Crystal Balls and Moroccan Walls

by David Fletcher

  Sandra looked almost shocked. She clearly wasn’t expecting this response. Any more than Brian had expected to deliver it. But very clearly she also retained her composure within, and closed proceedings on her husband’s venture into the education debate with the words: ‘I do get your point, Brian. But I still think people will misunderstand it – in just the way I have. And quite a few of them may very well blanch at some of those questions and answers. So I think that whatever you do, you might want to change them. Or some of them at least.’

  Brian gave a nod of appreciation. Sandra’s comments, he considered, represented a very fair response. But he still thought that what he’d done had a certain legitimacy about it, and that being rude and insensitive was sometimes the only way to force home a point. How else could someone like Alistair Campbell, for example, ever get a hearing? So he nearly reopened the debate, and probably would have done had he not been stopped in his tracks by the onset of some throbbing from down below. And just to be clear about that, we are talking here about the sound of a repetitive beat from somewhere in the bowels of the hotel. The disco had obviously kicked off, and what they’d chosen for the liven-them-up music was some sort of awful techno crap – very light on melody but very heavy on pounding and thumps.

  Fortunately, it didn’t last very long. And Brian thought he knew why. It was probably because it was inconceivable that, from within the ranks of the hotel’s middle-aged patrons, there would be even a single taker for this sort of noise, but possibly the odd one who might just threaten physical violence if they didn’t turn the damn stuff off. But it had lasted long enough to make any further discussion on the degradation of education in Britain a bit of a non-starter. Instead, as Sandra read beside him, Brian would give some thought to his final crystal ball in readiness for the following evening. And he would attempt, with what would then be the final section of his book, to be both sensitive and considerate – in much the same way as, for the last forty years at least, all those responsible for education in British schools have so emphatically not been...

  8.

  The sun was shining! The Moroccans had paid their bill at last, and there it was, back in the sky. And this meant it was even tolerably warm. Perfect. The Nature-seekers had a whole day’s birding ahead of them and, for once, they wouldn’t be either shivering or wet.

  These were Brian’s thoughts as he left the hotel with his wife to board the minibus, having conveniently forgotten that there had been a smidgeon of warmth and sun in the middle of their tour. But, in his defence, it did feel as though all they had seen in this country so far had been overcast skies and a full range of its incessant and unseasonable precipitation. And he could barely remember what feeling hot ever felt like. He could, however, remember what heavy traffic felt like, having experienced a whole lifetime of it back in England. And here was some more of it now, in the shape of the Agadir rush-hour – with the volume of traffic one might have expected in this enormous conurbation and a standard of driving that one might have hoped to avoid. It was chaotic. A bit like the conurbation itself: a great spread of concrete that went on forever and that was composed of every variety of blocky building one could ever imagine – and even more of those ubiquitous walls.

  Eventually, however, they were out of it, and on a road running south. And soon after this, both minibuses had turned off this road and onto another towards the coast and the mouth of the “Sous River”. Here their transport would stop and the Nature-seekers would resort to their feet. They were to walk for well over a mile – slowly – along a track that ran alongside the river and above it – and spot birds. Which, given that this was a birding expedition, wasn’t at all unreasonable.

  It was lovely. The river valley was green. The track was easy – with only the odd vehicle now and again. And there were birds everywhere. Within just a few minutes, the band of birders had been treated to such delights as a Bonelli’s eagle, some glossy ibises (not to be confused with the not-at-all-follicly-challenged bald ibises), a few tchagras and all sorts of warblers. And to fill in those non-birdy interludes, there were features of the local agriculture to take in, such as irrigation pumps (sounding, to all intents and purposes, like the engine on the African Queen), concrete culverts, overloaded donkeys – and the donkeys’ sometimes irate owners. (This was a well wrapped-around lady who wrongly thought that one of the party was about to take her photo – and, to dissuade him from this affront, screamed at him like a banshee, whilst at the same time waving her donkey-prodding stick in a distinctly menacing manner. Certainly menacing enough to guarantee that for the remainder of the walk most of the Nature-seekers didn’t even handle their cameras, let alone use them.)

  The perambulation terminated after two and a half hours – in a glade of eucalyptus trees. Here, the familiar salad lunch was already waiting, and after all that walking, Brian, for once, had a real appetite to assuage. He scoffed the equivalent of far more than his five a day, and was even tempted by the strawberries on offer. But when he then realised that they were all the size of golf balls – and of a rather strange shade of purple – he decided to eschew them. Nevertheless, he was more than stoked up for the afternoon and was as eager as the rest of the party to take a closer look at that river. For that was the promise. The Nature-seekers were all to be driven to a little concrete bridge across the Sous, and there they would recommence their bird-watching, in a determined attempt to discover some of the more secretive little jobbies hereabouts.

