Back in Tiznit

Aisha's friend Abdellatif Jhilal picked me up from the Tildi Hotel at exactly 10 o'clock. He drove me in an upmarket gleaming black Volkswagen sedan in around two hours to Tiznit. The Tildi is situated in a narrow quiet street that runs down hill to the beach. Just before the beach it is cut short by the main traffic artery that runs north-south parallel to the coast. This wide street took us first to Inzegane past the huge Marijane supermarket, the bus station and the Grand Taxi station. Next it crosses the Sous River that gives the region its name. March should be the time of the year that abundant water is passing under the bridge. It wasn't bad actually. Morocco also had had a miserable and cold month just like in Ireland. Next we drove through Ait Melloul. In this town is the turn off for the N1 to Tiznit and beyond. The other route goes to the airport. It was the route I had come that morning. By that time I knew that Abdellatif was courtious, somewhere in his forties, unmarried and from Taza. He taught theoretical mathematics at Agadir university and had been taken once by Aisha to Iligh to meet her family. After having established his antecedents without giving mine away we could proceed over the N1. First through the string of villages from one roundabout to another and than on to the new fast road. We passed the turn off to Sidi Rabat on the right and hit an empty stretch. Abdellatif had the address where we would meet the others and stay: the Tiznit Hotel. I knew where it was: on the major roundabout. Who would have thought that Tiznit would become such an important part of my Moroccan experiences? At the end of my stay I would finally get the chance to make a sketch of this roundabout from another hotel: the Idou Hotel. On the sketch you look from the west side of the five exit roundabout towards the east. The road to the east is towards Tafroute and is the traditional way to get to Iligh. From left to right is the N1 north to Agadir and south to Guelmim and beyond. That is the new or alternative way to Iligh. The two roads towards the west of which only one is visible go into the town.

Back in Agadir

Back in Agadir, but not for long. For the whole journey from my home in Polranny to the room in the Tildi 14 hours later I had been fueled by adrenalin. As soon as the night porter closed the door of my hotel room behind him I fell on the bed in a deep sleep. Once I'm 'on my way' I tend to relax. I have no problem to leave worries about the next day behind once I'm in the state of traveling. However before I'm on the move I'm totally, insanely nervous and sick with apprehension. I contracted this in my youth. Before I started on another hitchhiking adventure I was ill for a week, but the desire for adventure and the urge to get away always won from the sickening panic. It was delightful to wake up knowing I was in Morocco once again. I thought I would be picked up by Aisha's friend around 2 o'clock. That meant I would miss the beginning of the 'Reunion'. But I didn't care. Now I was in Agadir I didn't worry anymore about if and how to get to Tiznit or Iligh. I felt confident again. However before I went down for breakfast I got a message that Abdellatif Jhilal would be at the hotel at 10 o'clock. During breakfast I had just enough time to make a sketch of the view from the terras of the iconic hill and the fortifications that gave Agadir its name. The complementary fruit basket the hotel staff had so kindly put in my room was hurriedly stuffed into my shoulder bag. At least some of it.

Irish-Moroccan or Moroccan-Irish?

The flight from Dublin to Agadir with Air Arabia was supposed to leave at 10.35 PM. Checking in started three hours before departure. I had arrived at 17.30hours in Dublin with a lot of luggage as I would fly from Agadir to Amsterdam and was going to spend at least 2 months there. That meant I had to cart a lot of medical stuff around. Sightseeing in Dublin was no option. Instead I dragged my heels, looked around a lot and made three detailed sketches to pass the time. The crowd that was going to Agadir was an interesting lot. I never knew there were Moroccans in Ireland. Moroccans certainly hadn't been hired away from the villages to do the dirty work like in the Netherlands. Traditionally people left from Ireland to find work someplace else. Who were those Moroccans on the flight with me? Turned out most were Moroccan men married to Irish women and their families. Around me I heard Moroccans speak English with strong Irish accents. This was cute. It was a few days after Saint Patrick's Day and a week before Easter. Were the mixed families going back to Morocco after visiting Irish family for Saint Paddy's or were they going to Morocco to visit Moroccan family for Easter hols? For most of the flight I slept. Funny: every time I go through passport controle coming into Morocco a Moroccan in front of me is getting into a fight of words with an official. Of course I can't understand what they are saying, but it is always very emotional: the return of the immigrant to the mother country. Never easy.

