THE POWER OF PLACE


MOROCCO


COMING HOME ALICE MORRISON


“ Looking out at the glory of the mountains, with her warm hand in mine and the sun on our faces, brought me a simple and complete happiness”


My most recent expedition took me 1,000 miles across the Sahara, crossing endless golden dunes, facing weeks of moon-like barren wastelands and watching hundreds of camels gallop towards a well for water. These unforgettable experiences have all had an indelible impact on me, but it’s the small family compound where I live, in Morocco’s High Atlas Mountains, that has changed me the most. The Amazigh village of Imlil comprises a main street and a


clutch of red clay buildings built into the mountains, with the douar (family compound) accessed via a track overlooking a sea of walnut trees. Three families and a number of cows and chickens live in the douar with me, our houses looking onto a communal courtyard. Life in Morocco is segregated by gender, so my home life is with the women. Initially, I worried how I’d fit in — I fail on every level as a female here, where home and children define your worth. I have neither husband nor children, and I can’t cook couscous. My first ally was a 90-year-old grandmother. She


would come to my house daily, bringing an orange or some apricots, and teach me words in Tashlaheet, the local dialect. Looking out at the glory of the mountains, with her warm hand in mine and the sun on our faces, brought me a simple and complete happiness. ‘One hand can’t clap’ is a saying in Arabic, and here it’s


impossible to be lonely. If I sit on my front step, a neighbour will immediately appear for a chat about nothing in particular: the weather, who’s had a baby, what we’re having for lunch. I’m always invited to join the women at 5pm, when they congregate to drink sweet mint tea and eat flaky pastry pancakes dipped in wild honey or home-churned butter. It’s the opposite of the busy life I was used to. Here,


everything is simpler. People have time for each other — and time to sit and watch the flocks of rooks swirl and swoop over the peaks.


Alice Morrison is the presenter of BBC Two’s Morocco to Timbuktu: An Arabian Adventure, author of Adventures in Morocco and creator of the Alice in Wanderland podcast: alicemorrison.co.uk/podcast


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IMAGE: GETTY


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