  Well, essentially it worked. As did the stop at the next bridge further up the river. The Nature-seekers saw wonders such as plain martins and little crakes – and even frogs and terrapins. But they also saw – when they were right by the river and not on a track well above it – just how despoiled this river was. It was not a pretty sight and spoke only of yet more neglect and some serious abuse. And this had its inevitable impact on Brian’s mood. It deteriorated steadily until, by late afternoon, all he wanted to do was leave this river and get back to the crowded roads of Agadir as soon as he could. And anyway, the meter had run out and the sun had gone in, and there was now a threat of rain in the air.

  It was done. Stumps were drawn and the Nature-seeker team re-boarded the team buses for the last time today. And soon after this, these same buses were back in the metropolis and in the middle of Agadir’s end-of-day rush hour. And it was worse than the morning’s. Then it had been just busy on the roads, to the point of it being overly congested. But during the day, something had happened, something that had caused a large proportion of Agadir’s drivers to become not just aggressive and inconsiderate but also completely reckless. So, all around the hapless birders, there were lots of squeezing through gaps, lots of near-misses, lots of sounding of horns, and to such a degree that Brian began to feel that they had inadvertently stumbled into the middle of Morocco’s very own version of the Wacky Races. It wasn’t especially enjoyable and, to distract himself from the manic traffic, Brian began to turn his attention to the buildings and the other constructions at the side of the road, which, whatever their failings, were at least stationary and therefore not a threat to his person. And that’s when the penny dropped. That’s when he started to really take in what he’d been seeing for the last seven days...

  Here were some high, terracotta walls – in quite good condition. Here were some breeze-block walls formed into a large square. Here, a little further along, were some posh walls – with, in front of them, those same well-clipped bushes that were in evidence at the “royal compound” of yesterday – and, to the side of an imposing gate with a military guard, a sign announcing that behind these walls was the headquarters of the southern command of the (Royal?) Moroccan Navy. Then there were some castellated walls – and some crumbling walls and some stone walls – followed on closely by walls capped by broken glass (as observed in Erfoud), walls with gaps – where the gaps had been plugged with cut thorn bushes – and walls with gaps where the gaps had been left unplugged. And that’s not to forget the walls cover
ed with bougainvillea (quite rare) and the walls covered with children’s murals (even rarer). Or to forget that many of these walls looked new and tended, many more looked old and neglected, almost as many looked old and virtually abandoned, and some looked absolutely ancient and as though they had never been owned by anybody. Furthermore, some of the walls were the frontages to compounds, which might contain crops, industrial enterprises, houses, stocks of building material, royal palaces, regional headquarters of the Moroccan Navy – or absolutely nothing. Indeed, many of the older compound walls had openings in them that showed that they contained only a small patch of unadorned or litter-adorned Morocco, and appeared to serve no purpose whatsoever. And this was significant in itself, because it underlined an aspect of Moroccan culture to which Brian was now waking up.

  In essence, here in Agadir – and in virtually everywhere else he’d travelled in southern Morocco – there were walls. And this, he now believed, was because Moroccans have in their culture – and maybe in their nature – a deep-seated desire to build walls, for no other purpose than to conceal what’s behind them or within them, even when there is absolutely nothing to conceal. No matter that someone owns a patch of earth, with no crops in it or no buildings on it – and has no intention to provide it with either of these commodities – it’s still his natural inclination to conceal it from the rest of the world. And, of course, if there is something there – and particularly if there is a house there – then that must be hidden at all costs. And if that’s not possible – if there isn’t the room or the resources to hide one’s house behind some walls – then one constructs one’s house as its own set of walls. That is to say, one constructs it as though one is constructing a small compound with walls that are very high, and one may then grudgingly equip it with a couple of small windows, on the strict understanding, of course, that these windows will not only be small but also shuttered and barred. And Brian was now getting there, seeing that Moroccan walls – and their compound walls and their “walled” houses – were not just about privacy and a protection against the elements, but also a reflection of this country’s national culture. And unfortunately, that culture was one that was rather too inward-looking and rather too closed for Brian’s liking, and it was one that might also be rather too concerned with status. (After all, walls of a royal compound are as much a badge of wealth and power as the crumbling clay walls in a rural village are a badge of acute poverty.)

  Brian wasn’t really sure of his ground here. He never was. But he could compare what he’d seen here in Morocco – and how many walls he’d seen here – with what he’d observed in Syria. There, there had been a similar style of architecture – and some walls – but one just didn’t get the same sense that society was so “closed off”. Yes, even despite the terrible events which had overtaken that country since he’d been there, he hadn’t experienced the same feeling of intense reserve, which translated into this constant desire to conceal and to screen. He hadn’t come away from Syria with the impression that its population was anything like as introverted, inward-looking, inhibited and... well, so comprehensively closed in its attitudes and its thinking as the people were here.

