted, leaping half-way out the van after him. She shook her little fist in the air and squeaked furiously, "Those are my Cheetos! You give them back!"
Laughing, Eddie said, "I think he's scared of you, Aurelia."
"He better be," she smoldered adorably. "He comes back here I'm gonna pop a cap in his ass."
Lest we risk thinking that life was looking up, reality came crashing down upon us like a ton of manure. Eddie somehow managed to join me for a drink after dinner, where he told me about the stink of it.
"Well, it happened," he said simply. "I got fired."
I stared at him in shock.
"Susie's packing right now. I had to lie to get away for a bit. I just wanted to be away from her for a little bit tonight."
"How...?"
"The family sued Windstar Cruises and the knee-jerk reaction was to fire me," Eddie explained. "What can you do?"
"Goddamn ships," I complained bitterly. "You did everything possible for them, everything by the book. You saved their lives! Hell, you even went to the freakin' hospital in Italy with them. I guess I'm not surprised they're suing the cruise line, but did they really have to put it on you? The family didn't give you any credit?"
"Actually, I heard they did," Eddie said. "All the officers backed me up, too. All but one. That was enough. So I'm gone."
All of the officers backed him up, but one. That sounded familiar.
"Who?" I asked. "Who didn't back you up? I thought you got along with everybody."
"I don't want to talk about it," Eddie said, waving off the subject. "It's done. I feel stabbed in the back, to be honest."
I desperately wanted to press the matter. This did not feel like an isolated incident at all. In all my years of ships, and all the hundreds I'd worked with on a daily basis, I'd never known so many to get fired so fast. It all seemed to come down to one mystery officer, too. I had no proof of that, of course, but could not deny the feeling that death stalked the decks of Wind Surf. Was it the same mysterious officer who had Janie fired, took a shot at Yoyo, and now stabbed Eddie in the back? Like Eddie, I got along very well with all the officers aboard. I couldn't imagine any of them being so petty. Only one thing was clear: someone on Wind Surf was a closet asshole. A phantom firer.
"Guess I'll have to deal with Susie after all," Eddie added. "I can't stay on ships anymore."
"Sure you can," I disagreed. "Getting fired on one cruise line doesn't matter to the others. Any first worlder who's survived ships is hot property. But you're right about one thing: you'll have to deal with Susie."
Eddie smiled ruefully and added, "Easier to jump ship in port."
"I'm going to miss you, buddy," I said earnestly, and we clinked glasses.
2
I have wanted to see Marrakech for many years. My ex-wife and I planned on a trip for years. Somehow I have a feeling I beat her there. Ha ha, bitch! Just kidding. Anyway, Marrakech was all that I hoped and more. There were snake charmers in the massive square, theatrical water carriers plying the bazaar, and spice markets with piles of saffron three feet high. For Marrakech was truly the gateway to the mighty Sahara, the world's greatest desert. Camel trains came in daily. I heard the Muslim prayers five times a day broadcast over the air. I saw the veils, the djellabas, the donkeys, the monkeys. I very nearly saw the jails—permanently.
The tour was rather complicated. The ship dropped us off in Casablanca and two busses would drive the 300 kilometers into the desert, right up to the Atlas mountains, to the fabled city of Marrakech. Once the tour of the city was complete, the busses would drive through the Sahara to the western coast of Morocco to meet up with Wind Surf at a small port called Essaouira. The dual port action wasn't the worry, so much as Marrakech itself. That promised to be most tricky.
We would have to herd eighty utterly overwhelmed suburban Americans single file through crowds of screaming hawkers, rug sellers, spice merchants, snake charmers, barefoot children, laden donkeys, and spitting camels. That would be hard enough to accomplish in the open, but we had to keep everyone together through a warren of streets, alleys, stalls, tents, niches, alcoves, and mosques unchanged since the 12th century. Safety was such a concern that three local guides were hired for each bus, as well as two crew members.
Therein lay the trouble.
