After all, to start with, the weather is the weather. And wherever you are in the world, it does what it wants to, and if, in Morocco this April, it wanted to be particularly grim, then so be it. And you can hardly blame it on the country. Much the same with all that litter and rubbish. It’s what happens when people are poor. They can’t afford to deal with it, or even the time to notice it. It was probably there when they were born and it will still be there when they pop off. So why would they give it even a second’s thought? As for the tajines... well, maybe they were a lot better in other parts of Morocco. Just like the houses and all the other buildings were. Yes, the more he thought about it, the more Brian believed that his impressions of Morocco were not genuine impressions of the whole country, but only of its southern third. And this third was probably the poorest third, where poverty was at its most acute and where customs and traditions were, let’s just say, the “least advanced”. And therefore people here were the greatest advocates of bunker-type houses and too many walls.
Northern Morocco was probably very different indeed. It was probably a land with the sorts of attitudes to life you’d more normally associate with Amsterdam – and with the litter habits of the Swiss. Yes, there, you’d be more likely to find a pile of cannabis than a pile of cans, and maybe even real, racy knickers rather than just witches’ knickers. And even if not raunchy underwear, then at least a freedom on the part of the women there to dress in whatever clothes they chose, to match the freedom they enjoyed to go out for a cup of coffee – or just to go out.
Hmm... he wasn’t convincing himself. And his “walls” thoughts of the previous day had been triggered in sophisticated Agadir, not in the depths of rural south Morocco. And so this recollection swung his thoughts in the other direction. There were, he was sure, a few real problems in this country, and they weren’t confined to its remoter regions. The Moroccans might not see them as problems (or at least the Moroccan men might not) but, as far as Brian was concerned, he was very happy that he lived in England and not in Morocco, a country that had given him the feeling that it was in a permanent state of semi lock-down.
Yes, Brian would take Blighty any day. Even Blighty 2050 style. It wouldn’t be very nice then, but at least the women would get out and there’d probably still be a partial race memory around – to encourage people to keep the whole place tidy. And tajines would be off the menu permanently – and hopefully, the majority of people would still associate any reference to “walls” more with ice-cream than they would with any form of physical construction.
So... as Brian’s minibus drew away from the souk to take its passengers to the airport, Brian had come to a couple of conclusions. One was that he had spent eight days of his life harassing his wife in an absurd attempt to produce a vision of the future that was little more than a complete load of balls. And the second was that if he was forced to make a choice, then that choice would be very clear. Yes, despite everything, it would be that complete load of crystal balls – and not a complete load of Moroccan walls – every time.
Crystal Balls and Moroccan Walls Page 12