Mullan & Rabat

Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and celebrate the journey!

Fitzhugh Mullan

We got so impatient and worried about missing our ferry check-in time that after seeing three full coaches zoom past us on the clifftop outside the youth hostel that we started to hitch hike.

The dyed brass-blonde haired woman who stopped to pick us up was British, part of an expat community who she said almost exlcusively worked in Gibraltar, but couldn't afford to live there. She was from Coventry or Birmingham, I forget, and made light of the Hitchhikers' Fee - the unwritten rule that if you're picked up, you HAVE to make conversation - by talking more or less non-stop all the way into Algeciras.

She wished us luck in Morocco, but told us to keep our hands in our pockets in the ferry terminals - there were all sorts of criminals about.

We had in our possession an old copy of Rough Guide to Morocco which we had been leafing through in idle moments on the trains through Spain. We were extremely wary of being bombarded by hustlers in the ferry port. We had heard anecdotes from people in hostels of the terrifying barrage of languages and offers of wares and bargains which quickly turn to insults and hostility if ignored.

One guy we met in the coach station in Algeciras who had been dressed in clothing that might once have been white told us he had been travelling around the world for the last seven years on his inheritance, and Morocco was, to quote, 'The biggest shithole I've ever seen. Don't go.'.

We were suitably thin-lipped and nodded understanding, but we were undeterred. In the terminal waiting to pick up our tickets we were approached by a tall teutonic-looking gentleman. He was blond, with a close-cropped haircut and arms that looked as though they had been developed by bench-pressing volkswagens. He was incredibly well built and walked up to us quite boldly, but he looked nervous.

"Hallo. You are travelling to Morocco?"
"Yes."
"Can I come with you?"
"Excuse me?"

Andreas was German, and he too had heard tell of the persistence of the Moroccan hawkers. He felt that there was safety in numbers and so as a solitary traveller, he wanted to tag along with Gemma and I. I started to worry quite a lot. If this guy was worried about being mobbed by false guides, then...damn.

Spain's exit customs were non-existent. We and the full ferry's contingent of pedestrian passengers walked through deserted long low white walled buildings with bare metal tables along the edge of the concrete wharf, and up and onto the ferry. As we pulled out of the bay, the mountains of spain became hazy. The thin line of the beach at Tarifa along the coast from Algeciras and the slowly spinning windmills on the hills above faded out. The water around the ferry was an intense, rich blue, and the wind on deck was so strong that you could lean into it.

Tangiers was an assault on the senses. It seemed ludicrous that a few meagre miles further south than the coast of Spain that the temperature should be so much higher, but the heat was intense. Thin beaded minarets stood out from the city skyline as we pulled into harbour and Gemma, Andreas and I loaded up our bags and stood in the huddle of passengers waiting to get off...waiting for the verbal and linguistic attack of the hawkers in the terminal.
In the huddle, Andreas struck up a conversation with a man holding a German passport. After a few minutes, Andreas turned to us grinning, and the German man, dressed in colonial style, leaned towards us conspiratorially.

"Stick with me. There's no way you can shake these guys. They just won't leave you alone. Between them they speak all the European languages, Japanese, the lot. Just stay with me, and try and sound Russian."
"What?"
"None of them speak Russian. Trust me. They'll just leave us alone."

5th June 1999 (1650 Spain time, 1450 Maroc) Baking. Tangiers Station.
The Algeciras Youth Hostel was found without hassle. This morning we awoke, breakfasted and hitched into Algeciras after 3 buses drove past us, full. We met up with Andreas, a lone German Interrailer, and he came with us over the Straits from Algeciras to Tangiers. During the journey we a small school of dolphins heading for Tarifa and a flying fish escaping the bow wave. With the help of a German man experienced in the ways of the Moroccan ‘fauxguides’ or false guides, we escaped from the ferry terminal before being inundated, moving through the clamouring crowd speaking French with the most bizarre accent we could manage, saying we were Russian. On first glance, in his khaki and cream linen suit, and panama that puts mine to shame, he looks like the man from Del Monte. We’ve caught a ‘grand taxi’ to the new city train station where we have to wait ‘til 1650 for the train to Rabat.

The new station for the city of Tangiers, gateway to Africa, is a small hut. We’ve politely declined an invitation to appear on Moroccan TV to express our opinions on the site, as we’re very wary of hustlers and conmen. But it seems he was genuine, as a couple of our more fluent-in-French co-travellers have just come back in to this small waiting shack from outside, not robbed, pillaged or anything.

The train was a French colonial relic, thankfully with air conditioning. The lowscrub of the lands around the train slowly faded to black, and after a long journey, we pulled into Rabat, the capital of Morocco, in sheer darkness.

Climbing the steps out of the station, into an African capital, the first thing we saw was a huge neon advertisement for the nearest McDonalds. That kinda pissed me off. Looking back, it strikes me as naive, but hey - you can know that your preconceptions are naive, but that doesn't mean you shake them.

Andreas had commandeered the map, and strode off down the street, which had tall buildings and bright lights, street lighting and tarmac. Unsurprising.

Ten minutes later we were walking on the pavement of a dirt street, next to a low wall made of earth, stone and mud as we headed out of the new town and into the Medina - the old town, where the Hostel was. Almost everyone was wearing djellabah - the full-length flowing robes with large hoods, and the women were wearing veils. The street lighting was intermittent, and the walls of the Medina curved around punctuated by large ornate stone gates.

"I think it is this way," said Andreas after consulting the map. I followed him.

And then I fell down a manhole.

In the fraction of a second that I felt the metal plate give way underneath my feet, a lot flashed through my mind.
What was I going to land in?
Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit! (Not necessarily, but kind of an answer to the first)
How am I going to explain this to my parents?
Help!
Hang on.
Ouch.
FUCK.
OUCH.
WHAT THE HELL?

I was suspended above empty space.
Thank God.
Unfortunately, I was suspended above empty space with a hook in my arse, bearing the full weight of me, my backpack and my daypack.
But not my hat. That had fallen off.

Andreas had turned round and was looking at me strangely. I could almost hear the thought, 'Why is the English boy in a hole?' making itself present in his mind.

"Andreas! Help!"

The burly muscular German stepped forward and came to my aid by picking up my hat.

I was beginning to attract the attention of the locals, and a couple of men in white robes stood pointing on the other side of the street.

Another excruciatingly painful fraction of a second later I realised that if I pointed my toes I could stand up on solid ground, or at least take most of the weight off the piece of metal which was wedged in my arse. A Swiss guy who'd accompanied us from the boat helped me out of what actually turned out to be a three foot deep hole, complete with a metal plate which span around if you stood on the wrong side.

I stood, shaking, next to the hole. Andreas had had the good fortune to walk over the supported side of the plate. When I walked over the other, the whole thing span round and...hooked me. There were about ten people all gathered round by now.

"Someone should do something about it," opined one Moroccan man in accented English. "You should complain. They'd listen to you. You're a tourist."

My legs were quivering with the shock. I refused offers to take my bags and I limped with everyone else, to the hostel, and collapsed onto a bunk bed in an open dormitory, which centred on an open courtyard. After Gemma and the rest of the krew went out to get food, they fed me pizza, and I fell into a pained sleep.