Fingers of the Monkey
Our plan was to leave Fez and drive south through the Gorges Du Ziz. Which, if you are playing at home, are just north of the town of Errachidia. It’s an amazing place, as if there was a road through the middle of Grand Canyon. I don’t think that is an exaggeration, just miles and miles of massive cliffs and canyons.
From there the highway turns west across the top edge of the Sahara to Ouarzazate, and on across to Agadir on the Atlantic coast. Between Errachidia and Ouarzazate there are several valleys where roads run down into the Sahara. Places where fleets of Land Rovers take tourists to Berber villages to ride camels and yes, buy rugs. I’ve seen sand. If I’d known that Rhona had a secret desire to ride a camel, we might have made the trip. My feeling was that if we could coax the Bedford all the way to Agadir that would be asking quite enough of the old girl.
About a hundred kilometers from Ouarzazate (the so-called, Gateway to the Sahara) we came to the town of Boumalne Dades. Don’t you just love these names? There is an accent on the e in Dades, so it’s pronounced Dahdez. Anyway, Rhona was reading the Let’s Go book (part of the duties of the Navigator, you understand.) She said, “Hey, this sounds interesting… There’s a place called Fingers of the Monkey, just 17 kilometers away. There’s supposed to be a camping there.” Timing was perfect. I’d assumed we’d just park someplace for the night, but seventeen kilometers is only a little more than ten miles…. They had to be talking as the crow flies. The worst excuse for a road we’ve seen so far. Single lane, more pothole than asphalt, we bounced and jounced are way up the winding canyon, through tiny villages. Camping Le Dades, the book said, by a gravel turnoff. At a certain point at times like this, we give up hope of finding our destination. We don’t really talk about it, I think you have to stay positive. Rhona or I might make some little comment under our breath, like “Whoa, we’re screwed now…” But my original goal was just to park somewhere, so if the camping didn’t really exist, well, no great loss. But there is this stubborn streak I have. Fingers white on the steering wheel, nose near the windshield glass, I’m determined to find this place, even though the voices in the back of my head have taken a vote, and hope has lost. We round a sharp corner, and there’s a camping sign! A gravel pull off on the right! But the sign doesn’t say anything about Le Dades. Doesn’t seem to be anyone around. I keep going. Another mile or two, fifteen or twenty minutes, I decide that must have been the place back there… find a wide spot and turn around. When we come around the same corner a couple guys are waving to us, we make an almost 180 degree turn up a narrow driveway and Ezzaytouni Said opens the gate of his camping/restaurant. We pull into a courtyard. On the road side is a low wall. Opposite is a mud and straw building, obviously under construction. In front of the building, pitched on a concrete pad, is a Berber tent, open to the front, right out of the pages of National Geographic. Ezzaytouni is his family name, he introduces himself as Said (pronounced Sayeed), shakes our hands and welcomes us to his place. We make about three attempts, finally park the van along side the tent… there is no one there except Rhona and I – and Said. Across the wall, on the other side of the road, is a shallow canyon, and then an incredible wall, or rather several walls, of sculptured rock. The Fingers of the Monkey. There is an area that actually looks quite a bit like the big baseball glove at Pac Bell. A geologist could probably explain how the formation was created, I know I’ve never seen anything like it…. There are shelves of rock tilted back, layered upon each other. A crazy jigsaw puzzle of rounded eroded shapes, worn in deep grooves vertically and horizontally. A pile of oddly shaped biscuits, stacked in neat rows. It is past sunset and the colors are warm tans and browns, almost glowing in the fading light.
Said proudly shows us the bathroom. Very clean, freshly tiled. Do you know about squatters? The books call them Turkish toilets, but I think it’s the French’s fault. A square shower stall looking thing, with two foot pads, and a hole for a target. Get the picture? Said’s was the first we’d seen without a water closet. There was a hose bib coming out of the wall and a small plastic bucket. You did your business, filled the bucket, and flushed. Any questions? Good. We were thrilled. The place was spotless, cleanest bathroom we’d seen since… well, San Jose, I guess.
