Boarding pass and a cortado, going cold faster than I can drink it. El Prat at this hour smells like espresso and jet fuel, a combination I have made peace with. The departures board flickers to Marrakech and something in my chest answers before I do. The camera sits on the table, strap curled like it is waiting to be told what to do. It has been restless since Sant Pau, since the light through the market stalls got too good to ignore and I still didn’t shoot it. There is a discipline in waiting. Or maybe just stubbornness. Teimosia, my mother would say.
The gate is full of people who all look like they are going somewhere more interesting than each other. A man in a wool coat reads a paper in Catalan. Two women speak in fast Darija, laughing at something on a phone screen between them. I think about the last time I was in Morocco, years ago, how the medina in Fez swallowed my sense of direction whole and I didn’t mind. Getting lost there felt less like failure and more like the correct way to arrive. I wonder if Marrakech will do the same. Cities have moods, same as people. Some want to be understood immediately. Others make you work for it.
On the plane, the window seat does what it always does, gives me the whole show for free. Barcelona pulls away in tan rooftops and a haze that could be pollution or could be the Mediterranean deciding to keep its secrets. Somewhere below, someone is having an ordinary Tuesday. I like thinking about the ordinary Tuesdays of strangers. It keeps me honest about what travel actually is. Not everything is a postcard. Most of it is just people going to work.
Marrakech comes up through cloud looking dry and red, the Atlas mountains sitting on the horizon like they have nowhere to be. The camera is on my lap now, uncased, the film inside still waiting for its first frame of this trip. I could shoot the airport. The tiled floor, maybe, or the light through those tall arched windows they always seem to build in this part of the world. Or I could wait. Let the city earn the first click. It usually does, if you let it.
The wheels touch down. Somewhere out there, the souks are already loud. I can almost hear them.
