Reaux

The French changed everything. De Gaulle was closed, the airport unions were on strike again, and our carefully planned itinerary needed revising on the spot. We had to find a way to get to Rabat, Morocco, where we were to link up with the leader of our modest little expedition. After a quick huddle we decided, at Will’s suggestion, to take a contrarian approach. Everyone else was giving the ticket agents grief; we, on the other hand, would be solicitous and charming. Frankly, I was stunned that it worked. We were declared victims of an “involuntary reroute” and after cobbling together an itinerary of Orly, Marseilles, and Casablanca, the ticket agents upgraded us to business class and sent us to the first class lounge. Later, safely in the air, I mused that one could get used to business class. I had no idea that Air France served lobster in the business section, and little bottles of champagne. We celebrated our early morning arrival at Orly with a couple of beers and prepared ourselves for the long day ahead.


Much later that day, we were on the tarmac and strapped in at Marseilles, ready for the final leg of our trip. As the jet engines spooled up to power, the Air Maroc copilot, over the intercom, gave the flight time and expected time of arrival, finishing with the word “enshallah.” “Hey Will, what’s enshallah mean?” I inquired. “If Allah wills or God willing,” Will replied. “So you’re saying that the Islamic faithful believe events are fixed in advance and people are powerless to change them. Sounds like fatalism to me, Will.” “Well, not exactly Bill.” We were still deep into our theological discussion, having covered determinism, the concept of a benevolent Allah, Calvinism, and the relevance of chance as the jet’s tires touched down in Casablanca. We were only a hundred miles short of our goal, Rabat. After customs, we gathered at the taxi stand where we hired a grand taxi for the final overland leg of the trip. It was now dark. Getting situated, I voiced some of my concerns: “Will, how come there’s no floor under my feet, and why are we hurtling down this highway in the dark with no headlights?” “Enshallah,” he replied, just before drifting off to sleep.


After getting lost in Rabat, the grand taxi finally delivered us to the hotel Moussafir where we were reunited with our missing colleague. The following day we rented a couple of cars, checked in with the Minister of Mines and Geology, and obtained our permit. Will checked out the local “souk” where he obtained a variety of olives. All in all, it was a restful day. Early the next morning we set off for Taroudannt and the Palais Salaam, but we didn’t get very far before a rock, from a passing truck, smashed into our window completely glazing it over. Shortly after pulling off to the side of the road a passing motorist stopped and asked what was wrong. We pointed to the window, and he said, “No problem, smash the window out so that you can see, and go to Casablanca, it’s only thirty kilometers, there you can get a new windshield.” We opted instead to go to the nearby airport with our second car and rent a replacement. In short order we returned with the replacement car accompanied by a worker from *490 Days Since NBSS Arrived!the rental agency; who without a bit of hesitancy took his foot to the crazed windshield smashing it clear. Waving good bye he drove off trailing sparkling pieces of glass; we resumed our journey and observed, periodically, similar piles of glass littering the sides of the road as we motored south to Taroudannt and the hotel Palais Salaam.


The Palais Salaam, extolled in guidebooks as a certified four-star hotel, was, I initially thought, a little over the top; this is fieldwork? The hotel is a converted sixteenth-century palace abutting medieval walls that once entirely encircled the city; peacocks wandered around its palm-and-fern-enshrouded park-like courtyard. Our initial reconnaissance revealed two pools, two bars, a continental restaurant, a Moroccan restaurant, and numerous tour groups. We stood out in stark contrast to the tourists, especially when we arrived back from the field, thirsty, grimy, dusty, clothes rimed in salt. We were different from the usual run of tourist; different and studiously ignored by the hotel staff. Ignored until we discovered the power of generous tips; shortly after instituting a tipping program, we noted that the prime table nearest the pool was being reserved for our usage. Cold beer and freshly fried potato chips were delivered without need of our ordering; the staff knew what we liked. Languidly sipping our beer, we evaluated the display of flesh at the swimming pool whilst idly picking imaginary lice and nits from our hair, an action guarantied to produce priceless reactions of horror from the tourists. Knowing the importance of keeping hydrated when working in a desert, we would order more rounds before going to our rooms, properly hydrated, to prepare for dinner.


The hotel boasted two separate and distinct restaurants, one featuring a continental menu was the favorite of the tour groups. After the first two or three meals in this restaurant it dawned on us that continental equaled organ meats. We quickly dubbed it the offal restaurant. The Moroccan restaurant, on the other hand, proved to be a real jewel. Not only was the food good, it also featured a floorshow of native Moroccan dancers. This was a particularly popular feature with the crew; Will in particular seemed especially smitten by the dancers. The maître d' and the entire wait staff came to know us; they appreciated their lavish tips, and we were always seated at what we came to consider our customary table. This was fieldwork!


