Morocco trip 2023: Part 3
I sprained my ankle in Marrakesh
This part, part 3, will conclude with my sprained ankle. I also got a cold — and a few other maladies. Like I keep saying, it was a challenging trip.
Desert video
But before we dive into colds and sprained ankles, I forgot to share this video of the Sahara desert in the last update. This is the view from the top of my camel. To counteract the generous, gallumphing strides of the camel, much ‘image stabilization’ was used in the editing of this video (and ergo much cropping).
The Riad
First of all, the Riad we stayed in was lovely. I showed a few pictures earlier, but here’s much more of it.
This is the street outside the Riad. Where the woman is standing, that’s where you enter our Riad. There were other Riads on this street. Riad means “garden,” and it’s just a style of house in Morocco.
The bras are great, right?
And here’s the courtyard inside the Riad, with halls and rooms lining the floors above.
I was able to switch rooms, as I mentioned earlier. I asked for it, and it was granted to me. This was my new room, below, which was perfect and beautiful and adorable. And nothing smelled bad. It was one of the newer rooms built on top of the roof. It’s messy in these photos because I took them at the end of the trip.
The yellow sink is amazing. The problem with this trip is I saw so many great interior decorating touches that I got the bug, badly, to redecorate my apartment — and I’ve started doing that.
Below is the door I would use to get back inside the Riad. From there, I’d go down a stairwell to the ground floor and inner courtyard.
And this, taken from the same spot and turning to my right, is the walkway leading to my room. The door to my room is between the two pots on the right. Directly in front of those pots (towards the camera) is a stairway that led to an even higher roof, where we’d eat breakfast each morning.
And up there, a view of the city. It’s quaint how flat the city is; it feels like stepping back in time.
A word about the vibes
I don’t want to go into too much detail here, because the internet can be a small place. I joined up with the writing group about an hour late, when they were in the middle of our introductory dinner. Immediately I felt really out of place with them. Like they were giving me some kind of cold shoulder treatment. And this continued for most of the rest of the trip. Did the organizer tell them I’d asked to switch rooms? Surely that by itself wouldn’t result in a cold shoulder treatment, but it’s certainly possible if it’s framed just-so. Would the organizer be likely to vent such a thing? I saw a few things during the week that made me think it wouldn’t be a stretch.
Maybe it’s all in my head, though. Maybe they were just tired. Maybe throughout the week, the others also felt weirdly ostracized by the whole of the group. It is an odd thing to group up with strangers in a foreign country, and it’s not something I plan to do often in life. But, in Morocco, it’s not safe for a woman to travel alone, so it had to happen.
There was one woman in the group whom I clicked with. If something negative had been said about me, she didn’t hold it against me. I bought and read her book, “Where the Wind Wills,” a travelogue about her time in Africa. It was great! I recommend it if you enjoy nonfiction stories of adventure.
The writing part
Everyone morning, our group would meet for breakfast on the roof. Afterward, at approximately 9:00am, we’d do our writing lessons up there. The writing lessons involved the organizer speaking to us about writing for 2 hours. One day, we did a writing exercise, where we got to write, and I really enjoyed that. I wish there could have been more of that. But otherwise, it was just the lessons, and then we were told to find time to write in our off-time. There wasn’t much off-time — our schedules were very full — so I didn’t get much writing done on the trip. I was fine with that; the point was seeing Morocco.
All of this writing talk (and purported writing time) culminated in a “salon” at the end of the trip, where we read some of our writing.
Touring around Marrakesh
We were given a tour around Marrakesh, most of the major sites. Fortunately the weather was great this day. Below is the Kutubiyya Mosque, the central landmark of Marrakesh.
Trivia: This mosque tower is what you see in Walt Disney’s Epcot park.
Unfortunately, I didn’t take a ton of pictures of this area. I was exhausted and starting to come down with a cold.
Jemaa el-Fnaa
This was the main square in Marrakesh. Supposedly, it can get really sketchy there — a lot of scamming, a lot of straight-up stealing — so we walked through it really quickly, and I didn’t have the opportunity to take many photos. I wish we could have taken more time here, but I trust the decision by the organizers to breeze through it.
Some of the square was open-air, and there were snake-charmers and monkeys and various things you’d imagine in a marketplace in Aladdin.
