We careened from one magical, uncomfortable, sweat-stained adventure to the next, bickering and giggling and nagging. Nagging my poor mother about her luggage, which was distinctly not of the carry-on variety. Rolling our eyes over her hot rollers and her need to plug her ears when she flew and the way she flagged the túk-túks. We sighed over her terrified shrieks in Mumbai’s asteroid traffic. We were funny, clever little shits who could not stop ourselves from reverting into past behavior. What was it? What was this thing that made us all one heart and three loud mouths? What was this unexpected, unaccountable need to prove who was in charge?
By the time we got to Agra we had added twenty pounds of luggage consisting mostly of textiles, earrings and a crazy delicious curried snack mix from a spice market in Mumbai. Fun culinary gifts for home! We had consumed a shocking quantity of Bombay gin to smooth our rough edges. For the final act in our epic we decided to dress in saris and get a group shot in front of the Taj Mahal. If it makes you groan to read that, consider this: very often the best way to surmount the inevitable cliché of a moment is to wholly embrace the cliché. We didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of having a truly artful photo taken of the three of us. I mean, who but me could really accomplish that and I was going to have to be in the picture, right? Embrace the obvious. Gleefully busk for a moment. My plan was to arrange Charlotte and Mom in position with the Taj behind them, step in myself, and coerce a German tourist into taking a few snaps. I decided on a German because everyone knows they can work expensive machinery and they take a very no-nonsense approach to fun. We needed a precision individual who could follow direction.
We were grouchy because it was early, we’d been traveling for two weeks, and tea, oddly, did not come in twenty-ounce to-go containers in India. When you go to a tea shop, you have to sit and drink your drink. On the grounds of the Taj we were overwhelmed by hustlers. They would not stop badgering us. They were kudzu. Everywhere we turned one was at our side, at our feet, and on our back chat-chat-chattering for us to ‘Buy this, lady.’ Postcards, figurines, incense, jewelry, playing cards, shot glasses, even guys taking twenty-dollar digital photographs. A less fatigued version of me would have been more sympathetic – my God, I know it’s hard to make a living in some places. But I was not that person that day. I was the focused, brusque traveler on a mission and nothing was going to stop me from completing my masterpiece. This photo essay, no photo sympathy, of our trip demanded a terrific shot of the Taj. My dress was all sari, my attitude all clipboard and headset.
It should be noted that the Taj Mahal is even more splendid in real life. It looks like the movie of itself. It is creamy and swooping and all poem and anthem. There are not enough superlatives to describe its mathematical precision. It is a masterpiece of love and suffering and it must be captured with majesty. Obviously this was a job for me. I busily arranged the girls into perfect composition. It wasn’t easy trying to maximize views of the building and minimize the wandering herds of packish Japanese tourists but I did it. We flagged someone to take the photo (I honestly cannot recall her nationality) and checked it off our list of life’s things to do. Then in a moment of confusion my mother okayed a shot from one of the Agra hustlers and Charlotte and I were utterly contemptuous. Twenty dollars for a digital photograph? We’ve got it worked out. For heaven’s sake. Just be quiet and let us deal with this. She quietly paid him for his troubles and pocketed a decent, if not completely in-focus, picture. Whatever.
Four days later we landed at Newark, groggy and rotten from the long flight. I had spent three hours on the plane editing and cutting and perfecting the album. If you like taking pictures, you damn well better go to India. You cannot miss. Spice markets, temples, painted elephants, monkeys on rooftops, dusty pink sunsets, jungles – I had it all. Well, I thought I did.
It was in the car on the way home that I realized with a sickening, stomach-dropping thud that the camera was gone. Gone. Vanished. Utterly not there. No amount of frantic tearing apart of luggage could coax it from the ether. I was completely beside myself. It must have slid out of my purse and disappeared in the rows behind me. Or it was stolen. Or it was buried under newspapers, plastic wrappers, tissues and all the other detritus of a sixteen-hour flight. Or the gods were angry.
