The road through the Tizi N’Test pass climbs some 7,000 feet above the Atlas Mountains, bends impossibly around cliff edges, stretches and uncomfortably becomes a single fragile track, and creeps along under jagged ledges.
For a century, the lonely stretch of road has been known for its breathtaking views and dangerous curves. That changed on September 8, when an earthquake struck Morocco, killing at least 2,900 people and destroying dozens of roadside villages.
Then the serpentine road became a vital lifeline – connecting life-saving ambulances and providing vital assistance to devastated mountain villages. But first it had to be reopened.
Just hours after the earthquake, construction crews with graders, excavators and dump trucks set out to begin the difficult and dangerous task of clearing the road of huge boulders that had been shaken loose by the tremors and thrown down mountainsides and up buildings destroyed in their path.
The work hasn’t stopped since then.
“We won’t sleep until we clear the road,” Mohammed Id Lahcen, 33, said Friday as he sat on a pile of broken stones next to the giant grader he had been operating for the past week.
Mr Id Lahcen and his team, after several days of hard work, managed to create enough space for some vehicles to pass through, but they were still working to clear away the boulders and debris that had been pushed to the side of the road. He said he only took breaks to avoid the boulders that kept crashing down the mountainsides, nibble on food and doze in his grader. He hadn’t been home to shower or change clothes.
In many quake-hit areas, there were complaints that the government was slow in rescuing and transporting relief supplies to affected villages. It was therefore left to the residents to dig up the victims themselves and to bring food, blankets and mattresses to their Moroccan compatriots.
As we drove along the road to Tizi-N’Test Pass, the challenges relief workers faced getting through became clear.
For days, worried Moroccans from as far away as Rabat, hundreds of miles north, packed their cars and trucks with donations and then carefully made their way up the road to Mr. Id Lahcen’s plane, hoping to offer help and comfort to his fellow villagers , which were still cut off. When they saw the blocked road, they pleaded with Mr Id Lahcen and his colleague Mustapha Sekkouti to help them carry their bags of supplies to the other side.
“We want this reality to become a memory in our history,” said Mr. Sekkouti, 50. “I want to be able to tell my grandchildren that I was here. “We are helping to clear the way and save lives.”
The efforts of Mr. Id Lahcen and Mr. Sekkouti opened a gap at the top of the road on September 11, allowing some help to get through. However, temporary closures and traffic jams that slowed traffic continued for days, forcing The New York Times to abandon an initial attempt to reach the summit.
However, on Friday and Saturday we were successful and covered the entire route, 112 miles from the town of Oulad Berhil across the mountains north to Marrakesh, making stops along the way. The trip revealed a country emerging from the horror of emergency and taking the first difficult steps toward recovery.
The road was clear, piles of rubble littered the gnawed edges and littered with heavy machinery. Beside it rose the ruins of mud-brick houses, fused to their perches in the mountains, and rows of large yellow and blue tents where survivors now lived.
Women carried pillows, mattresses and bags of donated clothing up the sides. Flatbed trucks full of stacked school desks and chairs rolled toward a collection of tents in Asni, a town where high school and middle school students were preparing for the start of their school year on Monday.
A military field hospital set up near the southern end of the regional highway in the small town of Tafingoult appeared quiet; Only one bed in the air-conditioned emergency tent was occupied and the sterile operating room was empty. The hospital was built less than two days after the earthquake and had admitted around 600 patients for trauma – broken bones, perforated stomachs, broken backs. Most were admitted to permanent hospitals or discharged.
“We are currently dealing mainly with chronic diseases,” said Dr. Noureddin El Absi and referred to an elderly patient being treated for advanced diabetes, which has worsened since she lost her medication in the rubble of her home. The worst was over, he said. Not a single patient they had treated so far had tested positive for the coronavirus.
Up near the top of the pass, 36-year-old Hassan Ikhoudamen swept up the broken glass bottles and dented soda cans that had fallen from the shelf behind the bar of his cafe and modest guesthouse on the night of the earthquake.
A week later, he thought it was time to reopen his cafe.
He was lucky: although his house was destroyed, his wife and three sons had survived, and the café he had run for eleven years had only suffered cracks.
“The most important thing is to repair the building before winter,” Mr. Ikhoudamen said.
Eager for a distraction from the misery they had witnessed, a group of young men from a nearby ruined village came to play pool and hang out on the cafe’s couches.
“Death is not there,” said one, smiling.
About 20 minutes down the road, in the remains of the village of Tinmel, 26-year-old Soufiane Aarrach was rummaging through the rubble of his older brother Abderahim’s bedroom, looking for identification papers so he could declare him dead.
Abderahim was one of 45 people working to restore an ancient mosque nearby and died in the earthquake. The back half of the mosque, built more than eight centuries ago, was destroyed – as was the back of a house across the street where Abderahim rented a room with his closest childhood friend, Mohamed El Ouaryky, who also lived there the renovation worked.
Their bodies were found in the rubble of their shared bedroom, Mr Aarrach said.
“They were scared,” he said. “They protected each other.”
He dug into the rubble of the house with plastic shovels, shoveling bricks and dirt onto a growing pile of rubble until he uncovered a sealed bag. Inside were items of clothing: a leather jacket, a white shirt and some beige trousers. He pressed his shirt and pants to his face and took a deep breath, his eyes filling with tears.
“That belonged to my brother,” he said. “I prayed for him.”
Down towards Marrakech, where the route becomes generously wider and flatter, the village of Tijghicht showed the importance of road access.
Huge boulders blocked the path after the earthquake, leaving villagers alone to dig through destroyed homes for survivors and their deceased neighbors using just two shovels.
They made makeshift stretchers out of wooden poles and rope and carried the seriously injured more than six miles to a nearby town on the main road.
On the fourth day after the earthquake, Mayor Bouchaib Igouzoulen lay down in front of a huge excavator on the main road and refused to move until it came towards Tijghicht. The next day the road was clear enough for ambulances to get through.
Since then, the villagers have settled in some fields on the river bank below the remains of their houses. They set up a series of tents – one for each family – under solar-powered lights, used a long hose to supply water from a nearby spring and organized rotating cooks to prepare meals for 250 people over wood fires.
Mr. Igouzoulen, who led the tour, oscillated between horror and hope, introducing neighbors still in shock over the sudden loss of a grandchild, a mother or, in the case of 15-year-old Mourad Ouhida, his entire family. Mr. Igouzoulen held the boy and tried to comfort him.
With his village now reconnected to the main road, the mayor turned his thoughts to the future – how and where he should rebuild his village.
These are decisions and plans that take time. In the coming months, the snow will make large parts of the road slippery and temporarily impassable again.
“We have to start today,” he said.