Said said we could use the tent. I asked him the price, he said 20 Dinhars a person. A Dinhar is nine cents, so, what, $3.60 a night? A new record. He asked us if we wanted to walk to the canyon, but we agreed that it would be best to wait until morning. He left us to set up camp. We found ourselves in this magical place, alone. Rhona and I ate our dinner sitting on cushions looking out at the night. There was no moon. The stars were brilliant.
In the morning, Said reappeared, bringing a loaf of Berber bread, warm from the fire. About the size of a dinner plate, about an inch and a half thick, toasty brown in color. The texture … well, it wasn’t breadlike. The crust was tough, but the inside crumbly, almost like cous-cous. Very delicious, very filling. Said’s English is very good. He told us that an American couple had come to his village and taught classes. He is a tall man, very thin, but, as we were to find out, extremely strong. How to describe his manner? Warm, friendly… hospitable, that’s a word for Said. Not the least bit obsequious, obviously proud of his Berber heritage, his village, and his property.
The gate needed repair, so Said worked on it while Rhona and I had breakfast. Then he led us across the road, and down to the small river at the base of the rocks. We walked upstream a little ways and the canyon opened up into the fields of the village. More a series of gardens, a park…. Small rectangles of tan wheat, plots of vegetables, bordered with bright flowers, purple and pink, bright green palms, small bushy trees, perhaps olives. Breathtaking. Women were working in groups, hunched over, singing. Something about the movements, the earth, perhaps the heat of the day, just being a part of a small village that makes the music. You would hear the same melodies all over the world, I’m sure. Sounded to my ear like American Indian traditional music, rhythmic, wailing. Joyful. The contrast between the colors of the fields and the surrounding tans and browns was startling. Said suggested that we cross the stream and continue up the opposite bank into the rock formations.
Soon we were clambering up boulders, through openings in the rock, climbing up smooth grooves worn by centuries of wind and water. At places rock had fallen in a jumble, we climbed over and around, ducked under, sometimes crawling through small openings. It was tough going… After an hour or so of steady climbing in the intense heat, Rhona began having a difficult time. Said would climb, reach around and grab her hands, I’d push from below, up she’d go. Rhona had asked him how long the walk would take, wanting to know what she was getting in to. He had told her two hours. That evening he told us he thought we were in a hurry, and that was why he kept us moving. Well, we stopped often, Rhona and I… this mountain goat of a man waiting for us up the trail. At last we came to a final, almost vertical climb at the top of the gorge. We took it very slowly, stopping to rest like climbers struggling for the summit. And then… the top… overlooking the string of villages, the ridges of rock piled off into the distance.
The trail down was winding and steep, but easy compared to the climb. We entered the village, though the mud walled houses, to the well. Said winched up the bucket, we drank our fill as Rhona watched. Don’t care if I die, best tasting water I’ve ever drank! Right from a bucket that looked like it was made from an old car tire. We walked down through the small houses, watching the women at work, waving and smiling, seeing more of the beautiful fields.
We talked about a lot of things that day. Said told us that seventy five percent of Moroccans are Berber, the rest Arab. The last Berber war was with the Romans, they fought for 150 years. When the Arab armies arrived, according to Said, the Romans and Berbers were exhausted by years of battle. The Roman empire was disintegrating. The Berber people left the flat land to the Arabs and retreated to the canyons and mountains. And now, he said, we are coming back to the cities. The Moroccan constitution has recently been changed, the official languages were Arabic and French, now it will be Arabic and Berber. The Berber language will be taught in three hundred schools, once teachers can be found and trained. It’s always been an oral language, but an alphabet has been created over the years. I think Said said there are 36 letters and he has a friend in the village that knows them all. Rhona had talked to a taxi driver in Fez that told her he had a Batchelor’s degree, but that in Morocco you must buy a job, so he wasn’t able to use his education. It seems that the Arab people control the economy, positions go to relatives and friends. Or those able to pay – bribes, let’s call it what it is. I asked Said what he hopes for his children, he has three, two girls and a boy. Does he want them to go to school? He said, “In Morocco, school is not necessary.” He told me that it’s better that they work with him. That way they can use the time and money that education would cost to create their own business. He said he had 20 years of education, and in Morocco, as a Berber, it means nothing.
