Published by Pan Publishing, 2008, 418 pages.

The book starts unexpectedly with Annie Hawes, an adolescent, imprisoned in a high security prison in Salazar’s Portugal (she never found out why). She was eventually released and deported to the UK. On her trip back, she was shown great kindness by some young men from an Algerian oasis town. She never forgets this, and in the early 1990s—over 20 years later—travels to Morocco and Algeria to look up their family.

Hawes sets off with two friends and very little money, planning to live frugally and travel like a local. This was a period of unrest, with rebellion against the government and rising Islamist movements. Hawes and her companions meet and talk to a wide range of people, from truck drivers to vineyard owners. The resulting story provides a close look at Morocco and Algeria and most of all, it captures the people —their generosity, struggles and hopes. Hawes stays in a fuduq in Morocco, an ancient inn with a courtyard for donkeys. She is warned to be careful of djinns (and discovers that some stalls stay open late to allow the djinns to shop) and finds a hidden Algerian village in an area devastated by napalm used by the French during the country’s war of independence.

What I found particularly interesting were Hawes’s encounters with local women. They were forbidden many things, but they held their own (like the women of my home, India). The book is stuffed with unusual encounters and delves below the surface of the everyday life of women of the Maghreb.

The book also explores food, which, for a foodie like me, is wonderful! Much about couscous, some of it cooked by truck drivers on the roadside; pastila, a pie made with pigeon; mechoui; and olive oil, which one family still presses by hand. And when Hawes does find her family, they live in a paradise of green in the middle of the desert, filled with fruits, vegetables and the all-pervasive scent of henna: a mix of tobacco, chocolates and roses.  It had me dreaming of couscous for days!

When I finished this book, I felt that I had been on this journey too. My only quibble is that there is no map.

This review first appeared on Women on the Road.