It's Never Too Late In Morocco

by Calliope Zarpas (France)

Making a local connection Morocco

Ever since the day I was born I have always been just a little bit late. The habit started when I arrived into the world one day past my due date. It continued as I arrived to class ten seconds after the bell rang or finished my Christmas shopping on December 24th. And things were no different on my semester abroad in college. There I was weaving through crowds on train platforms shouting "mi scusi" or "perdóneme" or "excusez-moi." I was craning my neck to see over the security line in the airport and panting inside busses after making it just in time. But things changed when I found myself on a 24-hour bus across Morocco headed towards the burnt gold sands of the Sahara. On my first day there, I was in the October heat of Casablanca one minute and on a cooled bus to the famed Sahara the next. My friends and I had our books and backpacks and all the patience we could muster to pass the time between each stop. But our secret weapon was Ahmed, our tour guide. I had originally decided to sit up front next to Ahmed to get the panoramic view of the dry and rocky countryside of Morocco. I loved the miles of dusty nothingness dotted with oases of green palm trees and browned grasses. I saw horizons that looked so prehistoric with their crumbling landmasses and fern forests that my eyes scanned for dinosaurs. But I soon learned the best part of being up front was Ahmed and his stories. As the bus passed through the timelines of the little cities we traveled through on the way to the desert, we sailed parallel to that of Ahmed and his birth in the quiet sands of the Sahara, his twelve hushed years of grazing sheep across grassy fields, and all the way to him guiding strangers through the desert with just paper, a pen, and the stars. Through his stories we learned that because he’d been born in the silky silence of the desert, he didn’t move through time in 24-hour increments, but rather through the ebb and flow of silence and music. “It’s like drumming your hands on a table in a silent room,” he told us. “We want to fill the spaces with music.” He had first found music in the golden dunes that sang in the wind. Then he wandered the country side for twelve years as a shepherd with only the music between his ears and the sound of his sheep chewing grass. Finally he chased the music of language, learning the words of the tourists in order to guide them back to his desert. The farther we drove from the coast the easier we fell into his slowed time. Our days became marked by the silence between the calls that sounded off the cool stone walls of mosques. Time was suspended in the space between foreheads and prayer mats and among the shadows stretched across sidewalks. The minutes were measured by the amount of sunshine dripping off balconies in Casablanca, the number of snake charmers and tourists and bags of mint tea left in the markets of Marrakech, and the sound of clay pots and bubbling water from kitchen windows in the Atlas Mountains. I learned Ahmed couldn’t have been born late like I was because he didn’t have a due date. He didn’t know how old he was either, but he’d known where he’d been and he knew where he was as our bus weaved through miles of stories. He wasn’t late to wake up or to graze his sheep because neither was the sun to wake him. He moved to the seasons, the wind across sandy fields, and paths braiding through small villages. He wasn’t late to life because he didn’t attend college or land in the career he originally desired. By the time we arrived back in Casablanca each passing minute didn’t feel so pressing anymore, my future sprints towards busses slowed easier into “I’ll catch the next one” and I worried less about where life would take me after college graduation. Finally, I realized that I’d been born right on time.