With local guide Mohamed, we crossed the dry bed of the Ounila River and entered the historic village of Aït Benhaddou in Morocco. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the hill town has existed since the 1000s.

Aït Benhaddou was once an important stop on the caravan route across the Atlas Mountains between the Sahara and Marrakesh.

Today, the walled village is inhabited by only a few families.

We visited one of the residents, a widow who has lived in Aït Benhaddou for thirty years. Upon our arrival, she poured glasses of hot mint tea for us—the traditional Moroccan ritual of hospitality.

A donkey stood with its head inside of the front door slurping water from a bucket. A small herd of goats was penned in one of the home’s stone-floored rooms. In the living area hung a movie poster from Gladiator.

After our visit, we continued through the village. Narrow passages zigzag up the slope of the hill. Buildings of different sizes are stacked at angles, one upon another, like a child’s building blocks. The passageways are jammed with vendors selling souvenirs.

We passed a kasbah (fort), a mosque, a synagogue, and a former inn for caravaners. At the top of the hill, overlooking the valley, are the remains of a fortified granary. All of the buildings are composed of clay, wood, and straw. All are the same pale tan color, which glows warmly in the rising and setting sun.

Like the pueblos of the American Southwest, Aït Benhaddou is a classic example of earthen architecture. Of course, earth erodes.

The thousands of historic mud villages of Morocco, including Aït Benhaddou, appear to be melting like candles. 

Preserving them requires ongoing repair or replacement. The current buildings of Aït Benhaddou likely date from the 1600s or later.

Just outside the town’s walls is a more recent structure—a small arena. It was constructed as a movie set and used in the filming of Gladiator; thus, the poster proudly displayed in the woman’s home.

On location

Numerous films and TV series have made use of Morocco’s mud cities, deserts, and oases.

A short list includes Lawrence of Arabia, Time Bandits, The Jewel of the Nile, The Mummy, Black Hawk Down, American Sniper, and Game of Thrones.

Perhaps the best-known film about Morocco is 1942’s Casablanca. All of the movie’s scenes were shot in Los Angeles.

Starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, Casablanca won three Academy Awards. The fictional “gin joint” known as Rick’s Café Américain was inspired by the El Minzah Hôtel in Tangier. As no such place existed in Casablanca, an American entrepreneur decided to create one. She rounded up investors through her company, The Usual Suspects, and opened Rick’s in 2004.

Given my admiration for the movie, I had to pay the place a visit. I imagined finding crass commercialism—ball caps emblazoned with Here’s Looking at You, Kid.

Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to discover elegant dining amid vintage decor.

Living museums

The country of Morocco is the size of California. The entire population speaks Arabic. A fourth speaks Berber (or Tamazight, the generic term for all of the Berber languages). A third speaks French. 

As I speak none of these, I joined a small group of travelers on a two-week tour. I was accompanied by a few Americans, Australians, and Canadians, and Craig, my college roommate of three years and good friend of five decades.

In the city of Fes, we met Hicham, a local guide. Hichan grew up inside the medina, the original walled section of the city, founded around 800 CE.

For centuries, walled cities have offered protection. In the 1800s, when the cities fell to Europeans, the invaders often knocked down the convoluted medinas and rebuilt on modern grids.

In Morocco, the French occupiers decided instead to leave the medinas standing and develop their European-style neighborhoods outside the walls. As a result, many tangled Moroccan medinas have survived. They are living museums. 

The medina of Fes covers seven hundred acres. One hundred thousand live inside the walls. Hicham claims it has over nine thousand streets, all of which he knows. “If you get lost,” he said, “yell, ‘Hicham!,’ and I will find you. Don’t yell ‘Mohamed!’ or hundreds of Mohameds will come running.”

In old Islamic medinas, individual districts are formed around commercial specialities, the locksmiths in one neighborhood, for example, and the butchers in another. Most of the side streets are residential, many of them leading to dead ends.

Buildings are jammed together, sharing walls and rooftops. Passageways are intricately knotted. Apart from electricity and running water, little has changed in Fes since the Middle Ages.

