The Festival that Wasn't

Two weekends ago, we decided to do some interactive learning and visit the small town of Imilchil for the annual Berber marriage festival which we had been studying in sociology.  We had reserved a room in a "hotel" in Rich, another emall town about 3 by bus from Imilchil. Both towns are in the Middle Atlas Mountains, and both are very rural and difficult to get to.  Five American girls and our Moroccan friend Amin, we boarded the night bus at 8:30 pm on Friday.  Amin, being a Moroccan, could not understand our desire to go there-- neither could our brother, who did not even know of the festival.  It's interesting to see how the differences between Berber culture and Moroccan culture appear. 

Night bus to Rich

The night bus was over-crowded, and I was lucky to get a seat and not have to sit/sleep on the floor like some people did.  I ended up sitting next to a man who, upon establishing that I speak a little Arabic and he spoke a little English, asked me The Big Question: "Do you believe in God?"  Just like that, like "Do you think it's cold outside?"  That's just the thing: in America religion is more of a touchy subject, up there with politics and sex as not-appropriate-dinner-conversation.  Maybe because we were going to be stuck on the bus for the night, or maybe because it's Morocco, but I ended up talking with this man, Abdulhuk, for the majority of the ride, in between trying to sleep and our far too frequent stops at food stands on the side of the road.  He was pretty open minded, when I could get a word into his energetic, passionate, and insistent ramblings about the nonsensicality of the Cross of Christianity and the intelligence of the Jews who, alas, had done something wrong in the eyes of God.  As someone who is not strictly religious and doesn't adhere to a doctrine per se, I found everything he said very interesting.  Except, maybe, the last part before I played the exhaustion card: Abdulhuk: "Do you pray?" Me: "No." Abdulhuk: "Do you give alms to the poor?" Me: "Yes, sometimes." Abdulhuk: "Ok well yes. Inshallah we will meet again in Paradise."  What a guy.

Sleepy town of Rich at our arrival at 6am

I awoke as we were pulling into Rich, around 6am.  The landscape was breath-takingly beautiful at dawn, just vast expanses of dusty plains and mountains in the distance dotted with trees, and the lone paved road stretching on.  After checking into our hotel rooms, experiencing the turkish toilets (oh, yes.) and freshening up (as much as possible, understandably), we went to a cafe and had some strong, far too sugary espresso.  Amine then proceeded to make friends with every other man in the vacinity (as is the Moroccan way, for a man, anyways), including a driver who offered to take us to Imilchil, even though he'd never been there.  We squeezed into the van, Emily in the trunk, and started our drive through the mountains.  It was, once again, undescribably beautiful.  Our driver began stopping roughly every 20 minutes at little apple farmer tents on the side of the road, making friends and talking with the farmers and leaving with a few apples, which were thrown into the trunk of the van along with Emily.  Johhny Appleseed pulled over by the side of a river so we could  wash and eat the apples and drink the fresh mountain-river water.  I can only attempt to describe the colors of the mountains there, ribbons of sediment undulating for miles and miles-- kilometres and kilometres-- with little towns nestled at the base of mountains.

Eating apples in the Atlas

الله ، الوطن ، الملك

God, Homeland, King

Imilchil-- no festival in sight

 Berber souk

We finally arrived in Imilchil 4 hours later, found a restaurant with Berber tajines (characterized by potatoes, olives, and other vegetables stewed over chicken or beef), and were told by Amine that we would not be seeing the marriage festival, afterall.  At that point, all we could do was laugh, and finish our tea and tajines.  Turns out, the music and activity happens at night, but we had been driving all night and day and would be driving all the next day too, so we (Amine) decided to turn back early.  We went to the huge marriage festival souk nearby and walked around for a bit-- being a Berber souk it was different from those we're used to in Rabat and elsewhere, it was much, much larger and with lots of silver and Berber rugs.  After only half an hour of walking around, we headed back to Rich.  Of course, our van got a flat tire and we pulled over on the side of the road (read: ravine, as we were driving through the Middle Atlas Mountains).  Us girls got out of the car, laughing, and wandered around the rocks and the dried up river, because honestly what were we going to do?  A truckload of Berbers saved the day-- careening around the mountianside, they stopped up ahead of us a little and got out of their van, climbing down from the little pen-like structure on top of the van.  Too many cooks in the kitchen-- or Berbers in the van-- so some of them started talking to us in some kind of sign-language, which we eventually understood to mean they wanted us to take their picture.  They fixed the tire somehow and drove away, and we went home to Rich.

Berber men save the day.

We got on the bus the next morning with no troubles, heading out on the 8 hour return trip to Rabat.  On the whole, uneventful, except for Mustapha the electrician.  My friend Meera was sitting in the aisle seat, sleeping with her legs crossed, and her skirt had risen just above her knee.  Mustapha was sitting on a stool in the aisle of the bus (too crowded, but meshi mushkil (no problem)), and all of a sudden he reached over and pulled her skirt over her leg to cover it.  She woke up, startled, and he said in Darija, "I am Muslim", with a shrug of his shoulders.  Shuma bazaaaaf.  That's pretty much the attitude of men here as far as I've seen, especially as you get into the poorer areas of the city, or the more rural areas of the country.  I try to air on the safe side, which means being uncomfortably layered always.  The rest of the ride, he attempted to talk to us, but we weren't really in the mood.  Got back home, did some homework, called it a weekend. 

View from the top

Something to note: originally, Amine was not coming with us on this trip, and once he decided to come, we did some things differently from how we had planned.  As helpful as it was in terms of navigating prices and directions, we didn't stay in Imilchil because he was tired, and he had made an agreement with the driver to get back to Rich at a certain time.  It goes back to the gender issue, the pros and cons of having a man with you (not necessary at all times).  Oh well, guess we'll have to come back for the festival next year :-)