The Real Morocco..

Sometimes I find myself in an environment so totally foreign to American life that I truly feel I'm part of another world now. Sadly, it is usually these very moments that I cannot capture on film because Moroccans are most senstive about them.

Namely, an Ahawash. I went to one evening of a week-long ahawash here in Agdz, with my friend Nawal. It started at 10pm and ended at 1:30am. I estimate 300+ people in attendance, most all of them Tashelheight (Berber, not Arab). In the center, was a large circle of men, sitting crosslegged on the ground, with drums, tamborines and microphones... their voices and hands chanting away mysterious erie rhythms.

A group of young men (20's) circled them, rapidly shrugging shoulders, stomping feet, waving their arms, rotating around the epicenter like an orbiting planet. A Berber grandma, with lace and ornately gaudy layers froucing her shoulders and hips, beads and tatoos adorning her chin and forhead, strutted along behind the men, her own rhythm. People walked up to her and the young men and stuffed Dirhams (money) in their turbans and clothes.

Circling the young men, were dozens and dozens of young girls (see the one photo I have) ... dressed in Takshita's, beaded headdresses, charcoaled eyes and pink lips ... clapping and holding hands in little cliques, with an amazing grasp of the hip-movements and tripping dance steps of their elders.

Behind this row, sat all of us... younger and older women, six-deep, in a wide oval circumference, watching the whole affair atop our little stools or squatting on the ground.

Encircling us were teenage girls, also decked out in Takshitas, gold belts, and henna in their hair and twining down their hands and arms. They rocked back and forth, moving their hands up and down, clapping at odd intervalls, in unison.

To the right and left of the whole affair, ropes separated the rest of the male population as outside spectators. (They were not allowed to sit among the inner circles where the women sat.) Many of them lazed atop nearby roofs, to get a better view of their young female counterparts and the chanting, drum-beating old men.

By 1:30 the exotic nuance was overtaken by waves of exhaustion. Nawal, her girlfriends and I pushed our way through the crowds, arm-in-arm, back to her parents home, stripped our party garments and collapsed into blankets on the concrete-floored roof. I stared at the moon, partially hidden behind wispy clouds. A gust of wind wound through the palm trees surrounding the house and threw dust and sand in our eyes. I blinked my eyes, smiled at the wind, (my friend, nevertheless, in this parched climate) and that was about the last I remembered.