Morocco, December 1981
Introduction
In December of 1981, three friends and I — all of us then living in Lisbon — flew to Tangier and rented a small Fiat for a ten-day drive south into Morocco. We intended to spend Christmas somewhere near the Sahara. At the time this seemed perfectly reasonable.
From Tangier we drove through the Rif Mountains to Chaouen, then on to Fez, and afterward toward the desert towns of Erfoud and Rissani. The roads gradually emptied. Villages became smaller and farther apart. South of Fez the land turned rocky and treeless, and by then our plan had taken on the quality of improvisation.
Our ambition was to reach Rissani and then follow a truck track toward the Algerian frontier. We imagined crossing quietly into Algeria for a brief look at the Sahara from the other side before slipping back again unnoticed. None of us had any real idea whether this was possible.
The trip unfolded unevenly. There were long stretches of empty road and conversation, roadside cafés full of smoke and sweet tea, moments when the Fiat seemed on the verge of mechanical collapse, and the strange exhilaration that comes from traveling beyond the edge of certainty.
Along the way I picked up a few objects almost casually — a small incense tagine, a brass container, and an old Quranic tablet. Looking at them now, I see them less as souvenirs than as moments in the journey itself.
Object I — Miniature Incense Tagine from Chaouen
I purchased this miniature incense holder -- shaped like a traditional ceramic 'tagine' -- in a small shop in Chaouen, a town popular with adventurers in the foothills of the Rif Mountains. Unlike the large clay tagines used for cooking, this version was meant for incense — bakhoor (perfumed wood chips) or amber resin placed inside and heated beneath the conical lid.
At the time, Chaouen already felt dreamlike: steep lanes, whitewashed walls tinted blue in places, thin mountain air, and drifting wood smoke in the December cold. Yet my own memory of the town is inseparable from two experiences. The first was being guided into an open lot near the medina by a group of teenage boys who showed obvious disappointment when they weren’t compensated for their ‘effort.’ I didn’t realise how serious they were about their self-appointed job until we returned to our car the next day and discovered all four tires had been flattened.
My second memory is even less pleasant. A day or two after arriving in Chaouen, I was suddenly overcome with food poisoning and spent much of the rest of our stay there confined to the guesthouse while my companions disappeared into the surrounding mountains on an overnight trek. (At least I had a novel by Camus to comfort me.)
The evenings were cold. I remember lying awake beneath blankets listening to muffled voices from the street below. Smoke and unfamiliar cooking smells drifted through the window from the medina. Occasionally footsteps echoed in the lane outside.
The little incense burner became attached to those memories — not adventure exactly, but the sense of isolation, discomfort, and the peculiar vulnerability that comes with being ill in a strange place far from home.
Object II — Brass Container from Fez
I bought the pictured small brass container in Fez, where the journey entered a different rhythm entirely.
After the openness of the Rif mountain roads, Fez felt enclosed and intense, especially inside the old quarter. The medina seemed to function as a self-contained world of workshops, narrow passageways, braying animals, smoke, tools, and voices echoing between stone walls. Metalworkers hammered brass in dim stalls while spice merchants, leather sellers, and woodcarvers worked nearby. Everywhere there were repeating geometric patterns — in tiles, gates, trays, and engraved vessels like this one. The container's surface carried the same repeating geometry visible throughout the city.
The exact purpose of the container was uncertain. Such things might have held spices, tea, incense, or ceremonial powders. What mattered to me was less utility than presence: the object seemed to condense the medieval atmosphere of Fez into something portable.
Object III — Quranic Tablet from Erfoud
I found the Quranic tablet in the market at Erfoud near the edge of the Sahara.
By then the terrain had changed completely. The roads stretched across open rocky plains broken by oases, scattered settlements, and the occasional camel grazing in the distance. Everything felt exposed to weather and distance.
On our first night in town we visited a local bathhouse. After the long drive it should have felt restorative, but my memory of the place isn't positive: dim light, steam rising from the water, faces appearing suddenly through the mist and then disappearing again.
The outdoor market the next day was easier to appreciate. Fossils, minerals, carved stone, old tools, animal skins, and strange objects were spread beneath awnings while traders bargained nearby. Camels stood tethered in the dust.
The wooden tablet immediately stood apart from the surrounding goods. Its smooth surface was darkened with age and smoke. Stylized Arabic script framed a central hanging-lamp design against a lattice pattern. On the reverse side were faded handwritten lines in ink striking me as prayers or exercises in calligraphy.
The object felt used rather than manufactured for visitors. That was what drew me to it. It seemed to carry traces of another life before arriving in the market at Erfoud.
A day or two later, outside Rissani on Christmas Day, we hired a local guide who pointed us toward a truck track leading into the desert toward Algeria. Several miles outside town the Fiat slid into soft sand and became hopelessly stuck.
What followed was part disaster and part comedy. We pushed uselessly beneath the winter sun while the Sahara stretched silently in every direction. Eventually several truck drivers stopped to help and together we managed to free the car and drag it back onto firmer ground.
When I think now of the tablet, those moments return with it: desert dust, exhaustion, laughter, and the immense scale of the austere land around us.
Closing Note
Together, the incense tagine, the brass container, and the devotional tablet form a small personal exhibition of Morocco from December 1981. They're modest objects, for sure. None is especially valuable. Yet each preserves something larger than itself: the cold mountain air and smoke of Chaouen, the enclosed medieval world of Fez, and the strange luminous atmosphere of the Sahara beyond Erfoud and Rissani.
What also remains after all these years is not simply the route we traveled but the feelings experienced during the journey itself — the sense of isolation while I was laid up in Chaouen, strange foreboding in the bathhouse, mechanical uncertainty, and the reckless confidence of youth, which brought me farther than good judgment probably should have allowed.
The greatest present from the trip was ultimately the Sahara itself: reached by road on Christmas Day after a week moving steadily south by southeast through Morocco, carrying the four of us into a landscape both stark and luminous with a majesty that has stayed with me ever since.
The soundtrack for a post like this would have to be multi-faceted:
for early in the morning:
for mid afternoon:
for dinner time:
