32 THENEWYORKER,NOVEMBER29, 2021
becoming narrower and snakier. We
swapped cars, to let our driver return to
Marrakech. A sturdy white Toyota took
us up gravel and dirt tracks, higher into
the mountains. We gave a farmer and
his two bashful, doe-eyed children—a
boy and a girl—a lift to a small home-
stead at the top of a remote road. They
were about the same age as my kids,
who are nine and six, and evidently not
used to seeing tourists. Their father—
speaking Berber, which Imerhane trans-
lated—said that his son had once vis-
ited a city, but his daughter had never
left the mountains. Imerhane remarked
to me, “This is a Morocco that most
Moroccans don’t know.”
Finally, at sunset, after many ha-
rum-scarum switchbacks, we reached
an apex where two high valleys met.
Standing there, in a black T-shirt and
combat pants, was Phil Asher. He shook
my hand firmly and suggested that I
put on a jacket. “It’s about to get cold,”
he said, and he was right. He tended to
be right about things like that.
Asher motioned toward one of two
camp chairs that had been set up be-
neath a tarpaulin. He explained what
my expedition would entail, which
seemed daunting; what lessons he would
try to impart to me the following morn-
ing, in a brief period of training that
seemed insufficient; and where I was
going to sleep that night, which was
not in the comfortably adorned canvas
tent where Asher himself was staying
but beneath a mosquito shelter, on a
roll mat, by myself. As a first-night treat,
I was allowed to eat tagine in the can-
vas tent with Asher, Imerhane, and Hi-
cham Niaarebene, the driver, who pre-
pared the meal—it turned out that he
was also a chef. The three men com-
posed Black Tomato’s support team in
the mountains.
Asher, looking me dead in the eye,
asked, “What do you want to get out of
all this?”
I didn’t have a good answer. I also
felt a jangle of nerves.A
s the two men with flashlights ap-
proached me in the dark, I real-
ized that they were calling out in French,
which I know well enough to get by.
They were curious about what I was
doing alone in the mountains. I clam-
bered to my feet and shook hands with
them while trying to explain that I was
going on a long walk. They shrugged,
looked at each other, and left.I wasn’t sure what to think. Although
I was almost certain that this encoun-
ter was no cause for alarm, I got out the
tracker and sent a text saying that I had
received a visit from some locals. Imer-
hane knew people in a nearby village. I
figured that he could make a call and
work out whether I was in any trouble.
I received no reply to the text. It took
me a couple of hours to fall asleep.
I woke up at 5:30 a.m.—long before
dawn. I was cold, and I hunkered in my
sleeping bag, looking at the stars. I think
I saw the Plough, although I’ve always
been baffled by the constellations—it
seems as if one could link any group of
stars together to make a pattern. As the
light in the valley became milkier, I put
on my boots and began my morning
chores. I filled my water bottles for the
day from a large drum that Asher had
left, built a fire for breakfast, cooked a
meal, struck the shelter, charged my
Samsung, brushed my teeth, and packed
my bag. I also donned my yellow-and-
black shemagh, or head scarf, which
Asher had insisted I wear, telling me
that it might be more than a hundred
degrees in the sun in the hottest part
of the day. In Asher’s words, the scarf
would stop my head from “boiling.” I
felt ridiculous wearing the shemagh, as
if I were in costume as an Afghan war-
lord, but I wanted my head to remain
unboiled. I folded the loose ends around
my head and took a selfie. My kids, I
knew, would laugh themselves silly when
they saw the picture.
As I started on my route for the day,
at around 8:15 a.m., I received a mes-
sage on the tracker, from Asher: “How
was your night?” I replied that it was
good, but did not receive a response.
According to my maps, I needed to
follow the riverbed where I had slept,
then take a hard left up a steep valley
toward a high peak called Jbel Kouaouch.
After I had climbed to about eight thou-
sand feet, I would start to pick my way
along an escarpment, eventually de-
scending plateaus and valleys to a plain,
where I’d spend the night. The day’s
walk was about nine miles.
The first hour was hard. I run most
days when I’m at home, but there’s a
difference between running and haul-
ing weight. Loose rocks on the ground
often gave way, particularly on steep
grades. Navigating posed its own chal-“Funny how this happens when we’re supposed
to have dinner with my friends.”