Taken For a Ride – Salam Alaikum!

Dharma Europe takes a dharma trip to Morocco. It`s January 7, 2025 and it is the first time for most of us. It`s exciting and novel and trippy right off the plane. The foothills of the Atlas Mountains shimmer golden purple against the desert sky. Yellow sand and yellow stone sets this bygone mecca into dusty relief, dotted by the green of palm trees, orange trees, fig and Oleander. The smells are unidentifiable. Crackly smells of sand, bitter tea, goat hides drying in the sun, leathers and crooked walls, pigeon ammonia in murky vats. The air booms with calls to prayer across the trickling Oued Fes.

We are in a foreign land.

Men linger for hours in sidewalk cafes, smoking and squinting quietly together, dark tea at their fingertips in delicate glass cups. Not a woman among them.

We order coffee and milk tea and sit by an old stained wall inside the labyrinth, the Medina. Hustle and bustle is magnified in this narrow sweep as we sip and watch from our bench and stools. Done with tea, we make twelve right turns and seven left, and somehow emerge from the Medina maze, back at our Riad.

The heavy door locks behind us as we enter the Riad`s sanctum, silent and sheltered from the world outside, its tiled courtyard squared off with skylight and reflecting pool. We all sit around the long table and decide on the day. It is to be a drive into the mountains, to see monkeys and cedar woods.

We head out after breakfast, waving goodbyes to our housekeepers, the grinning Abdulatif and his no-fuss wife. 

After an unexpected stop for tea inside a cold dank cave, we make it up into the famous hills of cedar groves. 

Barely a foot out of the van and men and horses press in upon us. There are twelve of us and seemingly as many of them. Moroccan shouts ensue, gesticulating and pushing and slapping saddles, horse heads nodding, monkeys in the mix. Thus surrounded, some of our group already mounted, some walking into the woods with horseman and horse in tow, some with peanuts still in hand, tossing them at the monkeys on their tail. Within minutes our group is out of sight among the trees. 

Excuse me, Group Guru?

There are two of us left behind, our backs up against the van, four horse heads and five horsemen boring into us, each demanding, pushing, closing in. Martin and I can`t move. Mounting imperatives poke at us from every eye…. 

`Get on the horse!!`

`No!!`

`GET ON THE HORSE!!!!

`NOOOO!!!`

Arabic words are flying from all sides and then hands are shoving me about. Martin charges between me and the horsemen, incensed.

`Don`t touch her!` he glares at them.

They back away a step or two though undeterred. I begin to ask the closest horseman – Where will you take us? Is there a view at the top? How much is it? With a waving hand he refuses to answer, instead: `no problem, no problem, after, after, vista!` his hand jabs toward the woods.

Well, that just doesn`t wash. I know a tourist trap and I tell Martin I am no dumbass tourist. I`m not doing it. I ask the horseman the same questions once more. He repeats his answer, only now with delirium darting from his eyes. I know that look, I have been here before. Loads of times. Lying and scheming for a buck. I`m not falling for it. Martin agrees. Besides, we were hoping for a quiet walk among the cedars. Determined now, we push past them and march defiantly into the cool calm of the woods, relieved. 

And….no vista at the top, just saying…

The only vista, ironically, is our sangha on horseback lined up at the far end of the grassy knoll yelling `Victoria!!` their arms punching the air. 

Ya. Taking it up the ying yang and calling it victory. I laugh out loud. Martin grins complicitly. 

I soon stop chuckling however. Back at the bottom of the hill the weathered horsemen gather round once more. As keeper of our group`s cash kitty and under the scowling gaze of men and mares surrounding us, I obediently pay their ransom – a demand two and half times the normal rate (according to our driver). 

`Oh, well,` Victoria Shmictoria.

Clearly, we had loads to ponder and discuss upon our return.

Evangelos begins with a quote from Qapel:  sometimes in a tight spot, in a foreign land, you just go along, just simply give over.

Good point! Was I being rigid and ungenerous, and, ummmmm, controlling? I can see that yes, I was, in a certain obvious sense.

As our van rolls back down into the skree-filled valley of Fez, bathed in ochre and red of the setting sun, we discuss how Group Guru malfunctioned in the chaos of horse, monkey, and yelling men. It failed in the face of distraction, confusion, and the gung ho `I`m off on my horse` response  that is so admirably spontaneous, and also, simply chucks out cohesion and group decision – Group Guru down the loo.

Now, mulling it over, a realization dawns on me – I too dropped the ball in that moment. Stuck in my refusal mode, I was inattentive to Group Guru`s unspoken but unmistakably felt-sense majority decision that – `We are taking the ride` (the horsey ride).

  G G you work in mysterious ways.