I sat in airports.
Crossing and re-crossing my legs. Rows of pleather, arm-linked seating; PA loud in Arabic, French, German. English?
Coiling and twisting in tiny plane recliners. Turkey in gravy like grey, viscous pudding.
Thin lemon in my gin. Stiff blanket in my lap. Adjust and re-adjust and white-hot cramping in my calf.
And then I came home.
I walked in.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Extremities
I wake and my fingers are dry. I’ll start fires if I snap. I haven’t been drinking enough. Water, I mean.
Pure, draining blood on the pink, grooved tiles; licking itself viscously along geometric straights and angles.
I could tie you up in the old medina, get you lost while I dance like on rooftops.
“Cutting in” the shortening like my mom would do. Like she was making baking powder biscuits. Eventually I stuff my desert hands into the dough, working it, plying and kneading, pumping the slick mound and folding it in on itself. It feels good to use my fingers; the oiliness soothes.
Rolling out irregular tortillas with an empty vodka bottle.
Frosted glass and peeling label. Fajita tangle simmering in its own juice; bell pepper onion cumin jalapeno hot sauce chicken sweet corn tomato white bean lime juice oregano.
Delicious. Happy cinco de mayo, ladies.
I know my feet best. I can navigate the souk without looking up. It’s a forced skill. One I plan to promptly discard. Once I can look up without it being provocative.
Give me heels.
Give me strappy-weave pumps that zip behind the ankle.
High and clutching and chicly kitsch. Watch my legs tie knots, knees bruised. Return me to my swagger.
I love marzipan.
When I was little I used to get on these little arts-and-crafts kicks. Pulling down three of my children’s activity books, I would flip through the familiar pages, searching for a perfect afternoon task. Usually disappointed by the ever-narrowing selection of crafts yet un-attempted, often disappointed by the end result.
I remember once opening the big, white one, leafing through to pictures of smooth tear-drop mice in eye-catching cerulean, black licorice tails. Showing my mom, I pointed to my proposed creative endeavor.
I had been saving this one.
“It’s just marzipan,” she said, glancing at the page pityingly, a tight-lipped smile.
Well in that case…
I remember standing on a stool beside the microwave, its tiny ridges denting my soles, food-dyed fingers molding sugary blobs in marbled blue and green. Never a recipe conformist, an overwhelming emphasis on the powdered sugar component. Purposefully instilling no rodent-resemblance in either form or function. No tiny peanut ears. Crusty cakes with hardening edges and peaks.
I wasn’t trying to replicate the glossy mice, those irresistible smooth sweet blue tapers. Obviously.
That would have been unnecessary. And beneath me.
It was “just marzipan” after all. Radio playing against the opposite wall. I remember tipping the stool, energized, I loved that song. But I wasn’t supposed to be listening to it. I don't know now if the rule was introduced on this occasion or prior.
But the memory is gridded like with stiff window-screens.
Not entirely accessible, grey and brittle and subtle-sad. Like feeling a weight but not knowing from where. Maybe because the song was technically off-limits.
Maybe because it was “just marzipan”.
Avoid the chicken foot, discarded in its post-mortem splay. Silver-red sardine remnants, clawed into soggy and iridescent lace by two million meowing strays. Tiny tea-cup kittens blindly tripping over neighbors and onto a Laughing Cow wedge. Coarse and mange-mapped toms, missing eyes and tail-tips and scouring plastic bag corners for sunlit stretches of cardboard.
“Why would we touch the water heater? What reason could we possible have for messing with it?”
“Well there are a lot of you.” “And we belief the plumber.”
There goes 300 DH.
“And you will have to now pay for utilities.” “And you will have to now pay for ‘extra’ residents.” “And you will have to now pay a little more. Just ‘cause.” “Just so we don't throw your things into the street.”
No leverage. Absolute powerlessness. We roll over on our backs, twelve bellies up. Hating. Counting dirhams in our furious fists.
“Two-thousand-one-hundred, two-thousand-two-hundred…”
Die “Empty-Sam”. Die Sidekick.
Gruyere. The papery film beneath Edam’s red wax. Clay-soft wedges of buttery Brie. Ever noticed that things never cross-sect in real life like in advertisements? Knives always manage to crush while they cut. Maybe mine are just too dull. Maybe my whole life I have only known dull knives.
Afternoons spent in the shadowy white rectangle; clock always indicating sometime near six. Typing and typing and
“…most prolific answer. “Happiness” or “joy” (variations on “سعادة” and "فرحة", respectfully), were articulated by 13 women, and self-“comfort” (راحة) was an emotional response shared by 12 different…”
and
“…was 38-years-old, out of the 52 respondents who provided their age, 39 were 22-years-old or younger; meaning that 75% of those surveyed were either 18-, 19-, 20-, 21-, or 22-years-of-age (and only 25% …”
and
to Kristen Baltrum: “…I am tired...”
Squatting on rooftops when locked-out. Playing “dead bird catapult” with embarrassing arms. Towel still on the line. Salt in a bowl.
The coffee percolated into thick swamp black. And I drank it all, still tossing at 5am. Feet cramping whenever I stretch.
Kathy I’m lost, I said, though I knew she was sleeping
I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They’ve all come to look for America
Men’s toenails bullied into cataracted husks; thick and capped as tortoise shells.
Cuticles catching
Pure, draining blood on the pink, grooved tiles; licking itself viscously along geometric straights and angles.
I could tie you up in the old medina, get you lost while I dance like on rooftops.
“Cutting in” the shortening like my mom would do. Like she was making baking powder biscuits. Eventually I stuff my desert hands into the dough, working it, plying and kneading, pumping the slick mound and folding it in on itself. It feels good to use my fingers; the oiliness soothes.
Rolling out irregular tortillas with an empty vodka bottle.
Frosted glass and peeling label. Fajita tangle simmering in its own juice; bell pepper onion cumin jalapeno hot sauce chicken sweet corn tomato white bean lime juice oregano.
Delicious. Happy cinco de mayo, ladies.
I know my feet best. I can navigate the souk without looking up. It’s a forced skill. One I plan to promptly discard. Once I can look up without it being provocative.
Give me heels.
Give me strappy-weave pumps that zip behind the ankle.
High and clutching and chicly kitsch. Watch my legs tie knots, knees bruised. Return me to my swagger.
I love marzipan.
When I was little I used to get on these little arts-and-crafts kicks. Pulling down three of my children’s activity books, I would flip through the familiar pages, searching for a perfect afternoon task. Usually disappointed by the ever-narrowing selection of crafts yet un-attempted, often disappointed by the end result.
I remember once opening the big, white one, leafing through to pictures of smooth tear-drop mice in eye-catching cerulean, black licorice tails. Showing my mom, I pointed to my proposed creative endeavor.
I had been saving this one.
“It’s just marzipan,” she said, glancing at the page pityingly, a tight-lipped smile.
Well in that case…
I remember standing on a stool beside the microwave, its tiny ridges denting my soles, food-dyed fingers molding sugary blobs in marbled blue and green. Never a recipe conformist, an overwhelming emphasis on the powdered sugar component. Purposefully instilling no rodent-resemblance in either form or function. No tiny peanut ears. Crusty cakes with hardening edges and peaks.
I wasn’t trying to replicate the glossy mice, those irresistible smooth sweet blue tapers. Obviously.
That would have been unnecessary. And beneath me.
It was “just marzipan” after all. Radio playing against the opposite wall. I remember tipping the stool, energized, I loved that song. But I wasn’t supposed to be listening to it. I don't know now if the rule was introduced on this occasion or prior.
But the memory is gridded like with stiff window-screens.
Not entirely accessible, grey and brittle and subtle-sad. Like feeling a weight but not knowing from where. Maybe because the song was technically off-limits.
Maybe because it was “just marzipan”.
Avoid the chicken foot, discarded in its post-mortem splay. Silver-red sardine remnants, clawed into soggy and iridescent lace by two million meowing strays. Tiny tea-cup kittens blindly tripping over neighbors and onto a Laughing Cow wedge. Coarse and mange-mapped toms, missing eyes and tail-tips and scouring plastic bag corners for sunlit stretches of cardboard.
