A Clockwork Schwarma

"Guantanamo! Guantanamo!" the mildly inebriated but impressively hirsute local began to scream at us. His face moved closer and closer to Tough Guy's whose glazed expression revealed that he too had partaken of the Islamic taboo of imbibing alcohol. And yes, as could be expected of beer produced in a largely dry country - it tasted of pregnant goats urine. As the mans cries became louder so the pieces of schwarma propelled from his rotting teeth became larger. It was now a regular blizzard of smelly croutons. Fortunately from my vantage point a few metres away, the mans odour was drowned out by the charred, spicey aroma of the chicken kebab stall we had made our own whilst enjoying the lazy seaside ramparts of Essaouira. Tough Guy had no such luck. He was on the front line. All the while this scene was playing out, not to grandiose score of Beethovens 6th (as Kubrick would have had it), but rather to the whine of a squeaky violin and jangle of a banjo eminating from the stalls crusty ghetto-blaster. As the man grew increasingly belligerent at our drunken passivity, so the crowd of onlookers around us grew. However, they were not apalled or shocked at the mans display but were rather laughing and jovially egging the idiot on - whose confidence now grew with every morsel propelled. Our lone defense came from an unexpected quarter: the schwarma seller who, no doubt, sensed that our regular business was now on the line. After a few minutes of him waving a kebab-skewer around like a poultry-laden rapier, the crowd turned on him and he meekly returned his weapon to the coals.

You see, this is the single greatest problem we have experienced in Morocco: tourists are seen as morons and fair game to anyone who takes them on. The local herbalist who somehow lured me into his spice shop-cum-apothecary best embodied this. His shelves were lined with hundreds of the worlds most fragrant and exotic spices. And endless pastiche of sensory possibilities. And what does he offer me? Drugs. And after I said no to that? Viagra. Still not interested? An aphrodisiac. The last offer a particularly bad choice given the miniscule two-man tent I'm sharing with Tough Guy. So it became very clear that Moroccans view their pastier counterparts as amoral, hedonistic cavemen. And they dont try to hide their contempt.

This is a catastrophic pity. This country has such a bottomless well of natural and cultural wealth. It is truly unique and otherworldly in so many ways. Like the Berber village of Tagodiche nestled in the heart of the anti-Atlas, the narrow walkways lined with pink almond-blossom, wafts of olive coming in from surrounding fields, the local octagenarians capable of an astounding array of sound-effects to illustrate their stories.

We walked away from the belligerent copper-toned Hagrid and soon picked up a tale of young teenagers who quickly took to trying out their entire repertoir of English expletives on us. And as the glass bottle hurled at my head smashed into a thousand gleaming pieces infront of me, I could deny my overarching impression no more: Morocco is magnificent, but it's people certainly are not.