Chapter Four: Defeat Snatched From the Hands of Victory
If only I were an Israeli
11.30.2021 - 11.30.2021 66 °F
View Morocco + Uganda + Rwanda on paulej4's travel map.
Watch and listen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0vWagaQ43w
Marrakesh Express
Crosby, Stills & Nash
Looking at the world through the sunset in your eyes
Travelling the train through clear Moroccan skies
Ducks, and pigs, and chickens call
Animal carpet wall-to-wall
American ladies five-foot tall in blue
Sweeping cobwebs from the edges of my mind
Had to get away to see what we could find
Hope the days that lie ahead
Bring us back to where they've led
Listen not to what's been said to you
Wouldn't you know we're riding on the Marrakesh Express
Wouldn't you know we're riding on the Marrakesh Express
They're taking me to Marrakesh
All aboard the train, all aboard the train
I've been saving all my money just to take you there
I smell the garden in your hair
Take the train from Casablanca going south
Blowing smoke rings from the corners of my mouth, my mouth
Colored cottons hang in the air
Charming cobras in the square
Striped djellebas we can wear at home
Well, let me hear ya now
Wouldn't you know we're riding on the Marrakesh Express
Wouldn't you know we're riding on the Marrakesh Express
They're taking me to Marrakesh
Wouldn't you know we're riding on the Marrakesh Express
Wouldn't you know we're riding on the Marrakesh Express
They're taking me to Marrakesh
All on board the train, all on board the train
All on board
Late last night, as Ibrahim and I passed the Marrakech train station, Centre Guéliz Gare, after having driven nearly three hours in the dark, after having spent two of my life’s most frustrating hours at Casablanca’s Mohammed V Airport being told by Royal Air Maroc personnel that the ticket I had bought fewer than 24 hours before while in the Sahara was for a flight that would not fly, after reading of the Moroccan government’s snap decision to protect its country and people from the Omicron variant of the Coronavirus and COVID-19, after having not eaten for sixteen hours and after having made frustrating phone call after frustrating web search to find a way out of a country that was closed several hours prior to when it had been ordered closed and while watching the battery indicators on both my phone and computer slowly slide left from comforting green to worrisome yellow to dreaded red, I could not get Crosby, Stills and Nash to remain still as they sang, over and over again: “Take the train from Casablanca going south, All on board the train, All on board the train.”
It was Megan of Wanderlust Voyages who urged me (not to take the train) to recall Ibrahim and his big black Mercedes van back to the sidewalk in front of Terminal 2 to whisk me to Marrakesh where she predicted the chance of escaping barred borders would be greatest. Working on little sleep the night before, truly “sweeping cobwebs from the edges of my mind,” I was able to contact Marriott’s Titanium Member Reservation line in the United States and reserve a room at their Le Meridien hotel which sits a short walk from the Marrakech Train Station and a mere seven minute drive from that city’s Menara (RAK) Airport. “Ibrahim was driving on the Marrakesh Express.”
Room service is offered 24-hours at Le Meridien but the menu is via a scanned QR code which takes me to their Facebook page—I am proudly NOT a Facebook subscriber—they are EVIL—so that doesn’t work for me. Dialing 40 and establishing that this conversation would be possible in English, I settle on a simple club sandwich. Once it is eaten, I set the both the hallway doorknob and my iPhone to Do Not Disturb and fall into bed longing for sleep which eventually, like an honored party guest, arrives late but welcome.
Le Meridien Marrakech is, like me, old and tired and prone to making inexplicable noises when it shifts position in the chilling night. I hear plumbing surges and closing doors but the bed is big and comfortable and even if all but a handful of television channels are French or Arabic or another language indecipherable to my American ears, I am for the first time in 24 hours allowing the stress of potential Moroccan imprisonment to wane.
Only my daughter Megan and B4 have phone numbers which the iPhone has been trained to ignore when in Do Not Disturb mode. So when I am jolted from REM sleep as it rings at 5:32am and I hear B4’s distinctive ringtone (the song Diamond Girl by Seals and Crofts). A part of that song’s lyrics read “Day or night time, You’re like a shinin’ star, And how could I, Shine without you?”
It seems that she, B4, has reached out to WGTA (World’s Greatest Travel Agent) Kathy Sudeikis which whom I have a decade(s) long relationship on exotic excursions. You may think of Kathy as Jason Sudeikis’ mom but I think of her as the one who can make impossible travel things happen.
But, as is often the case with these blogs, I digress. B4 says“I know you’re sleeping. But Kathy and I may have found you a way out of Morocco.”
Groggy, I hear all but comprehend only a bit of what she says. I am to be at the Marrakech Menara Airport to board a somehow still flying Israel Airlines flight to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport at 6:00pm tonight (Tuesday, November 30, 2021)—twelve hours from now. In Tel Aviv, I have an almost ten-hour layover before boarding a short Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport. There I will wait six more hours before taking another Turkish Airlines flight to—yes—Entebbe International Airport arriving at 4:40am on Thursday, December 2, only about 36 hours after I left Marrakech. It is, dear reader, too good to be true.