Where to go?

While Bert and Aicha were running up and down the stairs in the provincial palace in Tiznit between the different layers of bureaucracy to get funding for the 'Reunion' of the Friends of Iligh, I was in Ireland and didn't have a clou what went on. During my stay in Polranny Bert and I had had contact via Skype every Tuesday about the graphic story. But since Bert had left for Morocco we had only occasionally spoken to each other. I knew about the disaster that had befallen Iligh and the desperation of Bert how that would effect the arrival of the international crew of experts. I didn't know about the effort of Bert and Aisha to work out Plan B. My flight from Dublin to Agadir would be on March 21 in the middle of the night. I would to take a taxi from the airport to Iligh. That was the plan. Next I got a mail from Bert that she had not arranged a taxi and anyway she, Aisha and Annie Wright, the photographer were in Tiznit. The Aboudmiaa also had stated that I couldn't take a taxi in the middle of the night. That was too dangerous and anyway Zhor Rehilhil was supposed to land that morning sometime from Casablanca. I had to come with her to Tiznit. I saw myself spending the night in the carpark of the airport. That didn't bode well. Finally I caught Bert on Skype. She happened to be in Agadir in the Tildi hotel. I asked her to get me a room and a transfer from the airport. She did that. A room with shower was reserved for me as I can't get into and out of a bath anymore. The last time I was in the Tildi I had trouble with it. So far so good. Between the arrival of my train from Castlebar and the flight to Agadir I was going to have to spend a lot of time in Dublin. Time enough to finally make that sketch inside the Galway Hooker. The Galway Hooker is the carvery inside Heuston Station. It is the place for the culchies to wait for the train into the boondogs.

Chapter 1 Iligh and the Dutch in the 17th century

Part of the Grant Application was a list of chapters and a short description of each chapter. Writing it brought in focus the potentially strong and weak points of the plot-line.From the start we put ourselves in the middle of the story together with Iligh as a location and as a historical power. But does that make a riveting story? Chapter 1 The seventeenth century: the first Dutch connections with Iligh. There are two important seventeenth century sources that tell us about Iligh in Dutch. Michiel de Ruyter, Dutch admiral of the fleet and hero of several wars against England, kept a diary all through his years at sea. Between 1644 and 1652 before being asked by the Dutch Republic to the admiralty, he traded with the ruler of Iligh. In his diaries he describes the travels inland from Santa Cruz (Agadir), the negotiations with the ruler of Iligh whom he calls the 'Sant'because of his religious status as descendant of a Sufi saint and his meetings with Dutch hostages. One of the hostages was Jan van Maren a ship's captain who wrote the story of his ordeal in Iligh after being freed by his former boss: De Ruyter. Will there also be written sources in the archives of Iligh that tell us about trading with the Dutch? The drawing is of the roadstead of Salé. Here Michiel de Ruyter went on land for the first time in Morocco.

Agadir for Wifi

Agadir is actually not such a bad place considering that it is rather nondescript. At least it has lots of four star hotels where there is good Wifi reception. Agadir is more than just a beach resort town. It is the economic hub of the Souss valley. It has a university, many young people and a 'modern' outlook. It also has a seizable ex-pat population. It does not have a 'heart'. Probably due to the fact that it was flattened by the earthquake of 1960. When I first started traveling south of the High Atlas mountains I didn't want to spent any time there. I had seen some of the sun scorched, pink fleshed, crowds in shorts and halters in Marrakesh and I thought I would die of embarrassment if I saw an entire Moroccan town filled with them. Mind you I find it uncomfortable too if I see them in the Leidsestraat in Amsterdam. The first time I stayed in Agadir I was in the cheapest hotel closest to the airport: the Ibis Hotel on the eastern bypass as far as possible from the beach and surf fun. It was everything you would expect of that kind of hotel: cheap, minimal and characterless. But its position next to an Afriqia filling station and cafetaria where all the local MacGirls came to study made it bearable. However when Heleen Toet had to catch the plane in Agadir, Bert refused the Ibis. We stayed instead in the Tildi hotel close to the beach. It turned out to be a great choice. Most resort hotels also have noisy indoor entertainment of some sort. The Tildi hasn't. Instead it has a beautifully appointed garden and pool. It is a big but quiet hotel for holiday making families and couples from everywhere. It also has a helpful staff and functioning Wifi. Not only that but it is easy to find being close to the main drag that connects the important dots on the way out of town. That means that it is also a great place to come to when one needs to meet or connect with people. On top of that it turned out that Agadir has plenty of places with a typical Moroccan ambiance whether 'modern' or 'traditional'. And that is why one is in Morocco in the first place, isn't it?

