Inspirations for a trip to Morocco: books, movies and art
We are still a few days away from departure, but I actually feel I have been traveling to Morocco for a few months already. And that is since I bought my plane ticket.
More and more I like to immerse myself in the culture and history of the countries I decide to visit, to travel with my mind before my feet, to smell smells, to imagine people and their stories, to see colors, streets and stores come alive almost as if I were already there. That is why before I left for Morocco I devoted myself to reading 3 books that I recommend in case you want to plan a trip to Morocco, or at any rate if you are intrigued by this country. Morocco Tours 8 days
“Morocco, Novel” by Tahar Ben Jelloun.
“Morocco, Novel” by Tahar Ben Jelloun is a real journey inside the soul of this country so complex, so elusive and multifaceted. A tale made up of many small stories.
Tahar Ben Jelloun is one of Morocco’s greatest writers, born in Fez and emigrating to France in 1971.
We immerse ourselves in the vastness of Morocco’s natural beauty, from the desert seen as the guardian and cradle of the oldest traditions of the Maghreb, to the sea seen as hope, a fascinating mirage. We talk about scoundrels, thieves, corruption, ignorance, but also hospitality, generosity, inner wealth ready to be shared with the foreigner who decides to open up to Morocco and its people with honesty and respect. From the most remote villages still stuck in the Middle Ages, to the cosmopolitan, party-going Tangier of the 1950s inhabited by European and American artists, patrons and writers.
“Morocco, Novel” is full of quotes to be pinned down. Quotations that with their poetry seek to reveal to the reader a half-open, proud and jealous world that tends to hide from the foreigner certain of its negative but well-entrenched aspects, mentalities and customs to which the Moroccan has now resigned himself but which he does not want to reveal to the tourist who instead must know how to grasp only the best aspects of Morocco.
“Morocco does not concede, it does not give itself. maybe you have to surprise it in its sleep or when it is sleepless, on a full moon night. Morocco is an enigma to be seduced gracefully.”
“The Voices of Marrakech” by Elias Canetti
“The Voices of Marrakesh” by Elias Canetti is a small, somewhat dated book (the events date back to 1954) that transports us to Morocco’s most important city and lets us discover its various aspects through stories and episodes experienced firsthand by the author. From the encounter with camels in the city markets, to the street children, to the sinister beggars and blind men, to the Jewish quarter, to the importance of the marabouts, to the hustle and bustle of the souks and its headstrong traders, to the storytellers so convincing that they mesmerize the viewer despite that incomprehensible language.
“Next to the stores where only sales are made, there are many others in front of which one can observe how objects are made. So the observer sees from the beginning how things are made, and this puts him in a good mood. Because it is part of our desultory modern way of life to be forced to receive in the house every thing nice and ready-made, ready for use, as if coming out of magical and horrible devices. […] It is a public activity, it is a making that exhibits itself along with the finished object. In a society that keeps so much of itself hidden, that from outsiders jealously conceals the inside of its houses, the figure and face of its women and even its temples, these intense displays of making and selling are doubly fascinating.”
We are facing the Morocco of 60 years ago, and yet reading this book I think that is exactly the Morocco that I still imagine in 2016: the confusion, the poverty, the contrasts, the strange characters. Viajes a Marrakech
Will I really find him as I expect Morocco to be? Maybe not, maybe it too has mellowed a bit and allowed itself to be corrupted by Westernization (at least in certain places).
“In the Land of Sands” by Isabelle Eberhardt.
The third book I read is actually set in Morocco only in the last few pages (for the rest we are in Algeria), but little matter because here the real protagonist is the desert. “In the Land of the Sands” puts together various stories and notes by Isabelle Eberhardt (Swiss of Russian origin) who, at only 22 years old, ventured as a nomad into the most inaccessible regions of North Africa dressed as a man: “dressed as befits a European girl, I would never have seen anything, I would not have had access to the world, since external life seems to have been made for men and not for women.”
A book dense with detailed descriptions of the landscapes that the writer slowly traverses on the back of her horse or camel, in the company of various tribes and gendarmerie personalities and civil servants, ordinary people and marabouts.
Sun, sunrises, sunsets, dunes, camels, tents, tea, kif, lights, shadows, desert, so much desert described with a unique poetry that conveys it all to us almost as if it were a great dream. Tours en Marruecos
Movies set in Morocco
From the most classic to the most unsuspected, there are many films set in Morocco that you can watch before your departure or afterwards to relive places that have become familiar.
Here are some of the major films set in Morocco:
Bernardo Bertolucci’s Tea in the Desert
Casablanca by Michael Curtiz
Marrakech Express by Gabriele Salvatores
Last Minute Morocco by Francesco Falaschi
I would say these are the most famous and the most classic ones, but there are also more recent ones that I did not know were also partly set in Morocco, for example: The Bourne Ultimatum, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Mission Impossible Rogue Nation.
Delacroix in Morocco
If I have been influenced by Morocco even in the form of art, it is also thanks to the last chapter (a letter actually) of Tahar Ben Jelloun’s book dedicated to the French painter Delacroix, who fell in love with this country.
Eugène Delacroix was thunderstruck by the charms of the Orient exactly in 1832 when he was invited by the French king to join a delegation to visit the sultan of Morocco. Witnesses to his enthusiasm are seven notebooks of sketches and notes and an album of watercolors. Marrakech desert trips
Delacroix in Morocco matures artistically; from this time the painter recognizes even greater attention and importance to the element of light. Light that influences and transforms colors, a unique light that he was able to capture only in Morocco and its desert.
From the human point of view, Delacroix is also impressed by the country, the simplicity of its people and their lives: these people possess nothing but that cloak within which they walk, sleep and are buried. Yet they look satisfied
Many of Delacroix’s Moroccan works, such as the watercolor album, are in the Louvre in Paris.
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