When I went surfing for the first time, I was surprised by how hard it actually is – you need to paddle hard, get up, keep balance… All that while fighting your fear of the sea and waves in the back of your head. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t do any big waves that day, I was with an instructor, and I consider myself a decent swimmer. So, I wasn’t in an obvious threat of drowning. It’s just that few years ago, I developed a crippling fear of depths. It’s called thalassophobia, I guess? It gets so bad that sometimes I’m on the brink of panic attack when I’m in a deep water. With that predisposition, even the relatively shallow shoreline and small waves look taunting.
When I finished surfing, I enjoyed a well deserved lunch, and feeling pretty tired, I was waiting for the bus back to Essaouira. According to the online schedule, it was supposed to arrive in about 10 minutes. It was 30 degrees outside, and the sky was cloudless, so I hid in what little shade I could find. I was taking in the views, since coastal Morocco was still a novel sight for me. While I was waiting, I was approached by a lady who asked me if I knew when the bus is supposed to come. I said what I knew, and we struck up a conversation. She asked me if I went surfing, and then proceeded to tell me a bit about herself. At first I thought she was on vacation, but it turned out she was looking for work, without any significant luck so far.
“The Moroccans are racist,” she said. “Everywhere, they send me packing immediately just because I’m black.”
At that point, we were apprroached by a taxi driver looking for passengers.
“I have some free seats in the cab. Just 15 dirhams for the ride.”
“We’re waiting for the bus,” she said.
“I’m not speaking to you,” the taxi driver replied.
There you had it.
I refused his offer, and we resumed our discussion. She told me about her occupation – she was an English teacher from Liberia, but the situation in her country led her, like many others, to emigrate, looking for a better life elsewhere. She asked me about Slovakia, if we might be looking for English teachers, and how well she’d be paid. She was quite surprised about the reality of my country, and concluded that it wouldn’t be a particularly good choice to come there.
As we were talking, I noticed something eerie about her. She looked dangerous. Not in a sense of being a criminal, or that she’d want to cause me harm, no. Rather, I wouldn’t try fucking with her in the slightest, because I’d come to regret it soon if I did. Despite her current situation, she had an aura of strictness and resoluteness. She must’ve been through a lot.
Ten minutes passed, and no bus was in sight. She asked me for some money, which I refused, and she accepted my refusal wihthout mentioning it again. The taxi driver approached us again.
“No bus in sight, eh? There’s still some free place in the cab if you want.”
“Seems like we have no other choice. Are you going as well?” I asked her.
“I don’t have money for the ride.”
I paid for her. We sat in the back of the grand taxi (a mini van that takes you outside of the city in Morocco) with an old gentleman who definitely wasn’t Morrocan. The driver was looking for one more person to fill the car, and the old man was growing more restless by the minute.
“Yalla yalla yalla!” he shouted at the driver who didn’t mind him at all, and kept looking for the last person.
“Looks like you’re in a hurry old man,” said the black woman. “Are you going to miss the dinner in your hotel?”
“No, I have important things to do in the town, and I have to catch the last bus back to Sidi Kawki in the evening. And I don’t live in a hotel. I’m more of a Moroccan than Englishman now.” the guy said with a perfect British accent. “Anyway, what are you going to do there?”
“I’m looking for work. Do you know of something?” she asked with a serious expression.
The old man scratched his head.
“A lot of people are looking for work. You may think that I live off my pension. Bullshit! I’m 60 years old, and I work every single day except Sundays. That’s my day off, that’s when I go to town. I used to have decent money, but I made some bad decisions… Anyway, my situation is a bit complicated, and let’s say I can’t return to the UK without facing certain issue. So I stay here, and I live like a Moroccan.”
I was getting hooked. How lucky was I to meet two such interesting people in one taxi?
“I’m a builder, working on a yurt for some European millionaire, just south of Sidi Kawki. I lead a team of three Moroccans… But I’d be better off without them, they just slow me down. How’s your search for work? Found anything yet?” the old man asked with a smirk.
“No, not really.” the woman answered. “Today I went around all the hotels in Sidi Kawki, but they kicked me out from each one of them.”
“What do you do? What’s your occupation? Your specialty?”
“I can do anything,” she said, smiling. “But I’m a teacher. An English teacher. I come from Liberia, but I was also teaching in other places before. Vietnam, for example,” turning her head to me, she added: “That’s a good country. You should go. You can teach English there.”
“Oh yeas, Vietnam is very nice,” added the old man.
“Have you been to Vietnam?” I asked him.
“No, but I heard.”