Heleen Toet

In the fall of 2016 I spent 5 weeks in Morocco two of them in the company of 92 year old Heleen Toet. The Flying Hippo Bert's travel agency maybe floundering most of the time, but it boasts some very faithful clients. Heleen Toet is one of them. Heleen was born a very long time ago in 1924 into a comfortable middleclass Dutch family. Her father was an engineer with the Department of Water Management the most important state body in Holland. Her grandfather was a Jewish cobbler who converted to Protestantism and married a shiksa. Heleen has clearly inherited his trait of going against the grain. At eighteen she left home to work as an au-pair or nanny, not in Paris or London, but Sweden. She came back to Holland to the conformity of marriage and motherhood. She lived the elite life of a KLM pilot's wife and had two daughters. I don't know if in the end she divorced him or became a widow, but in the revolutionary sixties when she was already well into her forties, she radicalized. Her 'thing' became communal living or in Dutch 'Woongroepen'. In my youth I shared a house with friends and I squatted but I never knew there was a whole movement of people who were consciously experimenting with different forms of living apart and together. They formed associations, had newsletters, held countrywide meetings and organized worldwide conferences. Heleen was and to a much lesser extent still is, in the thick of it. Anyway it was a delight to travel in her company. She wasn't just good company she was also an intrepid traveller and quite unfazed when things didn't go according to plan. Like when she stupidly missed her plane or left her passport in a taxi. Maybe it was because of her devil may care attitude that everything came out alright and was filed as an interesting experience. She bought one of my sketches and that way made it possible for me to have my own font made.

Agadir

When we booked out trip to Iligh we had decided that we wouldn't spend the first night in Agadir, but coming from the airport directly turn south and stay right on the Atlantic Ocean at Les Dunes B&B in Sidi Rabat. Agadir is an ginormous conglomeration that stretches forever more south and eastwards. To the south it melted together with the towns of El Melloul and Inezgane two busy and chaotic hubs. Agadir was founded by the Portugese and became an important port under the name of Santa Cruz Do Cabo De Gué. But I'm sure there was already a settlement there before the Portugese came. In 1541 the Moroccan Saadi dynasty took over and build a stronghold on top of the mountain that still dominates the town: hence Agadir. By the middle of the 17th century when Michiel De Ruyter used the port, it was still known among traders as Santa Cruz. I still remember that when I was at secondary school in the winter of 1960 an earthquake completely destroyed the town with the loss 15.000 people. It was the first time I heard of Agadir. However the stronghold on the mountain didn't suffer. The inscription in Dutch 'Vreest God ende Eert den Kooning 1746' (Fear God and honour the King 1746) is still there. Nowadays a rather similar inscription in Arabic graces the side of the mountain: for God, King and Country'. Agadir is the biggest holiday town of Morocco. Actually it's not bad for a town mostly dedicated to sun worshipping, scantily dressed, white, heathen, foreigners with a lust for alcohol.It also services the agricultural output of the Souss plain.

Car rental

Al Massira is the airport of Agadir and the airport closest to Iligh our destination. As soon as we were through the entry formalities Bert went to the Avis desk while I was waiting for my suitcase. Ibrahim of Avis remembered us well after a little prod Bert gave him. He is a very cheerful and friendly person. I had ordered a Hyunda i10 a car in the cheapest A bracket. I had already had a notification from Avis that the car was waiting for us. That boded well. Often enough the cars in the A bracket aren't available on demand and you are obliged to take an up scale car which means extra costs. On the Internet the car was priced at about Euro 350,- for 10 days. Ibrahim showed us what was included. I decided I wanted to get full cover insurance. That was a whopping Euro 300,- extra. But hey, how about when somebody backs into the rental at a carpark and we aren't there? It had happened to me before. It was already getting dark outside by the time the formalities were done with and Ibrahim was bringing us to the Hyunda. The call to prayer sounded over the carpark and cats were hunting between the car tires. A thick layer of sand covered the new looking four door hatchback. Four doors for such a small car! The boot held after some fitting and shoving our two small suitcases and nothing else. The Hyunda proved to be a delightful little car. Excellent for the crowded streets in the towns, comfortable on the narrow and bumpy country roads and strong enough for the steep mountainsides of the Anti Atlas.

