Simplicity that feeds the soul

Chapter two: After a day through the intense and crowded streets of the Marrakesh medina, I continue my journey along the roads of southern Morocco and through the arid landscapes, with yellow, orange and ochre tones, punctuated here and there by green tones of the oases. Intense heat, although the group that was ready to conquer the desert, remained lively, in a mix of languages ​​from different parts of the world. But about this small group of 13 people, yes 13 people, I will talk another day...

We stopped at an oasis... Tinghir, where we saw fields of mint and date palms. A guide was waiting for us, who would accompany us on the visit to the kasbah and later to the Toudgha gorge. We chatted a little... our guide was a Berber born in Imilchil, a good few kilometers away from where we were, but who, true to his nomadic DNA, had traveled through many countries. I had lived in Japan for 5 years. In Japan!! Can you imagine? It surprised me a lot...

But this small introduction serves to illustrate what, in fact, marked me in this short break on the way to the Sahara. At a certain point, I asked him what it was like to return to Morocco after having lived 5 years in a country of millions... and the answer was revealing of the spirit and way of being and feeling of the Berber people..." We live in a simple way , and what we don't have, we don't need."

These words resonated with me with such force, with such intensity that at that moment I almost cried. We live in a society where day-to-day life is guided by the verb "to have", to have more things, to have more money, to have more power... and there, in that corner of the world, where the houses are made of earth and sticks , where the paths are not made of concrete, where the money earned that day is used to feed the next day, someone tells me that what they don't have, they don't need. Simple life...

But the lesson didn't stop there... and a little further on we stopped in the middle of an alley, behind a rusty gate, because a batch of hot bread was being prepared. A woman, curled up on the floor, in front of a small wood oven, baked 3 loaves of bread.

I don't know exactly what they were intended for, whether they were to be sold, whether they were to feed the three young children who ran and played with our group, but the reality is that one of them was shared by the travelers who were heading towards the desert.

I don't know if it was because of the symbolism of that moment, because of the circumstances, because of the involvement of that hot afternoon, or because of the simplicity of that place, I keep it in my memory, as being the best bread I've ever eaten.

it fed my SOUL.