Tea in the Sahara

Approaching the Sahara there's a sense of something accumulating.

It's hard to put a finger on it. It's certainly the anticipation of an eager tourist but there's something "other" as well.

Paul Bowles' novel features the Desert as a character. Without ever being overtly described or defined in the way you might do with flesh and blood characters the Sahara nonetheless acquires if not a personality then at least a foreboding presence. Port and Kit Moresby travel through this brooding landscape in the poignant demise of their erotic train wreck of a marriage and, as they approach the Sahara, the desert's menace overshadows their journey.

Bertolucci's Dorian depiction continues this theme and between them they inspired other artists including Sting whose music references The Sheltering Sky in the iconic Police song Tea in the Sahara.

All this formed the expectation and soundtrack I carried in my head as we approached The desert from the northwest. 

For miles and miles the landscape flattens and harshens and you find yourself on a vast grey plain sporadically punctuated with ragged juniper bushes or wizened tufts of grass.

In the distance are the ubiquitous Atlas Mountains and here and there, teasingly, small sandy drifts begin to emerge from the grey gravel.

Curiously large numbers of quality hotels, not really auberges (hostels) as they are called in the region, appear in the towns approaching the desert. (These auberges are apparently aimed largely at the local (Moroccan) tourist trade with well to do families from Marrakech on day trip pilgrimage to the sand.)

To our southwest as we drove lay the disputed Algerian border and before us the golden dunes of Erg Chigaga rose slowly from the grey and featureless horizon.

Erg Chigaga, although a series of massive dunes, is but a taste of what lies beyond. Stretching 40 kilometers from west to east and between 10 and 15 kilometers north to south it would be straightforward to circumnavigate for the modern traveler. But these spectacular dunes also provide an ideal taste of the Sahara without the commitment needed to conquer a desert the size of the continental United States.

Along its northern rim auberge after auberge have been constructed. These far more modest ones bear splendid names like L'etoile Du Desert and Dunes d'Or and provide scant more than basic shelter in this powerful landscape.

Despite its inevitable commercialism Erg Chigaga is surreal.

The huge, mobile, golden dunes are ample testimony to the power and intrigue of the desert.

That this landscape inspired writers, film makers and musicians is far from surprising. Little wonder that Bowles, Bertolucci and Sting came quickly to mind.

Inevitably I did 'climb a high dune' though my prayers under the Islamic moon were somewhat diminished by the blinding sand born on a stiff southerly wind that also blew scattered clouds over the Sheltering Sky.

That I was able to drink 'Tea in the Sahara', dressed in full blue djalaba of the Berbers was not unduly tempered by that inevitable commercialism.

Mosque Hassan II - Slight Return

I mentioned earlier that Mosque Hassan II was built on land taken, possibly without fare compensation, from Casablanca's poor. Here are some more thoughts on this:

Casablanca is a contradiction and may well provide a case study in the inevitable outcome of extreme income inequality.

Almost as quickly as the local government demolishes them, vast shantytowns constructed of building scraps, rubbish and whatever else the resourceful inhabitants can recycle, spring up all over the city. 

The official population is a tick over 5 million and a significant percentage live in these vast shantytowns.

And yet, along the Atlantic coastline of the city, multi-storey luxury apartment blocks are beginning to crowd the waterfront pushing aside the city's poor who had made their homes along the shoreline.

Enormous billboards at the edge of the surviving shantys seem to guarantee that this 'progress' will continue.

Mosque Hassan II, built for religious reasons at the water's edge, is an iconic backdrop to this social experiment but its impact runs deeper than this: 

Constructed over 6 years by 10,000 workers toiling day and night and at an estimated cost of $800 million (but arguably up to 3 times that amount) sourced 1/3 from a grant by the King and a fully 2/3rds from "gifts from the people".

There is something about see figures that troubles me.

10,000 workers required to work, in shifts admittedly, around the clock, 7 days a week for 6 years leads me to wonder about working conditions and remuneration. Our guide for the day on our 45 minute tour of this spectacular mosque - the 3rd largest in the world - was not forthcoming on this issue.

$US800 million (or $1,600m or $2,400m), in a country where average incomes are between $US400 & $500 per month and the unemployment rate is unofficially close to 30%, seems extravagant when adequate housing, sanitation and an acceptable standard of living is unatainable for a hugely significant proportion of the population.

