Agadir in Winter

Summer is crowded with the tourist season. For the sea, the beaches, and low-cost living.
In winter, instead, the sky is grey and windy, with a few sandstorms and maybe one—at most two—rain showers in total. Often the air is hazy, with a lot of sand suspended in it. Sitting on the low wall that separates the promenade from the beach, I observed this place for a long time. In Agadir, I lived for a full year and went through all the seasons there.

Once the tourist season ends, life becomes completely domestic again. The market turns truly local, and a morning there becomes very long, absorbing the entire day. Inside the walls, the colored awnings overlap one another. Inside, labyrinths are formed, sometimes dark, sometimes bright, always noisy. I don’t know if I ever walked through all of it. Lunch is a tajine in a small stall inside the market, with a lot of couscous and few potatoes, sitting elbow to elbow with many strangers. Then the voices slowly begin to fade, into the afternoon, as the market gradually empties. When we leave, we put on a jacket, because outside the market walls the wind blows hard.

Along the seafront, people work on small renovations for the summer: someone sands and repaints the wooden structures for the next season. A few tourists are still around, but many—especially children—finally use the beach free of umbrellas. When the wind is strong, it covers their voices.
In winter, life is lived a bit more with lowered heads in the streets, more slowly. Only one area, with a few traffic lights and some livelier streets, remains active as in summer, as if untouched by the seasons or the climate. All around, bars fill with young people having just a coffee, more for the chance to be together. Often separated, men and women. Or families, getting ice cream for their children.

All in all, growth in recent years seems to have been fast, and there are many active construction sites. The city expands toward areas that are still completely desert-like; there is still a lot of free space. Urbanization often happens by first building very long road axes. Wide carriageways, palm trees, and flowerbeds in the center and on the sides promise ambitious projects. In the undisciplined traffic, a few donkey-drawn carts often mix in. The new avenues are then slowly populated by buildings and shops, and it is not rare to find a building that has colonized in advance a crossroads not yet integrated into the city.

I arrived on Christmas evening, when there is no trace of Christmas here. By the end of the first month of the year, I had already established daily habits in the neighborhood—a new compound complex, with ambitions of being modern, halfway between the sea and the old city. In the courtyards, every afternoon was animated by children. I had identified a couple of cafés nearby (French-inspired cafés are common, places to sit and have a long breakfast) where I felt comfortable and began to go often. Over time, I formed a cordial relationship with some of the waiters, surprised to see a tourist for more than a week in a row.

I was invited by one of them, Amid, to have a coffee. Not in a tourist bar, but in another corner of the city I didn’t know. We sat outside, watching the traffic pass. Amid dreams of Europe, but their passport does not allow them to leave. They know Europe well through social media, through tourists. Europe passes through them, but they cannot grasp it, he tells me. While I have coffee with Amid, we calculate together what his life in Europe would be like, imagining a job, a salary, and rent. At the end of the coffee, he gives up.

In the following months, during long walks along the promenade—which in winter remained always the same—I often thought about that conversation. The sea and the desert are two boundaries, not always perceptible. On the sea horizon, a large ship lingered for several days, sometimes almost disappearing into the haze, visible only as a dark silhouette. When I reached the sea, every time I counted the steps from the road to the water, to check the tide. But each time I realized I had in front of me the deepest beach I have ever seen.

By walking it again and again, I managed to deceive time, returning only when the wind became too strong. Without noticing, I replaced my initial hesitation with familiarity: I began to cross every street, every passage leading to the sea, with growing confidence. An urban landscape still in the making. Worn paths between construction sites, through scrubland, high above the sea, that in the end became part of the everyday.

The grey sky and the slow days made the landscape always similar. Palm trees and large shrubs lashed by the wind will remain there until next summer. Only the figure of a camel, backlit, walking while being led, this time without carrying any tourists. To the north, the hill where the urban center once stood before the earthquake recalls the three most important things: God, the Fatherland, the King. Carved into the hillside and lit at night. Today, only the archaeological remains of the old city are left on the summit, never rebuilt. And as I walk, the hill never seems to come any closer.