The heat met us before our driver did, but it was dry and tolerable as we sat in the backseat and endured the last three hours of travel. The transfer was a monochromatic transition from city walls to farmhouses, interrupted only by palm, argan, and olive trees standing proud in the arid landscape.

After spending one week visiting a friend doing research in Ghana, I moved north to spend another week in Morocco with family and friends. The trip was an unmet tension between myself and spaces unbeknownst as I moved through the streets of Essaouira and Marrakech.

When you’re thrown into a space geographically and culturally distinct from the customary, it’s easy to reduce it down to presupposition–where phonetic and linguistic barriers would render you parti pris in your experience of it all. I entered with the subconscious assumption that I would have no point of familiarity. But when you meet a place where it’s at, it reflects facets of yourself revealed only in the unfamiliar–a woeful but wonderful paradox.

Blue, all blue, the doors, the ocean, the fish stands. Essouira was cooling, both for the soul and the body and most days were spent walking through the medina, finding ceramic and silver wares to fill my luggage with. It took two days to confidently navigate my way through the main streets; this was abetted by the shopkeepers who recognised us (c’est les Australiens) and we would wave at them until we turned the corner.

On the last day we made sangria and drank it on the top terrace (yes, we had two). White wine, fresh juice and cut up peaches swam in a teapot as we smoked, listening to music and watching the cats traverse across the stones and washing lines which framed the skyline.

Later, we found ourselves in an outside bar. Crowds watched as the bodies below danced in the open air, moving to the sounds of the night. Loud music fed us until we surrendered at 1:30 am. We skipped along the water and back inside the city walls, running through the streets and past the cats as we clung to the last snatches of Summer.

Four days back in Marrakech where the crowds and noises overwhelmed my senses and obscured my thoughts. Everything was an acceleration of the former and we frequently sought solace on the rooftops of restaurants and riads, where the heat danced through the doorways and windows.

The city expresses itself by virtue of the people–foundational to how the streets operate. If you wake early you can feel the rhythm before the crowds drown it out. Mint tea on silver platters is a pharos for understanding the shared life here. Poured from a height and shared to neighbours, friends and strangers. After all, who are we if not our interactions with others? If not our moments of communion? Collectivism is the reflector of humanity. All it takes is some time, and reflection to see it.

The final night I watched the mosque glow in the distance. We stared at each other, curious about our differences but connected in our similarities. The night smelt like orange blossoms and burning amber and I imagined myself running across the terracotta roofs, I would sit in the palm trees as the city rippled below me. Each moment, real or not, was a pilgrimage unto myself. Identity is a soft cage when you see yourself in relation to the world around you.

Words by Emma Sun @emsun7s7