19th of September, about 17:30.
Last night I slept on the couch. My sickness was reaching some kind of head-achey climax. I couldn’t get off the couch so Andrea left me there. I woke early and finally refreshed. [I am sure my earlier dreams where related to my exhaustion.] Andrea slept long enough for me to draft a story up. I am not unhappy with it, I stumbled onto a few good sentences.
We went for an hour to a beach near the apartment then we picked up a board and travelled 35kms north for hunt for some surf. We had our first un-nice (to call it ‘bad’ or ‘nasty’ would be an indulgent exaggeration) incident.
I parked on a ridge and was immediately surrounded by boys offering to look after the car. I told them the car didn’t need looking after. They pestered me a bit as I unloaded the board so I said I’d give them 5 dirham (50p). ‘50’, he said. I waved him away. As we walked off I realized there was a park beyond the summit[, down on the beach]. Conscious of the hidden threat, ‘I’ll look after your car’, I moved it. Unfortunately, the boys at the car park below where men, multiple, and all stoned. I went through the pantomime again, tried to haggle, but he said he worked for 20 dirham, €2. It’s not really the money, it’s the robbery [that bothers me]. The other beaches had attendants, too, but they charge 5 and have a desk and look semi-official and they don’t come with half a unit of backup. 20 dirham. Fuck it. ‘Alright mate’, I said. I walk to the beach and two of this cronies hone in on me. ‘First day in Morocco’; ‘You stay in Tagazout’; ‘You have a cig’; ‘You have a light’. I went from perfunctory answers to ignoring him – they took turns pestering me, the first needed a cig, the second a light – to walking off.
I was as much frustrated at myself as them. I know nothing of local customs, I never know if I’m being too friendly or too aggressive. Of course, this is the point of chavs (who are difficult to deal with in England and English as these little cunts). They unsettle, try to make you make a mistake, and then play to the human in you, get you to say something or lose your temper. [It’s also sport for them. The contradictory questions - ‘I know you’/‘you new here? - are a form of cold reading, trying to gleam information from you. When we returned from the sea] they swarmed around the car, the horrible skinny stoned one took the board off Andrea and started loading it onto the roof (‘we help, we friendly’). I told him not to, twice, and then said ‘stop’! Then he gave me a mouthful in Arabic, I imagined he said, ‘aren’t you fucking hard’. At this point, I’d not paid the 20 so his friend shooed him off. In the car, on the way home, I daydreamed about how useful jujitsu (or maybe any martial art) would be for, if the need arose, controlling that situation with a well timed wrist lock. All I can do is box, head-butt and rugby tackle, which, unless it was some kind of fight to the death, would be useless.
[When we got back to the village,] we parked up and grabbed a crepe and fish soup, Andrea and me respectively. The bread was covered in flies. I never touched it (why don’t they cover it?). [Later,] when we got home we quickly had some coke.
The sun was setting turning the whole place shades of Sahara yellow and dusky oranges and casting long shadows. The hill was covered in goats, all swarming down towards the street. (They move in swarms.) I stopped for a moment. What is the system? Who herds them? Who owns them? I’d love to follow the goats for a month and see if I could figure it out. Alas, I’m not sure I would, in these things, I am just too thick.