The day before Cosmina and I retired to our usual table in the Compass Rose to work out the details. Cosmina smoked like a fiend. She was understandably concerned. She would be on one bus, of course, and I would be on the other. But who else? How many reliable crew members could we find who were off duty long enough to join a twelve hour tour? Fabrice was too busy for that, as was Barney. The marina remained open, which meant Eddie and Susie had to stay aboard on this, their last chance for a port before leaving. After the accident the previous week, that meant Faye had port duty, as well. The spa was open all day, thus negating Rick, Natalie, or Ingrid. That left who?
"Yoyo, of course," I said.
The eruption of tobacco smoke enveloped her head as if her temper had exploded like gunpowder.
"He lost eight guests in Italy doing a tour safely done by millions every year, for Christ's sake," she snorted. "Can you imagine him taking control if something goes wrong?"
"Well, you already said no to all the shop girls," I retorted. "That's the only department closed all day. Except the casino."
Cosmina's eyes narrowed.
"Fine," she finally said. "But she'll be on my bus. I don't want you two making out when you're supposed to be watching passengers. You get Yoyo."
And so it was.
Going so far from shore, so deep into a non-Western culture, required some guidance. Prior to departure Cosmina gave a ten minute lecture on what to expect. Her speech was an odd mixture of prevention and tarnation. It began with cultural attitudes about getting along with locals. Being a Muslim nation, most rules fell on the shoulders of women, of course. Photographs: it was extremely rude to take someone's picture without asking permission, especially of women. Eye contact: women, keep your eyes to the pavement to avoid confrontations with men who feel challenged by you. "La, shukran"—no, thank you—needed to be said forcefully at any invitation or approach.
As Cosmina continued, she grew heated. Being from a distinctly macho culture like Romania, her ire was not directed at the inequality of the sexes. She was used to that, and even agreed with an alarming amount of it. Rather, Cosmina began frothing at the mouth over the fact that, well, we were going into Morocco. She was scared she was going to lose some tourists. Her nerves crackled with such ferocity that her speech was nothing less than fire and brimstone.
"Stay in the group at all times!" she cried. "Women, especially, will find things uncomfortable. Men will glare or leer at you if you're alone. And for God's sake, don't show any skin! Do you have any idea what will happen if you show skin? You will get eye-raped, for sure, but probably worse. Wear long pants and long sleeves at all times, or else! Men, too! You go in there wearing shorts and a T-shirt and I can't protect you. They have people juggling fire, for Christ's sake, and snake charmers. If you leave the group, I cannot guarantee your safety. I've hired three local guides to assist each busload, but what can they do against the masses of angry Muslims wielding fire and commanding poisonous snakes? You've got fifteen minutes before the busses leave. So go back to your cabins, dress appropriately, say your prayers, whatever you need to do. Because once you get on the bus, it'll be too late."
"Very inspiring," I congratulated as she stepped off the stage. "Look, you made Yoyo cry."
The petite photographer stared up at Cosmina with huge, terror-filled eyes.
"I need a cigarette," she muttered, then stormed past the crowd of awe-struck passengers—each and every one thinking they'd made a horrible, horrible mistake.
The drive to Marrakech took three hours. Once we left the city, the desert yawned deep and wide. It was hard to imagine that we were heading directly into a desert waste stretching a whopping 2,800 miles. That was the distance between Los Angeles and New York City! Imagine driving across the entire breadth of the continental United States—the world's fourth-largest nation—and never seeing anything grow. The Sahara was crazy desolation. Even the cowboys, riding atop exhausted and dehydrated horses through the scrubby Old West, got to see the occasional buzzard circling above. Not in the Sahara. Maybe things had lived there once, but it's been an unending circle of death for millions of years. Indeed, there were sections of the Sahara where not even insects lived.
