Marrakech Express

We arrived in Marrakech and sat down for mint tea, taking a break from our camel mission. Some wanted a camel ride, I just wanted to see one smoke a cigarette. We all fell silent as we listened to the call to prayer reverberating through the marketplace, crawling under our skin. I’ve never heard anything like it- a religious air raid, but moving! I wanted to stand up to sit down again, and hide beneath the pressure of immediate occasions.

We ventured into the market maze at daylight “Leather goods, get your leather goods!” A man rolled over my foot with his cart. No apologies, it’s all good. I ruined some shoes bootgoofin’ through the mess. I bought a pair of fuchsia flats- the soles were gone by the end of the day.

A street charmer threw his cobra around my neck. I screamed, and he charged me! I gave him six cents for his harassment and he threw the coins back at me. “Next time, keep it in your pants, Doooooood.”



"I wish you the best you snake, you are self-professed you snake, my heart's in my chest you snake, you can have the rest you snake." -Wolf Parade

There are many little shops of bootleg Moroccan pop playing from lifted karaoke machines. Moroccan music is the best! It’s against custom for women to dance, so I did the Harlem Shake. I couldn’t resist! Moroccan-do! To the untrained eye, the Harlem Shake is simply a muscle spasm. Someone called me Billie Jean.

Guys named Muhammad wear plastic bag tuxedos to work, where they plough bumper crops and whip their mules. Their son’s shake change in their fists, and carry drugs in their pocks. Their sons are mules too. “Hi. Hello. You like? Feesh and chips, feesh and chips.” Little kids steal scraps from our tables and play games with Splenda packets. I watched a kid twirl sugar in a puddle of orange peels and dog hair. It was a game. The experience seemed as fake and saccharine as the sugar itself. I would’ve played a long but doctors strongly advise against such water contact. I think I could see the protozoan parasites, the insect saliva, the blood meals thriving in the confluent cobblestone swamps. An infectious disease as clear as mud.

The Moroccan thinks I’m from California. I ask why and they say it’s the hair. Can’t you tell I’m American, I smile superficially. “Californie? Yes, yes.” My friend Simi played Californication on his mp3 phone. We sang it together. I bought a shirt from him because I liked him so much. His brother warned me, “Simi is a player.” Simi looked all of but 16. They ask what’s up with LA, and I tell them they aren’t missing much, it’s not worth seeing. “I never said I want to go,” Simi corrects me. Touché.


When we came up for air, the sun was nowhere to be found. The city -abandoned and dangerous- designated us to our hotel rooms huddled around a blackberry, listening to Katy Perry cover Electric Feel. We executed a mosquito trying to dish us some marsh fever. It was entertaining and annoying. (The mosquito, entertaining; Katy Perry, annoying.) I slept head to toe in the clothes I wore all day. Shoes included, hood zipped over my “California hair.” I shivered under a layer cake of cholera blankets. I held my breath again. The dawn prayer shook me from my non-sleep reminding me We’re not alone; there are things beyond. But where the hell am I? My dreams, though absurd in their own right, are more realistic than the reality I’m currently living.

The Hassan II Mosque of Casablanca is the rough city’s crazy diamond. Shine on. It’s the third largest mosque in the World! It knocked the wind out of me, my jaw dropped. My neck hurt after 45 minutes of straight up admiration for this exotic place, literally some high regard. The hanging mezzanines, the minaret, the movable roof, the celestial view. I mean, my god! Take care, look up. I had to pick up my face. I didn’t know what the expect, but it certainly wasn’t this. You can be a virgin in travel the same as in sex. I’d never felt so minor, I felt like I was encroaching. Slice of humble pie, right there.




I busted out my French. I had no other choice. Without French or Arabic, we would’ve been busted ourselves. Still, my French accomplished very little. Lost in translation is not the best place to find me. A mapping of discourse. Like the time I volunteered to fill out my custom form in French coming home from Canada and consequently, was required to prove myself to immigration en Français. It made the officer very angry to see me so incorrectly fluent, shifting in my pants in uncertainty.The essential is to talk things over. They were pissed. Je ne comprend pas! If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it… I don’t remember how the saying goes. Hey, at least I tried.





The clique departed to the gare prematurely out of pure exhaustion. How defeated. In 1968, Graham Nash wrote “Marrakech Express” after traveling from Casablanca to Marrakech. He told Rolling Stone that first class was “f-ing boring.” I disagree. We drank bottles of wine out of paper bags in our compartments. We sang “Leila” for our Moroccan friend, Leila. She sang for us in Arabic. She and told us in French that We were American pigs, our candy wrappers and empty bottles. She laughed and said the three-hour train ride was incroyable, she’ll remember Us always. Leila wouldn’t like Crosby, Stills and Nash anyways.

We all pointed at foreign things that flew by our train windows: horse and cart, kilometers, desertification. I finally slept.


Despite the perpetual French nose blowing, the bootleg umbrellas, the peels, the hair, the squalor, I’m going to move here.

“Here’s looking at you, Kid.”