EXCERPT FROM SARA’S JOURNALJune
26, 1999
Rabat, Morocco
Losing Weight In Africa
Our plan was to take the all-night express to Marrakesh. Marrakesh was what we saved
for last – the oasis at the foot of the High Atlas Mountains in south western
Morocco, an enclave at the doors of the Sahara, Morocco’s fourth Imperial city and
cultural capitol.
Instead we’ve trashed our hotel room with another unruly showerhead and four rolls
of toilet paper. An excruciating four-block walk to the train station confirms that the
next feasible train to Tangier is tomorrow morning, and that we’re definitely not
going to make it to Marrakesh this time. Beside the station is a smarter hotel. Hotel
Terminal lets us check in at 11 am and we hunker down with a bathtub, four litres of
bottled water, a Kit Kat and a television.
All cramps, all water, all discomfort. Now we're watching a French documentary on
hunting, roasting and eating monkeys in the Congo. Families are slaughtered.
Babies go to orphanages. The strangeness is beyond strange. We're at the top of this
mysterious continent, with sore bellies, veiled women, beaten beasts of burden. The smell
of bread and skewers, the thought of an organism clamped firmly to the walls of my
intestine, pourous, perfumed, masterful cedar ceilings and the hands of a god and a King
who inspire architecture and design for gods and Kings. The traffic zooms, the city
ripples with dust and heat, and a voice wails above the concrete - a prayer-singer -
calling the people to the Mosque to wash themselves and remove their slippers and kneal in
devotion towards Mecca.