And I'd be curious to unpack the "gifts from the people" story. I'm not sure there was a Mosque Hassan II lottery and would hazard a guess that the money came from tithes, taxation or garnisheed wages. (I suspect General Hossain would be troubled by my irreligious cynicism.)  (I have subsequently discovered that each and every family in the country was required to purchase a 'souvenir' commemorating the building of the Mosque and, if they wished, richer families were able to contribute more.)

Of course the same argument can and should be made against St Peters Basillica in Rome, St Paul's Cathederal in London or Hagia Sophia in Turkey and I do not seek to defend these monuments over Mosque Hassan II.

Mosque Hassan II is spectacular and is a key attraction in an otherwise rather spartan offering for tourists in Casblanca. On the upside for Morrocans it is constructed almost entirely from materials sourced in-country including unimaginably large amounts of marble, granite and cedar, so at least some Morrocan industries will have derived a benefit.  The Italians provided 57 elaborate chandeliers and 2 white marble slabs but the rest seems to have been sourced locally. Somewhat incredulously given Moroccan history, the designer was French...

20,000 men can worship on the heated marble floor beneath an elaborately carved roof which is able to be opened in around 3 minutes. 5,000 women can worship on raised balconies and there is an exquisitely engineered ablutions crypt below the main hall where the faithful can perform the necessary cleansing before prayers.

Enormous titanium doors provide ceremonial access to the Mosque and it is in use all the time: if not for prayer then as a tourist attraction.

It is unclear to me what the local shanty dwellers think about the Mosque and its self-evident opulence but recent history has seen a spate of violent extremism in Casablanca including 13 suicide bombings claiming 32 lives purported to have been carried out by a radical Islamist group whose founding members trained with the Taliban in Afghanistan - Salafia Jihadia. Conflating these may be unfair but it needs contemplating.

Regardless of any apparent Islamist affiliations, one of the widely accepted motivations for violence against the state is inequality. On this basis alone Casablanca risks sliding into the abyss and becoming a powder keg in an ever widening poverty and opportunity-poor social milieu. 

As a footnote to the above, and to be expanded in a later contribution, we visited the Moroccan capital Rabat later in the day and our visit coincided with a not insubstantial student protest. Apparently the students had just completed their university education and had found that there were no jobs to go to and little or no prospect of employment in the near future.

A concerning confluence of issues for the King and his parliament.

The Irrefutable Logic of the Faithful

Getting to Morocco from Australia is an ordeal.

From Sydney to Abu Dhabi is around 14 1/2 hours. There's a 3 1/2 hour stopover in the Emirates and a further 8 1/2 hour flight to Casablanca.

Access to the Emirates business lounge at the beginning of the journey and the rather less salubrious Al Reem lounge in Abi Dhabi improves things but it still is quite arduous in a first world problem kind of a way.

The Casablanca leg provided an interesting aside to the journey. A Saudi former Airforce General was seated as the only passenger in the central section of the 777 adjacent to me. At times he made the most of the three empty seats by lying fully stretched out and sleeping in a sleeping pill assisted repose.

However, for the first hour or so, and the last hour or so, I was the main subject of his attention.

Dressed in the pristine white robes, white skull cap and red and white keffiyeh uniform of the Gulf States, this intensely happy man soon discovered my name, that I had adult children and that we were heading to Morocco for a 15 day holiday.

From my perspective, his classic social engineering discoveries revealed no nefarious intent and was both friendly and innocent. It did, however, allow him to set the agenda for the next hour or so of conversation. (I should add here that Cathy's impressions of my new Saudi friend were far less endearing.)

My error, if you will, was not to immediately challeng the good General's assumptions. So he then proceeded to pour out one pious statement after another regarding his faith. 

Following 14 1/2 hours of (albeit) Emirates economy class travel I was in no state and had no motivation to counter his assumptions and, in the interests of avoiding conflict with the General and becoming entangled in a fruitless theological debate for the next 8 1/2 hours, I acquiesced to many of his pronouncements.

The General took my acquiescence as agreement and it was not very long before I realised that his intent was to capture a new soul for Islam.

My cost for befriending this fellow traveler and failing to counter his arguments in the interests of a conflict-free flight, was to become ensnared in a chess-like strategic logic trap that this happy faithful man was intent to spring.

That said, the Generl achieved little more than a vague commitment from me to further investigate the Qur'an and a reluctant agreement that, based on his immaculate presentation of the facts, Islam may well be the true faith.