The city of Marrakech was deceiving to the core. At a glance, there wasn't much to appreciate. Oh, there were plenty of gardens boasting date palms and several very fine mosque towers, but if driving through one might not take much notice of the place. When staring at drab, patched walls, it's easy to yawn and move on. Yet just behind the mortar, sheltered in a courtyard surrounded on all sides for ultimate privacy, are secret gardens of the lushest beauty. Peppered throughout the seemingly dirty and downtrodden streets, tucked inside and just out of view, were moments as wondrous as anything the pasha could boast of in the Alhambra. Then again, it could also just be a utilitarian, mud-brick courtyard festooned with dripping laundry. And that was the magic of Morocco: it was impossible to imagine what was just out of sight. It was a mesmerizing land where wealth of all types, be it monetary or cultural, abuts illiteracy and subsistence.
But we were not explorers. We were suburban Americans. That meant shopping. And what better place to shop than the ancient medina? For the medina, while overwhelmed with acrobats and actors and magicians, was really about shopping. Morocco was a land of fantastic handcrafts, a wonder of woven cloth and rugs of all colors. Leatherwork was everywhere, tanned in a startling variety of colors from tanning pits in use since antiquity. Anything and everything could be found among the tents and stalls, from pounds of real saffron to bottles of not-so real magical potions. In short, the Medina was everything you'd imagine from a bazaar in the Sahara. I was expecting Disney's Aladdin to run by at any moment, having stolen a loaf of bread.
But behind the wonder lay danger. The place was chaotic. The sights, the sounds, the smells: all were overwhelming. Even experienced travelers get lost in a place like that. Luckily, the guides on my busload of tourists were top notch. They kept the guests organized and moving smoothly. The only difficulty was with Yoyo. He was supposed to stay at the front of the tour with the main guide, in order to photograph the tourists oohing and aahing. Invariably I found him wandering aimlessly on his own, playing with a brass trinket or following a camel. I was very, very glad I had chosen to bring up the rear. Otherwise Yoyo would never have made it back.
No, the real drama came during lunch. For it was here that both busloads of tourists met up. The eighty-odd passengers took over a restaurant in a gorgeous outdoor courtyard. A dozen round tables mingled with countless giant urns pregnant with lush plants and even palm trees. Everywhere were fountains whose water overflowed with rose petals, lending the air a soft, lush quality. The hard desert sun was diffused by shady palms and flapping canopies, leaving the mosaic-covered floor cool. Each table was hosted by a local guide to educate the passengers on the unique cuisine of Morocco. To each table was brought a huge tajine filled with steaming cinnamon and pepper chicken and an extremely delicate hand-rubbed orange couscous.
All that was awesome. Sitting at the table with Yoyo, Cosmina, and Aurelia was not. The two women had been fighting all morning. It was epic. Actually, as feisty as Aurelia was, she rarely directed her energies towards actual confrontation. She took the passive in passive aggressive quite literally. In other words, she utterly blew Cosmina off. And therein lay the problem.
It all started with wardrobe. Though Aurelia had been in attendance for Cosmina's fire and brimstone speech, she felt no compulsion whatsoever to wear long sleeves or even pants. Cosmina had been too busy freaking out—I mean 'being efficient'—to notice. Once the bus took off and the two were finally sitting next to each other, Cosmina nearly had a heart attack. Aurelia was wearing a pink T-shirt—tight enough to show no bra—and cargo shorts with a decidedly feminine cut. She had also brought a sweater, which she tied around her waist. When challenged by Cosmina, she merely shrugged. The vitriol had been building ever since. And finally, during lunch, it erupted.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Cosmina seethed to Aurelia.
"What?" Aurelia asked, nonchalantly dropping several sugar cubes into her mint tea.
"You ordered American food? Why did you order American food? You can't order American food!"
"Why not?"
"Because we're on a tour!" Cosmina viciously whispered. "We have to lead by example."
"But I don't like tajines," Aurelia said simply.
"How do you know?" Cosmina retorted. "How could you possibly know what a real tajine tastes like? We're not in the Moroccan restaurant in Bucharest. What do you know about Morocco? I've studied Morocco because it's my job. It's what I do for a living, learning about other cultures. I'm the professional here. You're not. You'd be totally lost here without me."
Aurelia didn't say anything. Cosmina gladly filled in the silence with angry, repetitive mutterings.
"...tell me she doesn't like tajines! She doesn't know anything. Nothing. She knows nothing!"
