I’m back from holiday with a sunburn and a whole lot of rugs. We’ve spread them across my bedroom, around the bed, overlapping at the edges. Let’s read, I suggested, so that’s what we’re doing now – O lying along one of his rugs, me at the other end, writing this. I think I haven’t felt this relaxed, this free of an underlying anxiety, in an age.
It was different before we left. On the plane to Morocco I tried to put it all behind me – London, work, the feelings of inadequacy, disappointment with myself over my lack of writing. Then, driving through Southern Morocco I found it difficult to let go of these things. Why do we go away? To get away from our problems? To pretend to be a different person for a week? I couldn’t escape the usual anxieties, did I plan a terrible trip? Why am I here – I don’t deserve this, I haven’t done anything with my life, I’m the same miserable, useless person I was five years ago. I’m stuck and not learning anything.
At an oasis village on the border of the Sahara, before departing into the Erg Chegaga dunes, I felt that this holiday wasn’t going to make my problems go away at all. It must be a failure. I must be a failure, if I can’t even relax on my own holiday. We arrived at the desert camp, a little cluster of yellowed, sand-hardened tents. We were the sole guests. My boyfriend, not used to the solitude and expecting something different (the camp had been billed as a luxury Sahara experience), fled into our tent to deal with his own anxieties. I, too, had expected something different – there was too much wind, sand blew into our eyes, heaps of trash lay around the campground, poking out the sand. What an entitled brat you are, I told myself. This is the Sahara desert. Our Tuareg guide prepared our dinner and lit a campfire. It was Ramadan, but with Covid we are used to not eating or drinking.
Several days later, in Essaouira, we got splashed down with water, black soap rubbed into our skin, then scrubbed with coarse little mittens. Afterwards I felt like I was drifting through clouds. But there I struggled with the hoards of tourists, are we having too European of an experience? I asked O. But you are European. It was like this that I drifted in and out of various states of relaxation throughout the nine days we were there.
Our last evening came. We stayed in Marrakech’s new town, flight stewardesses loaded in and out of the hotel elevator. Portraits of the king hung on every wall. We couldn’t find a restaurant that would take us without a reservation, but eventually we found our way to a pizzeria. Next to us sat a lady, in her 70s, white hair, blue shawl wrapped around her shoulders. How’s the panna cota? O asked her.
The woman told us her life story, how she lived in the middle east with her father, a geophysicist, in the 50s, how she hitch-hiked around the world, spending time in Afghanistan, Iran, Argentina; living at least a dozen different lives. How she now worked as the coach of a South American bridge team… Before we packed up our things to go, she asked if she could be so improper as to offer us some advice. Of course. We looked like we needed it.
I remember her as having whispered the following to us, so sage and wise did she seem. See the world, she said, while it’s still possible. It’s the one thing that will stay with you forever, more than any knick knack you’d like, or fashion trend. Save up and see the world. Take out a credit card, if you must. We thanked her, she told us to be safe. I understood that she wasn’t talking about luxury desert camps. Or maybe she was, maybe it doesn’t matter. Walking to the car I smiled at O. And I smile at him now, from the other end of our treasured rug.
