"Have this woman washed and brought to my tent!"
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I HEARD IT on a film, I swear. It couldn't have been Rudolph Valentino, because he never spoke. It was one of the black-and-white films that made up all there was of Sunday afternoon television in the days when Britain had just the one channel. So I think it must have been a Bob Hope and Bing Crosby road film, the one about being, like Webster's Dictionary, "Morocco-bound." A desert chieftain waves his hand past moronically chewing camels and settles on a struggling woman. She is the film's Female Interest, probably in ropes, almost certainly not wearing too much.
The chieftain pauses and says lazily: "Have this woman washed and brought to my tent," and goes on eating figss.
The problem is that nobody can tell me what the film is. In fact nobody even remembers the phrase. But once in my mind, it stuck there the moment we landed in Marrakesh, a seedy if colourful city in Morocco, the most north-western of African states. From here the plan is to ride for two weeks with a dozen British cyclists whom we have yet to meet, down and around the Atlas mountains. Then we'll set off again by ourselves, recircle the mountains, go up north through Fes to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, opposite Gibraltar, take the ferry to the Spanish mainland and ride home to France.
In all we will be away a couple of months, perhaps longer if curiosity gets the better of us or tiredness numbs our brains and legs. If nothing else, riding home saves another air fare...
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8 months ago