For a while it looked as if a plane reservation I made on Sunday to evacuate the wifi dungeon of Marrakech on Tuesday morning and arrive at JFK around 3:45 pm that afternoon might be kaput. A Royal Maroq Air rep told me on Sunday that my reservation was totally safe and locked down, but I was told early this morning this might not be so. Nothing of a bureaucratic nature is dependable in this country. Dealing with the powers-that-be (security guards, wifi guys in swanky hotels, etc.) is often a game of pure whimsical mindfuck torture. For a while it seemed as if I was being held hostage here. You can only leave when we deem it convenient for us! But late this afternoon I was told I’m good to go tomorrow morning. Sigh…thank you!

If I never return to the Marrakech Film Festival it’ll be too soon, but not everything has been bad. Yes, the wifi problems have been unrelenting but everyone you run into is is polite and calm and gentle to a fault. There’s apparently no such thing as an impolite Marrakech resident. (Okay, I did run into a couple of ruffians on a bike on Saturday night who tried to assault me and steal my wallet — I later named them Dick and Perry — but I pushed one of them in the chest and told them both to fuck off and then ran in the opposite direction and they were good enough not to follow, so even the thieves and the roughnecks are polite.) And there’s no indoor smoking ban. And there are no helmet laws so you can scooter down the street with the wind blowing through your hair. And the food is wonderful. And the energy in the main old-town square is so exciting and heavenly. And there are horse carts all over the city, and sometimes as you’re driving down the street you can smell horseshit, and that is a very good thing. The older you get and the more plastic and corporate the world becomes, the better horseshit smells.”