  This was quite heavy stuff – and he hadn’t even had a drink yet. So it was just as well that his minibus was pulling into the hotel car park, and he could now drop his assault on Morocco and instead start to apply himself to the task of getting that much-needed drink. In the event, he succeeded in this task with very little trouble at all, but then found it much more difficult than usual to stop. This was because, in the first place, it was the birthday of one of the group leaders, which required more wine with dinner than was usual, and, in the second place, it was the last night of the tour – and this required a post-dinner drink in the bar. And then another and then another. And then another. So when Brian and Sandra finally made it to their room, there was a niggling suspicion in Brian’s mind that his favourite sounding-board might prove a little less than cooperative. That she might point out to him that, as they were flying back to Gatwick tomorrow, it might be a great deal better to get a useful dose of sleep and leave the next section of his masterpiece for a later day. But much to Brian’s relief, no such suggestion was made, and for once Sandra seemed almost to welcome Brian’s request for her services. Maybe it was because she knew it was the very last time that they would be requested – for now. Or maybe it was because she was almost interested in Brian’s crystal-ball topic for tonight, which, according to her husband, was Britain’s “culture” in 2050.

  ‘It’s not a happy tale,’ he started.

  ‘You amaze me,’ responded his wife.

  But Brian didn’t acknowledge this sarcasm and simply got on to explaining precisely why it was such an unhappy tale.

  ‘Right, well I’ll start with the losers. Because, as you can imagine, certain aspects of British culture that are already in decline just keep on going in the same direction...’

  ‘Such as?’ prompted Sandra.

  ‘Well, books for a kick off. I mean, it’s already dreadful, isn’t it? If they’re not books on cooking or TV spin-off books, they’re bloody celebrity books. Shit, there must be more ghost writers out there than there are proper writers by a factor of about two to one. Yes, the conventional publishing world is shrivelling up like a rejected willy. But, unlike a willy, it hasn’t got any balls. And therefore it isn’t brave enough to stop playing it safe for a while and instead to just “give it a go”. You know, like adopting a whole new strategy, one that might just stop its decline into oblivion. But no. Instead it just pumps out more trash – more friggin’ cook books, more Top Gear pop-up annuals and more What I did after what I did after the first nine books – by Katie Price – with a special foreword by Katie Price herself. It’s pathetic. And the result is inevitable: the book as we know it essentially disappears, to be replaced almost overnight by the ebook. Because this is a form of publishing that first of all avoids all those literary agents, people who long ago became just literary parasites, useless middlemen clinging on to the talent of a few established authors, and as likely to help a new writer as would a bunch of book-burning fascists. And, in the second place, it avoids all those ossified publishers of physical books, who by now can’t see anything beyond maybe Jeremy Clarkson’s gut or Katie Price’s boobs. It is – or at least it has the potential to be – “books for the people” – written by the people and not by a set of rancid ghost writers who wouldn’t know a plot or a story if it landed on their keyboard, and who have about as much imagination as the celebrities they write for...’

  ‘Brian, you’re beginning to sound just a little bit bitter there. But go on.’

  ‘Thank you. Because what I want to tell you is that as promising as these ebooks were, there was a problem. And this problem was that pressing down on their initial success was a very heavy weight, and this weight soon became unbearable. You see, it was recognised very early on that as varied and as imaginative as these new books might be, they were all still full of words. And lots of words. It could take literally hours to read them, even if you could understand all the words, and increasingly, with education spluttering to a halt, people couldn’t. It was hopeless. Ebooks started to be ignored and it looked as though they were destined to suffer the same fate as their conventional counterparts, until some bright spark thought up “e-summaries”: very short ebooks that took the form of a one-page précis of the full length book – in large lettering – and that allowed their readers to get through something like The Old Curiosity Shop in about a minute – and then back to their Facebook page before you could say “mindless ignoramus”. So e-publishing had a sort of new lease of life – until even the summaries became just a tad too difficult, which was when “e-picture-books” appeared. Here the idea was simplicity itself: reduce the story to a short series of cartoon pictures, which required no reading skills whatsoever. So, for example, War and Peace was boiled down to ten fairly intricate pictures. And anything by Martin Amis could be captured
in just one picture, none of which, it has to be admitted, had even a scrap of interest... Oh, and incidentally, they found that the bible needed only six pictures, none of which meant anything to anybody.’

  ‘So that’s what reading has been reduced to by 2050: looking at cartoons?’

  ‘No. That was before 2050. When we get to 2050, we find that even these picture books have gone out of fashion. I mean, not only did these pictures not move, but you couldn’t interact with them, and it was very difficult to do anything else while you were looking at them. And so this willy shrivelled into non-existence as well. British culture, by this date, includes no books of any sort, and indeed physical books only survive at all as a new form of insulation...’