A train leaves Tangier promptly at 8:00 and travels south along the Atlantic coast, making me feel I should just get off and watch the waves for a few days. But my ticket says Marrakesh, so I stay in the compartment with my fellow travellers, a government official and a woman returning from a few years in Spain. We stop in Casablanca to switch trains which takes a while to figure out. I have noticed that when you ask people a question like "Cest la voie pour le train a Marrakesh?" and they say "Oui" because they are waiting too, they will check to make sure when the train arrives that you get on. Looking out for the wayfaring stranger. From Casablanca, the land gets more open. Winter wheat ripens in large fields...I never see a fence between holdings. But I was told earlier that everyone knows where the boundaries are. I see no evidence of farm mechanization, only solitary individuals, mostly women, working in the fields or watching flocks of sheep or goats. The land gets still dryer and the few villages that appear take the form of small walled compounds, everything facing inward, only the thick mud and stone walls facing the world. The train speeds on. The service cart comes around coffee and sandwiches. Kids play in the train corridor. The land gets drier. I am struck by the seeming lack of connection between the train on which I ride and the world I few ever so fleetingly.
