petite anglaise

“Enticing and intimidating in equal measures, the souk thrills the senses and jangles the nerves” – Lonely Planet, Morrocco.

I sit in the courtyard outside my room, sipping mint tea and chewing on a sweet, oily pastry. It is my first day in Marrakech and I’m trying to summon up the courage to leave the oasis of calm that is my Riad hotel, steeling my nerves for the thorough jangling which the Lonely Planet warns they are about to experience.

The maps in my possession offer little in the way of reassurance. Two or three main thoroughfares are labelled north of the place Djemma El-Fna, but from what I saw when the owner, Hamid, met me at the taxi rank and led me along a warren of tiny, unmarked passageways to the hotel, there are literally hundreds of snaking alleyways joining the dots. How I’d scoffed at the guidebook’s recommendation to bring a compass. Now I can’t help thinking I’d have done well to take it more seriously. Strolling aimlessly, surrendering all sense of direction can be quite liberating sometimes, leading you to places off the beaten track, revealing gems you wouldn’t have otherwise seen. But somehow doing all of this alone is less attractive. And more panic-inducing.

The heavy door swings closed behind me and I look back at the entrance, searching for distinguishing features. There is a number 8, but no name. I retrace our steps with care, trying to memorise the route I’d trodden with Hamid half an hour earlier. The passageway snakes left, under a dark tunnel, then right, left and right again. On the wall there is a phone number, an English mobile number it looks like, with the words “poute” below it. A misspelling of the French pute? A girl who led a local on, perhaps? I’ll never know but it will useful later. A marker showing me I’m on the right track home. Finally I’m delivered, blinking in the harsh sunlight, onto what I think must be the rue Mouassine.

My modest aim for the afternoon is to find my way to the Ali ben Youssef mosque and medersa, the Musée de Marrakech and the 12th century shrine which are huddled around a square to the east of my hotel. My destination should be only a five minute walk away, but I’m daunted all the same. And with good reason.

As I plunge into the narrow passageways my nostrils are assaulted by a million unfamiliar odours. Leather, scented wood and incense, sewerage, donkey droppings and spices. The heat and blinding light of the open alleyways give way to cool dimness; light filters through the woven ceilings in dusty diagonal stripes. The stalls are covered with a profusion of goods of all colours, shapes and sizes. They are grouped by trade, and I pass through the slipper souk, the jeweller’s souk, the tanner’s souk and a square where spices are sold and chameleons and tiny tortoises roam in cages. Through doorways I can see woodcarvers, blacksmiths and dyers at work, a man deftly gripping a chair leg with his toes while he files with his hands. It’s a sensory overload, a fascinating glimpse into a world which seems to have changed little through the centuries. If only I felt comfortable enough to linger, take pictures and soak up the atmosphere.

Sadly, I don’t. I move quickly, eyes hidden behind my sunglasses to avoid eye contact with the stall owners. “Some vendors are aggressive to the brink of assault”, claims the Lonely Planet. I wouldn’t go that far, but the constant onslaught of attention is exhausting, intimidating. As a tourist, and as a lone woman I am seen as a soft target, an easy prey. I can’t move an inch without someone trying to solicit my attention. The catcalls vary from friendly to impatient to annoyed if I don’t deign to stop.

“Bonjour la gazelle!” “Hello!” My carefully calibrated smile is intended to seem friendly, but disinterested. “Venez par ici…” “Non, merci, je me balade seulement, je n’achete pas aujourd’hui…” “Mais venez quand même, regardez un peu…” If I pause for long enough to take a photo shawls are wound around my protesting head, bracelets slipped onto my reluctant wrists, handfuls of dried flowers held up to my nose. Browsing without intent is not a concept the sellers want to understand. Every passer by is an opportunity to be seized. Tourists are fools who can be cajoled, badgered, even bullied into parting with their cash.

At first I’m blithely unaware that I am being followed. But when I turn, I see the boy who’d muttered “fish and chips” as I crossed the carpet souk square. Wrinkling my forehead as I study my map, trying to understand just how it is I’ve managed to walk in circles for the past fifteen minutes without getting any closer to my destination, he circles like a vulture.

“Where you want to go? I show you.”

“I’m looking for the medersa. If I take this street will it take me there?”

“I show you.”

“You don’t need to take me, it’s fine.”

“It okay. No guide. Lovely jubbly.” He scampers off, looking back over his shoulder and motioning to me to follow. I’m still smirking at his odd vocabulary, but this isn’t what I wanted at all. What appears on the surface to be gallant assistance for a damsel in distress will probably end with a request for a tip. But I’m all souked out, I need to find a way out of the chaos. I can spare a few dirhams if need be.

