Africa & Middle East > Morocco > Northern Morocco > Asilah > Articles > The Northen Circuit

She appeared out of the mist like a slatternly vision. The smudge of lipstick she wore was stark against her etiolated skin and her wild, peroxided hair. She pushed a pram inexpertly, as if it were a new toy.

A vendor approached her, proffering trinkets. The guidebooks tell you to meet even the most persistent of these street sellers with politeness, lest you incite aggression: she waved him away like a fly. Then she spotted me on the cafe terrace. "Do you speak English?" she demanded in an exasperated twang but continued up the incline from the beachfront, not awaiting a response.

At first she seemed so incongruous in Asilah, on the Atlantic coast of northern Morocco, she might have stumbled into town through a quantum wormhole from somewhere in Ohio. But, after staying a few more days, I realised she was a fitting introduction to a place that appeared characterised by a certain elastic reality, seemingly manifested in the mist that would periodically obscure the town like a veil.

I was in Morocco partly for the beaches. Europeans invade Asilah en masse in the summer but, perversely, the predominantly French and Spanish visitors only seem to want to bathe in the intense heat at the height of the season; as for the Moroccans themselves, they are so glutted with hot weather they dismiss temperatures below 25C. So, although it was still deliciously toasty in late autumn, I had the broad belt of sand stretching apparently endlessly from the town in both directions almost to myself. When the mist rolled in from the ocean - as it typically did, in under five minutes - that sense of isolation was brutally magnified; the world felt reduced to a 100-metre-wide circle of sand and lapping sea that was occasionally compromised as a figure resolved from the cloud, before dissolving into it again.

In the Medina - the old section of town, distinguished, as in most of Morocco, from a colonial new quarter - the fantastical murals that confront you at every turn intensify the ubiquitous hallucinatory sheen. Repainted every August as part of Asilah's International Festival - a month of music, poetry and visual art, and the biggest cultural event in the north of the country - these walls of exuberant colour combine with the blues of the sea and sky and the whitewashed Portuguese ramparts to make the whole town appear like an artwork.

Crowning the Medina is the Palais de Raisuni, the edifice of Moulay Ahmad El Raisuni, an exemplary figure from picaresque early 20th-century Morocco. A bandit, warlord, would-be philosopher and governor of Asilah, in more or less that order, Raisuni consolidated his position by kidnapping and ransoming prominent Europeans, including Walter Harris, the Morocco correspondent of the Times, with whom he later became friends. His justice was as rough as his rise: he made murderers throw themselves from the glass-walled terrace of his luxurious palace to the rocks 27 metres below.

But I get ahead of myself. I did not start my journey in Morocco, or at least not in the country of today. I began in Seville, a part of the old dominion of al-Andalus, which was in turn part of the Moorish empire that also encompassed Morocco. I wanted a gradual introduction to the Islamic world and I also wanted to arrive there in the most civilised and exciting way: by boat.

The genius and passion manifested in Seville's 15th century cathedral, or perhaps just its sheer size (it is the largest Gothic church in the world), almost made me want to believe in God. But maybe that should be Allah, for the building exemplifies the appropriation that characterised the struggle between Christian and Muslim worlds in southern Spain. My route had been partly motivated by a foggy notion that the relics of Moorish Andalucia might provide evidence of a different theme: that of relative harmony between the two worlds, in contrast to the explosive strife between them now. And it is true that such a balance did exist in architecture, namely in the Mudejar style developed by Muslims practising under Christian rule. An exquisite instance of this dialectical form exists next to the cathedral, in the serene tiled courtyards and gardens of the Alcazar Palace.

But the cathedral itself demonstrates the "Mine!", "No, mine!" approach to the built environment that is more typical of imperial conflict. The original temple had been an Almohad mosque that was consecrated to the Virgin Mary after Fernando III retook Seville from the Moors, in 1248. A century-and-a-half later, the church decided to build an unparalleled tribute to the greater glory and, on the same site, erected the building that exists today. The former mosque was demolished in the process, save for its minaret, La Giralda, which, converted to the bell-tower of the church, soars above Seville today and has been adopted by the city as its symbol.