Intermixed are homes, hammans (public baths), fonduks (inns for caravaners), souqs (markets), and madrasas (schools).

Embedded within Fes is al-Qarawiyyin, the oldest university in the world. It was founded in 859 CE. Today’s enrollment is eight thousand. 

Workshops hum and clang with the activity of weavers, coppersmiths, potters, and woodworkers. Each souq is a warren of stalls selling similar merchandise—clothing, shoes, accessories, housewares, and luggage.

The food markets feature live chickens, butchered meat, fish, vegetables, olives, fruit, eggs, cheese, baked goods, and candy.

Along the alleyways, spices, grains, shelled nuts, dates, and beans are mounded in baskets. Loaves of fresh-baked bread are piled in pyramids. Shoppers step aside as mules and handcarts make deliveries. 

“Balak!” means “Get out of the way!”

Tanning salon

Over two weeks, we visited several medinas. They are wondrous mazes, where, around every corner, seemingly any experience is possible.

In Essaouira, street musicians played traditional Berber music. In Rabat, men in bloody aprons carried raw sides of beef over their shoulders. In Marrakesh, a baker labored in a hole-in-the-wall below street level, inserting boules of dough into a deep oven with a long-handled pizza paddle.

In Meknes, we were invited into a private home for lunch. After a round of hot mint tea, we were served sloppy joe-style camel burgers.

In Marrakesh, motorcycles wove dangerously through the throngs of shoppers like angry bees. In Casablanca, residents rinsed themselves in community fountains and filled containers with drinking water.

Hicham said, “You’ve heard of Chanel No. 5. Here in Fes we have Camel No. 7.”

The stench permeates the alleys around the Chouara Tannery. Upon entering, visitors receive mint leaves to press to their noses. The tannery has been operating in (and stinking up) the medina since at least the 1500s.

In the vast dye yard below the leather-shop balconies, men tiptoe around the edges of huge stone vats filled with mixtures of cow urine, pigeon feces, quicklime, salt, and water.

Hardy workers climb into the vats to tread the hides of cows, sheep, goats, and camels.

At the other end of the yard, hides are soaked in tubs of natural dyes, including poppy for red, indigo for blue, and henna for orange. Once the hides dry, workers produce ultrasoft purses, coats, shoes, and slippers. 

The entire process, including the adverse health risks, hasn’t changed in centuries.

Game of thrones

With its strategic location on the Mediterranean Sea, Morocco was a natural target for settlement by various ancient empires, including the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Romans.

In the 700s Arab forces arrived and converted most of the indigenous Berbers to Islam. The region was ruled by a succession of dynasties. 

Portugal, Spain, England, and gangs of Barbary pirates fought for control of Morocco’s ports. In 1777, Morocco was the first country in the world to recognize a mutinous British colony called the United State of America.

In 1912 Morocco became a French protectorate. “It was not protection,” Hicham corrected. “It was occupation.” The country became fully independent in 1956.

Wildlife

In the town of Ifran, where the Moroccan royals sometimes vacation, is a statue of a lion. Wild Barbary lions once prowled the mountains and deserts of North Africa. Some were captured by the Romans and pitted against gladiators in staged spectacles.

In the 1800s big-game hunters decimated most of the rest of the population. The last sighting of a Barbary lion in the wild occurred in Algeria in 1956. Now, they are remembered as the mascot of Morocco’s national soccer team, the Atlas Lions.

On our approach to the Middle Atlas Mountains, we passed olive groves, fruit orchards, and greenhouses. Elevated irrigation channels delivered water. Flocks of sheep scrounged for something to eat in the rocky red soil. Always, shepherds were nearby, intent on their mobile phones. Sometimes, goats strayed across the highway.

The few buildings resemble bunkers with wrought-iron gates, grills, and doors. Tile roofs sport satellite dishes. Laundry hangs outside in the sun. In the distance, snow-sprinkled mountains rise from the horizon like a wall.

