Morocco -- A Dusty Treasure
Gharnak — My lovely little stallion
Years ago, after an Andalusian riding trip, we travelled to the southern coast of Spain. The high-rise condo buildings of the Costa de Sol were not for us; so, we kept driving west until we ran out of daylight. The nearest town was Tarifa and I went online and found a small hotel. On the phone, the owner warned me that we’d have to park our rental a few blocks away as the roads were too narrow for cars in the old quarters where he was located. As we walked, dusk turned to darkness and we stopped along the sea wall to look at the stars. A warm but strong southerly wind whipped our hair and pulled at our clothing. It smelled different, distinctly uneuropean. I breathed it deep -- that smokey, sweet smell with a tang of the sea.
The hotel turned out to be a delightfully updated old inn with rooms bedecked with rich fabrics and bits of shimmering colored glass and windows you could open to that intoxicating wind. It was our best night in Spain. The next morning, we stopped at the seawall and looked across the water. In the distance we saw land – Morocco. That wind had been my first breath of North African air. And, I knew then that I would love a land that could create such a fragerence.
I will not write today of the travel it took to finally get to Rabat, Morocco’s capital and the rendezvous location for our seven-day Moroccan horse-riding adventure. Even amidst the frustration of that troubled travel, there was unique Moroccan beauty and I want to do that beauty justice by letting my annoyance abate. No, today I will write of the Moroccan horse and how he is so emblematic of this relatively new country but ancient land.
Like the Moroccan people, the Moroccan horse is called an Arab, but there is much of the wilder, less refined Berber in him. He is a small, wiry beast that at first looks frail but has solid bone and amazing stamina. This is not the pampered Arab of oil money. His owners rarely go to boarding schools in France or drink forbidden whiskey while partying in Ibiza. No, this is the horse of the working Arab who plants and tends olive trees on any square of stony soil. His face is not freakishly dished like some mythical horse-fawn creature. And, when he carries his tail high, it’s likely only to drive off a fly. But give him his head when, between all those stones, you find a stretch of shockingly rich, dark brown soil, and he will gallop with joy.
On our first morning of riding, we travelled by fields of corn and ones strewn with bright yellow chaff from recently cut wheat. Goats and sheep had been turned out to eat this chaff and small boys tended them, yelling ‘hello’ and ‘bon jour’ as we passed. Long gallops along the field edges raised clouds of dust that darkened my face and made my hair stiff as cardboard. There were two stallions among our eight horses, and I was riding one – Gharnak. I’d been asked to ride at the back of the herd, as far from the other stallion as possible.
A delicious lunch was served in the shadow of an ancient olive tree and accompanied by the charming sound of horses, tethered nearby, chomping on their rations of barley and ‘hay.’ After lunch, our ride took us from fields into the stony hills that flank the Rif Mountains. Now the gnarly-trunked, silver-leaved olives became dominant, only occasionally displaced by a dusty fig, it’s usually enormous green leaves stunted and curled.
In the distance, where the hills grew taller, a white city nestled in a hanging valley between two steep slopes, like snow in the crotch of a weathered old oak – Moulay Idriss -- where we would stay the night. But first a stop — the ancient Roman ruin, Volubilis.
Roman ruins look much the same from a distance. It’s only when you enter them that you learn their true character. Volubilis looked a bit disheveled on first approach. But, when that fragrant wind whipped away the dust that lay thick on ancient stone, we found some of the finest mosaics imaginable. A dusty treasure -- like this country, like the Moroccan horse.