On the journey from Agadir, the distant mountains were as multicolored as Edinburgh rock. We crossed a stony landscape dotted with spiny trees; many of the trees were laden with goats.

Our “grande taxi” swerved stylishly before coming to an abrupt halt outside the fortified walls of Taroudant, in the Souss region of southwest Morocco. We were two of the six passengers who emerged from the battered Mercedes into a cloud of hot dust, and we hadn’t completely unfurled our limbs when the driver sped off to the rank of jalopies to await a return fare to Agadir. Swept along with the crowd, we passed through the adobe walls under an arch of such vast proportions that a Barbary falcon hovering above the frenetic scene might have mistaken us for ants. We made our way, hopping from shade to shade, through the convoluted lanes to the oldest hostelry in town, the Hotel Taroudant. Pushing open its ornate doors, we stepped out of the heat and noise onto a tiled floor. We waited at a high desk marked on a piece of card, “Reception”; the only sound was the ticking of a large clock high on the wall.

The proprietor arrived, puffed up like a peacock, and stepped onto the podium behind the desk. Following him was a slightly bent man whose arms appeared stretched by the constant carrying of heavy luggage. Speaking French, we completed the formalities, and this retainer picked up our bags and gestured that we should follow his shuffle through the twilit passage and into the dappled sunshine of the courtyard. He indicated that we should sit at one of the little tables, while he made us a mint tea. We drained our little glasses and followed the man with our bags into a room so fully flounced with frilly drapes and so bespangled by glass droplets that it appeared we had strayed onto the stage of a French operetta. The man set down our bags.

“Why are there so many goats in the trees?” I asked.

The man broke into a smile and beckoned us again to follow him. In a moment we were back in the street, weaving through the jam of cars, carts, and camels and pursuing him through a small doorway, then along twisted corridors and up narrow flights of stairs, until we emerged into the light of a landing where three women were slowly turning the handles of stone querns.

While the other two continued milling the argan kernels, the youngest showed us bottles of clear golden argan oil for culinary use as well as oil of a lighter shade used for cosmetics, and she began to tell us in fluent French about the arganeraie, the forests of argan trees.

Argania spinosa, a small-leaved, spiny tree, is a relic of the Tertiary Age, she said. It grows almost exclusively in scattered forests in southwest Morocco. For centuries, the Berber women have been extracting oil from its fruits. From the spouts of the querns drained a thick brown sludge, the unclarified oil from the kernel of the argan nut.

The trees, with their deep, labyrinthine root systems, are well adapted to the arid climate; they are instrumental in preserving the fragile ecology of their forests while keeping the desert at bay. In times of acute drought they become dormant, springing back to life only after the first rain. The argan is “the Berber Tree of Life.”

“And the goats?” I persisted. Watching the slow turning of the querns, I realized I sounded impatient.

The young woman continued her story in its proper order. After the rains begin in October, the new leaves and branches appear; the blossoming of flowers takes place between February and May. The fruits begin to form in October, but they are not ripe until late May or early June of the following year, when the leaves begin to fall in the heat and wind. To allow the leaves and fruit to develop, the shepherds fence the animals out of the trees with impenetrable thorn bushes. She gave us the name of the women’s cooperative 30 kilometers south of Taroudant.

The next morning we set out for it. At the grande taxi rank we were introduced to a driver who lived in the direction of the village, knew the cooperative, and had a cousin in the area with a flock of goats. As we traveled through the arganeraie, a shepherd came into view surrounded by a pair of camels and his flock. We came to a halt in a great billow of dust. This was the cousin.

The two men greeted each other warmly, while the cloud of airborne earth slowly settled, covering us all with a light powder. We had a clear view of the amazing acrobatic goats browsing in the tree canopies. They demonstrated the extraordinary way this crop is harvested. It being September, most of the nuts were gone, but the taxi driver explained that the harvest would begin at the end of May, when the ochre-colored drupes, slightly bigger than an olive, would be ripe and the flocks would be let into the trees. The shepherd watches punctiliously and, when he thinks the tree has been nibbled enough, whistles to his obedient animals to leap from the branches.