We entered a cedar forest, home to a dwindling population of wild Barbary macaques. Sometimes called Barbary apes, macaques are actually tailless monkeys. Their faces resemble those of characters in Planet of the Apes.

In a clearing on the side of the road, vendors use peanuts to attract macaques, and thereby attract potential customers. A troop of monkeys cavorted among the tourists. One tugged at a woman’s skirt, begging for food.

The number of Barbary macaques in Morocco is declining due to deforestation and poaching. In the cedar forests of the Middle Atlas the population is currently estimated at five thousand. The International Union for Conservation considers the species endangered.

Although the “capture, hunting, possession, sale and hawking” of the animal is prohibited by Moroccan law, enforcement is inconsistent. Chained macaques are fixtures in public squares, such as Marrakech’s Jemaa el-Fnaa, where they pose with tourists for a fee.

A new tactic to reduce poaching is the employment of shepherds in remote areas to monitor the populations while tending to their herds.

In contrast, feral cats proliferate. Most Moroccans do not keep house pets; however, they favor cats and allow them free range.

Scores of them congregate on every street of every city and village. They roam freely in and out of shops. They lounge on chairs in restaurants. In Morocco, cats rule. 

Most seem well-fed by the populace, although slightly skinny. Nodding at one, I said, “My cat is four times that big.” One of my tour-mates responded, “Well, he’s an American.”

The few street dogs in Morocco look sad and starved for attention. “Of course,” Craig said. “They’re living in a cat world.” 

Work in progress

The giant statues of apples in Midelt’s roundabouts proclaim the area’s agricultural specialty. At an altitude of five thousand feet, the town is in the high plains between the Middle and High Atlas mountain ranges. Mining development led to the electrification of Midelt in 1930. In Morocco, only Casablanca was wired earlier.

Outside of town, a local guide directed us on a hike along a ridge overlooking the deep gorge carved by the Moulouya River. We passed an apple orchard and a dairy cooperative. Shepherds waved at us. At the end of the ridge, we entered Berem, a steep, stony village of earthen homes, reportedly over one thousand years old. In the alleys donkeys transported sheaves of hay.

A meeting with a family had been prearranged. We removed our shoes and sat on the floor of the living room, which was covered with Berber carpets and cushions.

Two single women live in the home with their children. They served hot mint tea and spongy Moroccan pancakes with butter and honey.

Our guide explained that the women run a cooperative, one that supports economically vulnerable women, often widowed or divorced.

Moroccan society, both Arab and Berber, is male-dominated. Traditional gender roles and resistance to change have prevented most women from working outside the home and participating in public life. As a result, many Moroccan women are illiterate, poor, and socially isolated.

Worldwide, women comprise fifty percent of the workforce. In Morocco, women’s participation is half of that, among the lowest in the world.

In 2004, Morocco revised the Mudawana Family Code. Changes included raising the legal age of marriage to eighteen, limiting the terms of polygamy, and guaranteeing rights for women regarding divorce, child support, and property ownership.

The reform was hailed worldwide by rights activists. On the ground, however, change has been slow.

To help improve their lives, the development of women-owned cooperatives has been encouraged. In recent years thousands have formed.

We visited a few, including Marjana, a producer of argan-oil products, such as sauces, dressings, soaps, and shampoos. The work is arduous.

The collective of sixty women harvest argan nuts, dry them, crack them open with rocks, remove the kernels, and roast them, all by hand, before extracting the oil. It takes almost ninety pounds of kernels to make one quart of oil.

Hump day

As we headed into the High Atlas Mountains, we navigated miles of new highway construction, an effort by Morocco to provide the south of the country with access to the amenities of the north.

On the other side, the desert was barren for miles in every direction. Dust devils hovered. We saw small herds of camels. A few forlorn shops sold fossils, geodes, and fresh-squeezed orange juice.

Near Merzouga, Craig bought a long white scarf and wrapped it around his head, Lawrence of Arabia-style.

