Seven Minutes on the Road from Chefchaouen to Fez

But if you’re the sort of traveller who finds it difficult to stay seated when the landscape opens up — if you’ve ever looked out of a bus window and thought we should stop here, just for a few minutes — then it might be worth reading on.

There were thirteen of us on the bus that afternoon, including the driver.

It was the kind of group you tend to get on smaller routes: loosely connected, polite without being particularly interested in one another. A young Spanish couple at the back, sharing photos and laughing quietly. A group of Italians in their sixties who had the easy confidence of people who had travelled enough to stop treating it as something delicate. A Japanese woman travelling alone, quiet but attentive, who seemed to notice everything without ever drawing attention to herself.

And then the rest of us — including me — somewhere in between.

The driver said very little. I later learned his name was Youssef. At the time he was simply the driver — a lean, unhurried man in his fifties, with the particular stillness of someone who has driven this road so many times that the landscape no longer surprises him. He handled the road with the kind of quiet authority you only notice when it’s missing.

The landscape didn’t announce itself dramatically. It unfolded. Terraced hillsides, olive groves, low stone walls tracing boundaries that seemed older than the road itself. Here and there, water cut through the land in shallow channels, catching the light in brief, shifting reflections.

It was the sort of place that invites a certain kind of thinking — that what you’re seeing is stable, accessible, available to you if you just step a little closer.

Someone suggested we stop.

Youssef shook his head without turning.

No explanation. Just refusal.

The conversation moved on, as these things do. But the idea lingered. A few kilometres later, when the valley opened more fully and the light caught the water just right, the suggestion returned. This time it wasn’t one person speaking. It was several voices, overlapping, turning the idea into something shared.

Someone mentioned tipping, half joking, half not. I said something too. I don’t remember the exact words, only the sentiment — that it was still daylight, that there was time, that this was a reasonable request.

That was enough.

Youssef pulled over at a widening in the road where the gravel gave just enough space for the bus to stop safely. He didn’t switch off the engine. He looked at the sky first, then at his phone, then back at us.

“Seven minutes,” he said. “Don’t go beyond the water. When the sun goes, we go.”

It didn’t sound like a warning. It sounded like routine. Something said often enough to no longer require explanation.

We stepped out into late afternoon light that softened everything it touched. The air was warm, carrying the faint scent of damp stone and vegetation. Below us, a shallow stream ran over smooth rocks, clear enough to see the pale shapes beneath the surface. Beyond it, the valley stretched out in quiet layers of green and shadow.

It was, quite simply, beautiful.

People moved without much thought. The Spanish couple drifted toward the water. The Italians spread out slowly, pointing things out to one another. One of them — Marco — stepped across the stream, testing the stones with the easy confidence of someone who had done this kind of thing all his life.

The Japanese woman remained near the road. She took one photograph, then lowered her phone and simply looked.

I stopped just short of the water and took photos too. I wasn’t separate from any of it. I wanted the view, the same as everyone else. I wanted to hold onto it.

The first sound that something was wrong didn’t sound like anything unusual.

A foot slipping. Skin against wet stone.

Someone laughed, briefly, then stopped.

“You alright?”

The question hung there longer than it should have. Marco was sitting just beyond the stream, his leg twisted beneath him at an angle that didn’t quite make sense. He gripped his knee tightly, jaw clenched, insisting it was nothing even as the colour drained from his face.

The light had already begun to change. Not enough to notice immediately, but enough that the warmth had gone out of it. The stream no longer seemed as clear as it had been. The reflections dulled, flattening into something less precise.

From the road, Youssef called out.

“Come back. Now.”

No one moved.

The first attempt to help felt inevitable. Another of the Italians stepped into the water — shoes off, trousers rolled, dismissing the concern with a wave. He moved carefully at first, then more quickly once he reached Marco. They went down together. Not violently. Just badly. A loss of balance that turned into something else — hands slipping, bodies misaligned, the small sharp sounds of skin meeting rock.

Blood appeared, bright and immediate, threading into the thin water and spreading more quickly than it should have.

“Leave him,” Youssef said.

No one listened.

Lucia stepped into the stream. Then another woman. Names were called, voices rising, not yet in panic but moving steadily toward it. I moved closer and stopped. The distance between the road and the water felt uncertain. Not longer, not shorter — just harder to judge. People seemed closer than they were. When they spoke, their voices didn’t carry cleanly.

One of the women tried to pull Marco up. When she stood, her foot stayed where it was. Her shoe stayed too.

She pulled again, confused.

The scream came a moment later.

Things changed quickly after that, though not in any way I can describe as sudden. The sky darkened faster than it should have. Shadows stretched across the road and spilled into the lay-by. The stream stopped reflecting the sky altogether, its surface turning dark and indistinct. People tried to move back and found that moving was harder than it had been. Not impossible. Just resistant. When someone pulled, the ground seemed to hold. When someone stepped, their footing didn’t behave as expected.

“Back,” Youssef said. He hadn’t raised his voice. That was what made it carry.

Some of us listened. Not because we understood what was happening, but because something in his certainty made the alternative feel worse. I stepped back onto the road. The ground felt solid again the moment I did. Others followed, not all at once. Some hesitated. Some tried to go back for the others. Hands slipped. Someone fell forward instead of back.

From the edge of the road, the distance to the stream didn’t look any different. It felt entirely different.

Youssef stood in the doorway of the bus.

“The road is closing,” he said.

I didn’t know what that meant. I only knew that when I stepped onto the bus, I didn’t want to step off again.

We left before it was fully dark. From the window, the valley looked unchanged. The stream still ran. The stones still caught what little light remained. There was no movement, no disturbance, nothing to suggest that anything had happened at all.

The explanation you’ll hear — the one I gave — is simple. A fall. Poor footing. Confusion. People unfamiliar with the terrain.

It isn’t wrong. It just isn’t complete.

I’m writing this from a hospital in Fez. Nothing permanent, they tell me. Cuts, swelling, time. Others weren’t as fortunate.

I haven’t looked at the photos I took that day. They’re still on my phone. I don’t know what they show, and I’m not sure I want to find out.