This Fish Needs A Bicycle

hotel ali: marrakech, morocco

We left Marrakech in the rain.

I shouldered my backpack and stepped carefully down the winding, tile walled staircase at Hotel Ali and braced myself for the usual (and sometimes overpowering) smells of the Djemma el-Fna. To my great relief, the rain had tempered the caustic kerosene and petrol vapors, as well as the smell of spices from Tagine pots steaming in the center of the market. I’d burnt up my last day in Morocco, passing in and out of sleep, trying to recover from the havoc a few dried apricots had wreaked on my system.

I vomited every half hour for seven or eight hours. I clung to the edge of the toilet in our small, white bathroom, sweat pouring down my body, weeping. I couldn’t walk, stand up, or even lie down. Jen wanted to take me to the Red Crescent. It was just a short walk, catty-corner across the square, but I refused, preferring to die on the bathroom floor than be taken to a Moroccan hospital.

It made me a little delirious. And in my delirium, the 4:20 AM call to prayer began to sound eerily familiar. I crawled onto the bed, lay my head on the cold pillowcase and closed my eyes.

“Dust in the wind…. All we are is dust in the wind.”

I heard Jen chuckle from the next bed. She’d been awake almost all night, worrying and fussing over me as I cried and gagged and begged for her to have me killed. I was certain she could find someone in the old city who’d be willing to do it for a price.

“You know what I think they’re really singing?”
“No, what? Not Dust in the Wind?”
“He drinks a whiskey drink, he drinks a vodka drink…”

I laughed and clutched my stomach. Laughing hurt.

“I just might miss these early morning calls to prayer,” I said, curling up into the fetal position.
“Me, too.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll call you every morning at 4:20 and sing Dust in the Wind. It’ll be like we never left.”

On our final day, I slept as Jen set out with my money and her shrewd bargaining skills. I sipped Sprite, nibbled bread and listened to the din from the merchants and buyers outside the window, and finally the rain. Voices boomed from the minarets. The market emptied and Jen returned. She showed me my souvenirs and I felt sorry to have missed the shopping. I was trying to ignore the regret I felt at spending so much of our time there stuck in Hotel Ali, but I was also fairly relieved that we were leaving. There was some measure of comfort knowing that I was only thirty-six hours away from being home.

Where I could be violently ill in my own bathroom.

Posted by This Fish at November 11, 2004 12:32 PM