At the appointed time, we walked across the road to meet the camels. They were waiting nonchalantly for us, kneeling in rows in a sandy lot like cars ready for test drives. 

Dromedaries have single humps, composed of fat and fiber. Their legs are long and powerful with two toes on each leather-padded foot. Bushy eyebrows keep sand out of their eyes. They are hardy animals. Reportedly, they can cover fifty miles in a day and go for a month without water.

Camels were domesticated over five thousand years ago. None are left in the wild.

Each of our camel trains consisted of a male and a harem of females. They were as docile as a herd of cows.

Climbing aboard a camel is easy—until it stands up. First, it rises to its front knees, tipping you backward. Then it stands on its back legs, tossing you forward. Then it rises to a full stand, heaving you backward again. Once upright, I was comfortable. I got used to the swaying rhythm. Quite similar to riding a horse.

Once our party was mounted, the caravans headed into the desert, bare to the horizon in every direction. The dunes, known as Erg Chebbi, are just six miles from Morocco’s border with Algeria. An erg is an area of sand that the wind shapes into peaks and valleys.

The Erg Chebbi dunes shape-shift north to south for seventeen miles and over five hundred feet in height. The sand is rose-gold in color. It glows, as if illuminated from within. At sunset it magically transforms into oversaturated hues of pink, orange, blue, and purple.

Up hill and down, we plodded ahead, climbing the edges of ridges and descending to valley floors. Our shadows on camelback stretched across the plain, unnatural-looking creatures with long, spidery legs and tiny, hatted heads. The view of the meandering, voluptuous, luminous Erg Chebbi dunes from the back of a camel is surreal.

Eventually, the camels would deliver us to a campsite. We would enjoy tajines (stew cooked in clay pots) and listen to traditional musicians play percussive Berber music around a bonfire. First, however, another experience awaited—sunset in the desert.

In a shady basin, we parked the camels. Dismounting was as ungainly as mounting.

On foot, we trudged through knee-deep sand to the peak of a ridge and waited.

Gusts of wind swept grains of sand across the slopes. Shadows deepened and further defined the hills and hollows.

As the sun set over the Sahara, the once-radiant dunes dimmed slowly like the dying embers of a campfire.

High tea

Next morning, we walked through the Todgha Gorge as mountain climbers began their ascents up one-thousand-foot walls.

The Todgha Gorge is a series of limestone river canyons in the eastern part of the High Atlas Mountains. Abandoned mud villages cluster along the rivers, dissolving slowly like sugar cubes.

Our guide was Aziz. He said he helped set the ropes for Bear Grylls during the filming of a Man Vs. Wild episode in the canyon.

The trek quickly became rocky and steep. On the far side of the gully a large herd of black goats grazed. Trailing behind were a couple of goatherds. Later, two young nomadic girls with donkeys passed us on the way to the river. They pointed at their mouths, begging for treats. Our guide gave them handfuls of majhūl dates.

At the stony pass we paused for the view. Heading downhill in the direction of an oasis, we soon arrived at a nomadic family’s campsite, almost invisible on the mountainside.

The shelters were holes dug into the side of the mountain and lined with carpets.

Stone corrals enclosed sheep, goats, cows, and donkeys.

We met Achmed, an eighty-four-year nomad who lives at the site. The goatherds we saw earlier are his sons.

Achmed has likely camped out every day of his life—during the French occupation, World War II, Morocco’s 1956 independence, and the 1960 earthquake. He has survived eighty-four years without technology.

As we sat under his awning, Achmed served us glasses of, you guessed it, hot mint tea.

Indigenous foreigners

Most Moroccans are either Arab or Berber in origin. Arabs make up forty-four percent of the population. They migrated to Morocco from the Arabian Peninsula in the 1100s.

Berbers are indigenous to North Africa and predate the arrival of Arabs. They account for twenty-one percent of the population. Arabized Berbers make up another twenty-four percent.

Berbers prefer to be called Amazigh, a word which means free people. More than fifty-million Amazigh are scattered across North Africa. Around fifteen million live in Morocco.