“Why would we touch the water heater? What reason could we possible have for messing with it?”
“Well there are a lot of you.” “And we belief the plumber.”
There goes 300 DH.
“And you will have to now pay for utilities.” “And you will have to now pay for ‘extra’ residents.” “And you will have to now pay a little more. Just ‘cause.” “Just so we don't throw your things into the street.”
No leverage. Absolute powerlessness. We roll over on our backs, twelve bellies up. Hating. Counting dirhams in our furious fists.
“Two-thousand-one-hundred, two-thousand-two-hundred…”
Die “Empty-Sam”. Die Sidekick.
Gruyere. The papery film beneath Edam’s red wax. Clay-soft wedges of buttery Brie. Ever noticed that things never cross-sect in real life like in advertisements? Knives always manage to crush while they cut. Maybe mine are just too dull. Maybe my whole life I have only known dull knives.
Afternoons spent in the shadowy white rectangle; clock always indicating sometime near six. Typing and typing and
“…most prolific answer. “Happiness” or “joy” (variations on “سعادة” and "فرحة", respectfully), were articulated by 13 women, and self-“comfort” (راحة) was an emotional response shared by 12 different…”
and
“…was 38-years-old, out of the 52 respondents who provided their age, 39 were 22-years-old or younger; meaning that 75% of those surveyed were either 18-, 19-, 20-, 21-, or 22-years-of-age (and only 25% …”
and
to Kristen Baltrum: “…I am tired...”
Squatting on rooftops when locked-out. Playing “dead bird catapult” with embarrassing arms. Towel still on the line. Salt in a bowl.
The coffee percolated into thick swamp black. And I drank it all, still tossing at 5am. Feet cramping whenever I stretch.
Kathy I’m lost, I said, though I knew she was sleeping
I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They’ve all come to look for America
Men’s toenails bullied into cataracted husks; thick and capped as tortoise shells.
Cuticles catching
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Humor
ppffffffffff
“Vivi” farts loud and long, dead center of our amphitheatrical two-story riad. Her bodily functions usually ignored to-a-fault, I can’t help but join in when her daughter doubles over laughing, beside her mother and between the echo-prone tile.
“Shooma,” “Vivi” scolds in reply, “Shooma!” Shame.
I hear “Siddelee” outside my room, our laughter trickling into chuckles as “Vivi” continues to scuttle around the indoor clothesline, whispering about shame under her breath.
Pulling my bedroom curtain aside, the creases of her face shift topographically. “Shooma,” she tells me, and I assume I am being lectured for making fun. “Alaysh?” Why, I ask.
My ancient, dentured mother breaths in and verbally trumpets her best fart imitation. That was shameful, she allows, smile-creases pinching. “La!” I argue, “Laysa shooma, Mama Haja. Laysa!” I don't want her to feel embarrassed.
Her eyes glint and she smiles. “Zwena?” she counters, beautiful?
And then I laugh. I laugh because this woman is exactly one million years old. I laugh because I am speaking in Arabic about farting and because of the innocence of her “zwena?” imploration. I laugh because I am on the coast of Morocco and I am growing old before my peers and because I am ridiculous, everything is ridiculous.
Last night the second-floor girls giggled, internet sticks poised phallically from their laptops. Waiting for my valerian root to kick in, I read The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009.
“I said he was a stubborn control freak and a know-it-all… and I said that people like us are so afraid to relinquish control that sometimes the only way we can force ourselves to open up and change is to bring ourselves to an access of misery and the brink of self-destruction.”
- Jonathan Franzen
A few days post-fart, I bought a frosted cake, primped in pastel marzipan. I wrapped the framed Arabic verse in graph paper, a gift for my family, my pieces of tape irregular and jagged. Then I said good-bye. The home-stay was over, it was Independent Study time.
Twelve American girls in one house. Three salons. Two bedrooms. Two toilets. One Turkish. Two kitchens. One fridge.
