New Wave Lengths

The name ‘Paradise Valley’ is a promise, one we hoped Morocco would keep. We’d come via Agadir, where armed military met our bus in trained silence, the first language in a week we didn’t need translated. A shaky cab took us on to Taghazout, a small fishing village on the north west coast of Africa and the gateway to Paradise Valley.

Chris claimed to be the only Irishman in the village, the only piece of green, and I thought of him as a lost bit of broccoli snagged between two bone-white teeth. He was in his seventies, not the sort of guide we were expecting to lead us into the arid mountains, but there are no tours to the valley, only taxis, and Chris. An hour’s drive brought us to the valley’s mouth, as close as you can approach by car. On foot he led us down, using the paths the Berbers have forged with a thousand footfalls in their comings and goings from their villages under the palms.

On either side of us the red and pink rocks of the gorge were square and stacked slapdash, like a child’s building blocks, impressive in their chaos. A river ran through the valley, highlighter blue, and in better, wetter times Chris said the river swells like a belly and the waterfalls return in thunder, but the land was suffering now and the falls were languid under the sun. If it’s the falls you want, he said, come in the rainy season.

We followed him for an hour, ever descending, until the land rose steeply all around us and I felt as though we were inside a deep bowl, like the ones we’d haggled over in the medina, and all the sounds inside it were ours. Who would hear us now if we screamed, farted, laughed or sang? Who would remember? The high crest of the ridge cut a jagged diagonal line between earth and sky, like the half-turned page of a book showing part of one thing and part of another. I reached out a foolish hand and pinched the spot where in my mind I could have peeled the sky away.

It even smelt hot. We splashed into the river like dogs at the beach, all excited limbs and open mouths. Tantalising cool, the water could not be drunk, but it washed us clean of the dust and made us feel renewed. The riverbed was a seamless stone shelf, slimy with algae, and as we tried to clamber out we slipped and slid back. We ran on the spot cartoonishly, our feet seeking purchase and finding none, before sliding back into the blue. Breathless, we gave up and climbed out on our bellies, no better than snakes, laughing snakes, trying to wriggle out of Paradise.