I was Morocco’s Cheapest Mountain Guide: Ramadan in Morocco Part II
I woke up to the chainsaw of a minor-key voice. Arabic syllables sliced the stuffy Marrakesh air. My room had no windows, no fan. My insides cooked in the scorching stagnant air. The first call to prayer was joined by that from a second mosque, then a third, then so many more that the air buzzed and swam with the weight of prayers from every direction. All my associations with such sounds were from TV shows like 24. To me the minor key sounded scary, foreboding.
What was I doing in this windowless cell anyway? I remembered the day before, Ali the stranger becoming Ali the friend, then Ali the betrayer. Tears came to my eyes. I was alone. The call to prayer was an ear-splitting reminder that I did not belong.
Finally, it ended. My head filled with static, as though I had just been at a rock concert. My phone said 5 AM: it must have been the pre-dawn prayer. I closed my eyes, and tried to go back to sleep. The bed was slippery with my own sweat.
Then I remembered: Mt. Toubkal. Not only would climbing North Africa’s tallest mountain bring me some quiet, but it would also be cooler. I packed up my things and left. Following my guidebook’s instructions, I hailed a mini taxi outside of the medina and drove to the dusty dirt parking lot where I was supposed to pick up a long distance “grand taxi.”
All the cars were empty. It was already getting hot. I swallowed, my throat was dry. I remembered with horror the liter of water I had left in my hostel room. If a car didn’t come by soon I would I die of heat stroke? Ali was the only person I told my plan too. Would he even care?
A car’s honk startled me. I went over to it and was greeted by a cheerful British voice from the backseat.
“Hello! Where are you traveling too?”
“I’m trying to get to Mt. Toubkal.”
“Brilliant! So are we! Come on in. I think we have enough people now that the cab might actually go.”
I got in. The cab driver did not look at me.
The gangly pale Brit turned to the striking black woman seated next to him. “Karine darling, see if we can get the cab driver to leave.”
She spoke to the driver in perfect French. He spoke back angrily, seeming to argue.
“He doesn’t want to leave until every seat is filled.” She purred in a French accent.
“Well, bloody hell, we only have one seat left. Let’s just all split the cost of the seat and get on with it. I don’t want to be cooking in the sunshine all morning.”
We began driving. “Thanks for letting me join you guys, I was nervous I wouldn’t be able to make it, I’m Lauren.”
“I’m Christoph and this is my girl-”
“I’m Karine,” she said, cutting him off as though to assert her own identity. “How do you plan to do the trek? Are you going to use a guide service?”
“Guide service?” I laughed. “I don’t have that kind of money, I’m just a teacher. Anyway, I read the guide book and the trail is supposed to be easy to find.”
“But it is so tall?”
“It’s only 13,000 feet or so. There shouldn’t be any ice on it this time of year so you can just walk right up it. It will be fine.”
“Well, do you think you could take us up it? Could you be our guide?” Karine asked.
“I’d love to! It sure beats hiking alone.”
We then got quiet. I read and re-read the guidebook. Now that I had others depending on me, I really didn’t want to screw up.
We got dropped off in the small town of Imlil. We passed a restaurant and the air was filled with the smell of spices and slow roasted meat. It must be hard for those observing Ramadan to live in a tourist town where there was fragrant cooking all day.
We feasted on chicken tagine at the rooftop cafe. The check came, I got out my money purse.
“We got this,” Christoph said. “You’re our guide.”
“And a cheap guide at that! You only cost us one chicken tagine,” Karine added.
“Thanks so much.” I paused, now that I was a paid guide, I really needed to do some guiding. “Before we start hiking, we should drop off our heavy bags at a hostel so that we only carry what we need up the mountain.”
I led them out of the restaurant to a hostel across the street. The owner spoke English and was delighted to help us out and take our bags.
He waved us goodbye with a cheerful “have a splendid trek, Inshallah.”
“What does that mean?” Christoph asked me when we had walked a few yards away.
“If God wills it. I have heard it so often since I got here, and I think it is a nice way to remember to not stress out about things you can’t control.”
We found the trail and began to ascend, kicking up dusty clouds that shone in the noonday sun.
Inshallah, the rhythmic word was stuck in my head like a catchy song. My throat was dry, and I wondered if I had enough water. Inshallah, we will all make it without falling down with dehydration. I started to doubt if we would. We had seven miles and five thousand feet to climb. I looked at the culvert along the trail, filled with water chilled from the mountains. It was hard not to fall to my knees and slurp from it.
