We travelled to Morocco from Spain, by ferry, one hot summer’s day in 1977. I can picture the scene now, five of us, denim shirts unbuttoned in the sea breeze as we sat on the old ferry’s deck, sipping bottles of Dutch lager. It was an easy day to remember, the Spanish newspapers headlines we’d seen the previous day ensured that. ‘El Rey est morte’, they’d exclaimed – the passing of Elvis Presley was big news, even in Spain.
Safely disembarked, we hired a campervan and headed for the place we had all been desperate to experience – Marrakech. It was a holiday that is permanently etched in my memory, a sort of coming-of-age trip before the five of us headed off for university and our own, then unknown futures. Not that we thought anything like that at the time, of course, we were just there to have some serious fun.
Marrakech was the place where we had it.
We stayed in a kind of hostel that cost next to nothing, ate what the locals ate and experienced the exotic splendour of the ancient, mystical old city, the Medina as it is known. We haggled with the local merchants in the souks and took in the sites, and spent hours trying, unsuccessfully to chat up the pretty French and Scandinavian girls who appeared to abound there by the score. In the evenings we mixed with the locals and spoke of politics and history in broken French and imperfect Spanish as we drank sweet lemon tea and nibbled real Turkish delight. That was over thirty years ago.
Last year, I returned to Marrakech, but only for one night. It was a business trip and I stayed in one of the Marrakech luxury hotels I expect you have heard of. It was, naturally, a five star, air-conditioned, exotic affair and a far cry from the hovel I’d stayed in as a seventeen year old. I arrived the day before the meeting, checked into my hotel and set out immediately to attempt to rediscover the old city, and perhaps a little bit of the teenage me.
The old city, not surprisingly I suppose, looked and smelled exactly the same as I remembered it and the souks were just as vibrant; full of tourists attempting to haggle over the price of a kaftan and enjoying every second. In the shadow of the great mosque whose minaret soars majestically upwards from the centre of the old town, I ate dinner at a traditional restaurant and watched the world go slowly by, remembering. One of the five of us who travelled here in the seventies has, like Elvis Presley, gone on ahead. I thought of the younger him as I ate, and smiled. His memory seemed as timeless as the old city and briefly, I thought I caught site of the seventeen year old he once was, sipping coffee with the locals at a nearby café.
It wasn’t him, of course, but it was never the less reassuring and a perfect end to my one night in Marrakech.
