Jonas'
town
In Leo's days
Agadir was a small fortress a few miles away from the greater Portuguese
enclave at Messa. Today, Agadir has sprawled much beyond the fortress
walls, and overshadows provincial Messa. While the city may have changed
over the centuries, the surrounding land has remained the same. Agadir
is still enclosed by the River Sus on one side, and a forest of sand and
palm trees on the other. Though, as Leo mentions, dates are not the best
produce of these lands:
" To tell you the truth these dates are not very good, as they
turn stale quite easily" (88).
Writing
about Agadir, Leo tells a colorful story of legends and whales: Jonas
is said to have been washed upon the Agadir shore, after the whale had
spit him out (Tale from the Old Testament):
"It
is said that Jonas' whale spit him out on this very coast. An old temple
made of whale bone stands by a beach, where many dead whales wash up
on the shore. These enormous corpses frighten those who see them. The
locals claim that any whale who swims near the temple is struck with
sudden death, due to the divine nature of the place. I would not have
believed this tale had I not , every day, seen a whale corpse wash onto
the shore. However, a local Jew told me that there is nothing unusual
to this, as there is a great reef only a few miles away. When the sea
is rough, whales are drawn near the reef, and thrown against the rocks-
leading to injury and death for many. And the sea brings its victims
onto this shore. This seems to me a much more plausible explanation
than the previous one! " (88)
And to
add to the drama of this entire whale story, Leo tells us of his own
encounter with gigantic whale remnants:
"During
my visit to Massa(a port in the Agadir region), a nobleman brought me
to lunch on the outskirts of town. On our way their we passed below
an archway which had been carved out of a whale rib. We rode under it
as if it were a door, and while we rode on camel-back our heads did
not even reach its summit I was told that arch had been there for more
than 100 years."
Whales
are no longer an attraction in these areas of the Atlantic. And beaches
have traded the gigantic whale remnants for sprawling bodies of another
kind: tanning tourists!
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