Marrakech

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It was the year 2014. I initiated the journey to Morocco to glue together the crumbles of a collapsing relationship. I couldn’t find the missing pieces in the corners of the home we had to call ours, so I traveled far and wide to solve the puzzle that had changed form over time. I’m not sure whether I hoped to find a sparkle of what we once had in the fire licking at the sides of a charred tajine pot, or to feel the electric storms at one time passionately blustering through our lives in the dancing dust of the dark corners of the medina… Maybe I just needed a final test of what I didn’t want to recognize, before leaving for good.

Marrakech. It all started in Marrakech.

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I needed to be away from what I generally thought was normal to redefine sanity. A bird-eye’s view of daily life and mundane routine to find the secret cracks to escape.

I searched my soul in the labyrinth of the medina. Danced away my doubts in the middle of the bazaar, while toothless men in brown djellaba’s played their banjo’s made of goat hair, establishing freedoms women don’t usually have here. I strolled through faded alleyways and devoured the flavours of cumin and saffron, eradicating the deafening screams of heated merchants trying to lure in another hungry stomach. I found guidance in the city lights flickering… not from trams or apartment buildings, but from oil lamps of 1001 nights and kaleidoscopic reflections of candles shedding their lights on ornamented silverware.

Following the light to run from my own shadow, deepened by the toxic interaction of two souls growing towards two different suns, creating two incompatible worlds.

Marrakech gave me colors, aromas and sensations. The fine dust of the Sahara, the cold breeze casting back from the snow on the Atlas. The hypnotizing patterns of the crafty tiling, colourful repetitions of perfect puzzles reminding me of my own jigsaw I was there to solve. Marrakech gave me answers.

The beginning of the end, but even more so the beginning of the beginning. Me in that airplane. Witnessing the endless flat landscape, abruptly stopped by the immensity of the Atlas… that was life trying to tell me something.

I was done walking the easy but repetitious path through never-changing landscapes. Dry, bare fields where nothing grows. I had run down into the depths of the valley and needed to throw off all unnecessary ballast to climb more complicated, yet more exciting trails.

It was time.

Photos - the city of Marrakech:

Photos - The Atlas (Imlil):

Photos - the Sahara:

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