Economically-speaking, it was a steal. When we aren’t boarding additional girls for the night, the original dozen is each paying a grand total of 29.76 DH per night.
Roughly equivalent to $3.92 US.
Granted the second-floor bathroom flooded first day. The single stove had a gas leak the first night. We no longer have any light source in the stove/fridge-kitchen, making dinner preparation a nightly adventure. There are no doors and riads pass sound like it’s their job. The toilets must be manually flushed. And the staircase is precarious enough to make you dizzy during each ascension.
She is eccentric, our little house.
But in comparison to past residences, she is divinity. We have hot water, a way to make food hot, a way to make food cold. There are chairs to sit on and tables to eat at. The salon sofas are soft. There are working electrical outlets. And the water-line along the high first-floor walls, which I swear is growing as the upstairs bathroom sweats, is only slightly disarming.
I would endure far worse for four bucks a night… hell I’ve endured far worse for MORE than that.
Now I spend days migrating. Bed to table. Write. Translate. Riad to library. Email. Translate. Riad to survey-pick-up or field observation or vegetable souk.
I eat fresh yellow apples from the vendor down the street, their skins freckled and without a single bruise. Elongated green bell pepper and fat minced onion in my omelets. Spinach salads dipped in balsamic vinegar. I buy peanuts in burlap sacks by the half-kilo, soft and earthy in their lack of salt. Fresh cuts of supple red-waxed cheese. Peanut butter sandwiches. No need to stock-up on supplies, instead we shop daily, always filling our Tupperware and too-small fridge with the freshest produce, new slabs of meat.
We instituted rules obviously. But I spent Friday afternoon chopping up another resident’s poop with a long stick when it clogged the Turkish. And then I had to do it again Saturday. Cause the other option was... Oh right, there was none. And then Sunday I walked into the upstairs kitchen and about vomited at the utter absence of any semblance of order or basic cleanliness.
House meeting that night; I wasn’t laughing.
Pics posted under "Homes"
http://picasaweb.google.com/sarah872014591
“Vivi” farts loud and long, dead center of our amphitheatrical two-story riad. Her bodily functions usually ignored to-a-fault, I can’t help but join in when her daughter doubles over laughing, beside her mother and between the echo-prone tile.
“Shooma,” “Vivi” scolds in reply, “Shooma!” Shame.
I hear “Siddelee” outside my room, our laughter trickling into chuckles as “Vivi” continues to scuttle around the indoor clothesline, whispering about shame under her breath.
Pulling my bedroom curtain aside, the creases of her face shift topographically. “Shooma,” she tells me, and I assume I am being lectured for making fun. “Alaysh?” Why, I ask.
My ancient, dentured mother breaths in and verbally trumpets her best fart imitation. That was shameful, she allows, smile-creases pinching. “La!” I argue, “Laysa shooma, Mama Haja. Laysa!” I don't want her to feel embarrassed.
Her eyes glint and she smiles. “Zwena?” she counters, beautiful?
And then I laugh. I laugh because this woman is exactly one million years old. I laugh because I am speaking in Arabic about farting and because of the innocence of her “zwena?” imploration. I laugh because I am on the coast of Morocco and I am growing old before my peers and because I am ridiculous, everything is ridiculous.
Last night the second-floor girls giggled, internet sticks poised phallically from their laptops. Waiting for my valerian root to kick in, I read The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009.
“I said he was a stubborn control freak and a know-it-all… and I said that people like us are so afraid to relinquish control that sometimes the only way we can force ourselves to open up and change is to bring ourselves to an access of misery and the brink of self-destruction.”
- Jonathan Franzen
A few days post-fart, I bought a frosted cake, primped in pastel marzipan. I wrapped the framed Arabic verse in graph paper, a gift for my family, my pieces of tape irregular and jagged. Then I said good-bye. The home-stay was over, it was Independent Study time.
Twelve American girls in one house. Three salons. Two bedrooms. Two toilets. One Turkish. Two kitchens. One fridge.
