Long ago, south of the seaward end of the High Atlas Mountains
a goatherd lost her two children to a flash flood. She spent the rest of her days wailing
"Tarou dant": my children are gone.
This is the founding myth of Taroudant, the Berber City of Lost
Children.
The medina of Taroudant is a stronghold protected by seven
kilometres of high, thick pink walls of mud and straw bricks. Even a hundred years ago this was a place or
warring tribes of Berbers or, as they call themselves, Amazigh — free men. Each town and, within it, each house displays
a fortress mentality that persists.
Windows are small and barred and each house faces inwards.
They say that at night, the central square is a place of
storytellers, comedians, musicians and purveyors of snake oil. On the morning I was there, the sole
entertainment was a performer who was the spitting image of the late Colonel
Gadaffi. He played about five notes and
if no one gave him any money, he paused and waited a few minutes before exerting
himself again.
I walked into the souk where exuberant displays of red,
yellow and green vegetables tempted the shopper's eye. At the same time, mounds of fresh mint and
coriander delighted the nostrils. In
such an extravagance of plenty, I did not at first notice the withered pile of
black rags that was in truth an old, emaciated woman too listless even to raise
a hand for alms. Around another corner, a dusty man sat behind his dusty
display of second hand and probably non-functioning kitchen appliances. He was hardly rushed off his feet but seemed
not to have thought to clean his stock to make it more attractive. Perhaps he knew his market did not want it to
look expensive.
The goods in the silver and gold shops, however, sparkled
and flashed under bright halogen lights.
Berber women value silver. They
identify it with purity. Arab women choose
the gold that Berbers associate with evil.
A shop will sell silver or gold but never both. In the silver shop, two Berber women had the
better of the shopkeeper and after a lot of discussion, left without
buying. The shopkeeper seemed
unmoved. If God had willed it, they
would have bought.
Walking on, I saw murals that conveyed some important
message that was lost on me. A not very
fearsome warrior on a prancing white horse carried a book, probably the Holy
Koran, in one hand and a pen the size of a lance in the other. Is the pen mightier than the sword even here in
Morocco ?
In a café under a blue-bloomed jacaranda tree, I met a man
with his son Mouad, a boy of about six enjoying a serious morning at the coffee
shop together. His father drank coffee,
Mouad hot milk while they shared a croissant and watched the world go by. He was too shy to answer my poor Arabic but
his father allowed me to take a photograph.
Mouad enjoyed seeing his portrait on screen. Mouad's father and I invoked Allah's
blessings as we said goodbye and I moved on to Agadir.