It is a thin man, a DJ, who shows Leif and his escort onto a thin embroidered grey carpet that follows the length of the tent across the grey sand.
Read moreLeif and his escort walk along the carpet, her arm hooked under his, to the entrance at the near side end of the tent. His escort is demure, her dark Thai eyes turned down to avoid my look. She wears a tight silver skirt and she holds by his side until they reach the entrance, where the DJ parts the curtain to show them to their table.
Each table is long, it fills the length of each tent, and each tent is dedicated to an individual party. Leif and the Thai woman are invited through their entrance.
A gold ornament shaped like a netted leaf provides privacy from the rest of the table. I’m not clear what the other end of the table is for when only a couple are sitting at it. Maybe it is a place to put the courses that follow the usual Harira starter.
The tents are lined up in rows, our tent next to Leif’s, and we wait at our entrance for the DJ, for our escort.
Once Leif and his escort is settled, our own escort shows up at the far end of our own tent, at the beginning of the runner. She too looks Thai, but she is old and her brown thinning hair is plastered across her forehead. She smiles at me in greeting, but her teeth are also brown and she is missing two of her top teeth; only three of her teeth, on the right side of her mouth, remain.
At first I think she may be OK, and though we make not be able to communicate, that too may be OK.
But then, “This will not do!” I tell the DJ.
I think I am with Siobhan, I cannot tell, but we will complain, I think.
We enter the tent, leaving the DJ behind with the old Thai woman, and we push past our table and past the gold leaf ornament, until we we find a back room that must belong to the manager.
On the wall are rare framed pictures of gold and platinum LPs. The wall is maroon and shielded top to bottom by a thin glass wall which protects the mementoes behind it. There is a brown electric guitar, a Stratocaster I notice, behind the glass.
Guitars are propped on stands in front of the manager’s desk and, of course the desk is big and mahogany in the dim lit tent, but the manager is not there.
“This will not do!” I repeat, and I push on the glass wall. I am not sure whether I am trying to break it, but when it cracks unexpectedly, I want to go for it, we want to go for it. I kick at the glass wall, then I take one of the guitars from its stand and wield it at the glass to shatter it.
The whole glass wall falls towards us, and with it, the gold and platinum LPs, and the encased Stratocaster. They fall altogether, towards the desk and the glass smashes satisfactorily into splintered pieces, and spreads around us, across the carpet.
Photo from our trip to Morocco, April 2024.