Economically-speaking, it was a steal. When we aren’t boarding additional girls for the night, the original dozen is each paying a grand total of 29.76 DH per night.
Roughly equivalent to $3.92 US.
Granted the second-floor bathroom flooded first day. The single stove had a gas leak the first night. We no longer have any light source in the stove/fridge-kitchen, making dinner preparation a nightly adventure. There are no doors and riads pass sound like it’s their job. The toilets must be manually flushed. And the staircase is precarious enough to make you dizzy during each ascension.
She is eccentric, our little house.
But in comparison to past residences, she is divinity. We have hot water, a way to make food hot, a way to make food cold. There are chairs to sit on and tables to eat at. The salon sofas are soft. There are working electrical outlets. And the water-line along the high first-floor walls, which I swear is growing as the upstairs bathroom sweats, is only slightly disarming.
I would endure far worse for four bucks a night… hell I’ve endured far worse for MORE than that.
Now I spend days migrating. Bed to table. Write. Translate. Riad to library. Email. Translate. Riad to survey-pick-up or field observation or vegetable souk.
I eat fresh yellow apples from the vendor down the street, their skins freckled and without a single bruise. Elongated green bell pepper and fat minced onion in my omelets. Spinach salads dipped in balsamic vinegar. I buy peanuts in burlap sacks by the half-kilo, soft and earthy in their lack of salt. Fresh cuts of supple red-waxed cheese. Peanut butter sandwiches. No need to stock-up on supplies, instead we shop daily, always filling our Tupperware and too-small fridge with the freshest produce, new slabs of meat.
We instituted rules obviously. But I spent Friday afternoon chopping up another resident’s poop with a long stick when it clogged the Turkish. And then I had to do it again Saturday. Cause the other option was... Oh right, there was none. And then Sunday I walked into the upstairs kitchen and about vomited at the utter absence of any semblance of order or basic cleanliness.
House meeting that night; I wasn’t laughing.
Pics posted under "Homes"
http://picasaweb.google.com/sarah872014591
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Blue
I let my tongue melt dark chocolate as I smash the window pane. Not only are all the seats taken, the train lacks standing-room. We passengers move as a unit, slapped and slung sideways by haphazard speeding and buckling tracks. On the floor and behind, a mother feeds her small son; the infant’s hand cupping the dip of my calf. There’s no relief of riders when we stop, only turnover.
While the gentleman beside me tries to make room, I stand on my tip-toes, cheek to the glass. We race past caked washes of broad banks and mud flats, earth so taut it’s cracking – spring rains being more than thin soil could sop up.
All students separated, I at last find a seat, Aumad asking in English while I respond in his tongue.
“You are bravery,” he tells me and I shake my head no.
We find Tangier at twilight, shadows losing distinction, and taxi ourselves to a pension-packed street. It’s tight and coils upwards, all neon lights and square cobbles. The first menu-board with “pastille” becomes our dining preference; excitement severely crushed with the proprietor simply says “La”.
He must have read our disappointment, I’m a pout-expert of sorts, for after conferencing with the cook he returned, barely limping.
He could get us pastille. But only us. And he needed time.
“AL HAMDA ALLAH!” I praised to the restaurant, fists tight and raised, arms high above my head.
And oh, it was perfect. So flaky, savory-sweet; the twin medallions bedded on lettuce, sugar and cinnamon dusting the plate.
We were a tired beyond tired, our bodies having braced six hours, mostly standing, aboard train. I put in new earplugs and was dead until morning; sweet chicken and onions lingering and sating.
It felt like hard-boiled eggs in my throat. Upon waking, I found swallowing too painful to frequent and knew I was sick.
Damn.
The bus left to Tetouan right after ten, Al-Kitaab on my lap through the twists of the Rifs. We reached Martil by noon and the Mediterranean was bigger, bigger and bluer and the sun was so warm. Reclining and sandy, we dozed in small pieces, waking to shift or to tease chilly waves. The shells were all marbled, colored copper and caramel. Complete and hardy and stratifying the shore.
The others stayed on, but my throat was my hindrance; I returned to Tetouan, racing time for the bus.
