What a ride!

We waved down a shared taxi with space on the back bench, I said good-bye to Abdel Wahed and off I was. It was only 15 km to the next town, but this short trip became a very memorable experience.

As we rode along the country road from hamlet to hamlet, through the rolling landscape of the southern Moroccan coast and its dry farmland, tired after a hot summer, the taxi quickly filled up to the habitual 4 guys in the back and two on the front seat next to the driver. It was an old, run-down station wagon with grubby seats, patched-up holes in the roof lining and a slight odor of leaked petrol – just the way I like them. Pressed against the door & an unopenable, dirty window on one side and against an old, veiled man in jalabia on the other, listening to a groovy gypsy-like sound blasting from shabby speakers, I gazed at the barren, harrowed fields outside, sparsely dotted with olive, fig and argan trees and at the hills stretching out beyond, covered in semi-wild Argan forest – the source of the famous oil that has now become become one of Morocco’s major exports.

At that moment, I suddenly realised how happy I was and I wondered which part of that experience I owed this joyous feeling to – the arid landscape that I was so used to from my years in Jordan and that I’ve missed since living in central Europe? The faces of old men, tanned and grooved by the sun, village life and their hard work? Having a stranger nearly sitting on my lap? The beautifully harsh sound of a rural Arabic being spoken around me (even though a very bastardised version)?

In the end I concluded that is was simply this mode of traveling – the humble and ordinary nature of it, the connection with this country’s inhabitants that it enabled and the sheer simplicity of genuine, wordless human contact.

And just at that blissful instant, as I glanced back and forth between the landscapes of the passengers’ faces and those outside the window, just as I thought it couldn’t get any better, the taxi pulled over on the dusty roadside that merged seamlessly into a field. Seven women and two children, wearing plain, but brightly-coloured dresses, were standing in the sun, waiting for a ride. I immediately started smiling in anticipation and disbelief of what I imagined was about to happen. Was our driver really stopping to offer them a ride? How the hell…?
  

Another equally full taxi had pulled up simultaneously and the two drivers agreed to take on the challenge. As they started shuffling the complacent passengers around between their two vehicles, I gave way to my amused disbelief and said smilingly to my close neighbour: musta7eel! He smiled back at me, confirming: Musta7eel! (Impossible!) But we were to be proven wrong: only a few seconds later we found ourselves – four of us in total – ushered into the old car’s boot, the door to which was now being held up permanently with a wooden pole that looked like it had been used for this purpose before. A gentle but rather firm push was needed to close the front two doors of our taxi, now holding all seven (!) women, the two children on the laps and four men in the boot. I don’t know how the driver could reach the gear stick without breaking any cultural norms, but off we went, with a pleasant, exhaust-scented breeze and a splendid view out the back.