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In Morocco

In Morocco

Edith Wharton
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Literature
40 Chapters
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Having begun my book with the statement that Morocco still lacks a guide-book, I should have wished to take a first step toward remedying that deficiency. But the conditions in which I travelled, though full of unexpected and picturesque opportunities, were not suited to leisurely study of the places visited. The time was limited by the approach of the rainy season, which puts an end to motoring over the treacherous trails of the Spanish zone. In 1918, owing to the watchfulness of German submarines in the Straits and along the northwest coast of Africa, the trip by sea from Marseilles to Casablanca, ordinarily so easy, was not to be made without much discomfort and loss of time. Once on board the steamer, passengers were often kept in port (without leave to land) for six or eight days; therefore for any one bound by a time-limit, as most war-workers were, it was necessary to travel[Pg viii] across country, and to be back at Tangier before the November rains. This left me only one month in which to visit Morocco from the Mediterranean to the High Atlas, and from the Atlantic to Fez, and even had there been a Djinn's carpet to carry me, the multiplicity of impressions received would have made precise observation difficult.The next best thing to a Djinn's carpet, a military motor, was at my disposal every morning; but war conditions imposed restrictions, and the wish to use the minimum of petrol often stood in the way of the second visit which alone makes it possible to carry away a definite and detailed impression...

Chapter 1 EL-KSAR TO RABAT

A town at last-its nearness announced by the multiplied ruts of the trail, the cactus hedges, the fig-trees weighed down by dust leaning over ruinous earthen walls. And here are the first houses of the European El-Ksar-neat white Spanish houses on the slope outside the old Arab settlement. Of the Arab town itself, above reed stockades and brown walls, only a minaret and a few flat roofs are visible. Under the walls drowse the usual gregarious Lazaruses; others, temporarily resuscitated, trail their grave-clothes after a line of camels and donkeys toward the olive-gardens outside the town.

The way to Rabat is long and difficult, and there is no time to visit El-Ksar, though its minaret beckons so alluringly above the fruit-orchards; so we stop for luncheon outside the walls, at a canteen with a corrugated iron roof where skinny Spaniards are serving thick purple wine and eggs fried in oil to a party of French soldiers. The heat has suddenly become intolerable, and a flaming wind straight from the south brings in at the door, with a cloud of blue flies, the smell of camels and trampled herbs and the strong spices of the bazaars.

Luncheon over, we hurry on between the cactus hedges, and then plunge back into the waste. Beyond El-Ksar the last hills of the Rif die away, and there is a stretch of wilderness without an outline till the Lesser Atlas begins to rise in the east. Once in the French protectorate the trail improves, but there are still difficult bits; and finally, on a high plateau, the chauffeur stops in a web of criss-cross trails, throws up his hands, and confesses that he has lost his way. The heat is mortal at the moment. For the last hour the red breath of the sirocco has risen from every hollow into which we dipped, now it hangs about us in the open, as if we had caught it in our wheels and it had to pause above us when we paused.

All around is the featureless wild land, palmetto scrub stretching away into eternity. A few yards off rises the inevitable ruined koubba[A] with its fig-tree: in the shade under its crumbling wall the buzz of the flies is like the sound of frying. Farther off, we discern a cluster of huts, and presently some Arab boys and a tall pensive shepherd come hurrying across the scrub. They are full of good-will, and no doubt of information; but our chauffeur speaks no Arabic and the talk dies down into shrugs and head-shakings. The Arabs retire to the shade of the wall, and we decide to start-for anywhere....

[Footnote A: Saint's tomb. The saint himself is called a marabout.]

The chauffeur turns the crank, but there is no responding quiver. Something has gone wrong; we can't move, and it is not much comfort to remember that, if we could, we should not know where to go. At least we should be cooler in motion than sitting still under the blinding sky.

Such an adventure initiates one at the outset into the stern facts of desert motoring. Every detail of our trip from Tangier to Rabat had been carefully planned to keep us in unbroken contact with civilization. We were to "tub" in one European hotel, and to dine in another, with just enough picnicking between to give a touch of local colour. But let one little cog slip and the whole plan falls to bits, and we are alone in the old untamed Moghreb, as remote from Europe as any mediaeval adventurer. If one lose one's way in Morocco, civilization vanishes as though it were a magic carpet rolled up by a Djinn.