The 4pm was full and the next left at midnight.
Hailing a cab, we sloughed through tight traffic, my having indicated the city’s other station. After dropping off his first passenger, the driver then parked, saying we’d wait – the man was returning. I pleaded in Arabic that I had no time, I have to go NOW! The buses are filling! I jumped from the taxi and ran down another, arriving at a station just crawling with people.
The trip back was painless, albeit lengthy, and the fact that my food had been stored beneath-bus.
White, cubic homes clung to Rif creases; resembling small crystals or residual salt veins.
My seatmate would cough. And then offer his water. Offer his bread. Thick phlegm in each hack.
I met medina walls near ten, and although we’d been warned time and again about being out alone within the confines of old Rabat, it wasn’t until I was beneath the arch and packed within the mold of thronging Moroccans that I felt safe. Safe and at home.
I think about airports now, about tollbooths and planes. In-flight movies and seatbelts, wrapped butter or cheese, pre-heated foil meals.
Colorful cardboard, old boxes, beaten down over grates. In the end, on the streets, it’s all the same malodorous brown.
I think I’m getting tired.
Pics under "Blue"
While the gentleman beside me tries to make room, I stand on my tip-toes, cheek to the glass. We race past caked washes of broad banks and mud flats, earth so taut it’s cracking – spring rains being more than thin soil could sop up.
All students separated, I at last find a seat, Aumad asking in English while I respond in his tongue.
“You are bravery,” he tells me and I shake my head no.
We find Tangier at twilight, shadows losing distinction, and taxi ourselves to a pension-packed street. It’s tight and coils upwards, all neon lights and square cobbles. The first menu-board with “pastille” becomes our dining preference; excitement severely crushed with the proprietor simply says “La”.
He must have read our disappointment, I’m a pout-expert of sorts, for after conferencing with the cook he returned, barely limping.
He could get us pastille. But only us. And he needed time.
“AL HAMDA ALLAH!” I praised to the restaurant, fists tight and raised, arms high above my head.
And oh, it was perfect. So flaky, savory-sweet; the twin medallions bedded on lettuce, sugar and cinnamon dusting the plate.
We were a tired beyond tired, our bodies having braced six hours, mostly standing, aboard train. I put in new earplugs and was dead until morning; sweet chicken and onions lingering and sating.
It felt like hard-boiled eggs in my throat. Upon waking, I found swallowing too painful to frequent and knew I was sick.
Damn.
The bus left to Tetouan right after ten, Al-Kitaab on my lap through the twists of the Rifs. We reached Martil by noon and the Mediterranean was bigger, bigger and bluer and the sun was so warm. Reclining and sandy, we dozed in small pieces, waking to shift or to tease chilly waves. The shells were all marbled, colored copper and caramel. Complete and hardy and stratifying the shore.
The others stayed on, but my throat was my hindrance; I returned to Tetouan, racing time for the bus.
The 4pm was full and the next left at midnight.
Hailing a cab, we sloughed through tight traffic, my having indicated the city’s other station. After dropping off his first passenger, the driver then parked, saying we’d wait – the man was returning. I pleaded in Arabic that I had no time, I have to go NOW! The buses are filling! I jumped from the taxi and ran down another, arriving at a station just crawling with people.
The trip back was painless, albeit lengthy, and the fact that my food had been stored beneath-bus.
White, cubic homes clung to Rif creases; resembling small crystals or residual salt veins.
My seatmate would cough. And then offer his water. Offer his bread. Thick phlegm in each hack.
I met medina walls near ten, and although we’d been warned time and again about being out alone within the confines of old Rabat, it wasn’t until I was beneath the arch and packed within the mold of thronging Moroccans that I felt safe. Safe and at home.
I think about airports now, about tollbooths and planes. In-flight movies and seatbelts, wrapped butter or cheese, pre-heated foil meals.
Colorful cardboard, old boxes, beaten down over grates. In the end, on the streets, it’s all the same malodorous brown.
I think I’m getting tired.