Like a mirage, I looked up ahead and saw a shack beside the trail with an antique Coca Cola sign. “Guys are you seeing this shack too, or is it just a vision?”
Karine laughed, “I see it. And the donkey’s butt off to the right as well.”
A short donkey wrapped in colorful fabric was to the side of the shack, and the young shopkeeper was unloading supplies from his back.
“Salaam! Can we buy three Cokes please?”
“Yes, yes,” the boy motioned for us to follow him to the culvert. There he untied three bottles of Cokes that he had geniusly tied to the sides to allow the water to cool down the drinks.
We paid and continued onward. The trail was wide enough to walk three abreast. Feeling cheered and refreshed we got into a chatty mood.
“How did you two meet?” I asked.
“An online dating site.” Karine laughed, “Christoph came very well recommended by all of his exes.”
“What? You mean if someone dumps a person, they leave a review on their dating profile?”
“Of course! How else would people know what they are getting into?”
“What did the exes say about Christoph?”
“That I’m nice but boring.” Christoph laughed.
“Is that true?” I asked Karine.
“Maybe a little.” She coughed. “But when I went on a date with him, I could immediately tell that it was a cup-ed thing for him.”
“A what?”
“Uh,” Karine pouted trying to think of the word, “how do you say, like romance with bow and arrow?”
“Oh, a cupid thing.”
“Yes. I could tell he loved me right away.”
“Is that true?” I asked Christoph.
He blushed and looked at Karine with utter adoration. “Of course.”
“And you, Karine?”
“He is growing on me.”
The terrain became steeper. Although the sunshine was blazing, it began to cool off a bit as we gained altitude. A steep cliff was on our right and there were bright green plants in the moist ravine. The trail itself, however, remained relentlessly dusty. Karine’s cough grew worse.
She had to stop and catch her breath after a particularly steep section. She had her hands on her knees and wheezed and coughed.
“Asthma,” Christoph explained.
She looked terrible. How had I not noticed earlier? As their guide, I was letting them down.
“Do you have an inhaler?” I asked her.
“I forgot it,” she said, breathing hard. “But I will be fine.”
“It’s only going to get harder to breathe as we get to a higher altitude.”
She let out a long exhale and her breathing returned to normal. “I’ll be fine,” she smiled. “Let’s keep going.”
“Ok,” I set a much slower pace, filled with worry. What if she had an asthma attack that she couldn’t recover from? Were there any doctors on the mountain?
It was beginning to get dark when we reached base camp which was nestled in a small plateau at 10500 feet. The sandstone glowed red with the last embers of sun. The wind had taken a wintry turn and I shivered in my fleece sweater. The refuge was made of stones that were cut from the surrounding rock and it rose as if organically from its surroundings.
We entered the refuge and paid for our bunks. Karine and Christoph had to separate as the bunk rooms were divided by the sexes.
Knowing we needed to wake up early in order to reach the summit with good weather, we went to bed immediately. Between altitude-induced insomnia and worries over Karine’s coughing, I did not sleep much.
In the morning, we set out for the summit. This section of the hike was much more difficult, and Karine’s breathing grew worse as she scrambled up the steep scree. I worried about her and felt guilty. Was she in such bad shape because I had set too fast a pace the day before? But I wasn’t an official guide. I tried to shrug off the guilt. You get what you paid for.
I looked again at Karine. She had stopped on the trail her hands were on her knees trying to get her breath back. I felt worry, not as a guide, but as a friend. If she were to get altitude sickness on top of her asthma she could die.
“Please,” I pleaded with Karine, “You need to turn back. We still have three thousand feet to climb and you’re breathing is only going to get worse as you ascend.”
Karine looked defeated by her own body. “Ok,” she said.
“I’ll take you down, love.” Christoph hugged her. “Thank you, Lauren, it has been wonderful climb with you.”
“Thank you!”
I watched them hike down the trail, then continued upwards, alone. Without Karine’s health to consider, I hiked at a faster pace and soon reached the summit.
Rather than feeling a sense of accomplishment, I felt a sadness that Christoph and Karine weren’t with me. The peak of Toubkal towered over the other Atlas Mountains, but I found the view depressing, so dusty and drab. The company was more important than the summit.