Brigitte said she had little faith that this was anything more than a marketing ploy, an opportunity to commercialise the products.
‘But if it stimulates rural prosperity, guards tradition and protects the forests?’
She dismissed this with a wave of the hand. ‘The country is closing down, growing more restrictive.’ Female Arab journalist friends, colleagues of hers, were getting out before it was too late. ‘It’s time to leave,’ she said, shaking my hand as the train pulled into Rabat.
In her place came a young Moroccan woman, unveiled, in Western clothes. She nodded and we sank into our individual worlds. Moments later, the train ground to yet another standstill. We had been on go-slow since departure and were now over an hour behind schedule. I calculated that Michel, who had left Beijing about the same time as I had left Marrakesh, would, at this rate, be back in Paris before I reached Meknès. Frustrated by the delays, my travelling companion went off for coffee and returned with two cups. It broke the ice. She, a Moroccan teacher from les banlieues, the suburbs of Paris, with big, perplexed eyes, was on holiday, visiting cousins. She reiterated the French journalist’s point of view. Extremism was taking hold. She hated coming back and only did so because staying away would be perceived by family as an insult. She cohabited with a boyfriend outside Paris. It was over a year since they had moved in together but her parents, who lived fifteen minutes from them, knew nothing about him. He was not a Muslim and premarital sex was officially frowned upon by her religion. She feared her choices would kill her mother. She had two younger sisters, both of whom wore the veil.
‘I thought they would follow in my footsteps and break away, but quite the reverse. They live at home. They watch Arabic television. They never go out without full dress code.’
When I told her I was travelling to Meknès she said, ‘Me, too. Meknassa-ez-zitoun.’
‘Meknès of the olive trees,’ I confirmed.
‘Yes, that’s its original Berber name. They built their villages around the olive forests there. You will see. It is a very fertile part of Morocco with a rich olive history.’
‘Any idea how or when it began?’
She could not say, but for sure it was a Berber story.
Upon arrival at Meknassa-ez-zitoun, I hurried out of the station to face yet another scrum for a taxi. The journalist, Brigitte, had recommended a colonial establishment on one of the hills close to the town. While I was queuing, my attention was drawn to a policeman hanging about outside the station, shaking everyone’s hand. Folk were slapping him on the back, kissing him on the cheek. His behaviour struck me as bizarre. He had a rather comical appearance with a pencil-thin moustache and a shiny peaked hat that made him look as though he had popped out of a Jacques Tati film. A lean fox-like fellow sidled up and the two men stood side by side pressed up against a glass door talking, but always facing straight ahead. I was behind them. Slowly, the non-uniformed of the pair drew a black plastic bag from underneath the back of his jacket and passed it surreptitiously to his neighbour who secreted it between his upper thighs. As soon as the act had been completed, the deliverer walked off. The policeman turned, now facing my direction, and shoved the bag inside his jacket, which bulged and looked ridiculous. At that point he caught my eye. ‘What are you doing, what do you want?’ he barked.
‘A taxi,’ I sighed.
‘No problem.’ And with that he was marching authoritatively on the street, whistling, hailing passing cabs. He pulled one over. There was a passenger aboard. The poor bemused fellow was hauled out and instructed to get in the queue with everyone else, while I was installed. I offered objections, but the officer, shoving me into the rear, insisted. As we pulled away, I glanced back; package like a pigeon’s breast beneath his chin, the lawman was saluting me on my way.
The hotel was a shadow of its former self, its glorious Art Deco days, colonial France, but they had a room available and a restaurant where dinner and local wines were being served. This promised a pleasurable completion to a long journey until the desk clerk warned me that the strike would continue into the next and the days beyond. The trains were also to be affected though it was a drivers’ strike, an anti-governmental display for changing regulations to permits. I explained that I wished to visit Volubilis. The clerk promised to find someone.
I had encountered hustlers of one sort or another at various points throughout Morocco but this place struck me as being in a class of its own. On my way to the restaurant, a broad-breasted, dusky-skinned doorman, the height of an American basketball player (more a bouncer than a doorman), came bounding up the stairs after me.