From Seville, I made my way south. I stopped at Jerez de la Frontera, the eponymous home of sherry, where I took in the sole remaining mosque, out of 18, in the Islamic city, followed, contra-Muhammad, with some bone-dry fino; I dallied in Cadiz, which went into a long decline under Muslim rule but does have rather nice beaches; and, in Algeciras, one of the great port conduits between Africa and Europe, I paid my €23 for a ticket and embarked one of the booming ferries that ply the strait to Morocco 10 times a day.

In Asilah, hardly had the displaced American wandered on when a young, well-groomed Moroccan man sat down at the table next to me, smiling, and asked: "Parlez-vous francais?" Yes, I replied. Had I seen that woman with the pram, he asked, the American? Yes, I had. Well, he said, she was staying with him - she was the new wife of a friend of his, an Algerian, and he had agreed to put her up - and she was crazy! She let the baby play in the dirt and had left a bottle of whisky open on the table: this last he would not have. I tell you what, he said, smiling again, would I like to come back to his place - now - and have a look? A pause. No? Well, here was his number, and his name, Mostafa, in case I wanted to catch up later.

The lyrics of that Eurythmics song – "Some of them want to abuse you/Some of them want to be abused/Everybody's looking for something" – began looping in my mind again, and not just because it, along with motley other 80s chart-toppers, was a Moroccan café staple but because it was so apt: one had to wonder whether Annie Lennox had spent time in the country. For I have been keeping something back: as soon as you step foot on Moroccan soil, a swarm of hustlers, touts and assorted conmen will form about you and prove as difficult as mosquitoes to shake off.

I had fled Tangier for Asilah because of them but, despite their supposed concentration in the cities, they were just as numerous there. Crossing the continent to reach the beaches on the other side, I passed through Fez and found the ancient metropolis thick with thieves (one of whom casually conned me out of 200 dirham). I am not suggesting the authorities follow the example of the great, and greatly cruel, sultan Mawlay Ismail and skewer a few hustlers' heads on Bab Mahrouk, pour decourager les autres, but the brigade touristique is decidedly not doing its duty.

Only in Al Hoceima, on the Mediterranean coast, was I spared the Moroccan chancer's distinctive cry - "Hello, my friend." Here, as at Asilah, you are likely to share the town beach, Plage Quemado - a yellow curl like the Islamic crescent, bounded by two cliffs and the placid, aquamarine sea - with at most a handful of other bathers at this time of year. The beaches at Asfiha, Torres de Alcala and Kalah Iris, all within an hour's drive, are even more sparsely peopled.

Drinking thé à la menthe, haggling over leather goods and swimming, the days passed easily at Al Hoceima. A mystery was even solved for me: female Moroccans do dip. Two girls came down to the beach early one morning, in hijab, from head to ankle. After elaborate contortions, they stripped down to only about three times as much as western women wear to swim and took to the ripples.

To complete my circuit of the north, I had to travel through the Rif Mountains. Morocco is the world's leading exporter of marijuana, and this is where most of it is grown. The Rif has always been a lawless region, and $2bn annually in drugs revenue has not made it any more compliant; gangsters, like the dope plants, are everywhere. Certain liquidity on my part on the eight-hour bus-ride through the region was, then, not solely down to the stomach bug I had picked up at the last greasy spoon in Al Hoceima. Especially avoid getting off the bus in Ketama, right in the middle of the Rif, where all the deals are done; you can see how heavy its inhabitants are through the window.

Back in Tangier, I took a boat to Gibraltar, as, in the 8th century, did Tariq ibn Ziryab, the invading Moor who gave the Rock its still-recognisable, hybrid name: "Jabal Tariq."

This article originally appeared on Guardian Unlimited

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