The exposures we intended to work lay within the Argana basin, a long narrow valley-like affair that runs in a north – south direction. The town of Imi-n-Tanoute is situated on the northern margin of the basin; Taroudannt lies perhaps thirty miles to the east of the southern-most reaches of the valley. Our initial plan was to work the more southern exposures from our base, the Palais Salaam in Taroudannt; unfortunately the southern exposures didn’t pan out. The northern exposures were much more alluring, but it was a long commute from Taroudannt. At first we motored along at a sedate 100-kilometer-per-hour pace, which we quickly upped, for the commute was taking too long. Shortly thereafter we were whizzing up and down the valley at a blistering 170-kilometer-per-hour speed. The goat barf stands along the side of the road just flew by.


Goat barf? Allow me to explain: there is a tree indigenous to the Argana basin, which, not surprisingly, is called the Argana tree; it bears a bitter olive-like fruit. The seed pit is rich in oil; unfortunately, the astringent pulp surrounding the pit is hard to remove, except, that is, by goats. The goatherds of the region allow the goats to climb the Argana trees so that they can browse upon the fruit; the goats digest the pulp, then obligingly regurgitate the pits. After which the goatherds gather up the expelled seed-pits, they (the pits) are milled, and somehow the oil is extracted. The result looks like thin oily peanut butter; the locals often sell this oil from little stands along the side of the road. Will, of course, was delighted to learn about “goat barf oil” and at the first opportunity made me pull over so that he could procure some. Back in the car he excitedly opened the jar and took a sniff. Then he stuck his finger into the ooze, he removed his oil-covered finger, and, heedless of the oil dribbling onto his beard, took a taste. “Hmm, good, Bill, want some?” he said, offering me his oil-besotted finger.


The roadside town of Ameskhoud marks the southern terminus of the Argana valley. We referred to Ameskhoud as “I’m Screwed,” in honor of the flattened and desiccated goat that adorned the middle of the highway there; one dried ear waving, rather forlornly we thought, in the breeze of each passing Mitsubishi truck. Shortly after I’m Screwed, if one is heading south, is the turn-off to Taroudannt; the first ten miles of this secondary road became known as the “chicken stretch.” From the turn-off, to the town of Oued Olssèn, lay a stretch of one-lane road bordered on either side by a gravel shoulder; irrigation ditches occasionally bisected the shoulder itself. We quickly divined that, customarily, larger vehicles, Mitsubishi trucks, had the right-of-way; smaller vehicles pulled over onto the shoulder.


We obeyed the rules of the road and everything went smoothly until, one day, Will had an enshallah attack whilst driving. “Will, I detect a glazed and crazed look coming over you,” I said, as I nervously tightened my seat belt. “Aiiieeeeee, Jesus Christ, What the f*** are you doing, Will?” I shrieked as a gigantic red Mitsubishi bore down upon us at warp speed. Covering my face with my hands, with one final vision of the driver and his passengers in the be-tasseled cab of the truck saluting us with hand gestures, I prepared for oblivion. A few seconds passed and, finding myself still whole, I peeked back between my fingers. There, throwing up a huge cloud of dust as it fishtailed on the gravel shoulder went the Mitsubishi. Will looked over at me and, grinning, said, “Got him.” Will developed a real addiction to playing “chicken” with the trucks; mostly he pulled over but sometimes he won.


The initial portion of our field season was nearly over and, according to plan, three new people were due to join our crew of four. It was time to arrange to stay in a town or village to the north, perhaps Imi-n-Tanoute or even the little hamlet of Al Had Rohala. The hotel staff helped us find an interpreter/guide fluent in both Moroccan and Berber; the next day, armed with our interpreter, we drove north to Imi-n-Tanoute. The first stop was at the district police headquarters where we were to check in. Displaying considerable angst, the interpreter refused to accompany us into the police station; I sympathized with him, having my own aversion to police stations. Prior to our visit with the police, the guide had pored over our documents and pointed out a clause in our permit that stated something to the effect that all of the kings’ subjects were commanded to aid the permit holders, us, to the best of their means. “They have to help you,” the guide stated. Fortified with this knowledge, we marched into the police station, sans interpreter.


Inside the station we were greeted, and in French we explained why we were there and produced our documentation and permit. After carefully examining our papers, the desk sergeant requested our passports, which he stacked on his desk; thus stripped of our passports, we were told to wait for the duty officer. We had more than ample time to examine the room; along one wall was a bulletin board festooned with gory pictures of accident victims, the radio equipment occupied one corner, and beyond that was another bulletin board with what looked like wanted posters on it. A single bare incandescent bulb hung by an electrical cord over the duty desk around which a pair of flies idly buzzed. I felt like I was on a movie set. Eventually, the duty officer arrived; I wouldn’t go so far as to describe him as microcephalic, suffice to say that we for evermore knew him as “Pinhead.”