The entire catalogue of moments was wiped from existence. Every last image, from the neon-lit bar in Delhi, to the dancing boys in saffron turbans, to the cow draped in conch shells, to my mother’s coquettish smile at the Red Fort and Charlotte’s profile against the Arabian Sea – it was lost forever. Even as I write this, three years later, I feel vaguely nauseous.
When I told my sister and mother, they were startlingly and touchingly reassuring. ‘It’s not your fault. These things happen. It’s the memories that count, not pictures …’ For three weeks I had insisted I was the only one of us who could adequately capture our trip. A barking Kodak Napoleon whose vision could only be achieved through total command. All proof of my newfound authority and rigorous control of the adventure had vanished. Stupid. Silly. Shameful. It was with a familiar contrition and slinking shame that I called my mother to apologize. We did not have one goddamn picture of our entire adventure.
Well, not quite. There was one photo. One grainy, out-of-focus photo of three blonde ladies, dolled up in a rainbow of saris and wrapped in shawls grinning against early-morning chill. The Taj Mahal arcs behind them. It took ten seconds to take and cost twenty dollars.
I have my mother to thank for that.
The Call of Morocco
SANDRA BERNHARD
Sandra Bernhard is an actress and a performer. She has authored three books and her writing has also appeared in numerous publications, among them the New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Condé Nast Traveler. She lives in New York City with her girlfriend and daughter.
What led me to Morocco on three different occasions was a sense of desperation. To go back to a place I had dreamed of, imagined and longed for. Nothing came close to the emotion and desire I felt staring at the map of North Africa. It called to me as if I’d been there in a hundred other lifetimes.
On my second journey to Morocco, things were quite different. In the years since my first carefree, spontaneous trip, I had become a mother. Though still a gypsy at heart (with a strong desire for beautiful sheets and a top-of-the-line mattress), some focus on detail had become paramount. Obsessed with all things organic, I started to panic; what would I feed Cicely (my child) once we arrived in this land without amenities? I checked in with my friend Soumaya, who would be hosting us in her family home in the Kasbah of Tangier.
Soumaya seemed nonplussed by the whole conversation and simply gave me her address. I sent out the troops to gather cases of organic baby food, formula, diapers – you would have thought we were headed into some sort of gulag. We packed all this up in big boxes, carefully wrapping each bottle, then alerted UPS and in they came to haul them away. I ran after them, saying, ‘Please be careful. That is precious cargo. It must arrive at its destination safely!’
Then I sat for a while thinking about its journey and my own. This was a huge trip. I was bringing the whole gang: Cicely, her nanny Vicky, who at age ten had found her way up from Guatemala, alone, to rejoin her mother Anita in LA (Anita had left to find work in America a few years earlier so that she could support her children back home, even though she knew she might never see them again), Mitch, my musical director, and Breanne, my assistant from Garretson Beach, Brooklyn. We all headed out to JFK airport and boarded our flight to Tangier via London, an American Airlines extravaganza, with an endowment from various gigs and writing assignments that would be folded into this major excursion.
I insisted on wearing my white straw cowboy hat on the trip and it became a kind of annoying mascot along the way. I left it in the overhead bin on the London flight, and this occasioned a major catastrophe as I ran around tracking down special services to bring it to me in baggage claim. This was an ugly way to start our travels, but I couldn’t move forward
without that hat. As Breanne would often say in her thick Brooklynese accent throughout the trip, ‘If you’re looking for Sandra, she’s the one with steam rising out of the top of her cowboy hat.’
After a refreshing night at the Heathrow Hilton, we regrouped and headed off to our destination. Glitches continued. At Moroccan customs we discovered that Vicky did need a visa ‘after all.’ Soumaya and her father, Absalim, who had taken over by this point, remained calm –after all, this is a man who lives by the credo ‘America may have the clock, but we have the time.’ My patience, not one of my stronger virtues anyway, was worn paper-thin by this point. But Daddy told us all to go on to the house, he’d stay behind to sort things out. I wept throughout the car ride, wondering what I would do without my stalwart (albeit sometimes crazy stalwart) Vicky G.