The word Berber derives from barbarian, meaning foreigner. During Roman times, anyone not from Rome was called a Berber, thus a foreigner.

Ironically, of course, the Romans were the true foreigners.

Most Amazigh men are shepherds and move around with their animals in search of new pastures. They are sometimes gone for weeks. Traditionally, women care for the children and the home.

Disappearing ink

Historically, each Amazigh tribe had its own dress. Men wore (and still wear) jellabas (wool or cotton gowns) and turbans. Women wore embroidered shawls, covering their bodies and heads, and sometimes their faces. Often, their faces were tattooed.

In the village of Berem, our guide spoke with an Amazigh woman who had recently undergone a tattoo-removal procedure. The ghost of the tattoo was still evident on her chin. Smiling, she seemed pleased with the change in her appearance. 

Since pre-Islamic times, the marks identified the wearer’s tribe and family. Some indicated the woman’s marital and childbearing status. Others were intended to protect the wearer against evil or misfortune. Some marks are statements of spirituality.

Now, the tradition is disappearing. The religion of Islam, which most Amazigh have adopted following the Arab migration into Morocco, discourages tattooing. 

As technology shrinks their isolation in the world, some Amazigh women perceive a stigma associated with facial tattoos. Some are now realizing that being tattooed at a young age was not their choice. They are refusing to pass the practice on to their daughters.

Sultan of Geniuses

We took the backroad to Imlil, stopping at viewpoints of caves with cliff dwellings. Women carried loads of alfalfa on their backs. A trickle of water ran through the valleys below. Snow frosted the craggiest of the High Atlas Mountains.

Our minibus climbed to the windswept Tizi N’Tichka pass, a panorama overlooking multiple switchbacks. Double-decker trucks transported cows on both tiers.

Imlil is the epicenter for trekking in the High Atlas Mountains. The village lies at the end of the asphalt road and is the place to gear up for the onward journey. Its steep, winding streets are lined with outfitting shops and hostels, and teeming with hikers, mules, and motorcycles.

We set out on foot for quiet Aroumd (ARR oom en ed), forty minutes up the valley at sixty-two hundred feet. Recent projects in Aroumd include supplying running water and electricity to all of its two-thousand residents.

We found Riad Dar Tagine, a shambles of stacked rooms connected by steep Escher staircases and surrounded by orchards of cherry, walnut, and apple. Cold water, weak Wi-Fi, no HVAC. The floors and walls are covered with Amazigh carpets.

Three rooms, one each for the Americans, the Canadians, and the Australians, shared a common bathroom. We dubbed our floor the International Suite. Our host at the guesthouse was Hamed. Upstairs in the dining room, we ate tajines and melon, and drank hot mint tea.

In the morning we crossed the wide pebble-strewn floodplain, where the village kids had played soccer the evening before. Our path climbed away from the floor, hugging the shady side of the Ait Mizane Valley. A few trail runners scampered downhill. Occasionally, we passed rustic overnight lodgings used by trekkers.

We stepped to the uphill side of the trail whenever mules, burdened with food and other supplies, required right-of-way.

Soon, we entered Toubkal National Park. At almost fourteen thousand feet, Toubkal is the highest mountain in the Arab-speaking world.

However, our destination was neither that high nor that far. Instead, we aimed to reach the shrine of the Sultan of Geniuses.

Centuries ago, a tribe lived in the valley leading up to Toubkal. According to local mythology, the tribe’s leader was a holy man who consorted with invisible spirits, also known as djinns or geniuses. The wise man himself was not a spirit or genius, but rather the boss of them all—the sultan.

When he died, he was interred beneath a huge white-painted boulder next to a waterfall. Pilgrimages (or, in my case, a hike) are made to his shrine.

After two more hours of climbing, we reached the tiny ramshackle settlement of Sidi Chamharouch. A few rickety shacks surround the holy man’s boulder and its attached mosque. Some are lodges. One houses a bakery. A few sell sodas and souvenirs.