"I know I don't like tajines," Aurelia finally sassed back, sipping her tea.
"You don't know shit!" Cosmina exploded. Several guests turned to look, so she hunkered down and continued with a fierce whispering.
"Look at what you're wearing! How stupid can you be to wear that? I should just leave you here. How would you like that? Just leave you here to get along by yourself in this strange land in your wet T-shirt."
Cosmina leaned in close to Aurelia's face and taunted, "What do you think of that?"
Aurelia, unfazed, replied, "I lived in Morocco for three years."
Then, turning to a passing waiter, Aurelia proceeded to converse with him in a mix of French and Arabic a long, long time. The waiter, delighted with the surprise conversation, eventually bowed and walked away. He wasn't the only one surprised, actually. I think it was the most I'd ever heard the aloof Aurelia speak.
Cosmina sat and watched the whole conversation, dumbfounded. The moment Aurelia turned back to her mint tea, Cosmina took a final jab. With great—if hushed—authority, she declared, "My word is law!"
Aurelia shrugged her delicate shoulders and then proceeded to actively ignore her. Cosmina was furious. I was impressed. I recalled the dinky blackjack dealer when she was shaking her fist in the lounge and screaming, "Look at my balls!" I sensed I could learn something from this little one about defying expectations.
Trying to diffuse the tension at the table, I suggested to Cosmina, "Perhaps we should switch on the way back."
"Shut up!" she snapped. "I'm keeping you with Yoyo forever!"
It didn't turn out that way, however. Yoyo missed the bus and only at the last second hopped onto Cosmina's. A good thing for him, too, as the drive home was nothing short of ruinous.
It all started when our bus driver got pulled over by the Moroccan Royal Gendarmerie for speeding. That, in and of itself, was not the problem. It was amusing, in fact. Of course, we've all heard horror stories of reckless tour bus drivers driving off cliff-side roads in the Andes or something, but our driver was nothing of the sort. He was driving down a ramrod straight road through the middle of hours and hours of empty desert. I guess cops had speed traps everywhere.
Alas, the driver did not have all his papers. I don't know what kind of papers that involves in an Arabic country, but he didn't have 'em. A quick bribe of the officer solved that problem. That should have been the end of it. But it wasn't the end of it.
The gendarme waved a hand to indicate all the passengers and spouted something in Arabic. Sometimes Arabic language sounds very ugly. With the night creeping over the Saharan wasteland and a gendarme in blue military fatigues carrying a machine gun yelling at us, it was ugly indeed. I leaned across the aisle and asked our guide, Yousef, if we should be getting nervous.
"He wants to know who is on the bus," Yousef informed me.
"No problem," I said. I stood up and called out to the passengers to pass their passports up to the front. Booklets were passed from hand to hand, back to front, sometimes dropping in the darkening bus. Annoyances were muttered, as well as a few curses, but mostly people were hushed. A pile of passports rose from my seat. The officer took his sweet time picking them up one by one, flipping through them, peering in detail with his flashlight, and finally comparing each to the bus driver's list. The process took so long that the passengers began speaking amongst themselves, quietly at first, but with growing casualness. Soon the entire bus was talking. A nasty bark from the gendarme shut everybody up immediately.
The list did not correspond to the passports. Heated words were exchanged between the gendarme and the driver, then the gendarme and the guide. One need not speak the language to recognize accusations or defenses. After several minutes of heated debate, which appeared to include references to another bribe, the gendarme stuck a thumb at me.
"What's going on?" I asked Yousef.
"Your passport isn't here."
"Of course not," I said. "It's on the ship."
"I told him that. He wants to know why."
"I assume it's to stop crew from jumping ship in foreign ports."
Yousef spoke, the gendarme responded. The atmosphere was getting more heated, not less. Finally Yousef turned back to me again and asked, "How do you justify going so far into Morocco without a passport?"
