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Each day began for us with a long, sometimes harrowing ride from the apartment to the boatyard in one of the hundreds of tiny orange fender-bashed taxis that pinballed around the city, honking, squealing, blasting Arabic hit-parade music, throwing soot or brake parts or tire-tread. At the port gates, we showed our passes—ragged bits of tissue paper bearing a line or two of smudged Arabic—and careered on through to the Chantier Naval Hesaro. There, in the sunshine, we went at sweaty chores on a half acre of dusty concrete, amidst partially built fishing trawlers, or yachts being refurbished, one of which, a doozy built in 1948, belonged to a member of the rock band Pink Floyd and was in for a million-dollar refit that we were told had been ongoing for years.

From New Year’s Day forth, David applied himself relentlessly to getting the boat wired and rigged and (more or less) safe for the sea. He had not just the crew’s help, but the contracted assistance of a young aide-de-camp named Hassan, whose knowledge of Agadir was encyclopedic, as well as one of the yard’s most capable artigianos, an endearing and hard-working machinist named variably “Yaya” or “Shacky,” depending on who you asked. He also had the help of a yard journeyman and, later, an electrician name Essaidi, a devout Muslim with whom I occasionally attempted to converse. Unfortunately, he was a thinking man (problematic in any culture), and his ambitions to discuss political and social philosophy with me—and on one occasion the thoughts of his fellow North African, Albert Camus—went as pearls to swine in the context of my pathetically verbless and largely brainless French.

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