We arrived at the edge of the Kasbah to much excitement and glamour; the cars stopped and out ran a cadre of jalaba-festooned gentlemen with carts to carry away our baggage. The family in the main house welcomed us all for an immediate glass of Moroccan whisky (mint tea) and we sat in the entry courtyard as the sun came down. Twinkling candles were lit all around, and Soumaya introduced us to the household. Of course, there was Mama, Khadush, who was incredibly chic and a mother to all. She held Cicely and fussed over her. I nervously asked, ‘Has the baby’s food arrived?’ That brought the house down. Sideways glances between all the ladies led me to believe that this had been looked on as a folly. Khadush hugged me, saying, ‘We will make the baby fresh foods; she does not want this stuff that has traveled longer than you!’
Off she swept the baby, to the heart of the house, the kitchen, where the main cook, Khadisha, tucked Cicely into a strong cloth that she tied over her shoulder. Cicely’s little head popped out of the top, delighted. The baby was totally relaxed as Khadisha went about her chores, sweeping up, stirring the pots of couscous on the stove, checking on the tagines already fired up for our dinner. When she checked the pita bread baking in the ovens, bending over to see, I held my breath, afraid Cicely might slide out onto the floor. But all was well.
Khadisha continued moving about as I noticed, there in the corner, the box I had shipped six weeks earlier. It was battered and wrecked, torn open in one corner; I sheepishly went over and peered inside. The contents were intact but seemed somehow pathetic in this setting of all things fresh: eggs sitting out on the tiled counter, ceramic bowls filled with tangerines and aubergines, courgettes and figs, cilantro, tomatoes, and the aromatic spices that are dried and customized in each household into a blend called ras al hanout, which translates as ‘the head of the house’ – pungent, intoxicating, seductive. Against this plentiful backdrop sat my sad wares, which I had spent hours buying, wrapping and packing – not to mention the $600 for shipping. The box remained in its place in the corner during our entire stay. I never looked at it again.
Word of Vicky came in the late hours before we slept: she would be returned to us the next day after some official pardon had been approved. Exhausted and raw, I fell asleep and woke early in the morning to the first sounds of the muezzin calling the righteous to prayer. From the minarets the calls came, like sirens rising in the distance; they grew closer and I was startled at first, but then I laid back down and the voices soothed me. After two days, I couldn’t even hear them anymore.
One of the highlights of our stay in Tangier was the amazing cuisine, thanks to the endless talents of Soumaya, her mother, and all the ladies who arrived at the crack of dawn and stayed until long after sundown. We ate porridge for breakfast, fresh fish or bastilla for lunch, mint tea and honey-laden cookies at four o’clock.
Dinner was a feast: vegetables over couscous, lamb and prune tagine, spicy meatballs in a tomato sauce, everything cooking right up until it was eaten, sometimes in the kitchen, other times in the courtyard, where the world was shut out behind heavy wooden doors and friends came in to have crazy high-spirited conversations splashed with French and English.
Tangier is filled with expatriates, from America, Great Britain, France. One day we stopped by to visit the ex-head of a Colombian cartel, who had fled and was now living on the down low and enjoying the privacy and sophistication of Morocco, his past barely acknowledged and simply brushed away.
Absalim knew everyone in town. We tagged along to sit with him and pay visits to those he had grown close to. Paul Bowles welcomed us into his small abode; on his side table were a stack of High Times. I shook his frail hand, ‘I am so happy to meet you.’
He was sitting on the edge of his twin bed with Mickey Mouse sheets. He replied, ‘I’m so happy that I’m able to make you happy, my dear.’
We hung out for a while chatting about the day and the changes that were coming. It seemed as if this was an old routine for him; well-wishers and nosy intruders were part of his daily ritual.
One early evening Mitch, Breanne and I wandered right outside the Kasbah to a small smoky café where music was just getting started; violins, qsbah (flutes), ghita (a skinny guitar), ta’arija (drums) and more instruments joined in the classic melodies of Chaabi fused with jazz and other international influences. The men looked at us with some suspicious humor, nodding, lost in their groove, the songs stirring up and down, building to momentous peaks and falling almost hushed until you could feel the breathing in the room. The musicians asked if we would like to continue the jam session in someone’s home where we could also enjoy some hashish.