"A crew ID is a legally accepted form of identification," I replied, growing nervous. I couldn't help but dwell on the irony that every other cruise line I'd worked for allowed American employees to keep their passports. Only on Windstar Cruises did I have to relinquish the document and rely on my cheap plastic crew ID. That was a perk that had annoyed many of my fellow crew members.
The gendarme barked orders at me and gestured outside. His hard posture and impatient stare made it clear he wanted me to exit the bus.
My throat got dry.
"No way," I said. To Yousef I repeated several times, rather urgently, "No way. Please tell him I am staying with the group."
The gendarme was not happy. He began insisting for me to obey in a manner that intimidated me and scared the bejesus out of the driver—which in turn scared the bejesus out of me. It was a nasty spiral. The driver urged me to go outside, begging with clasped hands. He was visibly sweating. Soon I was, too. In heavily accented English, the driver implored, "Please go. He no take you unless... stay in light. Stay in light."
"Now I'm really freakin' out," I commented, only half in jest. To Yousef, I asked, "What the hell does he mean?"
"I go with you," Yousef said. "He will not arrest you without taking me, as well."
"Tell me what the driver means by 'stay in the light,'" I insisted. "If that's some sort of Poltergeist reference, I'm running. You hear me? I'm running."
"Stay in the headlights," Yousef explained. "If the gendarme tries to take you away, stay visible to the driver and the passengers."
With great reluctance I stepped off the bus. Yousef quickly interjected himself between me and the gendarme. Stepping onto the hard-packed dirt of the roadside, I glanced around nervously.
The sun had set and the air was cooling. A strong breeze blew from the east, from the rugged Atlas Mountains behind us. Some distance away, the dunes piled up to the side of a rocky outcropping. The silhouette of date palms teased at life, yet atop the rocky promontory sat only the blasted, bleached ruins of an ancient fortress. This desert was dead, dead, dead. Nothing lived here at all except miraculous flies the size of swallows. The stupid things went straight for my eyes, presumably for the moisture. They kept thumping into my face.
We stalked over to the front of the bus and stood firmly in the blast of the headlights. The gendarme motioned towards his patrol car sitting in the dark, but I shook my head. He marched up and began yelling at me. It was not pleasant, and even more disconcerting because I had no idea what he was saying. I was distracted mightily by the headlights flashing on the fully automatic assault rifle he wore over his shoulder. I know everybody else in the world thinks to be American means to sleep with an M-16, but that is obviously not true. An angry man with an assault rifle yelling at you in a foreign tongue is the stuff of nightmares.
I did not want to end up in a Moroccan prison. Being in the country without a legal form of ID was enough to warrant it. Despite what I said, what the hell did I know about my ship ID's legal status? I just assumed I was legal—and we all know what happens when we assume. I could easily have been in breach of some provision of international law, or Moroccan law. Even the suspicion of it was enough to justify being arrested and processed. And if that occurred, well, anything could happen....
Yousef was a godsend. He didn't bother translating everything, which was probably a good thing. For nearly an hour they shouted back and forth. An hour! Finally the vibe changed. The gendarme, unable to separate me from the group, seemed to realize his limits. Unless he was willing to truly escalate the situation—a risky proposition with the driver and forty-odd passengers watching—all he had was intimidation.
In the end all was cleared. To say I was relieved is a whopper of an understatement. Surprisingly, we didn't even have to bribe the guy. No doubt he knew that you just don't harass tourists or they don't come back. To be honest, he probably just wanted a little retribution for the fact that America was currently invading two of his fellow Arabic nations. The gendarme drove off, and we did, too. Or tried to. We got about ten miles before the bus broke down.
Needless to say, there was no cell phone reception out in the middle of the Sahara. Fortunately the bus had a CB radio, which was used to call in for a new bus. None were available. What they were all doing after dark on a weekday remained a mystery. A repair vehicle was sent out. The passengers were allowed to wander outside the bus, of course, but none did. Considering what they'd just witnessed with me and the gendarme, nobody felt like stretching their legs—or even peeing. Eventually the repairman came and replaced the fan belt. We limped back to Essaouira, a whopping four hours late. A mortified Cosmina nearly swooned with relief.