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Our vehicle traveled higher and higher on the dirt road that crosses the High Atlas Mountains in Morocco. Under me, the red soil lay between the forest green and the white snow. I lost myself in the dizzying beauty of the highest peaks of North Africa and, when I peeked nervously out of the window, I found that I was in the middle of the night. there was no protection on the road leading to the deep and distant valley.
Our journey began an hour earlier, at the foot of the mountain, by an ancient path taken by the caravans linking Marrakech to the Sahara Desert. Centuries ago, this trans-Saharan trade route brought gold, ivory and textiles from Timbuktu, Sudan and Ghana to the North African coast. Today, the other proud villages that dot this winding road are undeveloped and serve as a landing for weary travelers who can buy grilled meat in cabins and cafes.
That morning, I stopped in one of these villages, Taddert, with a washed out copy of Berber Village: The History of the University Expedition Oxford in the mountains of the Moroccan High Atlas. Mountains of the High Atlas of Morocco, in free translation).
Published in 1959 and written by Bryan Clarke, this book is the tale of a remarkable 17 – day expedition from Oxford to the UK in five isolated villages of Idihr, in 1955.
Young people – among them, Clarke himself – traveled in a truck that had been used by the army. They were animated with the hope of studying the geography, wildlife and customs of this remote corner of the highest mountain range in the Arab world.
Journey into hostile territory
The trip took place during a period of civil unrest. Morocco was a French protectorate since 1912, but after the exile of Sultan Mohammed V in 1953, violence broke out and the colonial authorities ruthlessly suppressed Moroccan nationalists.
When students pbaded from England to San Sebastián in Spain and prepared to venture from Gibraltar to Morocco in the summer of 1955, the French occupation was at its last moments and the future of this country, uncertain.
When the students arrived in North Africa, they asked the help of the chief, Thamis el-Glaoui, to find an isolated village ideal for research and protection during their travels. Before becoming the Pasha (governor of the province) of Marrakech in 1912, el-Glaoui was nicknamed "The Lord of the Atlas" and directed the caravan route that crossed the mountains of southern Morocco.
His palace was the legendary Kasbah Telouet, located in central Morocco. At the time of his death, in 1956, he was one of the richest men in the world.
After pbading from Oxford to the High Atlas, students spent the night in the palace. It was the end of the road, so a local sheikh organized a caravan of mules to carry the luggage while the students were traveling about 35 kilometers from Telouet to Idihr.
Moroccan High Atlas – Photo: Liza Foreman / BBC
Like the students, j & # 39; had come to Morocco for a personal business. After living in the United States for a decade, I traveled around the country hoping to write a novel.
One day, while digging in a Casablanca library, I discovered a copy of the Berber village. While reading it, I was fascinated by the trials and tribulations that these five young adventurers faced, including a Moroccan performer, as well as an aspiring zoologist, ethnologist, geographer and botanist. According to the book, during this 17-day trip, students slept under the porch of a British officer, met the legendary explorer Wilfred Thesiger and were almost captured by bandits in [
]. Marrakesh.
After arriving in Idihr, they camped for seven weeks during their research. Their main funding came from the Oxford University Exploration Club, which allowed them to purchase the vehicle and a £ 100 advance from National Geographic for a fee. article to come.
In the weeks leading up to the start, students stored a stack of prepared meals, penicillin and toilet paper. Clarke said goodbye to his former owner, who gave him a bag of homemade sandwiches for the trip.
Students chose Idihr for their remoteness in the heights of the Atlas. They wanted to find a place spared by modernity to study the beliefs and farming practices of a distant Maghreb society. The students set up their tents under a large walnut tree on the edge of the creek that was near the village. In 1955, five students from Oxford University went to Idhir – Photo: Liza Foreman / BBC "src =" date: image / jpeg; base64, / 9j / 4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQABAAD / 2wBDAAMCAgMCAgMDAwMEAwMEBQgFBQQEBQoHBwYIDAoMDAsKCwsNDhIQDQ4RDgsLEBYQERMUFRUVDA8XGBYUGBIUFRT / 2wBDAQMEBAUEBQkFBQkUDQsNFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBT / wgARCAAOABkDASIAAhEBAxEB / 8QAFQABAQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABgX / xAAVAQEBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADBP / aAAwDAQACEAMQAAABPKgzN6qiuKelD // // EABwQAAIBBQEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMEBgABAgUWE aAAgBAQABBQKPqWGySZ 6seXHuTcHjWbQ8BIRtDZDRSejo + + m2df / EABoRAAICAwAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADAREEEkH / 2gAIAQMBAT8BzW7uueC7P EABoRAAICAwAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAERAAQCAxL // / // 2gAIAQIBAT8Bq4c6lLLYAn xAAoEAACAQMBBQkAAAAAAAAAAAACAwEABBEiBRIUIYEjMTRBQkNRkrH / 2gAIAQEABj8CHaR4FNpBGQ ZTETjFEXAqP069VLG92fYlyzMgrH50r2vuVSxyuJXOklEW7Ex0rNi24si7908MGr9znKbIK7OVxjnn4rxZ1 + / / xAAfEAABBAICAwAAAAAAAAAAAAABABEhMUFhUdGBofH / 2gAIAQEAA T8hLZQRPjDbE6T5EgmkAdvwpCTEjzkk0IlaHPyBzJ7WEKiuvM + 0FAsmGFYl2vvjpf / aAAwDAQACAAMAAAAQSu xAAbEQACAgMBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABEQBhITFBgf // / // aAAgBAwEBPxB1SFd93GMg4n xAAZEQACAwEAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAABEQAhQVH / 2gAIAQIBAT8QIANs685FKRP / xAAdEAEAAgIDAQEAAAAAAAAAAAABESEAMUFRYRDB / 9oACAEBAAE / EL / QBOGkE2p3C8AxTAtYQIcJx9y0MJCAF9Cr8 cL7G94wRqSnGt245TkNVeRj + nIWdTYSFQiBgQ9HOCP / 9k = "/>
Over the weeks, writes Clarke, a friendship was formed between the two large upos. The students invited the villagers to tea in their booths and received them in their simple masonry houses. The villagers quickly revealed a belief in animism and genius and began to see the students, who shared their penicillin, as magical healers.
