Diary: Family Matters

On a train from Rabat to Marrakesh.

- Jiten Suchede

Didn’t sleep much. Rachid’s flat was hot. I don’t sleep well drunk. It was nearly 4 am when I passed out. A shaft of orange light through the open window kept me uneasy. Around 5:30, I tossed around in bed to the sound of a woman arriving. By eight, Rachid’s eyes were bloodshot. He said it was a toothache. He looked like he was in pain.

Last night, I had seen lust in his eyes— pure, focused, unapologetic. He stared at a woman across the bar dancing, hips loose to live Arabic music. When she sat down, he kept staring.

“How hot is she to you?” I asked in jest.

“Right now? Eleven. I want to eat her,” he said.

The last two weeks in Morocco have been illuminating. The landscape is often so much like India, but the people make it feel entirely different. I met Rachid at the start of the trip at a concert in Essaouira, with his friends. We drank and danced like revellers at any other music festival in the world.