Morocco 1990-2010 - Massimo

Massimo

I first visited Morocco twenty years ago. August 1990. With my sister, her husband (and best friend of mine) and two more friends, we rented a car – it was a FIAT 131 – and went around for three weeks. We started in Marrakech, then southward towards Ouarzazate, the Draa Valley, Dades and Todhra Gorges, Erfoud, Merzouga. That was the first, fantastic week, concluded with an unforgettable sunrise, admired from the top of the highest dune in Merzouga. A cock sang to salute the sun from a desert gypsies’ camp, just below the dune. It was one of the most perfect moments in my life. The whole trip, I think, was magic. In my perception – I never checked my friends’ ones – it was our ‘Fandango’. It marked the end of our extended youths. My sister had just married, I had finally found a job after all those years at the university (degree, post-degree, doc, post-doc, an: you know). And we were all end so on: you know). And we were entering our thirties. We were still young in many senses (far too many, in my case), but youth was over.

After Merzouga we went northward towards Fès, Meknès, Volubilis, the Rif – behind every bend, and there were many on that incredibly winding road, there was a boy screaming “kiff” and trying to sell us some hashish – Rabat, and then again in the South, till Agadir and Tafraoute. Morocco stuck us with its colors and fragrances, its imperial cities, its light and above all with its variety. With all our study of guidebooks and travel reports, we were totally unprepared to such a variety: a bit of Sicily (or Andalucía) in the North, with hills covered with olive trees, beaches and whitewashed villages perching over the Mediterranean; oasis, Kasbahs and huge sand dunes in the South; 4,000 meters-high mountains in between, with creeks, waterfalls and cedar forests. We thought Morocco to be one of the worst-known and most underestimated destinations in the world.

Twenty years after, the Moroccan nature, all in all, is still the same. The light, colors and fragrances, and the variety of landscapes, are still there. The old towns, from Marrakech to Fès, with their Kasbahs and Medinas, maintain their charme, even though some souk is filled with Chinese-made plastic souvenirs and motor coach adventurers make their best to destroy the peaceful, imposing beauty of riads and medersas. However, from many points of view, Morocco has undergone a dramatic change in the last twenty years. Again, that is something you should be expected to know, if you didn’t leave for your trip without any preparation. The figures about GDP growth, industrial and trade development are well known, as it is the fact that the Maghreb will be among the world’s fastest growing areas in the next decade.

Despite such knowledge, though, the new ‘towns’ which have been growing around Marrakech, Rabat and Casablanca are impressive, the wealth of the ‘super-marché’ in their suburbs is similar to our owns’, everybody seems to have a mobile phone and the number of German luxury cars on the roads – which, by the way, have been dramatically improved – is surprising. And seeing what Ouarzazate has become in the last twenty years is astonishing. ‘Chez Dimitri’, which was one of the two or three restaurants in a small, dusty, in-the-middle-of-nothing town, is now surrounded by brand new neighborhoods, malls and advertising boards. The town looks at least five times larger than it was, maybe more. I wasn’t even able to find the old famous signal with the indication for caravans (and early tourists): 52 days to reach Timbuktu by camel…

Twenty years ago, it was ‘Fandango’. I still do not know which movie the present trip will be. Judging from the first two weeks, though, I am sure it will not be boring, in the way I prefer: changing my perceptions and teaching me something.