On the roof of one, our group paused for hot mint tea, gazed down the pristine valley, and listened to the waterfall. It was genius.

Fantasia

On the way to the west coast, we stopped in Tafetachte, a village of just one thousand inhabitants, to watch a few minutes of the Tbourida Festival. Tbourida is also known as Fantasia, after the 1833 painting, Fantasia Arabe, by French artist Eugène Delacroix. 

The main event features a group of horsemen dressed in traditional Amazigh clothing galloping across the desert at breakneck speed, while holding a line. Toward the end of their charge, all of the riders fire old muskets into the air, ideally at the same moment, as dust and smoke swirl around them.

Tafetachte’s festival was bursting with locals, excited by the reenactment of their history.

Beach town

As gulls screeched overhead, Abdellah, our local guide in Essaouira, led us past a wide sandy beach to the marina. We walked onto the docks and watched a drug-sniffing dog inspect the fleet of blue wooden boats. “Sometimes the fishermen go out for fish,” Abdellah explained, “and come back with something that is not fish.”

Essaouira (ess SWAHR ah) was rebuilt in the 1700s by a Moroccan sultan and a French architect. The town grew to become Morocco’s most important port, shipping sugar, molasses, salt, ostrich feathers, gold, and ivory.

The city’s walls and ramparts have served as sets for movies and TV series, such as Game of Thrones. Orson Welles, director and actor of Citizen Kane, lived in Essaouira in the 1950s while filming Othello in the atmospheric streets of the medina. A square is named for him.

Essaouira’s fishing industry is one of the most productive in Morocco. At stands near the docks, fresh-caught sardines and eels are grilled to order. The pitchmen aggressively accost potential diners. “Look at my feesh! I have best feesh! Look at my best feesh!”

Art colony

Morocco has inspired countless authors and poets. While on vacation in the mid-1950s, Tennessee Williams wrote Cat on A Hot Tin Roof, a play that won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Paul Bowles’s novel, The Sheltering Sky, was written in Morocco in 1949. William S. Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch while living in Tangier. Other writers who spent time in the country include Edith Wharton, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Truman Capote, and Mark Twain.

Since 1998, the Gnaoua Festival of World Music is held in Essaouira’s main square. Although focused on gnaoua music from southern Morocco, the festival includes rock, jazz, and reggae. The so-called Moroccan Woodstock lasts four days and attracts nearly half of a million people.

Graham Nash wrote “Marrakesh Express” in 1967 about his experiences riding in third class on a train in Morocco. Several musicians from his era spent time in the country, including  Jimi Hendrix, Cat Stevens, Frank Zappa, and the Rolling Stones. They came seeking spiritual enlightenment (and hashish).

Endless carnival

Marrakesh’s medina, founded in 1070, is the largest in Morocco and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its huge main square, Jemaa el-Fnaa, is a combination circus, midway and food court.

A walk-through overwhelms the senses with sights, sounds, and smells. Every evening, the square is packed. Roughly one hundred smoky pop-up restaurants serve the roasted heads of goats and snail soup, among other delicacies.

Surrounding the restaurants are chained Barbary macaques, snake charmers and cobras, card games, coin games, rope games, fishing games, orange-juice vendors, water vendors with traditional leather bags and brass cups, tooth pullers, potion sellers, henna-tattoo artists, magicians, jugglers, musicians, drum circles, and costumed characters.

One doesn’t know where to look. The raucous nightly carnival has been called the “greatest show on earth” and has been running nonstop since the 1000s.

The next day, on the way through the medina, I paused for a traffic jam of motorcycles and pedestrians at an intersection of narrow passages. Suddenly, I felt my mobile phone sliding from a pocket on the side of my pants. I turned, grabbing for it. My arm bumped another arm and the device fell to the street. Quickly, I scooped it up.

The young man paused momentarily then fled through the crowd as I cursed him.

“Nice save,” Craig said.

The would-be thief might be relieved he doesn’t have to unload a mobile phone eight models out of date.