That travel does not broaden the mind

The same two Dutch girls do not like Moroccans much, saying that they are all “very tense”. Whatever that means (it means, no doubt something else in Dutch), the reason for it is soon apparent. Asked what places during their 2 and ½ week’s visit they liked best they name Essaouira, Marrakech and the one night spent sleeping in a tent in the desert. They did in other words the standard tourist thing. Back in 1800’s tourists meandered through the Firenze Duomo their Baedekkers in hand according to the complex path laid out by the guidebook. From the guidebook they read out numerous complex facts and by glancing at the objects of their visitation they confirmed their continued existence in their alleged location. Nowadays tourists don’t visit monuments, or rather they hardly do, but they still go through a strict ritual laid out by the guides – from one ersatz “must do” experience to the next. (And they are all as ersatz as the night spent in the desert in a tent: no one in his right mind sleeps in the desert in a tent at night. At night one sleeps under the open sky, looking up at the stars and taking in the cool breeze. The tent is for camping during the day, for hiding from the intense heat of the midday sun, not for stifling one at night when the outdoor is the so much better place to sleep. But tourists don’t know that, do they? It is far easier to sell to them something they already know from home – a night in a tent. (Not too much reality, please, as someone once said: our ability to absorb unfamiliar facts is simply too limited).

But what I wanted to say is not that mass tourism is one great foolery, a species of Disneyland; nor that it spoils the places wherever it goes (by throwing up ugly buildings and cheap trinket shops); but that it spoils the locals. The difference between Marrakech and Rabat is the case in point. Rabat is the capital, with large industry, trade and government employment and relatively few tourist attractions. People here do not live off tourism, but off their proper jobs. Ergo, by and large, they ignore me. No one here, since I arrived here 48 hours ago, has approached me to offer me anything – no woman, no hotel room, no hashish, no camel ride. Er, I take it back, two fellows did in the Kasbah, which is the only tourist destination here and where I will not set foot again; but even they were more tentative and furtive than anything I experienced in Marrakech. Certainly, no one has attempted to brow beat me or blackmail me into anything. In Marrakech of course it is the other way around: there is nothing going in Marrakech other than tourism and every foreigner is free game to be fooled and fleeced and dumped. (The real art lies in doing all this without being noticed, but, as with everything else in life, few attain to real art).

The locals realize that this is very bad; that it corrodes their souls more than it ruins our holidays: after all, who wants to be the sort of man tourism obliges them to become? So they try to compensate through emphasizing their kindness and empathy – humanity if you will – in their dealings with other non-guests (natives). They overcompensate, total strangers become their brothers by the mere dint of being Marrakechi, there is far too much shoulder slapping and hand shaking. That’s not good either: one loses the precious intrapersonal distance without which one cannot be himself. Even worse things happen when a long term visitor begins to cross the line between us and them, when one actually begins to like him, when he is no longer that other species to be fleeced and dumped – one now has to account to his people for this strange fact, and protect him, and the other way around, too. It is a terrible thing, certainly most unprofessional, and one should be on one’s guard, but even the people in the tourism industry are mortal and from time to time simply begin to like someone.

But I am straying. What I wanted to say is that the Dutch girls don’t like Moroccans because all they know is the people in the tourism trade (who are hard to like). They don’t like Thais, either, for much the same reason. In fact, they don’t know either Moroccans or Thais and are in this the perfect illustration of the fact which I have come to understand a long time ago that travel does not broaden the mind in the least. You go out, busily and expensively go around the world, and return home as stupid as you had departed.