Hungry

The funny thing about living in a fairy-tale city, one that delivers fresh exoticisms daily to your door, is that familiarity still ends up breeding contempt. Contempt is too strong – I’m still besotted with this city and drunk on its secrets. Maybe restless is a better word. There isn’t much difference between a weekday and a weekend in Fes, except that I don’t have to go to class, which makes it easy to just cozy up in a café with a book and let the day spend itself. To keep active and to avoid squandering this gift of five months in Morocco, I try to get out of town every other weekend or so.

You’ve heard already about the trip to the Sahara, where I discussed etymology with Achmed, my Berber camel guide and the first actual person I’d met with that name. I felt like I was back in New Mexico, soaking up the sun and the sand and the big big blue sky (and there’s really nothing like a sunset over a sand dune. It blazes a kind of screaming orange just before touching the horizon and for a second colors the sands between you to match, like a light on a wavy mirror.)

One thing I didn’t mention was the abandoned village we visited. It was on the other side of the big dunes from the town, about two hours’ camel ride, and I could tell walking through that it used to be a prosperous enough town, long ago. It had about two dozen houses, with wells and goat pens and cleared spaces for gardens. The houses were ruins, most of the mud walls were partially collapsed and the roofs had caved in. The largest of the houses was once a mansion – eight rooms, a stable, a banquet hall and an outer wall. Achmed coaxed me up onto the roof and we peered down into what must have been the Playboy Mansion of the Sahara.

“A very rich family lived here,” he told me. “They traded with merchants passing through from Algeria and owned a mine in the mountains.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“It all dried up. This area used to have grass most of the year. People grew dates and olives, kept cattle.”

“What did they mine?”

“Fossils, for the tourists.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes, the Germans especially, they loved the fossils.”

“Germans? Wait, when was this town abandoned?”

He counted in his head, searching for the English numbers. “I think in, two thousand and six, maybe.”

“You’re saying people lived here,” I waved, taking in the barren sands, the decaying ruins, the absolute lack of any goddamn thing, “less than six years ago?”

Achmed nodded. “My cousins lived here. They sold spices and olive oil. But then the grass dried, and everyone who could afford it moved away, to the big cities. If they had no money, they came to live in my town. Their relatives made space for them a place to live in their own houses, and food and water. But living that way, on charity, it’s not good for a man and a family."

There was actually one family still living there, and they made us lunch as we rested from the sun in one of the more intact ruins. God knows what they lived on, other than selling lunch to camel-jockey tourists.

I try not to get political in this blog, but this hit me hard, and I have to talk about it for a second. Climate change is screwing these people. They bear none of the responsibility but most of the burden.

This town was thriving less than a decade ago, now it has dried up and withered away, as have countless other tiny settlements along the Sahara. The desert is gobbling up more land every year, consuming lives and communities with a bland and patient hunger. You can dismiss doomsday prophecies about the seas rising, but you can’t dismiss the empty shells that used to be people’s homes. This is happening; this is now.

Another thing that hit me from this trip is how much I’d missed travelling on my own. I love travelling with my friends, of course, and some of the best times in my life have been two-man road trips or excursions with Peace Corps buddies. But there’s a lot to be said for striking out alone, just buying a bus ticket and seeing where it takes you. With no one to answer to but yourself there’s no deliberating or coaxing. You’re free to follow your every whim and explore whatever you want, earning great XP and picking up stories that no one will believe. Without someone to speak English and make Big Lebowski references with, there’s no buffer between you and the culture you’re wading through. It’s just you versus the world.

That said, I had another amazing trip with a group of good friends a few weeks ago, when we rented a car, crawled through miles of dank caverns, saved some German backpackers, broke into a hotel to forage for food and ended up getting a five-course meal. I’m reaching the end of your attention span, though, so I’m going to save it for next time.

And before you roll your eyes and assume that’ll be another three weeks – Lauren – I’m making a personal pledge that I will post the next entry this Friday, just two days away. Look at all the Yahya you get in just one week!