Last stop: Marrakesh
By Dan Morrison

The six-hour flight from New York was scheduled to land in Casablanca, probably the only city in Morocco most people could quickly name. But the weather was tricky, with a thick fog laying like a shroud over the airport.

The 1942 movie starring Bogart, Bergman, and Rains that made the desert city a recognizable name was a bit of a trick as well. It was shot entirely in Hollywood and was based on a drinking establishment named Dean's Bar in Tangier; there never was a bar named Rick's in Casablanca. Many other common pre-conceived images of North Africa are off the mark as well.

Marrakesh, our final flight destination, isn't exactly what you believe it is either. Especially if you're old enough to remember the sixties tune that paid homage to it as a laid-back destination for the counterculture. With a population of over 1.4 million, the thousand-year-old city is a metropolis.

From the airport parking lot visitors are confronted with the jarring site of a snow-covered mountain range just to the east, the High Atlas, including the ice- and snow-covered massive Mount Toubkal, at 4,165 meters Morocco's highest peak. Not exactly what one would anticipate when flying to country known for its camels and sand dunes.

The mini-bus trip to Ouarzazate led up into the foothills of the High Atlas, with terrain that looked remarkably like Arizona, with canyons and dry gulches and mesas. The road passed through villages with names like Ait Ourir, Taferiate, Touama, and Taddert, groups of angular dwellings fabricated from mud and straw, buildings whose foundations are the very earth itself.

The two-lane paved road rose higher into the mountains on a series of switchbacks until reaching Tizi n' Tichka pass at 2,260 meters, where strong chilly winds threatened to blow the small vehicle off the edge of one of the countless precipices.

At rest stops merchants quickly rushed out of their modest shops to sell geode stones ranging in size from marbles to bowling balls. Trilobyte fossils the size of a man's hand, nautilus fossils larger than a dinner plate. Silver inlaid daggers. Rugs and turbans and scarves.

"You buy? Very nice. Only 400 Dirhams (about $40). Too much? Wait, wait. What you pay? Three-fifty maybe. Three-fifty? Very nice, very nice."

Other visitors to the roadside stands, tall and lanky local youths, also have merchandise they hope to sell. Their spiel comes quietly, almost in a whisper. "Shit? You want to buy shit? Good quality ..." Drugs are illegal in Morocco, and only a fool would make such a purchase.

Once across the mountain pass the enormity of the interior lay ahead, although in the foothills of the Anti-Atlas the villages are still tucked into hillsides with irrigated gardens, green and lush, laid out in geometric patterns. Then finally, into the city of Ouarzazate.

A French garrison in the 1930s, the city now has a population of 30,000 and caters to the tourist crowd with luxury hotels. Bus trips depart regularly to nearby points of interest such as the kasbah of Tifoultoute, converted to a restaurant and hotel. Here the cast of Lawrence of Arabia bunked while filming parts of the movie in the kasbah of Ait Benhaddou nearby. Years later Sean Connery and Michael Caine also stayed for a bit while making the film The Man Who Would Be King in a setting just a bit further down the road.

Wandering into the nearby kasbah area of the old city, the West was quickly left behind and immersion in the Berber culture was immediate. The Berbers, the indigenous population of North Africa, has lived in the region since pre-history.

Old women shake their fingers and warn against taking photos. By contrast, young children quickly flock to act as neophyte guides, and pose for tourists' cameras, for just a few dirham please.

A shopkeeper emerges from within his room-sized establishment. "Ça va?" he asks, the French slang for "How are you?" He is multilingual, and in addition to French speaks Spanish, English, Arabic, and Berber, an irony. The designation Berber comes from the Latin term "barbari," meaning "non-Latin speaking," and its derivative "barbarian" has become a universal derogatory insult to largely misunderstood ethnic groups.

The merchant shows his rugs, and gives a lesson on how to wrap a turban. The material, dyed indigo blue, tends to leave a tint on the skin if worn long enough, leading to the legend of the "blue people" of the Maghreb, or south Morocco, Mauritania, Algeria, and Mali. These people are also known as the Moors, and the Moors who live on Moroccan soil are generally known as Tuaregs.

A light rain begins to fall as the sun sets and the winds chill. But even the rain seems to sense it is pointless to attempt any impact on the vast desert region, and it quickly gives up its weak assault.

The night air is cold. And now the comet Hale-Bopp can be seen just above the horizon.

Tomorrow the 358 competitors of the 1997 Marathon des Sables will inhabit a temporary tent city erected in the Sahara Desert, and the temperature will be critical to their performance in the race — perhaps even their survival.

The tents — fabricated of numerous black burlap bags sewn together and stretched across a framework of stakes — will offer little protection from the daily heat and the nightly cold, and the fierce winds will freely hammer the contestants will abrasive flying sand as they attempt to rest.

When asked if the weather will turn hot tomorrow, the merchant shrugs his shoulders and smiles. "In sh'Allah ..." God willing. What will be will be. The Berbers already know better than to second-guess the desert. The competitors in the Marathon des Sables will soon learn.

Dan Morrison is a freelance writer-photographer based in Austin, Texas.