It had been raining for seven days and seven nights. I was in Morocco, northern Africa,
traveling low budget through the small towns and big cities alike. I’d been hitchhiking, and was soaked to
the bone when I arrived in the town of Tetouan, about 60 miles east of Tangier,
and positioned just a few miles south of the Straight of Gibraltar. I’d been shivering all day, like a wet
dog shaking forlornly on the streets of Chicago in the dead of winter. I was in the throes of hypothermia when
I finally found a place to stay.
It was not a typical rain that had enveloped the area, but, rather, a
deluge of somewhat biblical proportions.
A rain they had not seen in memory. A rain that washed the mundane daily concerns from peoples
minds and replaced those concerns with anxiety about their own lives. Would they be O.K?
I took a room in an ancient hotel, stripped off my frozen
clothes, and soaked in a hot bath for what seemed like an eternity, warming my
bones, and renewing my resolve. I
ate a meal of crackers and canned sardines, and put myself to bed for some
much-needed rest, some much-needed dreams, even.
Traveling alone in a foreign country with a pack on my back
and a guitar slung over my shoulder is not easy, by any means. It’s romanticized in the recollections
and retellings of they who have traveled those roads, however, it is anything
but romantic. It is early mornings
and late nights in the middle of nowhere.
It is cold, and it is hot.
It is tiring, and frustrating.
It is lonely and foreboding.
It is dangerous and frightening.
It is certainly uncertain, and it is, in many ways, putting your fortune
in unknown hands, tossing your fate to the wind, if you will. It is, above all else, I think, a
continuous examination of your self, a deeper examination than most men are
even able to bear. You are
confronted with your own shortcomings, your failures, your frailties, your
weakness, your fuck-ups, your missteps, your ethics, your morality, and,
ultimately, your own mortality. It
strips you down to your very core, and redresses you in unadulterated
truth. It is like running a
gantlet with all the ghosts of your past lining up on either side of you while
you try your best to make it unmolested through the fray. But you will not make it through
unmolested. Not if you’re honest
with yourself, which, ultimately, you are forced to be. The road is not a frivolous place. It is not designed that way.
In the morning I woke to brilliant sunshine flooding through
my window, and the sounds of celebration in the streets. The rains had stopped, and the people
were out in the streets full force, most likely for the first time in those
long seven days. I was situated in
an ancient part of the city with narrow cobblestone streets lined with rug
shops and open-air vendors selling exotic food and hawking their wares;
the food, admittedly exotic to me, but common fare to the
Moroccans. I just wandered around
for the better part of the morning, taking in the sights, sounds, smells, and
hustles. Every rug shop I passed
sent a couple twenty-something young men out to follow me and solicit me to
come and have tea in their shop, look at the rugs, and, hopefully, make a deal. After ten minutes or so they’d give up,
and the next rug shop I passed would send out their own detail to engage me.
The streets were narrow and maze-like, winding, meandering,
with no particular discernable pattern.
But it was such a joy to be roaming around among them.
When the rug merchants finally gave up on me I was able to
relax, slow my pace, and take in the intricacies of the town, the minutiae that
gets missed and overlooked when distracted by other concerns. As I moved along I heard what I thought
was a child’s voice. It was faint,
but stuck out somehow among the hustle and bustle of all the other voices in
the streets. I thought I heard the
words, ‘Mr. Americano’. I turned around to look, saw nothing
related to the sound, then began to continue on my way. There was an old 4-story hotel that
caught my interest just ahead on the left. I thought I’d check it out with the idea of possibly moving
in there if I liked it. I liked
where it was located, and maybe it was cheaper than where I was. In any event, I took two or three more
steps towards the hotel when I heard the child’s voice again, but more urgent
this time.
‘Mr. Americano, Mr. Americano’. I stopped again, turned
around, and saw a six or seven-year-old child -standing about thirty feet from
me- calling for my attention. As I
saw him, and connected him with the voice, the ground suddenly shook with a
deafening roar as the old rock and mortar hotel crumbled into the street in an
enormous cloud of dust, just a few feet from me, leaving me in disbelief, with
about 50 people in the street buried beneath an enormous pile of rubble. Needless to say, I was stunned, as was
everybody else. People ran to
help, but it was daunting and dispiriting at best. I tried to help, but, being an obvious foreigner not
speaking the language, was held back from the rubble.
Rescuers arrived quickly and took control of the
situation. They were not
uniformed, organized groups, but, nevertheless, men who knew what they were
doing. Organized fire and police
came later, but this cadre of volunteers found rescue efforts to be futile for
the most part. So many ended up
just standing around with an ever-increasing crowd of mourners.
After a couple of hours, and still in shock, with tears
flowing uncontrolled down my weathered face I began to wander around the town
listening for that familiar voice, the voice which had stopped me in my tracks,
and spared me such an ignominious fate.
I walked around for the next couple of days, all day, looking for the
boy, the angel, that saved my life.
Today I call him Gabriel.