‘You know, you look great, showered and in a skirt, très belle. When you checked in you looked like a lorry driver. I am the trainer. Massage is my speciality. Why not book me for later in your room?’
Over dinner, my waiter, a decent doddery old bloke, a Muslim, praised my choice of wine and sat down at my table and poured himself a glass! After my meal, too hyped up to sleep, I strolled in the gardens round the disused swimming pool and then wandered into the bar. There was a very tangible sense of local Mafia operating in there. Men in shiny suits smoking fat cigars, drinking spirits, surrounded by girls, molls, in high heels, short skirts or skin-tight jeans, leather jackets, chunky jewellery. I could almost breathe the corruption. When this party’s bill was delivered, the chief among them, handsome, oil-haired, slick-suit in his mid-thirties, pulled out a solid roll of notes from a back pocket (thus exposing to me, seated at a table behind him, a gun wedged in his belt). His greedy-eyed guests went silent, so green were they for his fortune.
Meknès is a wealthy town due to its agricultural resources, particularly olives and wine. The district boasts more wine cellars and olive mills than anywhere else in Morocco. Were these olive barons or prohibition crooks? I had already seen in Libya how lucrative was the black market alcohol business.
Thirty-one kilometres north of Meknès was Roman Volubilis. A taxi picked me up as arranged. Olive groves climbed the sloping, folding hillsides; olive groves speckled with flowering poppies. We passed a man lying on his side in a pasture watching over three cows grazing. Alleys of towering olives bordered the roadsides, as plane trees do in Provence. They were leafy and elegant but lacked water. Assan, my driver, confirmed that it had not rained in a year; parched were even these fertile plateaux. Still, it was lovely to behold. Sweeping fields, gently sloping inclines carpeted with yellow flowers. Goats in the groves fed on the wild herbs girdling the trees. Donkeys and men with hoes ploughing fields. Barbary figs as hedges, demarcating the boundaries. And time seemed expansive here. It breathed gently, exhaled slowly. No rush amidst the majestic, proud orchards.
‘See in the distance,’ said Assan, ‘Volubilis.’
The Roman pillars and arches rose up out of the red hillsides; the city itself situated in the midst of the wide, generous plain of Jebel Zerhoun. As we approached its entrance, a farmer with two donkeys was tilling a patch of sunflowers and sapling olives.
First, it was a Neolithic site; after, a Berber region, then Punic-Carthaginian writings were dug up here. Excavations indicate that the location was settled by Phoenician traders in the third century BC. Eventually, inevitably, in marched the Romans. Their mighty city, built upon the ruins of the Carthaginian one, dates largely from the second and third centuries AD. Volubilis was one of the most remote outposts of their empire. Originally annexed in about AD 40, under their auspices it grew exceedingly rich, living off the oil of the land.
A long line of stones, broken treasures, flanked the pathway as I entered the archaeological site. The first to the right was an olive press, a stone as substantial as and just a little older than the one I had (barely) seen in Lahrcen’s mill. Not much in the design had changed since this Roman example.
The city proved to be a liquid goldmine. I had never encountered so many olive presses and I began to get some insight into the extent of the business that had operated out of this graceful yet remote western outpost of
the empire. One house in four owned their own olive press. Originally, the site was Oulili, a corruption of Oaulili, oleander. Berber or Phoenician, I did not discover. Here, the inhabitants, around 20,000, developed thriving trades in olive oil and game. As well as olives, lions, panthers, elephants were their business. Lions from the wild forests surrounding Oulili were shipped to Rome for their gladiatorial arenas.
Roaming the site, flowering marigolds everywhere, the scale of its achievements could not be ignored. Its position on this magnificent plain, its main streets and villas where it was still possible to glimpse its past living within the remains of the coloured mosaics decorating floors and walls. They offered a hint at the riches that had been accrued here.
From this lucrative agricultural region, the Romans built their administrative capital, linking all North Africa. Here, they were in touch with their holdings in the northern belts of what today are Algeria and Tunisia, all the way to Libya and onwards, no doubt, to military posts as far east as Palmyra, once the glorious oasis city in the sands of Syria.
