The jaunt by ferry from the southern French port of Sète to Tangiers with my 60-pound Dalmatian, was a last-minute whim, and I hoped that the only canine documentation I had—JP’s American rabies certificate and his outdated French vaccination passeport—would get us through customs. As we disembarked amidst trucks and more suspicious-looking cars than our Hertz mid-size, the officer flagged only us to the side. He inspected the bumpers and the underside of the chassis. “Open then the hood, please. And I must see a health certificate for that,” he demanded, pointing a finger at JP. I pretended to look through the glove compartment as the man searched for contraband. When he poked his head into the open rear window, and JP rose to greet him with a wet kiss, he jumped back as if he’d been attacked, and cursed in a mixture of French and Arabic with repeated emphasis on the word chien. He waved us on, not bothering to check my passport. JP stared at him in bemusement. “May that be the last of you, God willing!” the man shouted. 

*     *     * 

“Two of mine for one of yours,” said the first person we encountered on the deserted road to Marrakech, in broken French.

“Sorry?” I didn’t get it.

“Okay, three,” he said, indicating first a trio of sickly goats, and then aiming his cane at JP. He nodded his head, determined that we would strike a deal. I shook mine. “Why then you stop?” he asked, indignant. I looked at JP, who was relieving himself on some desert brush, eyeing the man and his live currency. I smiled. The man didn’t. JP instinctively jumped back into the car. Without further ado, I joined him. Accelerating a little too fast, we left the robed figure in a cloud of dust against a backdrop of date palm trees and miles of sand. “The cow is too maigre!” he called after us. “Feed him!” 

*     *     * 

Just to be safe, I had splurged on the first night by booking at La Mamounia, Marrakech’s palatial, dog-friendly hotel. We were met with a blank stare from the manager. “I mentioned the dog when I confirmed the room,” I said.

He explained that they accepted Poodles and other small dogs. “You didn’t say you had a pony.” He patted me on the back and laughed, expecting me to see the humor.

“No one asked me the breed,” I protested. He shrugged an apology, but it was hotel policy. It didn’t matter that JP was well-traveled, that it was after dark or that I’d prepaid; and no, he didn’t know of any hotel that would accept a dog this size. However, if JP was quiet, and if I kept him on a leash, we could spend the night in the casino—that way I could make use of my non-refundable room credit. JP found a resting spot on the cool tiles in the corner, and I settled in at the nearest slot machine. JP sniffs out the positive in any situation, no matter how humanly taxing. He’s the ideal traveling companion.

We left just before dawn. JP was refreshed and curious to explore. My head was heavy but miraculously so was my wallet—by thirty thousand dirhams. The sun lit up the rose-colored old city, revealing that nearly everything was a low one-story, at eye level, and I was struck by its mystery. It was impossible to see or predict what would be around any corner. Of course, smells and sounds alerted JP to the occasional discarded merguez sausage scrap—or the stray, mangy dog, who would beat him to it with a growl. When one of these fierce creatures saw me it would run away in terror. I didn’t get the impression that dogs and humans cohabited here. We wandered aimlessly through narrow streets and dead-end courtyards in search of water and caffeine; somehow by late afternoon we made it to the rooftop terrace of the Café de France, with its sweeping view of the Djemma el-Fna. JP became an instant celebrity, amusing the staff and patrons as he sipped silently from a clay bowl and graciously wagged his tail. 

As fate and my overstuffed wallet would have it, I was told while paying the bill that the person at the next table, a thin, toothy boy in his late teens, was the best tour guide in the city and a lover of dogs—and he happened to be available for a modest thousand dirhams a day. Normally I don’t fall prey to tourist schemes but Toufik professed to know of a “dog-happy riad of charm and cleanness” in the medina with comfortable beds. JP took to Toufik immediately—always a good sign—and what were a few thousand dirhams out of my newly won riches?

Toufik led us across the Djemma el-Fna square, packed with monkeys with their clowns, snakes with their charmers, acrobats, storytellers and vendors of every conceivable handicraft. JP had a parting-of-the-Red-Sea effect—wide-eyed people stepped aside as we made our way into the medina with its maze of alleys. The doorway to the riad, in the heart of the labyrinth, was so small that I had to lower my head to enter. Inside was a sprawling courtyard, dazzling with sunlit tiles, gurgling fountains, and olive and palm trees. After a few words were exchanged in Arabic between Toufik and the owner we were given a room with its own rooftop terrace for five hundred dirhams. JP sank into the bed and I into the hammock and we fell asleep to the twittering of birds and the scent of mint and spices from the alley below.

*     *     * 

Toufik’s negotiations, which included canine surcharges, made the next three days dog-friendly, with private viewings at carpet houses in search of the perfect hand-woven “dog rug” and tourist-free Moroccan restaurants where JP slept while I dined. Toufik believed me when I said that a fourth day of such luxury would be extravagant and he offered his time free of charge if JP and I would stay a day or two longer. I understood that JP had made something of a star of Toufik.  But I wanted to see the Atlas Mountains and so he gave me a “one-of-a-kind” map of a supposedly unknown and untrodden route through them. He did not require a gift in return as was customary, but merely the promise that I would call him on my next visit to Morocco … especially if I came with JP.

*     *     * 

The sun was intense along the gravelly road-less-traveled, and as we entered the foothills, I saw the reflection of water in a canyon. I pulled over and we followed a path that would lead to one of our most memorable detours ever. As we climbed, the river wound and cascaded down the hillside, rushing, torrential in some places, forming still pools in others. Along it were trees with limbs wide enough to walk across. Vegetation sprouted from rocks. 

“Salam alekoum,” someone whispered. An old man sat cross-legged on a Berber rug set on a smooth rock island from which a cedar tree grew.

“Bonjour,” I tested.

The man replied in French that he hadn’t seen anyone in years and asked if my beau dalmatien and I would join him inside for mint tea. “Inside” he had carved shelves into the tree, some for books, others for dishes. He and his belongings were protected from the elements by a cavernous overhang and boulders with trees on all sides. It was a virtual rock-and-tree-house. The man caressed JP as he told me the story of his lonely and wonderful life as a widower since the age of 25, of his son who died in Spain, of his 19-year-old grandson who probably lived in Marrakech, and of the soul-mate he found late in life: Tahar, a wild dog he had rescued from coyotes. Tahar, too, was gone, but a bit of his fur was laid to rest in an old ceramic box with a silver overlay. The man offered us an identical one handmade by his grandmother, along with a prayer that I would not have need of it for many years to come. All I could bequeath to him was the map—but if Toufik had told the truth and it was the only copy in existence, it seemed fitting that it should remain secret. As we were leaving, the man touched the box and whispered, “Not for a very long time, God willing.”
 

 

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