Three days in the Atlas

Mount Toubkal is the highest peak in North Africa. It is part of the Atlas mountains and it reaches 4167m. I did not know that when the trip started. In a hurry, I barely had the time of assembling some basic equipment and a booklet on Marrakech. Unlike me in most of my trips, I did not open its pages as I had to finish some other random tasks. I came silently unprepared for any revelation but with a high indefinite hope in my heart.

In a new city or in a city that mesmerizes me, I need to walk. I am capable of walking for hours, gently transitioning from one curiosity to another, indifferently losing any sensation in my feet. I keep on going, usually with a coffee in the background of my thoughts. If I am alone and I indulge in having it, I just think about walking again. I do not know what I am chasing for except the sensation that I really melted in the city, that I am part of its vibrations and its rhythm in a way that will make it a little bit mine forever. 

Our elder guide, the leader of the group, walks all the way through his life. He is not just trekking as a guide for tourists on different types of itineraries in the Atlas, but he is also walking for his pleasure whenever he gets the occasion. He lives in a medium-sized village that lies down at Mount Toubkal feet making it quite a connection point for tourists. But he is never there. He crosses back and forth the mountains with people like us or he escapes in a farther away part of Africa, walking through Senegal, Togo, Namibia just to understand. Now he started reading about Romania, Montenegro, Kazakhstan, and other eastern countries that must sound rather exotic to his ears. He is a berber, yet he knows about the small orthodox churches in the Eastern Romania. I am describing the colours and the paintings of Voronet and Agapia and we end up discussing faith as a superior force driving the universe. We both agree that religion should mean tolerance and interdiction to kill another human, that all religions are somehow universal in their basic rules and that they are meant to preserve the humankind above anything else. 

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At the beginning of the trip, I doubted a little bit of my capacities. I had not done trekking for years and, in my early ages, I was quite indifferent to the beauty of nature, relentlessly searching for the beauty of people. It is not that anymore. I am several steps closer to knowing who I am and eager to discover what bigger project I am part of. 

For the initial trail, I slided behind our guide and followed the hypnotic rhythm of his steps. Usually so hurried to get to the end-point, I seized the complete lack of final destination for this trip while synchronizing with his small, equal, calm, almost monotonous steps. The final point would be the end of our route, the temporary closure of the time with my friends and the inevitable return to daily routine.

Some of us tell jokes, some of us give the rhythm, some of us seize the moment but what we all need is detox. Detox from the metal and plastic of our big cities, from the rush hours and rushed minds, from the multitasking, from the implacable confrontation with illness and death we face in our daily professions. A more patient time, a longer second we could enjoy to calm down the spinning of years.

Our younger guide is 38 and he does a lot of alpine skiing, escalade and more physically demanding and audacious excursions with tourists. He looks at me a little amused at first and then discretely attracted. His behavior remains equal all the way. I am thinking once again about how little need we have for words in order to explain the ambiguous realities. And still I am a lover of words, a perpetual addicted to the rare moment of confessions. Just not there… He tells me about how much he appreciates the short winter of Marocco, pushing one’s limits and the physical and spiritual benefit that body movement may bring. We all sit down and have lunch in a living room created in the middle of the nature.

Most of the time, there is no connection to internet. No mobile data. No news except from some scarce phone communications with our homes. No jewelery, no fancy dressing. I have dropped anything that could be a filter. Except maybe for some eyeliner. I feel uncovered, unused to have my friends see me in this new formula for days. But I thrust them to keep their gentle glance. 

Our youngest guide is 24 and he is a student in Law School which he definitely hates. He prefers nature and hopes to become a full-time guide. I feel he’s puzzled by our heterogenous group, by our different rhythms, our big laughs, our small silences. He is young.

Mint tea and dates are so tasty that I wonder why we do not regularly have that at the end of our longest surgery to resource us. But would it taste the same?

The houses for the night are so basic, so cold that we are flabbergasted at first. The food is clean and tasty, everything is local, no packed plastic single-use containers, no silicone-injected peels, no garbage. No toilet paper, towels or soap. There are so few essential things in life that we have merely forgotten that. A blanket, that’s all. And stories, laughs, silences, glances.

Hikayat is the art of storytelling around the fire in Marrakech. It could also be the title of my favourite scene in The English patient, the reason I ardently loved Kristin Scott Thomas for a while and looked for her at an English theatre in Electra. I wanted to be that woman for a fleeting moment one day. I just kept the legend of Candaules and Gyges for the next occasion, maybe for the escalade of the real Toubkal or for a desert fire camp. However, I enjoyed the legend of Diogenes and Alexander the Great, and a lot of other stories. Our life stories too. All of us have walked long roads already and probably we all still have to keep on walking.