With a jerk, the train pulled out of the dusty mountain station bound for Casablanca. The sun was close and direct and hot, but thanks to the elevation the air was cool. We were the only Americans I had seen since we left the hostel that morning, me and my then-buddy Dave, four months into our gap-year fugue in 1974. The train was crowded, with people standing in the passageway, but we had snagged seats facing each other in a threadbare compartment. I was facing backward, which makes me queasy, and I dreaded the ride down through the mountain valleys toward the coast.

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     I was sitting between two Moroccan guys, one tall and skinny and the other squat, his feet just brushing the floor. The skinny one was wearing a dark suit with a narrow black tie and smoking a fat yellow cigarette that he held up near the open window, which swept away most of the smoke. He looked like a post office rubber-stamper. The fat one wore a generously cut white shirt tucked in to coarse trousers. He was sweating under a red felt fez, damp half-moons under his arms and perspiration sparkling on his upper lip. 

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     Dave, across from me, was between two women, one older, with broad, powerful shoulders. She wore a dress that covered her arms and buttoned at her throat. It billowed around her robust figure. In her ample lap she held two live chickens that clucked and craned their necks as though looking to see where the axe blow that would send them to the stewpot might come from. The other woman might have been younger and slender but her dress, which covered her hair and most of her face, made it hard to tell. She held a bulging carpet bag on her lap and frowned at her hands. The luggage rack above their heads was crammed with lumpy jute sacks.

 

     No one said anything. As discreetly as I could, I looked at our traveling companions. The older woman seemed to be the wife or maybe sister of the guy in the fez. The bulky sacks on the luggage rack had leather goods and wood carvings sticking out. I figured they bought stuff in the hills and took it to the city to sell. It seemed like the younger woman was the skinny guy’s wife, but they didn’t seem to know each other well, so they were probably newlyweds. He was much older than her, so I assumed it was an arranged marriage. He probably took a few days off from his paper-pushing job to go to his home village for the wedding. There was a mixture of anxiety and excitement in her frown as she contemplated married life in the big city, with its loose morals and many temptations.

 

     Dave, wearing dusty bell-bottom jeans and cowboy boots, reached into the pocket of the hand-tooled leather vest he had bought in the souk at Marrakesh a few days before. He pulled out a cigar and perched it between his lips under his handlebar mustache. His elbow brushed the young woman’s shoulder, and she shrank against the window with a glance at her husband, who frowned at Dave. With his other hand, Dave reached into the other pocket of his vest and produced a chrome lighter. His arm brushed against the lady with the chickens. With no room to move, she turned her head and glared at Dave.

 

     Dave flicked the lighter open and lit the cigar, turning it in his mouth and puffing to ensure it was fully lit. The cloud of grey smoke in front of him turned bright blue where the sun caught it. It rose slowly toward the ceiling of the compartment and began to dissipate, tendrils getting sucked out the window on the one side and the doorway to the passage on the other. He puffed again, sending a new billow of smoke behind the first. The drafts from the window and the door were too indirect to air the compartment completely, and the blue-grey pall grew thicker and began to suffuse the small space.

 

     Chicken lady’s black eyes glared at her husband. He gave a small shrug, as though advising her to accept her lot. Her eyes narrowed in response. On my other side, the young woman looked expectantly at the skinny guy. He turned and looked at Dave as though about to speak. 

 

     “Hey, Dave,” I said. “Put that thing out, man. Nobody else wants to smoke it.” I nodded toward the young woman. 

 

     “You’re so uptight, man,” he said, his voice hoarse from the cigar smoke. “It’s a smoking car. He’s smoking.” He gestured at the skinny guy. “They can move if they don’t like it.” The cigar smoldering between his middle and index fingers, he waved at the enclosed space.

 

     “You’re making the young lady next to you uncomfortable, though. You can smoke it later.”

 

     The skinny guy glanced at me, no doubt understanding the gist from our tone. He then looked at the young woman, cocking his head slightly in my direction. She looked at me, meeting my eye for a brief second before looking down at her hands again.

 

     “You think she’s uncomfortable?” Dave said, puffing again on the cigar. “What about me? Wedged into this old death trap of a train with sweating Arabs.”

 

     “Dave, stop it. You gotta stop assuming nobody understands you.” I stood up. “Here, at least trade seats with me.” 

 

     He snorted and stood, picking up his backpack from between his feet, and turned to sit in my seat. He puffed on the cigar. 