The country of Morocco, exercising its undeniable right to protect everyone here from the new Omicron variant, issued what some would call an excessive and almost immediate shut down of its borders. Royal Air Maroc, exercising its undeniable right to position its aircraft in its home country, issued what some would call a premature cessation of flights, failing to notify passengers who planned to beat the national deadline that they would replace it with a corporate one. I am one of those “some” but, as is the case with COVID and exposure and vaccinations and masks and social distancing and quarantines, “me” needs to be replaced with “we.” I didn’t get vaccinated just to protect myself, I got vaccinated to also help protect everyone else by not becoming a virus host. I didn’t practice social distancing and mask wearing because I wanted to, I did those things to be a part of the team playing defense against the offence that COVID represented. Here, too, I need to recognize that both the country and the airline are trying to beat a foe—not trying to inconvenience “me.” In a sense, I am a part of another team even if drafted unwillingly. If B4 and Kathy’s plan works, I am about to be traded.
What I find amazing is that El Al is flying to Tel Aviv because I had heard that it was closed as well. But there it is, on paper: I am booked on El Al flight 556 to Ben Gurian Airport.
At 12:23pm as I am on the telephone with an Acendas Travel Agent, Dawn in New York, who can not find any of the flights even though she twice checked the Acendas confirmation code, I look out my second floor window to see a beautiful sight accompanied by a roar. It is an aircraft leaving from Marrakech. Maybe this will work.
Dawn offers to rebook all the flights that Kathy had already booked so I can use my credit card to actually pay for them, something that B4 had been unable to do because she could not locate my CC number and codes, etc. Dawn said she would immediately email me the new itinerary. I don’t know why but I asked to confirm the email address to which she would send it. She had been about to send it to a now dead corporate ej4 address (we sold the company almost a year ago) which would not have reached me. Is the Russell Luck returning? Why did I think to check that? She updated the email address to the correct russraff address and I nervously awaited receipt. It didn’t come and it didn’t come until it did.
I grabbed a quick lunch poolside, the only place lunch is served at Le Meridien. Note the old fashioned pop top on the new fashion Pepsi Max can. I checked out telling the desk clerk that we should cross our fingers (an internationally accepted gesture it appears) that I am not back in an hour due to the flight not actually operating. “We will be here for you,” he said. “I hope not,” I replied. Into a taxi I went for the $10 ride to Marrakech Airport
Upon arrival at RAK, I strolled over to the El Al business class check-in lane and presented my passport and a smile. A manager came over to me and gestured that I should follow him. He unhooked the retractable belt from one of the stanchions that mark the check in lanes and ushered me away from the area. “You will not be allowed to board the flight,” he said. “Why is that?” I asked. “We are only accepting Israeli citizens. Do you have an Israeli passport?” “No.” “Then I cannot help you.”
Stunned, I stood motionless for nearly a minute as he walked away. The only way I can describe the emotion is this: you know when your team is ahead by 3 points with only seconds to play but the quarterback somehow drops the snap before taking a knee for the win and the opposition snatches up the ball and runs the length of the field to go ahead and win the game as time expires? You know, when the win is in your hand but somehow you lose? That is what I felt.
I walked to a nearby seat and noticed that Air France had a flight to Paris leaving in 90 minutes. I quickly placed a call to Kathy but got voice mail. I called her parent company Acendas but got a computer that put me on hold, reminding me that my call was important to them and that apologized for the wait. And the wait. And the wait. Check-in for the flight would close at precisely one hour before the flight. I had 30 minutes to get ticketed, then 25, then 20. The ticket line across the terminal was hours long.
By the time I got through to an agent it was too late.
The good news is that agent was able to book me for tomorrow. 4:30 to Paris, then to Dubai, then to Entebbe. Now the best I can arrive there is 2:25 on Thursday, 12/2, only ten hours later than the earlier plan.
I took a taxi back to the hotel to reclaim my oversized Marriott Le Meridien suite for another night. I had told them I might be back and now I was.
“A suite is not available,” I was curtly informed. But we have a very nice room for you at an even cheaper rate. “But,” I began. “It is not available,” I was told. This hotel, I was told last night, is 8% full.
Screw it. I’m in a room that has a tv and that is not that much different than most hotel rooms I’ve stayed in. But, I will say this: My lifetime Titanium Status at Marriott, earned over 31 years of membership in their now named “Bonvoy” honored guest program by staying, get this, 2427 nights in their hotels during those years, my guaranteed upgrade and my suite night awards are of no consequence here. The best I can do is write a nasty Tripadvisor review and let Marriott corporate know that I don’t appreciate not being appreciated.
That is but a fly in my soup, however. The important thing to remember is that I have the bowl of soup in which the fly now swims: a ticket out of Morocco. Will it work tomorrow? I will let you know in the next chapter.