Some parts were inside — shops lining the walkway like you see below.
One funny story. As you’re walking past these stores, the owners are constantly calling out to you. I’m tall and obviously Western, so I was a prominent target. There was this one dude who saw me approaching (by myself; I was in the group but walking alone). He started calling to me, “Miss. Miss! Hello!” or whatever he said to get my attention, the Arabic equivalent. He probably started talking to me about what he was selling, too.
I just completely ignored him. With my sunglasses on, with my pixie cut, I stared dead ahead and walked right past.
I’ve kept his reaction on my phone for over a year now. I wanted to get it right.
As I began to pass directly by him, I heard and saw him start to laugh. A chuckle from his belly. “Hehehehe…. Oh my God.” His tone was like, This lady is ridiculous, who does she think she is?
As I passed him, I heard him continue to laugh behind me. “Hehehehehe….. eughhhhhh.” The “eughhhh” was an expression of disgust and futility from the depth of his soul.
That seriously cracked me up, but of course I didn’t let him see it.
While in Morocco, we interacted with so many people who were trying to sell us stuff, trying to get money from us. For example, even the manager at our Riad had this fake way about him. I’m sure he’s a nice guy — and I owe him because he saved my ass after my sprained ankle (and I tipped him incredibly well for that!). But he had a fake veneer. We never interacted with the real human there.
By contrast, the Riad bellhop — the one who had told me, “Enjoy your life!” when I’d first arrived — he seemed incredibly kind and genuine to me. But you could tell, those qualities were going to hold him back in matters of business. The cutthroat people are going to make more money off the tourists. The ones who are interacting with you in Morocco, they’re probably among the most cutthroat people in that society, a society that profits so much from tourism. The “cream” that has risen to the top.
So, I appreciated the rare, genuine interactions I had from the Moroccan people. There’s a few more of those to come.
The sun was setting as we left Jemaa el-Fnaa.
The Bahia palace
Earlier that day, we went to the Bahia palace, which was, um, a palace in Marrakesh? I don’t remember any historical detail of this. I think we even had a tour guide, but I was perfectly content to drool over the architecture and ignore everything else.
The amount of detail! Everywhere you looked.
The salesman who didn’t like me
At the end of this day, we went to a perfume seller and medicinal shop. Or was it alchemy? A chemist? Something like that. A place that sold things in jars — food, medicines, smelly things. It felt like a tourist trap, though. This happened to me a few times in Egypt: You’d go on these group tours and afterwards they’d dump you into these stores, and you’d get a talking to and pressured to buy things. There’s no locals around that you can see, just groups of tourists. As far as I understand it, they even cut the tour guides a percentage of their sales.
Egypt totally wore me out on this, so with Morocco I went in skeptical. I wasn’t in the mood to pay these things any attention. (Why are we so sure these items are even legit?) I was also getting sick, as I said earlier.
The salesman assigned to us was a Moroccan gentleman who had a very 90s gay effect — that exuberance you don’t really see anymore post 2010. It felt so odd and false to me; an old Western cultural export, washed up here, forgotten, never to be updated. While we were seated in a semi-circle, the salesman walked vials and jars around to us — asking us to smell things, to put on lotions, and so forth. At the 2nd or 3rd pass, I shook my head no.
His exuberance dropped away, and an intense negative expression flickered across his face. It was like he was thinking, “What if the others catch this bitch’s attitude? There goes my paycheck!” It was just a moment, but I saw it: fear and anger.
Then, he actually waved his hand in my face. His palm flat, he flicked his fingers up, a dismissive gesture. And kept on with his sales talk. The next person smelled the soap, and the next, and round and round he went, smiling and laughing, never offering anything to me again.
Either you’re in or you’re out, I guess.
This resort we went to
On another day, we visited this amazing resort in the countryside. We spent the afternoon there, lounging in well-decorated rooms, ordering drinks and hors d'oeuvres, eating dinner, riding camels. It was my 3rd time riding camels and I’m good for the rest of my life.
Utterly gorgeous. Perfect weather. I wish I could have spent a week at this place.
The aesthetic is transporting.
I especially enjoyed myself because I got some writing done while I was there.
I’d kill for that rug. Gorgeous.