The cab finally departed, and we talked the whole way. I found out that the guy’s name is Andrew, and he’s been living in Morocco for the last 3-4 years. I learnt that the woman lives in one room with 10 other people, that they share a mattress and they barely have money for food, let alone rent which is due soon. I was sad when all three of us got out at Bab Marrakech, and the woman disappeared almost immediately. I wanted to invite her for a lunch a listen to her story. I wanted to understand what’s behid the resolute face, behind the aura of unfuckwithableness that’s around her. Andrew asked me if I wanted to join him for a beer, and I obliged without hesitation.
The old man was oddly energetic for his age, and he clearly knew the place well. There was no doubt about that. Where I’d take the main street, patting myself on the back for efficiency, he stormed the side ones without batting an eye. He knew where he wanted to go, and he didn’t hesitate for a moment. While we rushed the streets of the medina, he told me a lot of things about the city and it’s history. Just when I completely lost track of where we were, we got out at the end of the main street, near Bab Sbaa. Andrew pointed to a big stone portal leading to one of the side streets.
“Now, look at that. What do you see on the top?” he asked, and without letting me even think, he also provided the answer: “There’s the star of David. This part of the town used to be Jewish. It’s very subtle, but you can see the history everywhere. Now we are going to have a drink there.”
We went through the portal, and into a side street, took left turn, and came to the end of the street, next to the city walls.
“Here we are, the finest establishment in all of Essaouira. And the wole region as well, likely. It’s called Alhafra. I used to spend most of the pandemic here…” His eyes trailed off as he reminisced.
“This may be the most famous bar in all of Morocco. A lot of people from different backgrounds come here. Politicians, scoundrels, rich, poor, artists, and working men. They all come here, and their differences dissolve, leaving only the human. I made a lot of interesting friends here.”
We entered the bar through the small door, and when my eyes got used to the dim light and cigarette smoke, I found myself in a run-down sort of place, which would get the moniker of “third price category” in Slovakia. I wandered what Andrew meant by “finest establishment” and “most famous bar in all of Morocco” when this was, at best, an ordinary village pub where I’m from. Since my thirst for beer and stories was higher than any possible disgust, I decided to leave my judgements for later.
Andrew obviously didn’t lie about spending most of the pandemic there. The bartenders and bouncers greeted him as soon as they saw him, and they seemed to be on friendly basis. We ordered beers, and found a free table, which wasn’t a problem at that time of the day.
At first, our conversation stalled a little, and Andrew talked with others sitting in the bar for a while. He asked the bartender to bring him a baguette from a small bakery next door, and he claimed that it’s the best bread in Essaouira. This time, I didn’t doubt him. The baguette was warm, and crunchy. It was like that everytime I bought it from the bakery afterwards. No matter the time of the day, the bread was fresh and it costed only 2 dirhams, or even less. We ate the baguette with the loubia and olives brought by the bartender for free. That has to be said about Alhafra – you didn’t pay for the food. As our stomachs filled with food and cold beer, we picked up the conversation again.
“What was it with the black woman in the cab?” Andrew asked. “She seemed terrifying!”
“Yes, she indeed was terrifying. I wouldn’t want to fuck with her.”
This caused Andrew to spill beer on himself with laughter.
“That’s perfect! That’s exactly what I was thinking. She seemed like a decent human, but at the same time, there was something… Off about her. I wouldn’t want to fuck with her either.”
I nodded. The woman did look a little bit off. I don’t doubt anything she said. I don’t think she meant harm to any of us. But still. I wouldn’t want to be on her bad side.
Andrew finished his first beer, ordered another one, and started digging in his sock. He fished out a ball shaped something packed in a torn piece of newspaper. Without thinking twice, I knew what it was. Andrew torn a piece of hash from the ball, gave it to me, and asked:
“Can you roll me a joint please? I suck at this and you look like someone who can go his way with joints,” he asked politely.
He was right. I rolled the spliff, we lit it up, and smoked, passing it between us.
“This it the only place in Essaouira where you don’t need to be scared to smoke hashish in public. Anywhere else, they’d kick you out, at best. Not here though, nobody bats an eye here.”
Not like I was planning to smoke it on the street.
“You want some hash for later?” Andrew offered, and after a moment of hesitation, I accepted the gift.
“So, what’s your story? What makes you yourself?” I asked.
“Do you really want to listen to that?”
“You look like an interesting person. Well, to me at least. I suppose there’s a good story behind that.”
“If I must,” Andrew smiled and put out the roach. I’d say he was waiting for my encouragement to keep on talking about himself.