Over the years, the shepherds gradually reshape the trees to make it easier for the goats to climb into the branches. The older trees tend to be prostrate, their horizontal branches ideal walkways for the animals, while the more upright younger specimens are made safer with stones placed as steps in the trunks’ hollows and forks. Cuts made deftly with an axe form useful hoof-holds. The skill of scrambling and balancing in the trees is learnt in the first few months of a kid’s life, not only from its mother, but also from the helping hand of the shepherd. The cousin took a newborn from inside his djellaba for us to admire and hold, before he balanced it gently on a step in the crotch of the tree. Whistling to his animals to move on, he waved us farewell.

The taxi driver, watching his cousin surrounded by animals wander off in the direction of their village, told us how in the evening the flock would follow the shepherd home to the fold, where these ruminants, able to digest only the flesh of the drupe, would quietly regurgitate and spit out the nuts before settling down to chew their cuds. He illustrated with expressive miming. This produces ready peeled nuts. In the morning, the women gather every one of them from the ground. The large thorns that grow in profusion along each branch make it impossible to pluck the fruits. Those not consumed by goats are shaken from the branches or knocked off with sticks and gathered from the ground. These fruits are dried in the sun before their flesh can be laboriously scraped away with a sharp stone.

We drove the short way to the outskirts of the village, a shady oasis, and walked until we could hear the sound of hammering. In a dimly lit room, women were cracking open the nuts. They welcomed us in, to see for ourselves the ancient process of making argan oil. Using the method of “hammer and anvil,” the Berber women crack open each nut between two stones and remove the two or three “almonds” inside. The kernels to be made into “Arganti,” the edible oil, are spread out on a clay plate and lightly toasted over a charcoal fire. Those for cosmetics are left raw. Both kinds are milled.

At the end of the day the resulting paste is kneaded with the hands, and as drops of boiling water are added, a firmer mixture coagulates and clear oil separates. The paste residue is patted into cakes and used to feed the animals. Whether for culinary or cosmetic purposes, the oil is carefully filtered and bottled. To make one liter of argan oil requires 30 kilos of fruit and 15 hours of labor.

With enthusiasm, the women spoke of the importance of the cooperatives and how the increased production benefits them and the local communities directly. The cooperatives aim to improve the social and economic situations of the rural populations, especially women and girls. Already, 2,500 women have followed courses in reading, writing, and mathematics, as well as civic education, hygiene, and health. More women now understand their legal rights. They learn about the environment, the management and practical running of the cooperatives, as well as oil quality and food safety. As they explained all this to us, they laughed and giggled like young girls.

The cooperatives, buying the argan kernels directly from the women who gather and crack them, can offer a better price than they would receive from the middlemen in the local market. Although the harvesting and cracking are still done traditionally, some of the oil is nowadays extracted, filtered and bottled by modern machinery.

Previously in times of drought and subsequent poverty, the people, too poor to buy charcoal, would cut their trees to the ground for fuel. It would take up to 15 years before a tree recovered enough to again bear fruit. There is good reason to protect the argan trees. Not only does the arganeraie supply a harvest of oil, but it is also the last bastion against the encroaching desert. With the increase in production and the wider marketing of the oil, the felling of trees is now outlawed.

Both the prunings and the nut shells are used as fuel for cooking, and the prunings are used in marquetry. With careful management, the flocks need not destroy the argan trees, and the goats give the semi-arid land much needed manure. The meat from these organically reared animals is also highly prized.

The midday sun was growing relentlessly hot. Waving vigorously, we put a bottle of argan oil carefully in our bag and returned to the taxi to enjoy the cool breeze as we sped back to Taroudant.

There, among the flounces, swaths, and crystal droplets of our room, we took a closer look at the label on the bottle and were surprised to read the modern analysis of the various fatty acids in this rustic product. The Berbers are not excluding themselves from modern life.

Opening the bottle, we poured drops onto bread. We savored its slightly nutty flavor; it was delicious. That evening in a café in the market we read the menu carefully and chose dishes using argan oil. It is not heated but mainly incorporated into dressings for salads and cooked vegetables. Sprinkled sparingly on grilled fish, it certainly enhanced the flavor. We ate well in Morocco. ●

Editor’s note: In the US, we’ve had mixed luck with argan oil, finding it to be sometimes fresh, sometimes rancid. Expiration dates, which don’t appear on all bottles, seem to be two years after the harvest. Look for oil that is less than a year old, and choose a purveyor that cares particularly about the taste of what it sells.

From issue 77