Getting through a cold
I missed 1-2 days of excursions because I came down with a cold. Fever, exhaustion, sore throat, and so forth. This sickness felt incredibly rough because I had to deal with it almost entirely alone. I’m not a baby when it comes to getting sick either; I’m fine tending to myself. But in a foreign country, the logistics make it challenging, and I wasn’t getting much help. For example, I messaged the group via our WhatsApp thread, asking if anyone had extra Advil because I’d run out. I didn’t get a response. Eventually I located a local pharmacy and made the quick trek to buy myself Advil. Fine; whatever.
At another time, I asked if anyone could bring up a few water bottles for me. We had to drink water from bottles to avoid stomach issues. No response.
(In case I forget to mention this later, the group became much more responsive in the WhatsApp thread after I sprained my ankle. They weren’t like this the whole time, just at first.)
Food was a problem too. My first day of fever, I messaged the organizer to tell her I was too sick to come to breakfast, and I got a confirmation from her. By the time I woke up again, the whole group had left — gone to their excursion in the Atlas mountains. The breakfast table had been cleared. No one had checked in on me before leaving thed Riad, even though they had walked right past my door going downstairs. I had no idea what to do for food. When I went downstairs, the Riad was empty. The hotel manager was gone. Everyone was gone.
I could have messaged the WhatsApp thread, but I felt angry at them for ignoring my other requests. Ashamed too; I felt so degraded. Plus, they weren’t around to do anything anyway — all I’d be doing was guilting them for nothing.
My friend Mahdi, who lives in Tangier, whom I know through Discord, will remember that at this point I was messaging him, asking him how I could order food through the equivalent of Uber Eats in Morocco. He helped me out with his phone number — the app required a local’s number and my SIM number wasn’t cutting it. I was able to get food into the app’s cart, but I couldn’t finish paying for it; I couldn’t get the app to accept my American credit card. So I gave up.
“Why didn’t you go out walking and find some food yourself?” you may ask. Because everyone is staring at you, and it’s not exactly safe, so we’d been told. And while I had visited a few nice restaurants, I didn’t know where any quick service was — and I looked and felt like death anyway. I figured I could wait a while.
And feel really, really sorry for myself. Like you do when you’re sick.
Finally, in the afternoon, I heard sounds in the Riad. I came downstairs and two women were working in the kitchen. The maids. Zora and Hasseneah — a name which means “good” and “beautiful,” which is what she was to me.
When I asked them for food, they both jumped into action making me food. Asking me to sit down. While they prepared the food, tea and water, I burst into tears of relief.
They made me several meals over the next few days, ensuring that I was taken care of as I recovered, and I felt so grateful for them. (And tipped them well!)
Hasseneah particularly had this motherly, firm way that was exactly what I needed. She would bring me food and then say, “Eat this. It’s good.”
Or she’d bring me tea and say, “Drink. It’s good,” and she’d pat her throat to show what it was good for. “Drink, finish. Then, rest.” She’d point to the bed.
Bless that woman.
The broken ankle
By day 4 of the Marrakesh portion of the trip, I felt recovered enough to venture outside again. This was good, because I wanted desperately to do some souvenir shopping before we let Marrakesh. Although I’d be stopping in Marrakesh again before flying home, it would only be for a few hours. No time to shop then.
The group organizer kept hyping up this shopping center, and I was excited to visit.
Again, I’ll repeat the theme that I didn’t take any photos of this place because I felt sick and I was in a hurry. This was the only one I got, a shot from inside the shopping center and looking out onto the street. It was basically a mall — for tourists. The government set the prices here so you didn’t have to haggle.
Oh yeah, that was the other challenging thing about Morrocco. You had to haggle for almost everything. It was such a relief to go to this mall where the prices were fixed. Even if I was overpaying, I didn’t care. I didn’t want to mess around with haggling.
The organizer had only allotted 45 minutes for shopping, which wasn’t enough time for me. The rest of the group was hurrying off to a spa, having had ample time during the week to get their souvenirs. I told them to go ahead and I’d finish out my shopping and find my own way back.
You know how it is when you’re almost recovered from a cold but not quite? My energy was good, but I was sweating a lot that day. Still slightly sick, but able to push through.