With such a wealth of land and groves in North Africa, the transport routes and bureaucratic systems Rome had set up all along the coast from the Moroccan Atlantic to Libya gave her an unsurpassed advantage and the Roman Empire became the unforgiving mistress of the Mediterranean, of the Western world.
Here lay the demarcation point of yet another Olive Route, a land-based way. But the olive’s had never been a single route; the olive’s history, its transportation, was a web, a tapestry of exchanges woven by many civilisations, back and forth across the Mediterranean or trekking its circumferences. Caravans of camels set out from here, but they were never intended to complete the treks to Syria, Antioch or beyond, quite possibly linking up with the Silk and Tea Routes coming from China. There were staging posts. An exchange of manpower, beasts and commodities. From Volubilis to Algeria. From there, continued the next convoy. Or to harbours further east, entrepôts, where the oil would have been loaded on to galleys and from there set sail for further, more exotic or more northerly destinations. It was an endless and intricate relay of exchange and barter.
Unlike so many other Roman sites throughout the Mediterranean, Volubilis was not abandoned when the Romans eventually departed. The city survived and was occupied for centuries by the Berbers who had never greatly cared for their masters and had only accepted them to the degree that it had suited them. Still, the Latin tongue was spoken here until the Arabs arrived, bringing Islam with them; another language, another faith. But what did not change was the agricultural stability. The power of the olive and its produce has lived on here.
Yet more car problems! Assan’s was neither a puncture nor the radiator. This time it was the hub cabs and it was me who alerted him to the noise.
‘It’s nothing,’ he said until the clatter of a hub rolling along the road convinced him. Moments later, the vehicle tilted to the left. Assan panicked, lost confidence, doubted the taxi would deliver us back to the hotel. He needed assistance. I was considering trains, my dawn flight the following day from Casa to Algiers, a non-refundable ticket. Eventually, a small lorry approached and the driver offered to tow us to Moulay Idriss where the nearest garage was to be found.
On a hilltop stood the mausoleum of Moulay Idriss, a murdered great-grandson of the prophet Mohammed and one of the most revered of all Muslim saints. The small town, named after him, receives more pilgrims than anywhere else in the Islamic world, save for Mecca. While Assan tended to his wheels, I walked this strangest of pilgrimage locations. A white-walled maze of dwellings and stores decorated in green mosiacs. Green, the sacred colour of Islam. Non-Muslims were not permitted beyond the gates of the massive mausoleum wherein the tomb of Idriss was encased. I was taking snaps from an exterior passage when a young man approached and offered to escort me. My polite refusal was countered by nastiness, by a bizarre rebuke. ‘You French, you’re all the same. I’d never buy a car from one of you lot!’
I stepped away to kill time within the labyrinthine inclines. A young student approached. He wanted to apologise for his fellow citizen’s bad manners. I shrugged it off but the teenager stuck with me, walking at my side, pointing out this and that. We passed a middle-aged man giving a piggyback to a blind, crippled veteran. The ascent was steep, to a holy shrine in the skies, hiking towards heaven to pray. Outside the ladies’ hammam, logs were stacked in the cobbled lane. Donkeys with shopping; wimpled women with heavy bags. Beasts or foot were the sole means of access to the upper reaches of the village. There were no cinemas. All forms of entertainment were forbidden. There was no hotel. This religious centre hosted an annual festival that lasted several days. Many thousands of Muslims converged to worship, offering prayers and votives to the saint buried within the sepulchre.
‘Where does everyone stay?’ I asked.
‘They pitch tents in the olive groves. A few inhabitants rent out their houses. This village is the poor man’s Mecca.’
It was starting to rain. My driver had achieved whatever temporary repairs were possible. I gave the boy a few dirhams and climbed back into the taxi as Assan warned that it would be a slow return. He was not exaggerating. It was late afternoon when he delivered me back at the hotel. One train to Casa was still scheduled to run, but I had no transport. Assan’s taxi was done for and reception failed to find another.