After filling out some forms, Pinhead started calling out, one by one, our names as they appeared in our passports. First the leader of the expedition was called to the desk and was told to sign the form, which he did – left-handed. Will was called next and he also signed with his left hand. I was next; approaching the desk the sense of unease was palpable. The various policemen shot suspicious glances at me as I took the pen and signed my name with my right hand. The fourth crewmember likewise signed with his right hand and the tension level returned to a nervous status quo. Evidently there just aren’t many left-handers in Morocco. Finally our documents were stamped and we were instructed to go to Al Had Rohala and check in with the village elder, who would arrange for us to have a place to stay. At Rohala the interpreter explained the situation to the village officials. Carefully examining our documents and permit, the elders then retired to a back room to consider this development. After calling the police in Imi-n-Tanoute on the radio, they returned and we were told that we were welcome to stay free of charge and that for a nominal fee we could arrange to have one of the villagers cook for us. A few days latter after meeting our new crewmembers at the airport in Agadir, we checked out of the Palais Salaam and settled into our new digs.


It was a descent, perhaps not all the way to hell, but still a notable reduction in our standard of living. Judging from the abandoned market stalls, Al Had Rohala had seen better days; we figured that Rohala began to wither soon after the new road went in just to the north. Fortunately the village had a well where we could draw water; we were even assured that we didn’t have to worry about cholera as the well had been treated with chlorine two years previously. This of course made us very happy -- happy that we had the forethought to bring water filters. Our quarters were to be with the village school teacher; after all, he had three rooms, a small kitchen, and a bathroom (actually a tiled closet with a hole in the floor out of which grew . . . stuff). After fumigating the rooms the now-seven of us set up shop with the school teacher, a nice man who left at the end of each school week as soon as he could for the civilization and, I assumed, nightlife of Marrakech.


The village also had a store – well, actually, a stall -- where one could purchase sodas of various kinds and not much else. The storekeeper was to be our cook, the deal being that we would supply him with the raw materials and he would make tangines (essentially a Moroccan pot-au-feu) for us in his oven. We supplied him with only the best cuts of beef or goat, which he magically transmogrified into various equine body parts. It became quite the thing to identify the species of what we were eating, “Hey look, Will, I just got a horse astragulus” to which he was likely to reply “Doesn’t this look like a donkey calcaneum to you, Bill?”


Rohala had a souk day once each week. On that day we could purchase things like beets, carrots, eggs, and live chickens, which we dutifully turned over to the village storekeeper, but it wasn’t enough. More supplies were needed, which we procured in Imi-n-Tanoute a half-hour drive away. Before reaching the hard top, one had to pass through a small valley where there was a small Berber settlement. The women wore colorful dresses and always took the time to stop their work in the fields to wave and smile at us as we passed by. Will became obsessed with them, volunteering to do all of our grocery shopping just so that he could slowly drive through “the valley of the Berber Babes.” “They want me, guys!”


Occasionally we would run into Pinhead on our grocery trips to Imi-n-Tanoute; he seemed to be in charge of the police roadblock detail. He never failed to stop us and ask how our work was going; we took to carrying around “Pinhead display bones,” a sort of show-and-tell, if you will, on our trips to town. Once when I was driving into town with Will, we were followed closely by a Mercedes, too close I felt, then up ahead I spied Pinhead and his roadblock. Pinhead recognized our car and, pulling out his revolver, motioned us over. The driver of the tailgating Mercedes must have spotted the pistol, too, for he pulled over in a panic, right into an Argana tree. As Pinhead’s comrade strolled over to investigate the smoldering Mercedes, Pinhead walked up to our car. He stashed the revolver away and with a smile asked, in French, if we had found anything. Will, had, just for this occasion, brought along a couple of beautiful coprolites, one of which had, as a finale, a Tasty Freeze type of tip. Will explained that these things were fossilized feces and pointed out their undoubted resemblance to fecal piles of today. He then, with a grand flourish, presented the specimens to Pinhead, much to Pinhead’s delight. As we drove off, Will said, “Always wanted to give a cop a load of crap.”


As the weeks went by, Will’s pursuit of the Berber Babes became increasingly hopeless. He had much better luck with the young shepherd boys, much to everyone’s surprise and amusement. Each morning after the metal door to our dungeon swung open and Will stepped forth, he was greeted by a fester of ululating goatherds. We learned to wait until Will left with his coterie, grumpily stalking out to the exposures followed by the boys gayly trilling his name -- Will, Will, Will, Will. Better Will than us we reasoned as we waited in our hovel for when we deemed it safe to make our own break in the opposite direction from Will.