When I’d finally finished shopping, I felt so accomplished. It was a load off my mind to get the souvenirs. I’m not usually one to care anything about souvenirs, but I love Morocco and I wanted to buy everything. Obviously a bunch of these were gifts too.
So, loaded up with 2-3 big bags, I started back to the Riad. My strides were long, quick, carefree.
And I slipped. On a step outside the mall. Or more specifically, on a ramp on the steps. The ramp was like the one you see below, except they were made of marble. They had no grip on them, like they would have had in the US.
I looked down as I slipped, and I saw my ankle bend inward. All my stuff flew everywhere. I started cursing, loudly. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
A Moroccan man ran up to me. “Are you all right?”
“No.”
“You’re fine. You’re fine.”
“No I’m not.”
There were two men now, standing over me. One of them went to get a chair from inside the mall. He brought the chair to the top of the steps, and both of them picked up my arms and set me down into the chair.
Then, they told me they were going to get some help — someone who spoke more English.
So I was sitting in that chair, in the 85-degree sunlight, sweating profusely from the cold and the frenzy of my shopping trip, staring out at an empty backstreet, and thinking, “How am I going to get back to the Riad? The group left. I have no help. No one will help me. I’m not safe. I’m a sitting duck.”
And then I passed out. I think I was just that shocked.
I was in this inky, black place, experiencing some kind of dream, some scene, some happy moment of life. I felt blissful in the dark. And then someone was shaking my shoulder, waking me up. “Miss! Miss!”
I remembered: I’m in Marrakesh. And I just sprained my ankle. I did not want to wake up, when I remembered that. Too many problems with that.
“Miss!” He shook my shoulder.
But I didn’t have a choice. I opened my eyes. A Moroccan man was handing me my phone, which I had dropped. I thanked him.
Various things happened here, and I don’t remember every detail. Somehow they brought me out of the sunlight, back into the entryway of the mall. There were Westerners around me now, such as a French man in his 30s who had sprained his ankle skiing in the past and knew what I should do. He talked me through how to sit and elevate my foot. A woman with an eastern European accent brought me food and drink from the nearby cafe (no one charged me). Helpful people like these… they lingered as I called the Riad, as the hotel manager agreed to come pick me up in a tuktuk. They waited until he arrived, in 5-10 minutes, and helped load me into the tuktuk. The French man in particular was very comforting. I’m so glad for him.
Not to give only the Westerners credit! The Moroccan men who initially helped me were amazing too. When I think about how easy it would have been for that man to swipe my phone and cash; he was kind and I’m glad for him. And of course, the hotel manager who got me back to the Riad and made sure I was comfortable: thank you to him! I think I tipped him the equivalent of hundreds of dollars in the US, haha. (Meaning how far the money goes.)
So, as much as I’ve complained about the predatory attitude towards tourists, at the end of the day, I think they’ve just decided we don’t need our money that much. When I had actual need, everyone came through.
Here I am lounging at the Riad, with ice on my ankle.
When I got back like this, Zora and Hasseneah saw me and did the Moroccan equivalent of rolling their eyes, expressing, “This again? We just nursed you back to health!” I laughed, shrugged and apologized.
I rested for a long time. I didn’t dare try to put weight on my ankle initially. I’d never sprained my ankle before, so I was approaching the situation very cautiously — probably too cautiously, honestly. Below is a picture of the first hour of swelling.
Various people in the writing group came into the room, saw this swelling, decided it wasn’t bad, and left to get ready for dinner. They were unfazed. But they hadn’t seen what I’d seen; they hadn’t seen my ankle bend inward.
At this point in the trip, however, I expected no sympathy from them. So I took it in stride. Everyone plays different roles in groups, and I was the pathetic, dramatic malingerer. Whatever.
There was some discussion (among the group organizers, and among my parents whom I called) about whether I should go see a doctor. But I held off on doing that. It would require me moving and I wasn’t even sure it would help much. I was much more concerned about the logistics of getting home; my flight would leave Morocco in 3 days. The group was leaving for Essaouira the next morning. Could I still go with them? Would I need to stay in the Riad, alone again? Just cooped up and waiting for a flight?
It was the second lowest moment of the trip.
The lowest moment, that happens in the next update.
Stay tuned!