the weirdest day so far, or: how we ended up dancing with sad eyed prostitutes in a moroccan brothel

Steph and I left Marrakech on Wednesday to head out to Ouarzazate.
It was a beautiful but nauseating ride through the Atlas Mountains, endless winding and speeding up and slowing down.

We arrived in Ouarzazte at dusk and who should meet us at the bus station but Mustapha! This was unexpected, I had told him where I was going but thought he was on his way to Merzouga or something. I do have to admit however that I very rarely understand what he says so maybe we had made a plan to meet up and I just didn't realize it.
Anyway, he walked us through the town to our hotel...it was a dodgy dodgy walk through a pretty crappy looking town, dark streets lined with dudes staring at us. Steph and I both admitted later to a brief bit of worry that Mustapha was actually just leading us to an alley to be robbed and murdered. Luckily we were just paranoid because he took us right to our hotel and then out to his friend's cafe for dinner (and I suspect to show us off).

We made plans to meet the next morning and he took us out to the famous kasbah at Ait Benhaddou (where a number of films including Gladiator and Lawrence of Arabia have been filmed).

Getting there involved the "grands taxi" - one of the more terrifying modes of transport...it's a big old car (maybe a mercedes or something) that will have 6 passengers and 1 driver crammed into it - 4 in the back and 3 in the front. Seatbelts are not an option and you will really get to know your neighbour.
The Kasbah was pretty cool, we wandered around, ate an orange, then walked back to Hassan's brother's hotel and restaurant where we met who else but Hassan. He convinced us that instead of going straight to M'Hamid and the desert, it was okay now to go to Merzouga and that we should go with him through the gorges and then go to the desert at Merzouga.

Then it was time to head back to Ouarzazate. There were no grands taxis around so Hassan flagged down a passing milk truck and convinced the driver to let us ride back to the nearest small town where we could get a real taxi.
So we climbed in the back with the flies and the giant milk tank and smaller bottles and drove through the rocky desert from remote dwelling to remote dwelling picking up and dropping off jugs of milk.


The people were always amused when the truck door opened to display us sitting in the back. At one home a tiny little girl less than 2 years old was passed into the cab of the truck to come along for a ride. The three men in the cab played with her and made her giggle like they were all her grandpas.

Finally we got back to Ouarzazate and Mustapha took us to a "music festival" which turned out to be like a local town fair complete with midway rides and stalls selling junky housewares. Just like home except there was no beer garden, just a lot of tea. The music wasn't going to start for several hours so we sat at the tea tent with some older guy Mustapha knew and a woman we assumed to be his wife.
We were pretty much the only tourists around...we saw one other blond woman briefly, but she disappeared and wasn't seen again. There were a lot of stares and I believe that a group of youngish guys offered Mustapha some money for us. It was nice of him to say no.
Waiting for the music we did bumper cars and ate cotton candy and watched boys breakdance and then finally it was about time for the music to start.

Mustapha's friend Said who-looks-just-like-John-Leguizamo appeared and we were introduced. Said's interests became apparent right off the bat; "you are both very pretty" and "do you have a boyfriend" being among his initial comments.
The performers were all verrrrry serious and dressed in suits.
For the first couple of songs, which were pretty slow, there were a few other local women in the crowd, mostly young kids and older women. But after the third song or so we looked around and we were absolutely the ONLY females around in a sea of guys. About 50% of whom were openly staring at us, mostly curiously but some hungrily. I asked M if it was all right for us to be there and he said yes, no problem...turns out he had paid the police to watch us and also we were right beside the barrier so
if there was any trouble I had my escape route planned.
It was really crazy actually - because of the limited contact between men and women men tend to be really physical with each other in a way that would be SUPER GAY at home. Everyone knows this already but yeah, guys here do walk around holding hands, arms around each other, etc etc.
When the music really got going dudes were dancing with each other, some really provocatively...my ass there's no homosexuality here. But for the most part it was pretty straight, just a bunch of guys having a really good time, dancing around in circles, doing conga lines, running around, jumping up and down.
I made the mistake of looking around and accidentally making eye contact with a short dude in a white baseball cap. After that where ever I looked, there he was, leering at us and dancing.
All of a sudden Mustapha took off and the next thing we knew there was a big scuffle and some guys were pulling him off of Baseball Cap guy. Turns out Baseball Cap had started doing some inventive dance moves with his tongue in our general direction and M saw this.
Steph and I are like "okay it's time to get out of here, we shouldn't be here" but the guys said no, it's fine, don't worry. However after the THIRD fight the guys finally conceded and we all took off.
I had mentioned something to Said earlier about missing beer (no beer in two weeks! that's harsh especially after Spain.) so he proposed that we go to a bar. Yaaay! Finally a chance to check out a Moroccan bar.

They took us to this place with live music, a few women dancing on stage, and a couple of tourists grinding on the dance floor.
We saw the older guy and his wife that we had been sitting with earlier. I'm so naive that Said and Mustapha actually had to tell me that "No, that's not his wife. That's a prostitute. All the Moroccan women here are prostitutes."
Yikes! Still, the atmosphere was pretty chill. The beer tasted great and it was such a weird environment to observe. There were far more men than women and even here the men were drunkenly dancing with each other.
The dancers on stage were wearing bulky robes and doing a shimmying sort of dance, one in particular, the one in white, could do some incredible things with her hips.

The dancers for the most part didn't really seem to be all that into it even though the music was so infectious that when I went to the bathroom even the old bathroom attendant was dancing her ass off.At one point all the musicians from the other show arrived at the bar and went up on stage to play too. They looked like they were having a much better time here.
Said and I had a conversation that mostly consisted of him trying to get me to talk about sex. For example, he started off with a sort of innocuous question about life in Canada and how it is different from Morocco. This somehow led to a discussion of homosexuality, specifically lesbians...like did I know any lesbians personally? Oh really?
"And so...when you go out for a drink with your lesbian friends...do you then experiment with each other?"
"Huh?"
"If you have a drink with a lesbian will you kiss after?"
"Uh, Said...lesbians aren't animals you know."
"Oh." A look of tremendous disappointment crossed his face.

Then, a few minutes later he tried again when I innocently asked him what Moroccan girls his age do for fun since they can't go to bars and stuff.
"You know, masturbation?"
"Uh, Said...that's not what I meant."
"Oh". More disappointment.

Finally he just decides to go for broke and asks me some very direct questions about my sex life...Said, you horny little bastard! Give it up!
"Uh, Said...that's personal and I'm not going to discuss it."
"Oh"
That's pretty much where the conversation ended.

After a while we decided to dance too - the other tourists had left and Steph and I were definitely the main attraction which was kind of weird. It was all very unsexy, what we were doing, really we were just jumping around, but all the guys were watching us. I felt badly for the hookers.
At one point the floor was clear so the woman in white took it over, was joined by a couple guys...then she came over to our table and pulled me up to dance with her. She looked a lot like Catherine Keener but with sadder eyes. I think she wanted to dance with us just to take a break from all the guys...she sat at our table for a while too but we didn't talk much.
It was a strange place.