Paul Pascon and Iligh

Bert had contacted the person behind the Dutch name that was also on the cover of the study 'La Maison D'Iligh' by Paul Pascon. He sent the book to her by return mail. She read it in one sitting. She couldn't put it down. Although it was a historic and sociological study it read like a detective novel according to her. I read the prologue. In it Paul Pascon writes how he visits Iligh for the first time to find two elderly brothers with the ear glued to a radio listening to the BBC world service. Although Iligh itself seems at the end of the world in the middle of nowhere, the brothers are very aware of what happened in this world. Pascon is surprised by the importance Iligh used to have as a hub on the Trans Sahara route and the riches of its 350 year history. The brothers take to him and in the end let him into some of the old archives. He decides to study them. When he finished his study he knows he has just scratched on the surface. There will be much more to discover. But that never happens. Paul Pascon dies in Mauritania in an unfortunate car accident. After the first interest the publication of 'La Maison D'Iligh' generated Iligh slowly sank back again into nothingness. While in the next thirty years the area immediately around and south of Agadir developed into a popular holiday destination, Iligh hardly ever saw visitors. It literally sunk into the earth as I could see on Google Earth.

Meeting Aicha Aboudamiaa in Agadir

On the last day of October 2016 Bert Hogervorst and I met up with Aicha Aboudamiaa in the Ibis Hotel in Agadir where we were staying prior to our flight back to Amsterdam. Bert and Aicha welcomed each other as old friends. It was the first time I met Aicha. Still Bert didn't know much about her. She is a daughter of Imam Aboudamiaa the descendant of the first ruler of Iligh: Ali Aboudamiaa. Bert had told me that the name in Arabic meant literally 'Father of Tears'. One could only speculate what it stood for. Aisha didn't have the answer there on that day in Agadir. Aisha told us that her father wanted to get international interest in Iligh and its history. Aisha was supposed to do that, but she has a full-time job in Agadir and not the time nor the connection. Could we help? I thought: I don't think so! Bert told her about our visit to the Jewish museum in Casablanca and our talk with Zhor Rehilhil director of the museum. Bert told Aicha that she should get in touch with Zhor. The museum is very well endowed and Iligh obviously isn't. But Zhor wants proof of the many documents in Hebrew that are supposedly in Iligh. Aisha tells us that her father doesn't want any of the documents to leave Iligh not even for preservation and documentation purposes. He has been in contact with the government minister in charge with the national heritage. He is afraid that once the historical papers are in Rabat, he will never get them back. Her father wants to get the international focus on Iligh in the hope that that way enough money will be generated to get the documents saved without interference from up high. After excuses that nobody had been in Iligh to open the door for us when we were there, I showed Aicha the drawings I had made there. The one of the Zaouia and the two in the part of the stronghold that is open to the public. She likes them very much and asked point blank if I want to come back a.s.a.p. and make more drawings.

My first visit to Iligh

In October 2016 Bert and I called on Maison d’Iligh. Although contact was made beforehand again nobody was there and again we finally met up with Aisha in Agadir. Bert asked her for proof of the chest. Aisha promised a photograph. Then the problem was revealed: her father had contacted the ministry for culture in Rabat, but they only want to make the documents and books safe for the future if they can stay in the national library. That was a bit too much to ask of the last descendant of the illustrious House of Iligh. Moulay Imam Aboudmiaah wants his daughter to put Maison d’Iligh on the international stage. It is his only hope to safeguard the place, treasures and history from oblivion. But Aisha has a busy job and it is not an easy task to honor the wishes of her father and save Iligh. After looking at the sketches I made in Iligh and the Zaouia she asked me to come back and made a book of drawings of Iligh. Preferably soon. However there are no funds. In the plane going back to The Netherlands Bert and I decided that a booklet with drawings of Iligh wouldn’t do. Bert had already researched a bit the history of the small kingdom at the edge of the Sahara  that dates back to the seventeenth century and its Sufi saint founder. She had also discovered the interesting connection Michiel de Ruyter had with the place and a tentative link to the Sephardic community in Holland. It wasn’t difficult to come to the conclusion that only a graphic novel about Iligh and its history would do.