Safe.
Staring up at the ceiling from my bed. The room calmly blue.

I heard someone complain about the heat but me, I’ve wrapped my self snugly in a blanket and I feel just warm enough. The last of the fever moving through and out of me.

Agadir, Agadir, the mythical town whose name I’ve been silently singing for the past months, feeling it pull me towards itself: a dot on the map so far south, calling me, echoing my lymphatic system in chanting: south, south, south.

I am south now. More south than I have ever been on my own two feet. I feel very far away from home, wherever that is, brought here by my own two stubborn feet, athlete thumb and idiot smile which, in turn, are validated by endless currents of help and kindness.

This dot on the map that I imagined passing is enclosing me now and I am in its symbolic meaning: being here means that I will move on.

Being here means that I will leave.

Being here means that I am turning my attention to the desert, the yellow, unknown, the vast spaces I imagine crossing, the contrast, the new, unknown selves I expect to become.

Being here means I am tensing up as if to leap, yes in a sense I will leap over borders, lines drawn on maps and traced on ground with guns and walls, traced by people in boots and matching uniforms, chins raised as I expect them to eye me down; traced by flags moved by wind made accomplice.

(I often consider the strangeness of my own familiarity with imagining land from above, represented in scale. Thinking in lines rather than landmarks; so comfortable am I with relating to maps.)

Being here in this mood means that I am not fully here.

…

The first day I just sleep, alternating between my bed and the couch on the rooftop terrace. The hostel is small and friendly, backpack-y, run by a local family with some workawayers. It is, surprisingly, the only hostel in all of Agadir. It is hot here, for real. A clear contrast to the cold of Tangier and Casablanca.

The few interactions I have with the other European tourist my age are not very pleasant for me but I end up talking to an older man who spends his days walking. He leaves before dawn and returns after sunset. His only spoken language is Spanish but I understand him enough and he seems to understand my increasingly weakened Portuguese. He doesn’t ask me where I come from but where I am going and what I have seen, and I like that. He lets me elaborate and relates to my mood rather than my words. Then he tells me about his hours of walking, the sunrises and the silence he enjoys when he leaves early. I sell him my remaining weed which I haven’t touched since I bought it on a whim over a month ago, solving my problem on how to get rid of it before moving over a border.

In the evenings we are all invited to share a huge tajin and I dig in, seated a little on the side from everyone and with my own plate so as to not spread whatever virus I am healing from. It is simple and delicious. I let every bite linger a little in my mouth, thinking that in only four days I will, insha’allah, be in Mauritania and that to my knowledge, this might well be the last tajin I eat in a while.

…

I set my feet down softly as if I were sneaking down the streets; no rocking or bumping my still-sore head after these days of being drained. Movement will circulate the blood and fluids, bring oxygen to the muscles, soften and wring out the last pain from my joints. And I want to see this town, even a little. I have already been sneaking down to the nearby market, bringing oranges and msimmen back up to eat while recovering.

Agadir has no old Medina. The whole town was almost completely destroyed in an earthquake in the ‘60s I’m told, now re-built and spread out over a vast area, houses mostly low and square. With the distances far and wide, everything has a flat look to it. The streets are all straight or geometrically round as they usually are in cities that did not grow organically but were first drawn up and planned on paper, from above. The mid-day sun pushes the shadows into the house walls and there is nothing that offers escape from the heat along the spacious streets.

There are not many people out anywhere, leaving Agadir almost a ghost town with all its space. Even the markets are quiet and calm with the vendors napping or scrolling, the heat making it difficult and pointless to shout out the prices of produce.

I wrap my scarf more carefully around my head, protecting it from the rays. If you plan a city in a hot climate like this, I think to my self, I don’t see the reason to make the streets so wide and to offer no shade. I suddenly understand better the old Medinas and their narrow, aisle-like streets, the house walls offering cool during days like these.

The beach, too, is wide and flat. I let the cold water submerge my feet in its waves, sand giving way slowly underneath and I walk lazily, feet, knees and hips carefully contemplating each step while not thinking much of anything at all. Storing my attention within the circulation of my self, slowly gathering strength, healing, collecting thought, walling my self from too much impression, protecting, preparing to launch so that in the morning I’ll have the energy to begin the long ride down over Western Sahara.

…

(This story told in pictures.)