What we didn’t talk about was the disappearance of the tourist business. 9-11 was a disaster in Morocco also, as it has been for the tourist industry all around the world. The recent bombing in Casablanca has made things much worse. Overnight, what American and British tourists were here, all left. We’ve seen the effects, empty campgrounds everywhere we’ve been. I may be too optimistic, but I think, I hope, Said will have his dreams fulfilled. The tourists will return, his hard work will be rewarded.
When we got back to the tent, he made us some mint tea, (good for hot, he said) and agreed that he would cook us a Berber dinner that night. He made a trip to Boumalne for supplies, while Rhona and I took showers with buckets of cool water. He returned with a bags of groceries and a Moroccan pottery barbeque. There are three parts, a base, like a good sized flower pot that holds the charcoal. A heavy dish sits on the base, supported on raised fingers so that air gets to the charcoal. And then a cover, cone shaped, like an upside down funnel, closed at the top. We had seen them displayed at roadside pottery stands, but had no idea what they were. The charcoal was lit with a small bundle of sticks, the platter put in position, and when the fire was going good, he poured in an inch or so of vegetable oil. When the oil was hot, a half a chicken was placed in the sizzling oil, and browned, as he prepared the vegetables. Carrots, potatoes, onions, all peeled and skinned. When the chicken was ready, the vegetables were piled on top, sprinkled with the magic Moroccan mix of spices. He had sliced tomatoes that were added at the end. The cover sat down over the platter, and it was left to cook for about an hour. It’s called Tajine, and tastes like a very flavorful stew.
Said told us that he had met friends in town and had invited them to join us for dinner. In a while, Catherine, an English lady, arrived, with a young Moroccan friend. He spoke only French, and we never did catch his name. But we had a great time talking to Catherine. She has done a lot of traveling, hitchhiked through the States. She had been in this village for nine months. Every three months she had to cross back over to Spain to renew her visa. Lots of stories about the Moroccan bureaucracy. She was in the process of getting permission to be a permanent resident, she hopes to operate a guide service. She talked a lot about the women. She has spent a lot of time visiting their homes. When life is so difficult, she said, the people have little time to deal with emotions– they often ignore crying children, for example, because they simply do not have the time or energy to be concerned with what seems to them, trivial matters.
We sat around the low table, eating the Tajine by dipping pieces of bread into it, scooping up chunks of chicken and vegetables, soaking up the gravy. We brought out our last two bottles of Portuguese wine, and there was a party going on. Conversations going on in French, Berber, English… and the food was wonderful. Topped off with honeydew melon for desert…. Well it tasted like honeydew, looked like cantaloupe.
Too soon, our guests were leaving; Rhona and I climbed into our van, tired and happy.
In the morning we packed up, getting the van back in travel mode. It would have been easy to spend another day there, but the beaches are waiting for us. We were just about to leave Said a note, when the gates swung open and there he was, smiling and a bit hungover. We exchanged addresses… shook hands all around, and soon we were rolling down that terrible road again. We came back out onto the highway at Boumalne, and turned east towards Agadir. I heard a horn honking behind us, looked in the rear view to see a little white van with the driver waving frantically. Our guide books have warned us about bandits flagging down tourists, but I couldn’t just ignore these guys. I pulled over. The passenger door opened, and out climbed Said. He had Rhona’s address book in his hand, somehow we had left it. I was stunned. This was right up there with old honest Abe carrying the penny back to his customer. He apologized for taking so long to catch up with us, it had taken him a while to find a ride. Absolutely amazing.
It will be a long time before we forget our friend Said, the Gorges Du Dades, and the Fingers of the Monkey.
12:46:07 PM 
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