 

     Finding myself in the middle of the space between everyone’s feet, I moved toward the door and leaned against the jamb facing forward. Standing there for the rest of the trip would be tiring, but I was enjoying the relatively fresh draft created by the open windows that lined the passageway. Plus, I thought it would be good to leave the women passengers a little space. The Moroccans exchanged brief glances, and the skinny guy looked at me with an almost imperceptible nod. I rocked from foot to foot with the motion of the train. Chicken lady scooted a few inches toward the middle of the seat and let her arms relax. The chickens took the cue and settled quietly into her lap. The young woman also moved toward the middle, no longer pressed against the window. I couldn’t have sat down in the remaining space if I had wanted to.

 

     “You gonna stand there all the way to Casa?” Dave reached in front of the skinny guy to flick his cigar in the ashtray under the window. 

 

     “It’s only a couple hours. The air is better here anyway.”

 

      “Suit yourself, man.” Dave shrugged and puffed on his cigar. 

 

     We all rode in silence the rest of the way. It got hotter and more humid as the train descended from the mountains. The skinny guy finished his cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray. His wife inspected her hands. The other lady held the chickens on her lap. Her husband sweated. Dave finished his cigar and reached across the skinny guy to put it out. 

 

     We pulled into Casablanca in the heat of the day. Fez guy had a rivulet of sweat trickling down his cheek. The skinny guy luffed his suitcoat. The younger woman set her carpet bag on the seat and smoothed her skirt over her legs. Chicken lady’s forehead glistened. The train emptied slowly because the crowd on the platform was so thick.

 

     Dave barged ahead, but I stepped back into the compartment and helped the one couple get their bundles off the overhead racks. My backpack in one hand, I was going to pick up one of their bundles, but the woman waved me away and slung all four of them, like giant saddlebags, over her shoulders. She scooped up the chickens like footballs and shoved her way into the crowd in the passageway like an offensive lineman. The chickens clucked. Fez guy stood on his toes to pull a suitcase from the rack and, giving me a stiff bow, pushed his way into the crowd in the passageway. I stepped into the passageway to let the skinny guy and his wife leave the train ahead of me. The skinny guy pulled a thin briefcase and a small leather suitcase from the luggage rack and gave me a nod, but the young woman kept her gaze focused on the floor as she passed me.

 

     When I pushed my way off the train and stepped onto the platform, I saw that fez guy was standing at a zinc bar swirling a steaming dark liquid in a small glass. Chicken lady had forged her own path through the crowd, aided by her bulk and her bundles, and was nearly at the exit. The skinny guy was being greeted by two other Moroccan guys, also in dark suits and narrow black ties, who bowed to him. One took his briefcase, the other took his suitcase, and they set off down the platform, the two greeters shoving the crowd out of the way. The young woman was standing a few feet away, scanning the crowd as though looking for someone.

 

      As I jostled my way through the crowd, it occurred to me that the little stories I had told myself about my fellow passengers were just that. 

 

     Dave was waiting for me in front of the station. As I approached him, he brandished his Lonely Planet guidebook at me.

 

     “Says there’s a reasonably clean flophouse just a couple blocks away. We can drop our stuff and head down to the beach.” He shouldered his bag and started to walk toward the street.

 

     “Hey, Dave,” I called after him.

 

     “What, man?” He stopped and turned around.

 

     “Why do you have to be such a jerk, man? We’re visitors here. That’s like being a guest in these people’s home. You should –”

 

     “So, you’re an expert on Morocco, now? Like you were on Holland, Belgium, France and Spain?”

 

     “Well, at least I didn’t stop reading after the sections on bars and hostels.” I gestured at the Lonely Planet guide. “I read the parts about history and culture and art.” 

 

     “With that stick up your ass I can see why you wanted to stand up on the train.” Dave snorted and adjusted the strap of his bag over his shoulder. “That doesn’t make you an expert.”

 

     “No, of course not. It’s just, the more you know, the more you know that you don’t know.”

 

     “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Dave scoffed. “I just want to sit on the beach and watch the sun set over a nice cold fig brandy.” He turned toward the street. “Are you coming?” he said over his shoulder.

 

     “I think I’ll go back to school.” The trip had taught me how little I knew, so it had served its purpose. Dave gestured vaguely over his shoulder, and I watched his misshapen Stetson bob through the crowd like a small boat in heavy seas. I went back into the station to ask about getting to the airport.

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