“I was born in England, but my father was Polish and my mother Irish. My father fled Poland after the Second World War, because the communists prosecuted anyone who was fighting in the Brittish army. Funny, isn’t it? He put his life on stake to save his motherland, just for the motherland to want him dead afterwards. Either way, he came to England, met my mother, and they conceived me. We lived in a small town which was full of rich people and celebrities. My family were their servants, basically. My father worked as a gardener, while my mother was a governess in one of the houses. We were the poorest family in the town. My parents were catholic, and I received that kind of upbringing – strict, restricting, punishing. The fact that we were the poorest family in town left a weird sentinment in me. You know, when I say that we were the poorest, I’m not saying we didn’t have money. Quite the contrary! We had two cars and we always had very good meals on our plates. We never lived in poverty. But still, in contrast with the other people living there, we were poor.”
Andrew paused for a moment, took a good sip of his beer, and seeing that I listened intently, he resumed: “When I was a kid, we used to go to Poland, communist Poland, mind you, during the summer vacation. Back then, there were no direct planes, and if there were, you bet they were expensive. So each year, we loaded up our small car, and each yer we embarked on a week long journey to visit our family. We usually stayed with them for about a month. I loved Poland! The country was very poor, and foreign currency got you far. I received 5 pounds of allowance for the whole month, and I could live like a king, even save some of the money! I could buy anything I wanted, I always took taxis when I went somewhere. You see, growing up in perceived poverty was in huge contrast with being rich on vacation in Poland. And it always left a weird feeling in me, when we went there.”
Andrew took another sip of the beer, frowning, and he seemed to loose himself in memories. I didn’t push him. I was in awe. This weird old man, who I met few hours ago was confiding me his story. After a while, he seemed to regain the present, and he blurted: “I’m sorry! I have to be boring you with my talking.”
I stopped him abruptly: “No, you’re not! Go on please, I want to hear more.”
I think he said that just out of politeness.
“Of course, communist Poland had it’s pecularities. I don’t think I have to explain this to you, since you are from Slovakia. There was a strong presence of the secret police, and our visits never went unnoticed. When you are young, you don’t think about this sort of thing of course. But your parents, or grandparents will tell you to not talk about certain things with this uncle, or that neighbor. So, on one hand, you feel like a king, you can afford almost anything you wish, and your life there is careless. But on the other hand, you feel this omnious presence…”
He took another long sip of his beer.
“Thanks to my yearly visits to communist Poland I understood the nature and mind of the people behind the iron courtain better. And I grew to like that part of Europe. I returned to the region in the 90s, after the regimes fell. I travelled around a good portion of the place, usually working as an English teacher. I also worked in Slovakia, in Bratislava.”
“Really? How did you like it?”
“It was very, and I mean VERY cheap. I loved it. You could go out in the evening, not spend more than 5 dollars, and live like a king. I was a child again.”
With that, he smiled, and finished his beer.
“I loved the rawness of the countries in the 90s. I don’t like the western Europe as much. It’s too…”
“Sterile?” I suggested.
“Yes, exactly!”
“That’s my thinking as well. And I have to say that even Slovakia is sterile now. Too sterile for my liking.”
“Oh yes, I can imagine that. It’s a price to be paid if you want to be in the EU, I suppose. That’s why I like Morocco now. Things here are…”
“More real.” I interrupted him again, and he nodded with approval.
“I see that you understand me. Well, that’s why I’m here. Not exactly, but still. I don’t want to talk about the particularities of my situation. That’s not important. But come now, I’m talking for too long. Narcissistic me. It’s your turn, tell me about yourself. I’ll try to be as good listener as you were,” he said, ordered another beer for both of us, and sat back in the chair.
I told him about my story, how my relationship of 5 years ended that year, how I wanted to travel for a long time, so I went, and there I was in Essaouira. I told him about how life in Slovakia was, which he laughed about with a hint of sadness in his eyes. I told him about my dreams, and about my sense of being lost in the modern world.
He wasn’t a good listener. He interrupted me often, and then he started talking about himself again. I was okay with that. I wasn’t there to talk about myself.
We stayed in the bar for a few hours, but the conversation never regained it’s former depth. Around 6PM he said that he needs to catch a bus back to Sidi Kawki, so we left, and we parted ways very soon after. We exchanged numbers, but there was never any further contact between the two of us.
Only later I learnt that Alhafra means a hole in Darija. The bar’s called that because there used to be no door in the past, only a hole in the wall. In my opinion, the name was more of a metaphor. The place was a hole where people were falling – alcoholism, escapism. Running away from their terrible, brutal lives, running away so fast they didn’t seem to notice the abyss they ran towards. The place was also full of people with holes in them. Holes left by their experiences, their traumas, the lack of understanding and love in their lives. They all came to The Hole desperate to fill the hole in them, but falling only deeper instead. I visited The Hole from time to time during my stay in Essaouira. The place offered some weird sort of inspiration only a filthy bar can. I tasted the bitter-sweet comfort of The Hole, and I’m glad I didn’t fall too deep into it. I like to think that the first time I was there, I was a witness, or even a participant in filling of one little hole. I hope I’m right.