As an aside, the General did postulate an interesting, if flawed, theory as to the progression from JudIsm through Christianity to Islam. It went something like this:

If you wished to purchase a computer and had the choice of a model from the nineties, one from the mid-two thousands and one from 2015, which one would you choose?

Judaism, by this theory, represents the nineties model which is now out of date and, in the General's estimation, corrupted.

The mid-two thousands model superseded the nineties model and this represents Christianity superseding Judaism. Christianity has also become outdated, corrupted and obsolete leaving the 2015 model of Islam.

The General went on to expand his theory by claiming that the Jewish Torah was inaccessible and never read by the people, that the Christian Bible was written by many different individuals sometimes as much as two hundred years after the events it depicts but that the Qur'an is the work of one single prophet - Mohammed and so is the true written word.

He did concede that all three faiths had some legitimacy as their prophets all were sent by God rather than depicting themselves as God but where Christianity had gone wrong was in the confusion of the triumvirate - God the father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. His comments regarding the Jews and Judaism were far more predictably critical.

Having no real skin in this game but having neglected to challenge those initial assumptions I was compelled to accede to the irrefutable logic of the faithful.

General Hossain was a former fighter pilot who left the Saudi Airforce quite recently following the death of his father. He was traveling to Morocco, partly for business and partly for pleasure and his ultimate destination in Morocco was the coastal town of Agadir where the Saudis have invested heavily in decadently opulent seaside resorts and villas.

Agadir is reputedly the premier tourist location in Morocco although in many respects it is not typically Moroccan. It is a city that was completely rebuilt in the 1960s following a devastating earthquake. Originally a fishing and trading port, Agadir's premier industry may now have become prostitution and it is for this that the Saudis have allegedly come.

The Saudis are not well liked in Morocco.

That there is a predeliction for just post-pubescent girls is, understandably, particularly troubling for them.

It would be poignantly disappointing if General Hossain's attempted proselytisation of me on the Abu Dhabi to Casablanca flight were merely an act of pre-absolution for his trip to Agadir. 

Insha'Allah it is not so.

Salaam wa Aleikoum.

Though not quite the same chaos as some Asian cities we have visited Casablanca has its own unique North African character and charm.

Clearly not a tourist city, Casablanca lies on the Atlantic coast on the north western edge of the African continent. The principal attraction is the blue mosque or Mosque Hassan II which dominates the waterfront with its towering minaret inlaid with turquoise tiles and intricate carved marble. It is the tallest structure in Morocco (apparently) and cost a staggering $USD800m. It's built on land that at one time was home to some of Casablanca's poorest and it doesn't look like they were properly compensated. Same story everywhere I guess.

Cathy and I found it through some haphazard map reading and via the ubiquitous carpet buying experience that appears to be something of a right of passage in Morocco. 

Having spent the better part of 30 hours on planes we decided a walk around Casablanca would be a great way to get the blood flowing in cramped legs and set off from Hotel Maamoura, photocopied low-res map in hand, in 180 degrees the wrong direction.

However it wasn't too long before we realized our error and made our way back to our starting point and recommenced  our Casablancan walking recovery tour.

Passing through United Nations Square and along majestically named boulevards such as Boulevard Tahar el Alouï it wasn't long before these obvious tourists were greeted by friendly locals who were quick to offer advice on directions and things to see... Oh and cousins to meet who just so happened to be in town... "you are lucky to have arrived in Casablanca today my friends, my cousin has his beautiful rugs for sale only today, come I will show you..." You get the drill.

The carpets were magnificent and there are now a couple on the way home. (Not sure how we will eat for the rest of the trip but the carpets will look sensational and, besides, we have supported I can't remember how many local artisans etc. etc.) Amazing what you can justify on a few hours sleep after a monumental plane trip.

We did eventually make it to the Mosque and admired it from the outside. (More on the Mosque tomorrow after we do the obligatory tour.)

A late lunch overlooking a rather angry Atlantic was followed by a long walk back to Hotel Maamoura punctuated by several wrong turns, detours and rewarded by a much more comprehensive knowledge of downtown Casablanca than we would have got from a taxi ride.

(BTW, full disclosure: this is not my photo as I still am too tired to download the ones I took from my camera 😴.)

Tomorrow our full Moroccan adventure begins but for now I we will sleep with the sounds of street traders wafting gently through our hotel window as  night comes to downtown Casablanca.

Tesbah ala kheyr.