Morocco

Morocco is both a route into the novel’s central conflict and a country David Henniger struggles to interpret. The narrative moves from the ferry approaches and Tangier’s outskirts to Errachidia and the desert villages around Tafal’aalt, setting wealthy European visitors alongside migrants, local communities, and people who depend on fossil work. As David travels through these places, his first impressions of danger and strangeness give way to respect for some of the people he meets, but not to a settled understanding of his own responsibility.

Crossing and First Impressions

The journey begins at the crossing between Europe and Africa. From the ferry, European millionaires arrive by motorboat as migrants on the upper deck gather their belongings, encouraged by the approaching sight of home. Their children carry oranges, while secondhand cars stored below are readied for the road. The scene places wealth and migration in immediate contrast: the ferry is a shared passage, but not an equal one. David watches the approaching city and the people waving from it, while Jo looks toward the shore with confusion. For him, the sight of Africa suggests a threshold and the possibility that the drive may prove pleasurable rather than difficult.

That expectation quickly encounters the road. David and Jo travel from Tangier toward Chefchaouen in an old Toyota Camry with unreliable brakes and torn seats. They pass women leading mules along the hard shoulder, crowded suburbs, apartment blocks, antennas, damaged gardens, and empty factories. David drives tensely, intent on getting out of the city, and the road becomes a succession of hazards and signs of neglect rather than the open, scenic route he had hoped for. The journey establishes a recurring tension in the novel: visitors arrive with expectations shaped elsewhere, while the country they encounter is experienced through ordinary pressures of transport, work, and urban life.

Ruins, Springs, and Foreign Visitors

The country’s history is present not only in roads and cities but in abandoned buildings. Near Tafnet, the ruined Azna ksour stands high on a hillside. Its main mansion and old granaries remain within walls dating back centuries, though the settlement was abandoned after Moroccan independence in 1956. It was built near the spring known as Source des Poissons, whose water is reputed to help women who cannot conceive. The river and pools below the settlement connect the place to local life and belief, even as the ruined architecture records a community no longer living there.

The narrative also shows how residents regard the foreigners who have settled in the area. Known locally as visitors, they are wealthy, employ servants, and are expected eventually to leave. Their habits—watching stars from rooftops with binoculars, keeping unusual hours, and relying on private swimming facilities—mark them as alien to the surrounding community. Their presence brings employment and money, but does not erase the distance between hosts and guests. The local description of foreigners as strange conveys a view of them that reverses the usual travel narrative: the visitors, rather than the country, become the objects of scrutiny.

Errachidia and the Desert Economy

Farther south, Errachidia appears as a rectilinear city of wide avenues, a river crossed by a bridge, and large numbers of male students. Its white buildings and broad spaces retain the character of a former French military town. During the drive, David experiences the heat and sand as physical discomfort, while Abdellah and the other men continue the journey with little conversation. The city is a stopping point, but also a reminder that Morocco in the novel is not a single, undifferentiated desert landscape: urban life, military history, and the desert’s proximity meet in the same view.

Beyond the city, the economy of fossils gives the desert routes their own social geography. On the road toward Merzouga, Aït Atta men ride bicycles with tools as they travel to look for aquifers and crinoids. Anouar explains that the men of Tafal’aalt concentrate instead on trilobites, especially specimens from Jbel Issomour, which are sold to traders from Germany, France, and the United States. Some well-preserved Comura trilobites command prices of hundreds of euros. The contrast between different groups’ work and the international buyers’ market shows how local livelihoods connect the remote villages to foreign demand.

At the Mirzan quarry, David sees a group of young girls with chisels and hammers near the huts where they live. Their father runs the quarry. One girl approaches him with a fossil, which he buys for a few dirhams. The small transaction brings the larger economic system down to an individual encounter: fossils are both geological remains and a source of income, and the work reaches into children’s lives. As the journey continues, villages display trilobites painted on their metal doors, making the trade visible in the landscape and in the symbols of everyday life.

Tafal’aalt and the Limits of David’s Perspective

Tafal’aalt, Driss’s home, consists of about two dozen domed houses, gardens, and date palms at the edge of the open desert. The paths are pale, the settlement lies beneath the shadow of Jbel Issomour, and the houses’ metal doors bear painted trilobites. When Abdellah arrives with David, three women emerge from a house and run toward the car in grief. The village is not simply an exotic destination for David’s journey: it is the home of the dead man whose death has brought him there, and a place where his presence is judged against a loss he cannot repair by treating the journey as an adventure.

David’s understanding remains divided. On the drive away, he reflects that the greed he had feared from Abdellah’s community did not materialize and that life there demanded a kind of endurance he had not previously appreciated. He considers giving Anouar the two thousand euros he has been carrying, believing the money might help him pursue a better livelihood in France. The thought marks a shift from seeing money as a way to settle his own obligations toward imagining it as a practical resource for someone else. Yet David also continues to defend himself: he describes the fatal collision as not his fault and takes pride in having seen the people of the desert more clearly than his European companions. The change in his judgment is real, but it is entangled with self-excuse.

Departure and the Country’s Afterimage

When David is driven back toward the north, the route passes Rissani, where fossil sellers offer imitation specimens, and continues through Erfoud toward Errachidia. These roadside encounters return the narrative to the material pressures of the region: fossil selling includes both valuable finds and deceptive imitations, while water, travel, and work remain immediate concerns. At a stop, David finally receives a mobile-phone signal and tells Jo that he is on his way back. He speaks as though the ordeal is over, although his private reflections show that the journey has unsettled more than his travel plans.

Back among his European companions, David says Morocco now feels cursed for him and Jo. Dally rejects that judgment, and Richard’s response turns the discussion toward David’s drinking. Jo instead emphasizes that the events have ended peacefully for those who survived, while acknowledging that this is not true for Driss. David wants to leave the country and return to England; the others do not accept his sense that Morocco itself is to blame. The ending preserves this difference in perspective. Morocco has exposed the distance between David’s self-protective explanations and the consequences of his actions, but it does not give him a clean resolution. It remains at once the setting of his guilt, the source of his new respect for Abdellah and Anouar, and the place from which he is eager to escape.