We left a generous tip and attempted to thank them all in many broken languages: ‘Merci,’ ‘Shukran,’ ‘Inshallah.’ (I’ve been using those last two words ever since, whenever possible, really, bandying them about as if whole conversations might be at the tip of my tongue.) After that, we wandered into the dusk where we stopped to look out at the views of the Mediterranean, the Straits of Gibraltar, and the southern tip of Spain, disappearing into darkness. Then we headed back for dinner.
The drama of Fès rose in front of us as we flew in and seemingly back in time, where everything looked as it must have 5000 years before. The sun beat down on the ancient souq as we landed and headed to the classic beauty of the hotel Palais Jamais located at the mouth of the medina. We settled into our rooms, Cicely wide-eyed, being swept around like the tiniest tourist, rolling with the punches of it all, the perfect traveler. We headed down to the bar and sipped gin and tonics and picked at the nuts, steadying ourselves for what we had been assured would be the craziest experience of our travels.
A young boy loitering outside the hotel offered his services as a guide. We bartered back and forth and almost walked off before he relented and accepted (what we thought was) our very generous offer. Off we went, leaving the little one behind with Vicky, who happily relaxed poolside with a club sandwich, fries and a Coke.
Into the heart and soul of Fès we went, our guide leading us left and suddenly right, winding up stairs, struggling between donkeys laden with baskets of bricks, goats ninnying and butting heads, stall after stall of every kind of olive known to mankind, Berber ladies with red-stained teeth and men wearing the hats of their hometowns. At one point I came upon rows of leather goods where I spotted my beloved ‘satchel,’ a handmade leather bag just big enough for credit cards, some cash and one set of keys. I still carry it to this day (in spite of its wretched condition), much to the chagrin of my girlfriend Sara. I have some torn dirham I keep in it, along with other shamanistic odds and ends.
A little later our young guide, Mohamed, stumbled upon a ‘kosher’ restaurant where we had a lovely meal; I was glad to see a few Jews still in Morocco. We continued on our way, then suddenly, Mohamed was gone. We started to panic. We looked everywhere, wandering around a section of the souq where butchers displayed their wares: goat’s heads, entrails, sides of meat undefined and buzzing with flies. Wafts of goat crap mixed with dark dust settling all around – where are you, Mohamed? – and I felt that any minute we might come across a nativity scene, in this strange biblical dream.
Finally, as if we had been hallucinating, o
ur mysterious escort reappeared right next to us, as if he had never left our side. He laughed and winked at Breanne, who proclaimed him ‘the man with a paper ass.’ He led us to a rug merchant who insisted we sit on low stools and enjoy his hospitality while he had his minions drag stacks of rugs to our feet. We sipped the sweetest of all the mint teas ever served, poured dramatically from a hammered silver pot high above into colorful glasses. He pulled out a lighter and demonstrated the purity of the wool, ‘You see it does not burn! This is a very fine rug; you will buy it! We will ship it to you, easy breezy. See how I can wrap it so tightly? Maybe you take two – I make a special price!’
I couldn’t resist and took them both. (When I finally removed them from the paper six months later, I could still smell the souq, the goat’s red dirt and every foot that had ever stepped upon them … divine!) Finally Mohamed brought us back to the main path that wound back down to the exit. Exhausted, high, exhilarated, filthy and ecstatic, we stumbled back into the new world as if we had been thrown up by the past into the present. After a shower, a cocktail and a lovely dinner, I somehow longed to go back again.
Off the Beaten Path in Guatemala
BRUCE BERESFORD
Bruce Beresford is a film and opera director. He was nominated for an Academy Award for the script of Breaker Morant and direction of Tender Mercies. He directed Driving Miss Daisy, which won the Academy Award for Best Film in 1989. Other films include Black Robe, Crimes of the Heart, Double Jeopardy and Mao’s Last Dancer. He recently directed André Previn’s opera of A Streetcar Named Desire for Opera Australia. In 2011 he is directing Carlisle Floyd’s opera of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, also for Opera Australia.
Lights, Camera...Travel! Page 17