Fsheesht?

Escaping Imsuoane is an ipossible feat. We teeter in limbo between staying forever and leaving for good. This means that currently our packs rest in our reserved beachfront room while we take a brief sojourn to the desert. Meanwhile we assure ourselves that this is a huge step towards moving on...either that or learning to surf. About the only thing that can get one to leave Imsuoane other than lack of money is lack of fish. When the wind is high and the sea is choppy the little village turns into a ghost town. The remaining men of the village sit in Cafe Imsouane sucking down green tea without mint, because there is none, and watching the same Berber film that they watch every day. As the film goes: woman marries man, woman falls in love with singer at wedding, singer loves another woman, things then get confusing until the film ends with extended shot of singer riding souped up scooter.

On mornings like this the Imsouane boys open their portals for a few seconds to precisely calibrate the day's swell and wave height and promptly shut the blue door and the light out until mid afternoon. On days like this the sieste is globally enjoyed and while the moon sliver crosses the setting sun you recline on the roof and watch the net of stars begin to appear across the sky.

Also on days like this you are lucky if you eat vegetable cous cous and maybe some secretly purchased chicken from over the mountain; but usually you eat eggs: lots and lots of eggs. Three mornings have been spent perfecting the crepe and perhaps just as many consuming some sort of omelet-like concoction. After a few days of this you are eating rice or plain instant cous cous and can consider yourself really mod if you are given the scoop on grilled octopus with argan oil and tomatos and invited to join. Rain comes and breaks the plaster off the walls and into the pipes drains that collect our drinking water. The day afterward, before everything has settled the well yields a fun confettied liquid that we drink nonetheless.

After so many days of backgammon, weird-rules checkers and bad attempts at the djembe one finally gets late in the morning and decides: today I will really try to leave Imsouane. After another several hours of tea drinking, hanging around and basic loitering you actually get into a car with a backpack and let them take you away thinking to yourself, "What the hell am I doing?"

Upon arriving in Agadir I eat half of a roast chicken with crisp browned skin and the most perfect french fries: soft in the middle, mildly crisp and crunch outside . We don't realize how different life has been until we seek to wash our hands and are surprised and delighted by running water. There is also electricity most of the time, and from the wall not the battery! About the only thing that really matters though is the hamam...