Retrospect
Looking back on the Morocco Hitch from the perspective granted by the passing of a few months, it is not the success of reaching Tangier which I remember most vividly, but rather it was little moments along the course of the trip which stand out in my mind.
For example, the first night we spent squeezed into the lower bunk of Eduardo’s cab, which was our first night on the continent. The previous night, spent on the cross-Channel ferry, was no different to any other night we’d endured on public transport over the years, but the second night was different. It was our first night on the road, at the mercy of someone else’s hospitality, in an unknown and uncertain location, far away from the world we knew. I was wedged up against the wall, and Xin Hui was curled up against me. As Eduardo slumbered on the bunk above us, Xin Hui and I whispered to each other. I remember the smell of her hair, the sound of her breathing, her warmth against my body in the cold cab, the dim glow of the lights outside peeking through the curtains, the breeze from the air ventilation system (and later of Eduardo poking at the switches with a stick so that he wouldn’t need to get out of bed to turn it off), and most of all the nervous thrill of excitement that had taken grip of my stomach and settled down to nest. It stayed there, ebbing and flowing as the trip went on, but never leaving till a few days after we reach Morocco, when it finally sank in that we were under our own power again. Perhaps it was the fear of the unknown, the thrill of adventure, and the excitement of travel, which heightened my senses that first night, but I remember it the most vividly of all our nights.
The other memory which comes back to me when I think of the trip is of the very last day, of that fateful morning when I made such a huge mistake of forgetting that my phone was not set to Western European time. The lowest point was not when I realised my mistake, nor when I ran to the service station and found Sayid gone, nor when I screamed my anger into the cold morning sky. It was a while later, in Seville, when the DHL truck dropped us too close to the city centre, and we were stuck for ages at a petrol station, and no one would take us further onward to a service station. I spent half that morning approaching people out of sheer desperation, and at my lowest ebb I sat down outside the station and buried my head in my arms, as anger and frustration threatened to overwhelm me. That was when I felt Xin Hui sit down beside me, put her arms around me and lean her head on my shoulder. She gently told me that it was okay, that she wasn’t blaming me, that I shouldn’t be angry at myself, that everything would be alright and we’d make it to Morocco.
I’d like to say I believed her then, but I didn’t. I didn’t believe her for a long time afterward. I suffered through more anger and disgust at myself for another half a day. But until that moment I had been at my lowest ebb, the very nadir of my emotions, and I was drowning in the waves of my own self-loathing. She reached down and took me by the hand and gave me strength to look up again. Her belief in me reminded me of who I was and what I was capable of. Sometime later – it might have been five seconds, it might have been five minutes – I got back on my feet and started moving again.
When I think about the Morocco Hitch it’s not the successful end I remember. It’s the moments of great emotion, where things were most frightening and fearful and uncertain. It was those moments which made the trip worthwhile, which taught me the most about myself and which revealed the most about the relationship between Xin Hui and myself. Sometimes all you need is for someone to believe in you, and sometimes wanting to succeed because you love someone else and want to repay their faith and trust in you can give you strength that you didn’t have.