not a bad thing at all

entering morocco from spain is like walking out of your front door into the street.

it is obvious that i am not from morocco and  this creates a lot of attention for me.   

a parade of eyes follows my progress down the street.    voices call out

"hola tio, que pasa?"  ( spanish equvalent of  "hey man, what's up?")

and want to find out where i am from and where i am going.

being in an unfamiliar country and not knowing anybody, it is so natural to want to accept another's words as genuine, especially when their words are helpful and friendly words.      but Mustafah's advice was well given: it is important to know that are people in the world who chose to behave positively badly, and to regard until-recently-unknown-others with a certain wariness.

upon arrival in tetouan, i spent a while looking around for a cheap second hand bike, soon attracting a retinue of attentive helpers,  who guided me around the narrow market streets of the old medina, opening up garages crammed with bikes and other paraphernalia;  after a lengthy search it was i who decided to renounce the task in light of my stinginess; but then came the request for a little money for their help but i dont want so much to give them money and the friendly attentiveness is destroyed (how to inquire "where can i buy a bike?" without ending up causing offence?) and then merely meandering alone through the medina and a man is making polite conversation and "would i like to buy hashish?" and "well even so, could you spare me 20  dirham so i can buy some?" and he will not stop following me and pleading with me, so i decide to leave the city and head up the hill into the pine trees.   there there are children throwing rocks at me and i am glad when i am far above the city; looking over the twinkling lights and sleeping by a fire.

the next day the rain comes and that is when i decide to move into the abandoned building.   collecting water and buying bread i get to know the twisting streets of the concrete neighbourhood built upon the steep outskirts and from the people there start coming the warnings. "where are you going?  it is dangerous up there."   i am happy to say hello when said  hello to but to otherwise remain a distant berucksacked figure.  one day i descended to use the internet and the man there said that i had been seen coming from high up and that i shouldn't return there; very insistent in showing me the direction of the city centre.  but i found another way to wind back up the streets and there is an old woman who prevents my passage with her body and makes as if to slit her thoat to indicate the dangers that await me.  i try another route and a man coming out his door calls to me and explains in spanish that those woods are only frequented by bandits and drug mafia; even the police avoid being there, sleep in the city centre if you want, but if you havent been robbed yet then you will be tomorrow, and if not tomorrow then the next day.

i realise that it would be best to leave that place. i must return however for my tent and sleeping bag and it is with certain trepidation that i follow the path through the pines, hitherto so peaceful in my eyes, now converted into a place of danger and suspence.       :geographies of the mind.

so with renewed gladness at simply being alive and healthy, i am glad to take the bus to chefchaouene, a smaller, nice looking village in the mountains.  tetouan is a dangerous place people say. a man on the bus says that even he attracts attention there, coming from the mountains; and was robbed once.

    

how to know how to be in a place, and avoid the dangerous parts, when one has only just arrived?

:by only frequenting places sanctioned by the passage of other tourists, and by seeking somewhere like a hostal to spend the night,  i answer myself.

now i am in chefchaouene, watching the rain fall heavily heavily, listening to the rolls of thunder and thinking a hostal would not be a bad thing at all.