10,000 years in 15 days

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This was published 16 years ago

10,000 years in 15 days

By Sue Paterick

Following the same paths as invaders and pirates, Sue Paterick gets lost in the mists of time in Morocco.

The last time I saw Casablanca it was 1942. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman were saying goodbye for a second monumental time in the legendary movie.

I had watched in preparation for a trip to Morocco, an area once known as Maghreb (Arabic for land of the setting sun), which encompassed Algeria, Tunisia and Libya.

Today Morocco has a tight hold on Africa's north-west coast and Europe's back door. Spain is just 13 kilometres across the Strait of Gibraltar and both the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea wash Morocco's shoreline.

Farmers inhabited the country about 10,000 years ago, then Berbers (an ancient tribe of North African warrior nomads) moved in before 1000BC.
Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs, Turks, Spanish and the French have all had their way with Berber territory but Arabs wielded the greatest influence from the 7th century. Today, Morocco's official religion is Islam and about 98 per cent of the population are Muslims.

Men and women mostly wear long, hooded robes called jellaba (the garb worn by the ewoks in ). Many women also cover their heads with a scarf called a hijab and men often wear white skull caps.

The fear factor compelled me to book a 15-day tour from Casablanca to Marrakech rather than go it alone. The tour explores other imperial cities such as Rabat, Meknes and Fes, the Middle and High Atlas mountains, the Sahara, yawning gorges, Roman ruins and the Valley of A Thousand Kasbahs.

Day one sees me and my 19 mainly European tour companions standing outside Hassan II Mosque. It is one of the largest religious monuments on Earth and non-Muslims are allowed inside. Its minaret - a slender turret with a balcony where the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer at 5am, midday, 3pm, 6pm and 8pm - is the world's tallest, standing at 210 metres.

As we approach the mosque's glittering gold, pink, bone and green facade, a woman in black robes glides through a pathway of graceful columns and arches. Her mystique lingers as strongly as heavy perfume.

Behind the mosque's enormous titanium doors is a prayer hall of jaw-dropping beauty, 200m long, 100m wide and 60m high. Seventy-seven pillars hold up the 11-tonne ceiling, 77 chandeliers cast an ethereal, blue light and its marble floor is centrally heated.

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Worshippers of Islam are required to wash their hands, face and feet three times before each prayer session and in the mosque's ablution hall sprout 42 fountains resembling the size of those Alice wandered through in Wonderland.

After lunch we reboard our coach bound for Rabat. A wide, modern road divides flat plains crowded with pine, oak and eucalypts. Rabat, Morocco's capital, is an attractive seaside town whose origins go back the 8th century BC when people settled in nearby Cellah. When the Roman Empire crumbled, Berbers turned the city into a ribat (fortress-monastery).

In the 17th century, Andalusian Moors fleeing the Spanish Inquisition built a new city south of the kasbah (a fortress or a walled residential quarter around a medina). Our local guide explains a medina is an old city that usually contains a mosque, school, hospital, hammam (bathhouse) and souk (market).

Meanwhile, sister city Sale, on the opposite side of the Oued (river) Bou Regreg, had become notorious. Andalusian refugees teamed up with Berber inhabitants and international undesirables, and turned to piracy on the high seas.

