In the Sahara

In front of me, and swirling around me, were some of the most exotic sights and enticing smells I’d ever experienced. Every smell and taste built on the last to create an intoxicating sense of adventure and travel. Not always easy or fun, but magical most times. Even ordinary, mundane moments and details of a communal meal with a group of Moroccans in a Berber tent in the Sahara was part of the story I could tell later. Mostly because it wasn’t ordinary at all for us.
The way most Moroccan meals are served is in a communal style. The tagine is used often- a clay pot that can be covered and put on fire or baked. Couscous dishes were common, with lamb or chicken and different kinds of vegetables. The prepared dishes would be placed on a shallow table and people sat cross legged, eating with their hands or scooping up food with delicious, barely sweet Moroccan bread.
Our friend we had picked up from the town before was eating freely we saw, obviously he was going to enjoy the fruits of his help to us. Or maybe this was the bonus to guiding unsuspecting westerners to his friends. We didn’t know, but you couldn‘t worry too much about it anyway. Also sharing the sprawling tent with us was a guy from France, a seasoned traveler and photographer. He had his Land Rover parked outside the tent, and the next day he was going to start the 3 or 4 day cross-desert drive to Mali. He showed us pictures from his previous trips there. They were shots of everyday life in yet another place I knew nothing about. We all shared in the food and tried to learn about each other and where each was from, commenting on similarities and differences.

Not long after the food was finished, the young gentlemen of the tent brought out a crude dumbek drum. They asked us what kind of music we liked. I thought of how to tell them of the music back home. Who would they know? What would be familiar to them? Even though I had heard Kenny Rogers on the ferry over and in the Marrakesh market, that wouldn’t do, so I couldn’t really answer them. The young man who had done most of the cooking started beating out a rythm on the drum, and got more and more into it as his self consciousness faded away. Before too long, the two other men joined in a chorus of “Mustafa, Mustafa!” as they swayed in enjoyment and flashed us soulful smiles.
The beat was familiar but the emphasis of the downbeat was shifted slightly enough to throw my ear. The emphasis seemed to come right after the downbeat, as opposed to western music, where if it’s syncopated, we throw this emphasis right before the downbeat. It’s deceptive simplicity let it cycle and never get stale. The guys were having fun singing this tune, which they explained later was a devotional song to the prophet Mustafa. It had significance to them spiritually and it was a song they liked. They handed me the drum and wanted me to play something, and I beat out some rythms that they got a kick out of. But I quickly handed it back to them; their music seemed to fit the atmosphere and setting much better.

They were beating out the pace of daily life as they heard it, the songs and feelings that they carried with them. And just like the customs and things I saw there, they had a humanistic familiarity to them. But they were so foreign at the same time, because they weren’t my habits, they weren’t my customs. Just like music: everyone, no matter where they’re from, can hear and feel the rythms, but only a few know the dances connected to the sounds and the true meaning of the words being sung.