by Cash Peters
“Hi,” I say, and give a weak little wave, the sort that gets you raped in prison. “I'm Cash.”
“He-lllll-oooo, Cash.”
Who would believe there could possibly be a malevolent way of pronouncing those two simple words?
“Don't worry,” he sighs in a thickly accented tone, far from happy, “I'll see to it.”
We have more assistants working with us today than on any show so far. It's Willy's doing. As part of some complicated back-scratching exercise, he's invited along a posse of thuggish friends—four big, hefty guys, at least three and possibly all four of whom are completely unnecessary—and allotted them roles in the production. Spoiled for choice, we have one carry Kevin's tripod and camera bag; another walks behind the first guy, making sure he doesn't drop anything; the third is there to drive the extra vehicle we now need because we have too many crew members; and the fourth has been given the all-important task of smoking continuously while the rest of us work. If you ask me, we should put our communal foot down and dismiss three of these hangers-on outright, get it over with. But… well, things are never that easy with Willy, I discover. Somewhere along the line, he's done deals and made promises he can't renege on. Additionally, he's already annoyed about the hotel problem; one more complaint at this stage could push him right over the edge.
Our first location for this episode, the place where I'm supposed to be all washed up with no clue where I am, is in the Ourika Valley, an hour's drive south from Marrakech in the glorious High Atlas Mountains, which slice through this country west to east.
Although Morocco is close to Europe (extremely close: Spain's about seven miles away, across the Strait of Gibraltar; with the wind at your back you could probably jump it), it has thus far managed to withstand most major European influences and stay true to its Middle Eastern roots. Which seems laudable, even miraculous, especially when you learn that it's not in the Middle East at all, it's in North Africa.
In the early days, this region, known as the Maghreb, was populated mainly by Berbers: hardy, nomadic shepherd types (the word “barbarian” comes from them) who'd drifted this way from Egypt to set up small tribal encampments across the coastal plain and into the hills, where, for many years, they continued to live their quiet, pastoral, barbaric existence uninterrupted.
Unfortunately, this is History we're talking about. And in History nobody gets to live a quiet, pastoral existence forever. That's just not how things go. As we've learned, there's always some brutal dictator or scheming madman and his army lying in wait, ready to strip the shirts from the backs of others. And that's what happened here too.
Eventually, the skies darkened and a bunch of other cultures came bulldozing through the Maghreb. The Greeks, the Phoenicians, the Romans—all tried their hand at overthrowing the local tribespeople, taking their land and crushing them into lifelong servitude. What they didn't count on was the iron will and defiance of these humble peasant farmers, forged over centuries of hardship. Berbers: they're a tough, feisty bunch, man. They know how to put up a fight. They're also surprisingly choosy about who enslaves them. Instead of caving at the first sign of foreign aggression, the way the Lesbians usually did, for example, they stood their ground for years, battling relentlessly to maintain their indigenous culture and independence.
That is, until the seventh century A.D., when an enterprising Arab army from the Seven Large Patches of Sand to the east swept into the Maghreb, not to conquer it, but with the sole aim of opening up trade routes across the desert. Rather than launch a hostile takeover bid, the Arabs experimented with a different approach altogether: bribery. They bribed the Berbers with gifts of ivory and gold. They also introduced them to a fabulous new religion called Islam that came with all kinds of bells and whistles, both for this life and the next, and which, they said, had everyone captivated back home.
Well, how could the peasant farmers resist? Finally they quit struggling and submitted to outside influence.
The Berbers’ past, in short, is a blood-soaked cardigan of rebellion, knitted steadfastly over ten thousand or more tumultuous years. And I guess that's the reason we've been sent here now. How fascinating and insightful it would be, the office must have thought, if the host of the show were to be all washed up in one of the most remote rural villages in the snow-capped sleeve that is the Atlas Mountains, and experience firsthand what it's like to live and work as a nomadic shepherd on the frayed hem of civilization.
Inspired idea. Love it.
Only one problem.
