Continents away…
It’s hot in Morocco; but on the news there’s snow in the US, China and UK, miserable weather, power outages and traffic chaos. It feels surreal. I look out of the window here onto a curiously timeless world: rose-coloured houses bathed in sunshine, palm trees vivid against dusty rock, roof terraces colourful with airing rugs and drying washing, women in black haiks carrying sacks of flour home from the market, sometimes even on donkey-back.
Boys are playing football in the street outside because there’s hardly any traffic to disturb them, and it’s one of the rest days in the Africa Cup of Nations football contest. There was a day of national mourning here last week when Guinea knocked Morocco out of the tournament, but when the Cote d’Ivoire knocked Guinea out 5-0 on Sunday, no one was cheering: they’d largely lost interest. If Barcelona are on TV, or Manchester United, or even Chelsea, they’ll be packing into one of the little cafes in the town with an old telly braced to the wall to watch the match.
I’m in that odd limbo time before publication of the book, when no one really knows what the reaction to it will be; and this dusty little corner of Morocco seems the most appropriate place to be in this odd space, before returning to the modern world for the London Book Fair, Oxford Literary Festival and publicity events in UK, US and Canada. It’s a great luxury to be able to get your head down somewhere quiet like this, where you’re able to hold the rest of the world at bay via email, pondering ideas for the next work, taking notes, reading research material, letting your mind be quiet. Ideas need quiet time to mulch down, like a compost heap…
How surprising then, to be tracked down to this remote place by the Mail on Sunday, You magazine. A team arrive tomorrow: a journalist and photographer to cover the story behind Crossed Bones/Tenth Gift. I wonder what they’ll make of Tafraout? I see its beauties easily now, though it took a while to learn to look past the strewn plastic bags, the overflowing oil cans of rubbish, the ever-present building work, the dust. This morning when I cycled into the countryside I saw the almond trees were beginning to blossom, though the silver branches of the figs are still bare. I disturbed a rock squirrel among the twisted roots of an argan tree when I sat in the shade for a while; I watched a crested lark soar up into the uninterrupted blue of the sky. The modern world, with its Sunday newspapers, publicity opportunities and strictly regulated hours and timetables seemed literally a world away.
It sounds, by far and away (and literally FAR and AWAY) the nicest “compost heap” I’ve heard of! Love the new site and looking forward to ‘Crossed Bones’.