In Arabian Nights: A Caravan of Moroccan Dreams

My father used to say that stories are part of the most precious heritage of mankind.

Settling into a new country is like getting used to a new pair of shoes. At first they pinch a little, but you like the way they look, so you carry on. The longer you have them, the more comfortable they become. Until one day without realizing it you reach a glorious plateau. Wearing those shoes is like wearing no shoes at all. The more scuffed they get, the more you love them and the more you can't imagine life without them.

Stories are a communal currency of humanity.

My father used to tell me that stories offer the listener a chance to escape but, more importantly, he said, they provide people with a chance to maximize their minds. Suspend ordinary constraints, allow the imagination to be freed, and we are charged with the capability of heighetned thought. Learn to use your eyes as if they are your ears, he said, and you become connected with the ancient heritage of man, a dream world for the waking mind.

Stories are not like the real world; they aren't held back by what we know is false or true. What's important is how a story makes you feel inside.

Real travel is not about the highlights with which you dazzle your friends once you're home. It's about the loneliness, the solitude, the evenings spent by yourself, pining to be somewhere else. Those are the moments of true value. You feel half proud of them and half ashamed and you hold them to your heart.

Believe, and what was impossible becomes possible what at first was hidden becomes visible.

To Succeed, you must reach for the stars, and let your imagination find its own path

There is nothing like a train journey for reflection.

We had the kind of conversations that only great friends can ever share. They were touched with magic.

My father never told us how the stories worked. He didn't reveal the layers, the nuggets of information, the fragments of truth and fantasy. He didn't need to -- because, given the right conditions, the stories activated, sowing themselves.

Nothing was really so important to my father as the achievement of selflessness. He rarely mentioned it directly, but tried to guide us to it in a roundabout way.

These days no one challenges us,' he said. 'And because there is no challenge, there is no reason to work hard. And with no reason to work hard, we have all become lazy.

For my father there was no sharper way to understand a country than by listening to its stories.

Because there is no challenge, there is no reason to work hard. And with no reason to work hard, we all have become lazy. Lazy people are like cancer. They spread. Before you know it, the entire country is destroyed.

There can be few situations more fearful than breaking down in darkness on the highway leading to Casablanca. I have rarely felt quite so vulnerable or alone.

The ants are bad" The Bear "the ants?"Tahir "Do not be fooled. They look very small, so harm you don't think of then at all. Then years. Then one day you wake up, and your home has fallen down." Osman.

I believe that Marrakech ought to be earned as a destination. The journey is the preparation for the experience. Reaching it too fast derides it, makes it a little less easy to understand.

Close your senses and the imagination comes alive. It's inside us al, dulled by endless television reruns and by a society that reins in fantasy as something not to be trusted, something to be purged. But it's in there, deep inside, a spark waiting to set a touch-paper alight.

Real terror is a crippling experience. You sweat so much that your skin goes all wrinkly like when you've been in the bath all afternoon. And then the scent of your sweat changes. It smells like cat pee, no doubt from the adrenalin. However hard you wash, it won't come off. It smothers you, as your muscles become frozen with acid and your mind paralysed by despair.

To be selfless, you would give charity anonymously, walj softly on the earth, and look out for others-even total strangers-before you look out for yourself. For the Arab mind, the self is an obstacle, an impediment, in humanity's quest foe real progress.

You have no idea. when you're a salesman here in Marrakech medima, lying is the first thing you learn. generation after generation, they pass it on. its the secret ingredient the foundationfor a salesman's success. lie well and you make a fortune every day. your wife purrs like a kitten, and your children ealk tall with pride.

At the dealership, I pulled out the sieve and toyed with it threateningly. When the salesman was ready for me, I held it up, told him I was not a tourist and demanded a large discount.

I'm a fool, that I should simply trick the tourists like everyone else. after all, most of them will never come back. and what are tourists for but for tricking?

The Berbers believe that when people are born, they are born with a story inside them, locked in their heart. It looks after them, protects them.” Dr. Mehdi flicked the hood of his jelaba down onto his neck and sipped his coffee. “Their task is to search for their

I take reeds from the river that have been nurtured by fresh water and grown in good soil, and I turn them into baskets, a product that has so many uses. I know how to make baskets from something so simple because my father taught me, and his father taught him. “Make baskets of your own,” he would say, “make them all kinds of shapes and colors. But never forget that your baskets are made of something that is there for anyone to cut and use. And never imagine that you created the reeds yourself. You are only the person who shapes them into something that can be of use to others.

Much travel is needed before a raw man is ripened. Arab

the object of war was not to win battles or destroy the enemy, but to provide a field for the performance of heroic deeds, which were subsequently immortalized in poetry. For the early Arabs to fight honorably was more important than to win.   T

To be valued as a member of masculine Moroccan society, a man is expected to put in his time sitting, thinking, talking, or doing nothing at all.

When you arrive at the sea, you Do not talk of the tributary. Hakim Sanai F