When he shaking arrived at 11:11 p.m., Nabil and Fátima were resting peacefully in their house in the medina of Essaouira. Blanca was having a drink with her friends on the Taros terrace. Ahmed was selling his desert bracelets and Heike and Regina were preparing for their trip to Marrakech the next morning. Over there, 191 kilometers away from the blue city of the fishermen and the seagulls, the Koutoubia mosque also felt the beat of the earth that was shaking strongly in the middle of the night.
Morocco trembled this Friday for several minutes with an earthquake of magnitude 7 on the Richter scale that has left, so far, 1,037 fatalities and 1,204 injured, 721 of them very serious.. Al Hauz, Taroudant and Chichaua have been the most affected provinces while, on the coast, the tragedy was only intuited.
It’s because of the sand, the sand protects us. Al hamdoulillah. These are the words of a morning worker who sweeps the square where a few hours ago hundreds of people were waiting for a possible aftershock of the earthquake that did not occur. He bends down and grabs a handful of the clear dirt surrounding the palm trees. With a hand over his heart, he tells us that he and his family are all fine. Alhamdoulillah, Alhamdoulillah.
Last night the houses of Essaouira – and of the entire country – stopped being a refuge and became a threat: the old buildings of the medina, with their white walls and blue doors, were not to be trusted. The shelter was outdoors, among men, women and children who sat in their pajamas on floors and benches. They were talking on the phone, some little ones were crying, others were laughing at the novelty of the sudden crowd. There were also tourists carrying backpacks, babies, worried faces.
The wait became more relaxed as the minutes passed. Between kaifa haluka (How are you?) and the tasharrafna (Nice to meet you), smiles crept between strangers that, like an immediate balm, relieved the pressure. A friend from the riad where we stayed during these days of vacation brought fruit. We shared it with Fátima and little Nabil who, in exchange for pieces of peaches and grapes, gave us a calm shukran (thank you) in a low voice.
The everyday details—the skin of the fruit on the metal of the knife, the fingers sliding over the screens of the smartphones, the casual conversations—helped the strangeness of the moment to dissipate. So did the lack of knowledge about what was happening: at that time, there was no other figure than the magnitude, a seven covered in speculation from which we could not deduce anything.
When the earthquake hit, Nabil and Fátima left with everything they were wearing. Blanca didn’t feel anything but she followed the people who were leaving the cocktail bar in a hurry, down the stairs. Ahmed sought safety in the sand, like the desert that saw him grow up, and he went to sleep on the beach, where nothing could harm him.. Water is just water, I was safe therehe says, leaning on the arch of one of the gates of the Essaouira wall on the morning after the earthquake.
The Germans Heike and Regina also went to the square and after an hour they returned to their accommodation. They walk in the hot morning and, between fabrics and mirrors, they tell that their travel agency has delayed their trip to Marrakech by one day. In the riad where we are going to stay, nothing has happened, there is only one door damaged, but they have told us that it is better to waitthey clarify.
The final verification that life in the city continues as normal is in the port. There the hustle and bustle continues as if nothing had happened: fish, shrimp and stingrays pile up in the stalls, fishermen remove the skin from their prey, some families and tourists browse the fresh products while the colorful buoys appear in the sky. that pile up like a bunch of giant balloons.
We hear a woman with a blue djellaba and black bow speak in Spanish and we approach her and the child she is holding by her hand. The strength of the how are you at a moment like this: the two words immediately start from his mouth an accelerated story full of details. She She is from Bilbao, where she lives with her Moroccan husband and children and yesterday they were in Marrakech when everything happened: “I ran down the stairs to get the children, I had an anxiety attack and I had to go ask for a pill. It was all dark, we were very scared. Nothing happened in our area, we didn’t see any fallen buildings. But in Jamaa el Fna square and in the medina there is a lot of destruction. He did everything like this (move your hands“Like a hurricane in the room, a huge vase began to fall and I didn’t realize it was an earthquake.”
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When the tremor hit at 11:11 p.m., All of Morocco faltered and so did some parts of the Canary Islands and Andalusia. A common sensation that does not understand borders, that reminds us, in tragedy or shock, the fragility of our shared condition. Because Nature, unlike the artificial system in which we live, does not understand roles, skin color, nationality or invented borders..