These corsairs (sea raiders) were referred to as "Salle Rovers" and for more than 300 years they terrorised shipping and coastal communities in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. Men, women and children from as far away as Cornwall in southern England were nabbed at sea and from their homes, streets and fields to suffer lives of deprivation and hard labour. The women ended up in harems. Continued…
Such a violent history is unimaginable as we drive along wide avenues lined with chic houses, white-picket fences and orange trees in Rabat's Ville Nouvelle (the French quarter).
There are 90 mosques, five churches and 10 synagogues in Rabat, but King Mohammed VI's palace eclipses them all in grandeur. The king, 23rd of his line and only in his 40s, is named after Islam's prophet and is a direct descendent. He has closed harems and outlawed polygamy (the Koran allows men to have up to four wives as long as they are treated equally).
A short bus ride away his grandfather, Mohammed V, is buried in a white mausoleum with a green roof (green is the colour of Islam), graceful arches, columns, delicate arabesque stonework, carved doors and glittering brass. Royal guards look spiffy in their blood-red uniforms, white caps and belts, green fez caps and rifles at arm's length.
Our next stop is Kasbah des Oudaias, a serene suburb the reminds me of an undersea garden. Each building resembles a breaking wave - painted brilliant blue and dazzling white higher up.
Next morning, our group explores Cellah, once a Roman town then a Moroccan necropolis. Its fortified walls of pink, grey and gold stand out against clear skies, as if drawn there. All up 2500 souls were laid to rest here, all buried on their sides facing Mecca. Nesting storks create the din of a wood-chopping competition.
Meknes, a bit further south-east, was home to tyrannical sultan Moulay Ismail from 1672. He was known as the "megalomaniac of architecture" and used European slaves as his prime source of labour. Ismail built a complex of 50 interconnecting palaces enclosed behind a 40-kilometre wall and called it Dar Kbira - The Big. There were stables, mosques, a huge reservoir, long aqueducts, harems and a hanging garden said to rival Babylon's.
But his most magnificent structure has to be his own mausoleum. I stand momentarily transfixed in a corner of its courtyard, feeling as insignificant as a bee about to buzz through a giant's garden. Before me hectares of green, yellow and red mosaic flowers form a shining oasis around a central fountain. Its translucent walls and arches are covered in delicate arabesque, and marble columns hold aloft a domed ceiling.
I could linger but we are off to explore the souk, where storekeepers proffer free treats in colourful "sweet" alley, and a charming, smiling fellow tries to sell me a dozen eggs in meat street. Behind him are cages of live pigeons, chickens and guinea pigs.
The man next door is selling live rabbits and beside him a shopkeeper weighs two clucking chickens for a customer. A little further along, large camel legs hang from the ceiling and, in spice, olive, nut and fruit alley, produce sits in kaleidoscopic mounds.
After an early-morning visit to the old capital of Moulay Idriss, a charming and traditional town somersaulting down heaving hills, our bus pulls up outside the World Heritage-listed Volubilis - Morocco's best-preserved and largest Roman ruin.
To the accompaniment of chattering storks and more melodious birds, I wander through what was left of a forum, basilica, temple, triumphal arch and houses dedicated to Venus, Orpheus, knights, athletes and bathing nymphs.
I look at brilliant mosaics and picnic in a sheltered spot overlooking a quilted valley of olive groves, green fields and dark ploughed earth. After lunch we head to Fes, Morocco's oldest city. Our tour begins outside the king's summer palace, winds though the Jewish quarter (mellah) and its sizeable cemetery before ending in the 9th century.
Fes's World Heritage medina is one of the largest living medieval cities in the world. We wind through archaic lanes seething with humanity and pass shops full of snails, an enormous camel's head hanging from a dangerous hook, lads twirling spools of silk, shops stuffed with silver, bronze and copper kitchen utensils, voluptuous bottles, exquisite jewellery, wonderful brass lamps and donkeys laden with impossible loads. "Balek! Balek!" donkey men call out, which means get out of the way quickly or I'll mow you down. Continued…
After climbing through the snow-dusted Middle Atlas we enter Gorge du Ziz, a spectacular landscape of mountains, chasms, rivers and ksars (kasbahs). Tinerhir oasis marks the beginning of the Valley of A Thousand Kasbahs and a meeting point between the shark-toothed High Atlas and Jebel Sahro mountain ranges.
We spend the night in a hotel in the style of ksar (walled town) in the chilly Todra Gorge and next morning, which dawns clear and blue, we are on the road early to explore another World Heritage site, Ait Benhaddou at Ouarzazate. It was once a major town on the caravan route; now the rambling structures there are used regularly as Hollywood sets.
From Ait Benhaddou, the road climbs up 2260 metres into the High Atlas across Morocco's highest vehicular pass. The view goes on forever. And, trying to photograph ice-capped peaks in sub-zero temperatures, I am proposed to ... twice. Both suitors sell shell fossils; the first offers 10,000 camels to marry him but the second offers only 1000.
Marrakech lies at road's end. In the Berber tongue, its name means "land of God". Caravans once passed through from Timbuktu, carrying spices and salt.
In its souk, glitter, glare, noise and smells combine to strip time bare. Centuries hang in carpets, echo in the cries of hawkers and lay sealed in glass jars in apothecaries. After sundown its lively square, Djemaa el-Fna, turns primeval and crowds gather around storytellers, musicians, snake charmers and sword swallowers.
My tour ends that night over a smorgasbord of gastronomic delights. Despite all I have seen, Morocco remains mysterious, its secrets still wrapped in a veil as surely as mists envelop the mountains above Marrakech.

Destination

Morocco

* GETTING THERE

There are no direct flights from Australia. Emirates airline can get you to Casablanca with a stopover in Dubai for about $2780 (high season) or $2120 (low season). Flights are also available from other African countries or Europe.

* STAYING THERE

Morocco has a wide variety of accommodation to suit any budget.

* GETTING AROUND

When travelling independently, car and campervan hire are available, as are buses, taxis and trains.

* WHEN TO GO

Spring, from mid-March to May, or autumn, from September to November, are best. Winter can be extremely cold and summer boiling hot.

* WARNING

The Federal Government advises a high degree of caution travelling to Morocco because of the threat of terrorist attacks. See www.smartraveller.gov.au

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