Realistically, to do justice to the subject matter in a documentary and capture the complex hues of what is obviously a unique culture would take about six months to a year. And that's at the very least, I'd say. Whereas we have—hang on, let me check and see how long we're scheduled to be here—ah, yes … two hours.
“Okay—everyone who's not in this scene please—please get out of shot.”
Jay limps up and down the road, trying a spot of crowd control.
Over to our right, old men with worn-out gargoyle faces line the grass verge, watching our preparations. It's colder than a butcher's fridge out here today. Sensibly, they're wearing heavy white ankle-length overcoats called djellabas, hoods pulled up around their ears. The crew too is wrapped up cozy in sweatshirts and padded jackets.
“Willy!” Jay waves one last time. “For Christ's sake, move!”
“Who, me?” Hands plowed deep in his overcoat pockets, our fixer is standing beside an uncomfortable-looking tethered camel piled high with brightly colored blankets, gossiping conspiratorially in Arabic with its owner and three of the thugs. With a perfunctory “Ah. Sure,” he moves, and continues his dark plotting behind a wall.
The morning air nips like tiny pincers at my flesh, fed by December snows from the mountaintops all around us. Farther along the valley, stone chimneys jutting from heavily wooded slopes puff out lazy blue trails, blending into a dawn mist that's long overstayed its welcome.
“Cash—are you ready?” Jay yells.
Not really. I'm f-f-freezing.
Our daffy wardrobe lady has done it again. After hearing me complain in the past about being overdressed in hot climates, this time she must have thought, “Morocco: that's a desert, yeah?” and immediately went out and bought me a gossamer-thin lemony long-sleeved shirt to wear, without ever bothering to check what winter in this part of the world might be like. Consequently, my entire body is gored to the bone with cold. My teeth are chattering the way they do in cartoons, and I can hardly speak coherently for shivering. Yet again, if this were reality and not merely a reality show, I'd be dead by now.
Between takes, Tasha runs over with Diet Coke—the equivalent of my daily fifth of gin; used to get me going each morning and give my flagging spirits a fillip—and also a thick wool-lined jacket, which she drapes about my shoulders. “Th-th-thanks.”
“You're welcome.”
“Okay—action!”
On Jay's cue, the jacket is snatched away, Tasha scarpers out of shot, and I launch myself onto a bridge over a little stream and across what looks to be someone's vegetable patch, programming myself into character as I go, forcing my imagination to make believe that I really am stranded, alone and helpless, in one of the most inaccessible spots in the world. It's a tough act, especially when there's a crew of at least ten people standing not twelve feet away. And sixty feet beyond them is a roadside souvenir stand.
Word spread fast that a TV crew would be in the area today to capture the authentic look of a Berber village. Eager to turn this opportunity to profit, the highly enterprising locals sprang from their beds extra early to line the streets with fancy merchandise. Fancy and cheap, I should add. Rugs, baskets, beaded hats, bowls—the kind of gaudy knickknacks that only tourists would buy, and which doubtless go from here to their hotel, to their suitcase, to their home, to the back of a cupboard, and from there straight to the Salvation Army, without ever being looked at again.
“Exc-cuse me? W-w-where am I?”
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Jay has steered me toward a crude stone hut beside the stream. Quaking violently with cold, I hurl myself inside, where a short, dark-haired man in a brown djellaba stands staring at me. I'm used to the drill by now. Another handsome stooge planted by the local tourist office.
“You're in the Ourika Valley,” he says, giving a little bow. His diction is wonderful, and that's what lets him down: he's much too sincere and coherent to be mistaken for a nomadic shepherd. Also, he has jeans and white sneakers poking out from underneath his djellaba! “Which is near Marrakech, which is a big city.”
“And how f-f-far is th-that?”
“Fifty kilometers from here.”