If I’d studied my guidebook more carefully, I would have seen the oldest trick in the book coming sooner. I follow the boy into a shabby courtyard, home to a modest looking scarf shop. Powdered dyes in wooden bowls are spread across a low table, and the vendors make a great show of asking me to guess the colour of the dye before they wet a piece of newspaper and dip it in. A green powder is violet, a deep red powder produces indigo. Every time I turn to leave they block my way. “Why hurry? I show you… You on holiday.”

“I need to go now,” I say firmly. “Thank you for showing me this, but that really wasn’t what I asked for. I don’t want to buy anything today.”

I turn, brush of the restraining arms and walk away.

“You give me twenty dirham? For guide.” He follows, overtakes me, blocks my way.

“You said no guide.”

“Ok, you give me kiss.” He gestures at his unappetising, pock-marked cheek.

I shake my head, push past him and turn on my heel, heart beating at a hundred miles an hour. I fall into step with some tourists I don’t know from Adam, finding their presence oddly reassuring. Turning the next corner, stepping out of the path of a speeding scooter just in the nick of time, I see a sign for the Musée de Maroc. I head towards it, gratefully, losing myself in the tourist throng.

Marrakech, I think to myself as I flop down in the museum café and order my second mint tea of the day, is not for the faint-hearted.

The last time I decided to take myself off on holiday alone was almost a decade ago.

In the summer which intervened between my two years of “teaching” English conversation classes as a lectrice, I found myself in the enviable position of having a three month paid holiday to fill, somehow. None of my friends were at a loose end, so I decided to go it alone. With the wonderful Routard as my guide, I started at Avignon and worked my way westwards towards the Spanish border, staying in cheap hotels and youth hostels in Nîmes, Montpellier and Perpignan, alternating budget restaurants and ravioli from a can, getting from A to B by bus and train. In those days, the Routard rated towns of interest with a helpful number of stars, and I made a point of visiting every place I could get to without a car, and was rarely disappointed. I saw jousting in Sète, fell of a rented bicycle into a ditch just outside Nîmes (due to a tragic combination of sunstroke, oversized bike and too-short legs) and ate fresh anchovies in tapas bar in Coliloure.

At the end of my three week tour I went to stay with a British couple, George and Sylvia, friends of a fellow lecteur, who had chosen to retire in the countryside north of Narbonne and were happy to put me up in exchange for doing a few odd jobs around their house and keeping them company. My favourite memory of that holiday is of the day when George drove me out to a vineyard to buy the cheap local red which he drank with every meal. On the way back to the village he took a turning I hadn’t noticed before, a narrow track which snaked through the vines, bringing us out on top of a hill from which we could survey the surrounding countryside.

“There’s something I thought you might like to see,” said George, parking the car and leading me slowly, painfully to the North side of the hill, leaning heavily on his walking stick. He had a bad leg, and it occurred to me that he was probably over stretching himself.

I followed him, squinting into the sun, thinking that the view was pretty, but not spectacular enough to warrant his trouble until I saw what he was pointing at, and stopped dead in my tracks. From our elevated vantage point the foundations of an immense Roman villa, invisible at ground level, were laid out in front of us. The main road almost clipped the outer wall, but without my guide, the vines would have had no trouble keeping their secret.

“I knew you’d like it,” he said, pleased as punch when he heard my sharp intake of breath. “After you told me about visiting the amphitheatres, the ruins near Nîmes. I knew you’d appreciate this.” He was not wrong.

Ten years later, I found myself once more in the enviable position of having the wherewithal to go away, and the time to do it. Tadpole will be staying with her French grandparents for ten days in February, and as I haven’t been on holiday (trips to see my parents or friends notwithstanding) since the damp and disappointing week I spent in Morbihan, Brittany with Mr Frog in August 2005, I decided to seize the opportunity.

It shouldn’t be too difficult to find some winter sun without breaking the bank, I thought to myself, scrolling through the destinations on LastMinute and AnyWay, clicking merrily through the special offer links on PromoVacances. But my mounting excitement was soon tempered by a feeling of indignant despair, as I saw that not only did most operators charge a hefty supplement for single occupancy of a double room, but in some cases they simply weren’t prepared to let a solo traveller book a room during the school holiday peak period, full stop. It seemed I had stumbled on yet another of those “Reasons Why Couples Look So Smug”, and it irked me no end.

After much dispirited sighing and surfing in ever decreasing circles, I finally found my solution (and it wasn’t a holiday site for singles, although I almost considered it). No, the solution was simply to eschew packages and book the hotels myself, often finding single rooms, and never paying a supplement.

I’ll be flying off to Marrakech for five days in late February, staying three nights there, and two by the coast in two gorgeous Riad hotels. My bags filled with books to read on the roof decks, I’ll take a few guided tours, do a spot of haggling, eat tajine and drink litres of fresh mint tea.

And by some bizarre twist of fate, guess who I’ll be meeting for dinner on the first night there?