It is a good thing to begin with such a mishap, not only because it develops the fatalism necessary to the enjoyment of Africa, but because it lets one at once into the mysterious heart of the country, a country so deeply conditioned by its miles and miles of uncitied wilderness that until one has known the wilderness one cannot begin to understand the cities.

We came to one at length, after sunset on that first endless day. The motor, cleverly patched up, had found its way to a real road, and speeding along between the stunted cork-trees of the forest of Mamora brought us to a last rise from which we beheld in the dusk a line of yellow walls backed by the misty blue of the Atlantic. Salé, the fierce old pirate town, where Robinson Crusoe was so long a slave, lay before us, snow-white in its cheese-coloured ramparts skirted by fig and olive gardens. Below its gates a stretch of waste land, endlessly trailed over by mules and camels, sloped down to the mouth of the Bou-Regreg, the blue-brown river dividing it from Rabat. The motor stopped at the landing-stage of the steam-ferry; crowding about it were droves of donkeys, knots of camels, plump-faced merchants on crimson-saddled mules, with negro servants at their bridles, bare-legged water-carriers with hairy goat-skins slung over their shoulders, and Arab women in a heap of veils, cloaks, mufflings, all of the same ashy white, the caftans of clutched children peeping through in patches of old rose and lilac and pale green.

Across the river the native town of Rabat lay piled up on an orange-red cliff beaten by the Atlantic. Its walls, red too, plunged into the darkening breakers at the mouth of the river, and behind it, stretching up to the mighty tower of Hassan, and the ruins of the Great Mosque, the scattered houses of the European city showed their many lights across the plain.

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Latest Release: Chapter 40 BOOKS CONSULTED   01-08 10:35
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1 Chapter 1 EL-KSAR TO RABAT
30/11/2017
2 Chapter 2 THE KASBAH OF THE OUDAYAS
30/11/2017
3 Chapter 3 ROBINSON CRUSOE'S SALLEE
30/11/2017
4 Chapter 4 CHELLA AND THE GREAT MOSQUE
30/11/2017
5 Chapter 5 VOLUBILIS
30/11/2017
6 Chapter 6 MOULAY IDRISS
30/11/2017
7 Chapter 7 MEKNEZ
30/11/2017
8 Chapter 8 THE FIRST VISION
30/11/2017
9 Chapter 9 FEZ ELDJID
30/11/2017
10 Chapter 10 FEZ ELBALI
30/11/2017
11 Chapter 11 EL ANDALOUS AND THE POTTERS' FIELD
30/11/2017
12 Chapter 12 MEDERSAS, BAZAARS AND AN OASIS
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13 Chapter 13 THE LAST GLIMPSE
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14 Chapter 14 THE WAY THERE
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15 Chapter 15 THE BAHIA
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16 Chapter 16 THE BAZAARS
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17 Chapter 17 THE AGDAL
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18 Chapter 18 ON THE ROOFS
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19 Chapter 19 THE SAADIAN TOMBS
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20 Chapter 20 THE CROWD IN THE STREET
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21 Chapter 21 A D-EL-KEBIR
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22 Chapter 22 THE IMPERIAL MIRADOR
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23 Chapter 23 IN OLD RABAT
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24 Chapter 24 IN FEZ
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25 Chapter 25 IN MARRAKECH
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26 Chapter 26 No.26
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27 Chapter 27 No.27
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28 Chapter 28 No.28
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29 Chapter 29 THE BERBERS
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30 Chapter 30 PHENICIANS, ROMANS AND VANDALS
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31 Chapter 31 THE ARAB CONQUEST
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32 Chapter 32 ALMORAVIDS AND ALMOHADS
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33 Chapter 33 THE MERINIDS
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34 Chapter 34 THE SAADIANS
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35 Chapter 35 THE HASSANIANS
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36 Chapter 36 No.36
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37 Chapter 37 No.37
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38 Chapter 38 No.38
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39 Chapter 39 No.39
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40 Chapter 40 BOOKS CONSULTED
30/11/2017
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