The guy introduces himself as Mohammed, although I believe his authentic Berber name is Tony. At least, that's what I heard people calling him off-camera. As I walk in, he's in the throes of doing something indigenous—another dead giveaway that this is a setup, which will no doubt thrill the New York Times TV critic and her many cynical readers. “Once again,” I imagine her writing, “Peters just happens to hit upon a hut in which someone who speaks good English is, at the very moment he arrives, engaged in an extremely interesting photogenic pursuit.” In this case, the man's grinding corn to a fine yellow powder to make bread, using two large rotating stones that he operates manually, the way his family has done for centuries. Or at least when they're being filmed they do. The rest of the time they probably buy it at Costco like everybody else.
“How l-l-long does it t-take?”
“Three and a half hours,” he says.
Per loaf??? My God.
“And you d-do this every d-day?”
“Yes.”
Of course you do. You're a miller and you stand in this perishingly cold hut every morning grinding corn. Sure.
“All the people in the village,” he adds, “bring their packs of grain and they grind it here. And after, they pay for the milling with 10 percent of the grain.”
Bullshit.
You know what this reminds me of? One of those Civil War reenactment villages you see in America, where retired women kitted out in elaborate period-style bonnets and crinolines address tourists in olde Englishe phrases they picked up from an audiobook of Twelfth Night: “Oooooh, verily, Sir Toby, nay! Avert thine devilish cuckold gaze, sire, lest my maidenly furnigrations grumpled ne'er can be,” while they churn butter, shoe horses, and pump with gusto at the treadle of a spinning jenny, before knocking off at 6:00 and rushing home with a Whopper and a six-pack to catch Entertainment Tonight.
Playing along, I allow “Mohammed” to show me the fundamentals of Berber bread-making: how the corn pours from a four-cornered basket dangling from the ceiling through a hole in a piece of wood, and then onto the revolving stones to be ground into flour. The process is powered somehow by the fast-flowing stream beneath the mill.
“Could you not just get donkeys to turn the stones?” I propose, thinking that one word in the right place could propel this culture forward by up to a thousand years. Into the fifteenth century. “Or a man on a bike peddling very fast round and round?”
He looks confused. Evidently, nothing quite so wildly futuristic has ever crossed his mind. I mean, why would it, really? “For other types of mill we use donkeys.” He steps over my suggestion. “Making olive oil, for example. For this we use water—”
“Look.” I have to interrupt. Not only am I bored with his shtick, but I'm also mere minutes away from dying of exposure. “Do you have anything I c-could wear? I love the flour thing, it's f-fascinating, but I've got to g-get warm.”
“Yes,” he says, seeming a little disheartened. “No problem. My house is nearby. I'll let you have something, and a cup of tea.”
Excellent.
“Aaaaaand … cut,” Jay shouts. “Let's move on.”
From the bread-making setup we shift along the road a little, ignoring a steadily expanding crowd of spectators, to Phase II of the Berber theme park: the family farmstead. If accurate, it's quite a shocker. Built to replicate the hardships of rural life around the time the Romans came knocking in 100 B.C., it's a series of crude stone buildings enclosing a muddy courtyard. Windows are just bare holes in the walls. There's no electricity, therefore no lights. The only warmth in those days came, as it does in this mock-up, from an open fire crackling away in the hearth of an outbuilding. As a nice touch to round things off, several extras have been bused in this morning for set decoration—a couple of children, a good-looking woman who's here to represent the Berber wife, and some toothless old bag draped in rags crouching in the doorway, playing somebody's mother. There's even a ginger tom sprawled across the ground, along with a chicken. A lowly, dispiriting scene of poverty and desperation if ever there was one, and I'm impressed at how beautifully rendered it is. Humbled too that all these wonderful people climbed out of their warm beds this cold morning to do our little show. They've really pulled out all the stops. Thanks, Morocco Tourism. Good job.
While I hog the fire, thawing out my hands, “Mohammed” dives into the house, reappearing moments later with a spare djellaba. “Here, try this on.”
Normally I'd refuse. There might be things living in it. But since it's a prop, I'm safe. And when I slip it on over my head, it's instantly snug and warming. “Oh, I love this.” Additionally, I'm sure it makes me look rather cute—though that's a secondary factor. All the same, I may buy one later to take home.