I set off with my luggage, walking in torrential rain, and soon got lost. At a highway junction, I took a wrong turn and ended up at the gate of Bab el-Mansour. I was way off course. There was no time to appreciate the splendours of this major Meknès tourist attraction, which in any case was almost obliterated by the rain. Its main entrance had been turned into a rather tacky art gallery. Sodden as a river rat I wandered in, to see if someone could help me, could ring for a cab (or ring for my husband, safely arrived home in France, to come and get me! At that moment I wanted nothing more than to be sitting on our terrace, enjoying the company of friends). They shook their heads and pointed to a solitary calèche sheltering against the city wall.
The driver agreed to take me to the station. If I could find a train, all well and good. If not, I intended to hire a car. We splashed through potholes brimming with water, clopping by streets banked up with small blue cars, the local petits taxis. (Every town’s petit taxi was a different colour.) At the station I was informed that the only train scheduled to run to Casablanca, because all others had been cancelled, had just been withdrawn without notice.
‘Maybe it’s just late?’
The stationmaster shook his head. I begged an address of a car-hire firm or a travel agent and the grim news was that these, too, were on strike, out in solidarity. I was left with no way back to Casablanca, to the airport, to my plane for Algeria due to take off at seven thirty the following morning. I thanked the official and returned out into the thunderous weather.
Looking skywards, I smiled. Finally, rain. The farmers, the agriculturalists would be delighted. I had eaten nothing since breakfast. I was soaked to the skin, fed up, shivering with cold, hungry and worried. Everywhere was closed. Eventually, I found a ‘pizzeria’ and entered a darkened saloon where a trio of morose Arabs were slouched against the bar drinking whisky. The barman came to greet me, that or block my entrance. I recalled the bar in Barcelona!
‘What do you want?’
‘Some food, please.’
‘We have nothing.’
‘But this is a pizzeria.’
‘Only in the evenings.’
‘Coffee?’
‘No coffee. Whisky or beer.’
I settled for beer and sat alone at a counter facing a wall, luggage on the stool at my side. I could not bear the expressions of the men, staring as though I were a sinner or harlot. It was one of the only times when I wanted to shout, ‘Stop judging me because I am a woman. Christians are not forbidden alcohol. You are the guys breaking the rules, not me.’ Of course, I said nothing, downed my beer meekly and ambled back to the station to find out about nearby ho
tels.
‘Sorry to trouble you again, I’m looking for …’
‘Weren’t you enquiring about a train to Casa?’
I nodded.
‘It’ll be here in fourteen minutes.’
I could not believe my good fortune.
The train was packed to the gills. The first class equally crowded. I was so embarrassed by my trekking boots, wringing wet trousers, blackened-by-rain leather coat that I actually made an announcement, explaining my predicament. And what a response! Tissues to dry my face were whisked from a handbag. Plans to help me reach the airport were afoot. (It was now I discovered that Casa Voyageurs, the central station in Casablanca, was not the one that serviced the airport.) How to get from one to the other? One man commenced calling friends in the city, requesting a lift on my behalf. Another, a voluptuous mother figure, a teacher, handed me a bar of chocolate. Alongside her, tucked into the far corner, was a lecturer at the university in Lisbon who spoke every language on earth, it seemed. Apropos of nothing, he told us of his ability to read Catalan. The Portuguese found it closer to their mother tongue than Spanish was his explanation. In what way might he assist? Conversations flowed, jumping from French to Arabic and back for my benefit. Such courteous people. A hellish afternoon had been transformed into lively discussion, ranging from the bombings in Tangier, the changing face of Morocco, the appalling mess caused by strikes, the unhealthy hold Muslim parents had over their children and, with grave expressions, Islamic Fundamentalism. Throughout all, the fellow opposite continued to make enquiries on his phone. As we pulled into Casa at 10 p.m., a room had been booked for me at the adjoining hotel and it had been established that one train, only the one, ran at dawn from this principal station to the airport.
It was as though our team had won the lottery.
The Olive Tree (The Olive Series Book 2) Page 23