Ocean Vagabond

Fast-new-close friends and I ride through the sunny labyrinth of the early morning medina. We cruise out to the blue awnings of the fish market, then to the pier where fishermen already nap in their heaped nets, then along the ocean promenade where the wind guides the bright yellows, greens and oranges of the kite-boarders’ kites into our periphery.


Soon we are swimming out to the collapsed guard tower that has been sprinkled in ivory and pink-streaked limpets.

Then we are back in the medina. We are gathering fresh fruits, good breads, Heinekens.

The alcohol shop is an unmarked storefront. The man shakes my hand and touches his hand to his heart. I do the same. They take two cans at a time and roll them in newspaper. It is fun to buy alcohol when it feels illicit.

We have biked to the ruins of the old Sultan’s palace and are lounging on the four-hundred year old tower, and we watch the sea, and hear the lost donkey bray as he hobbles into view, and then there is the camel rubbing his back in the sand.

Someone has carved ‘Smail’ into the wall, a derivative for Ismail. My simplistic mind thinks immediately of snails, and sees a grimy, hunched and squatty boy who wears thick glasses to keep in his protruding eyes.

Because my bike gets a flat tire, we make our way back slowly and notice the Ocean Vagabond beach bar and stop to, “take a beer.”

Suddenly we are through Bab Marrakech, and in the medina, and the man fixes my tire for 7 dirhams, or about a dollar. It takes him only five minutes to find the leak using a thin plastic tray of water, and repair it. While we wait, we see the rush hour of students.

They wear uniforms inspired by white lab coats. They become an absurd throng of tiny and uninhibited doctors, scientists and x-ray technicians. They dart through the narrow streets kicking a futbol made of tape, paper bags and newspaper.

Now, we have returned our bikes and are walking, laughing, to Taros.

Three floors of brightly tiled walls lead to the terrace bar at Taros. Everything is white and is lit with blues and yellows. We look out over the square and the port until dinner. There is a white, aura-like ring around the moon. One of my friends says it is the ozone. I immediately accept this as fact.

We find ourselves in the Riad and we are eating Moroccan soup, fish tagine, and drinking the impossible sounding, “Sahara Reserve” wine.

We go to the roof to listen to the owner play his guitar and we see the ocean waves curling towards us in the light of the moon and I am pointing and showing the new Spanish guests how the ozone is out tonight, and someone taps a corkscrew on a ceramic cup turning it into a percussion instrument, and later we decide to sleep.