Pulling up a little stool, “Mohammed” hands me a homemade round of pita bread and invites me to tear off a chunk. Of course, you just know at this point that a dozen grubby fingers have touched it prior to now. The chicken pecked at it maybe, the cat licked the edges or even curled up and fell asleep on it for a while. These are the mountains, life is meant to be tough here, and this piece of living art is uncompromising in its portrayal of people from Ancient Historical Times and their hardships. So to hell with it, I stuff the bread in my mouth anyway, swilling it down with a glass of delicious hot green tea laced with peppermint, which begins a slow journey through my system, heating me up as it goes.
Once I'm done eating and drinking, and I've conducted a short interview about this ancient lifestyle, I see Jay checking the clock he carries around with him everywhere. Our two hours are almost up. Time to head back to town. “Ask him how you get back into Marrakech from here,” he whispers in my ear.
So I do. “If I want to go to Marrakech, how would I get there?”
“I have friends,” “Mohammed” replies. “Somebody will help you. I can find someone to bring you to Marrakech.”
Of course, he adds, I might have to barter with the “driver,” give him something in return. I pull at the sleeve of my djellaba. There's always this lovely coat I've just acquired.
“That's good,” he smiles haplessly, pretending he's attached to the djellaba and that to lose it would perpetuate his hardship still further, which is just silly. There must be dozens of them in the souvenir shop.
And yet…
Alerted by a certain concern in his eyes, something occurs to me. A faint, distant, thoroughly implausible possibility …
No, surely not. It can't be.
… that “Mohammed,” nicknamed Tony, is not actually a stooge from the Tourist Office at all. He's not in character, playing the role of a Berber farmer; he really is a Berber farmer. A Berber farmer called Mohammed. And he does mill corn flour for a living and this is actually his farmstead, with its glassless windows and no electricity. And the children, the wife, the toothless old bag, the cat, the chicken …
Holy crap. What an idiot I am.
The whole thing's for real, isn't it?
“This is honestly how these people live?” I whisper to Jay, praying for a denial.
Busy sampling the wonderful mint tea for himself, he looks up and smiles.
Oh God.
Good news. After an hour on his cell, Willy's struck a deal with a hotel on the outskirts of town. “I don't know if you'll like it,” he mumbles apologetically. “It's slightly be
tter than the other place. But hey, if you hate it, I'll try again.”
He's still explaining this as the van we're in pulls through a set of wooden gates, past a sentry in a tall hat, standing to attention, and glides to a rest between two ornamental pools filled with floating red rose petals, the centerpiece of a courtyard leading to a magnificent, secluded, five-star villa.
“As I said,” Willy grins wickedly, “if you hate it…”
Yeah, right.
Inside the main hallway, an Arabian Nights column-and-pool motif lends an air of understated mystique to one sunny room after another, each decorated tastefully with antiques and laced with an enduring stillness that somehow makes its sophistication effortless, the way good taste should be. To the rear of the main hall, a set of glass doors leads to a patio, and from there to a stunning landscaped garden bordering an exquisite diamond-shaped pool of still water, not because the pump broke and it's stagnant, which has been my experience with pools in the past, but because someone engineered it that way, to mirror the house's image back at itself, in case the old girl should need reminding from time to time how beautiful she is.
Built by a wealthy Moroccan family as their private home, it was recently turned into what is arguably Marrakech's finest out-of-the-way hotel, and stands in quite epic contrast to everything else I've seen in this struggling country so far.
“We have many big celebrity clients come to stay with us,” the owner's son explains proudly. “When they do, they take over the whole house.”
Dressed in a sharp suit, with rakish long brown hair down to his collar and an aristocratic French accent, he carries himself with an air of easy wealth, and none of that appallingly obnoxious swagger sported by the nouveau riche back in Hollywood.
Wait, did he say celebrities?
“Such as who?”
“Oh, well, P. Diddy flew three hundred and fifty of his friends out for a party …”
Impressive.
“… and Will Smith brought his family here for a vacation last year.”