During cocktail hour one night he announced, “I’ve had it with the little pricks, they follow me everywhere, I don’t even get enough privacy to whack off!” “Gee, Will,” I said “I feel your pain, man, today was infested with them. I was working in Quarry 9 by myself when a pack of them showed up; they were there all goddamn day too. When I wasn’t looking, one of them got into my super glue and glued his fingers together. Then they stole it a second time; two of the little buggers interlocked their thumbs and forefingers and glued themselves together. Wait, it gets worse; I managed to keep everything under control for awhile, then I found a nice jaw and was working on it when one of them prodded me in the ribs, and, giggling, pointed behind me. I turned around, and there were two of the festers with their foreheads glued together. One of them must have been greasier because after a couple of minutes they managed to pry themselves apart. Of course that left one of the bozos with polymerized super glue on his forehead, so he grabbed my Marsh pick and used it to scrape the glue off. It was a tough day, Will. Pass the vodka, will you?” Passing the vodka, Will replied, “We’ve got to get out of here. Wonder what those dancers are doing at the Palais Salaam?”


We were pardoned eventually, our sentence in Rohala coming to a merciful end. Back at the opulent Palais Salaam, we showered, for the first time in weeks, and otherwise prepared ourselves for our farewell dinner in the hotel’s Moroccan restaurant, where weeks earlier, we had made reservations. All shiny and squeaky-clean from our baths and in our best clothes, we excitedly gathered for a “real” Moroccan dinner -- only to have the maître d' deny us access to our table. Frowning, he explained that a tour group had “bought the restaurant.” After a bit of discussion, we came to understand that some damn tour group had reserved the whole restaurant for themselves, notwithstanding our own reservation made weeks earlier.


Faced with the prospect of eating in the awful offal restaurant, we milled about in some confusion. Then Will, snapping his fingers, turned to me and said, “I need a thousand dirham.” “Will, that’s, like, eighty bucks, man. I’ll give you a hundred -- get the rest from the others,” I replied. Soon Will had a wad of money. Evidently judging it enough for whatever he had in mind, he disappeared into the kitchen. Whatever Will was up to didn’t take too long and he soon rejoined us. Suddenly the doors to the kitchen parted like the Red Sea and out strode the maître d', who marched up to the tour guide and had an animated conversation with him. The results seemed favorable, for the maître d' returned to us beaming and ushered us to our customary table. “Let the show begin,” I heard Will mutter, as I set about ordering voluminous quantities of wine.


Out of respect for the tour group, we were at our decorous best. The dinner was everything we had hoped for, but after many bottles of Moroccan Claret, decorum was wearing a little thin; we were straining at the bit, we wanted a party! Then a tinkling sound of fork to glass spread throughout the room, and in a sonorous voice the tour leader announced to his group, “The entertainment for tonight will be traditional Berber dancing accompanied by a native folk band. The dancers will be in traditional garb. This first number tells the tale of unrequited love.” The dancers and band entered, the drums started thumping, other instruments joined in, and the dancers began to sway to the exotic beat. Will, as in our earlier stay here, was transfixed by the dancers; totally enthralled, he appeared frozen in place except for one finger tapping with the rhythm. The dancers finished their number to polite applause, and the tour director grandiloquently announced, “The following dance is commonly known as the ‘wedding’ dance. In the native Berber villages, the women would go into the crowd and invite their betrothed to dance with them.” As before, the drums began the musical introduction . . .then, to everyone’s shock, the two dancers turned to our table and hauled Will and myself out onto the dance floor.


Meltdown! To a four-four beat the band started playing a Moroccan interpretation of the Rolling Stones song “Brown Sugar,” and Will and I found ourselves dancing the funky chicken with the women. The tour director was engaged in a very serious conversation with the maître d' as the band broke into “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” Evidently not getting any satisfaction from the maître d', the tour director gathered up his flock and stomped out, minus a couple of women who decided that our party was a more attractive option than continuing with the dour tour. Soon the dance floor was crowded, the tunes swirled on, and our party gained momentum. Taking a break, Will and I flopped down onto the pillows, where finding the table bereft of wine, Will motioned the maître d' over. The maître d' handed Will the wine list, which he then passed to me. “That was considerate,” I thought as I gullibly opened the book. Opening the book triggered the surprising release of a paper pop-up rendition of a penis. Will and the maître d' collapsed into each other’s arms in uncontrollable laughter. After my initial befuddled shock I, too, broke down into laughter. “A pop-up dick,” I gasped as I stuffed money down the maître d's shirt. A joke this good demanded a tip. The band played on and the party continued.


Wiping the tears of laughter from my face, I asked Will, “What happened?” Will answered with a feral gleam in his eye, “That ******* might have bought the restaurant but we bought the band.”


In remembrance, Enshallah,


Bill

__________________
Reaux