The more I read Clarke's story, the more curious he was about what had happened to Idihr. Still existed? I read it on Google Maps and asked the people of Marrakech in Arabic, but no one could find any trace of the village. I contacted Clarke's widow and asked if anyone in the group had returned to the place. Clarke had not and she was not sure of the others they were still alive.
The small point of a village seems to have disappeared from modern maps, and the only evidence of its location is a hand-drawn sketch in Clarke's book, located ten miles from the town of Zerkten and between the villages of Taddert and Telouet, in the province of Al Haouz. I did not know if she had changed her name or if she had completely disappeared, but she was determined to find out if she still existed.
Taddert seemed to be the nearest village on modern maps. So I drove to the village of Marrakech for three hours with a driver who acted as an interpreter.
A group of men gathered around us and examined Clarke's book, while my driver and I were rehearsing the name of the village. They looked at the hand drawn map and eventually someone pointed the mountains off. Then a good-hearted mechanic, Karim, who was nearby, came to my aid. Idihr existed and he would take me there.
I waited in a roadside cafe at Taddert with Clarke's book on the table while Karim was calling a friend. Our expedition consisted of me, my driver, Karim and his friend, who owned the biggest car in the area: a 4×4 capable of climbing the mountains.
But after an hour of climbing and the wheels of the car closer and closer to the cliff, I could not stand it anymore. Too scared to continue, I begged the driver to stop, I closed the door and I started going up the mountain on a dusty trail before the car came to me. search.
I was disappointed with myself, but I discovered that Idihr existed. Now, I just had to find a different way to get there. Karim, my driver and I returned from Taddert to Marrakech that night. Karim badured me that he would look for a less dangerous route to the village and insisted that I owed him nothing in return.
A few days later, I received a call from him. He had decided to take the 4×4 on a different road. Even if I had fun to redo the course of 35 km of students Telouet, it was very dangerous. I was in the hands of Karim to find another way.
We left seven days later. While Karim, myself and our driver, left Marrakech and traveled on mountainous roads, the old caravan route went to the snow-capped mountains. The women washed their clothes in ditches, the carpets blew in the wind in the roadside stalls, and the donkeys trotted freely through half-houses.
After three hours, we left the caravan road to approach Taddert, on the other side of the mountains where we tried our first attempt. Although Idihr is less than 20 km away, the journey took several hours. We climbed curves and crossed rivers at the speed of a snail.
We were alone on a dirt road while the peaks of the High Atlas were standing around us. Finally, the small village appeared: a group of simple brick houses stacked at the edge of a river fed by the mountain.
Karim hailed sites in Arabic and Amazigh dialect (also called Berber). Men came out of their homes and women wearing bright skirts and scarves on their heads were hidden. It seemed that they were not used to foreign visitors.
I went through gardens and goats. A group of children followed me to the creek below the village where I found the walnut described by Clarke. The village consisted of low, sand-colored houses arranged around a square. Another row of houses ran along the top of the stream and was identical to the pictures of the students in the book.
The villagers took black and white photographs of a stranger who had stopped here years ago. I asked to photograph the women and they were amazed by the images on the screen of my iPad; there was no cell phone or camera. I showed them a copy of the Berber village and asked if anyone remembered the students, but no one had ever seen the book. Some villagers recognized photographs of deceased villagers.
Nothing seems to have changed in Idihr since the story of the book, though it is that a van sporadically leads the residents to Taddert. People worked on the land, as they always did. They still love meat and vegetable dishes cooked slowly in tajine pots. One of them was offered this afternoon.
An old television was extinguished in a common area, except for a roof over his head and clothes on the body, the villagers They did not seem to have much. And, according to Karim and the driver, they still bought goods from "magic men" traveling in the hope of bringing them luck.
I spent the afternoon in the village and left before dark. Idihr was nowhere to be found – it was so difficult to reach her, and so small that if you did not get lost in search of the Kasbah Telouet, now in ruins, you'll never find it. But now that I had succeeded, I dreamed one day of returning to camp in the village, just like the students.
I did not have funding from a university or publication, but that proved that a traveler with a lot of determination can still be an explorer in the world today. ; hui. I may not have been the first to discover Idihr, but thanks to the kindness of strangers, I had the impression of finding a little secret hidden in plain sight and frozen by the slow march of time pbading in the mountains.
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