Pics under "Blue"
Monday, March 29, 2010
Saturday, March 27, 2010
"American."
And then they took us to the village.
زهورة [Zhoura]’s hands are calloused, rough as peeling burns. Sheafed like the morning I stuck my thumb in a spout of teapot steam; coarse with dead and dying skin.
A calf is used to prime all four teats. Udders swollen and vein-ribbed with weight, the small cow’s desperate grip makes the Young Mother kick in reflexive protest. زهورة breaks him away, restraint rope fraying, blue beneath brown. She milks all four in turn, leathery fingers pulling, squeezing the hot milk in frothy blasts. The sound against an empty plastic pail, muffled by an ascending cushion of perfect white foam. Starbucks $3.55 Macchiato foam; glistening, popping and weightless. The Young Mother filling many small pails before her calf, writhing, wrenching wide-eyed is loosened.
Old Mother gave only a small bubbling bucket, contents slackened, her flaccid, sagging breasts encased by the sharpest of pelvic bones. Points and creases, mud and feces on her neck, her matted flanks.
زهورة spins the wooden stake up her chocolate shin teasing combed wool batting into catching; matting the foreign pieces seamlessly into beautifully imperfect skeins. Cord twisted and spun, pilled and strong.
She wakes me to make bread. “Msammen.” Kneading, full-fisted while she squats between her thighs. Entire body weight. Sticky. Wet. Devoid of ingredients, consistency stringy and weak like cheap gum chewed too long. Oil, milk, flour. Saufee. She smears it into three, makes the first a long flat oval and douses it with oil. From one end she gathers, rolls and flattens, then pats down the log lengthwise, tucking the outermost layers into its center, a sheathed spiral. Smashing the cinnamon-roll-structured ball, the thick and slick tortilla is thrown sputtering into the hearth-heated skillet, sizzling until flipped. Once fried, زهورةcrunches it slightly, held like a dinner plate, until rifts and fissures lift and spread over its shiny face. Slapped on a plate, drowned in olive oil and globs of soft foam butter that melt on contact and slide along contours. My fingers so slick, tiny tea glass requires the bracing of ten fingers, its contents sweet enough to catch my throat and make me cough.
Bamboo wielding, she drives me out to brickle-barbed pasture after the cows and calf, before the three goats their coats manifesting the spectrum from spoilt cream to caramel. When they nibble at buds beside me, small spring saplings finally coming undone, زهورة scolds in my direction, indicates a motion to strike out so I shoo them. “Not the trees,” is her implication.
When I take out my camera, her modeling is immediate, pressuring.
By the stove. Before pots and pans. A pile of blankets, tagine-in-hand.
She pulls me, “Hadji!” from room to room, refolding her hijab, straightening sparse shelving, unfolding her latest woven-wool rug. Stock-still and unsmiling. She unpacks a bag of photos, showing me her son, grandchildren.
Directing me to take pictures of the pictures.
Demanding to “shoofee” the photographs, once taken.
She begins a pile sent by a previous student, handing me images of the girl, images that the girl had taken of her.
زهورة instructs me to send her the photographs I had just captured, her poses laughably redundant when compared with the other student’s pile.
“Send me these pictures. Like the other American,” she motions the addressing of a letter with her fists.
Beside the olive tree. Beside the loom.
She mimics writing, the fingers of her right scratching the ham of her left, “Send me these from America,” she grovels in darija.
At night I find my lower back like Old Mother's. Sharp and distinct. Her skin taut around open sores like burnt black plastic. Hide already cured in sporadic spots devoid of hair.
I watch her at the loom. She told me to, after all. “Gillsee,” I’m instructed. So I sit, reading de Bernières. It must be lonely here. The flies jump from our knees to the rims of our leban glasses, the milk sour and pulpy, not at all like local grocers’. When we swat, they lift obediently, resettling without hesitation. The flies call our bluff – we pose no real threat.
زهورة beats the virgin wool, combing and compressing it amongst the stiff, wooden frame. Black lines bordering the wild gamut of Technicolor X’s. She watches me when I watch her, chewing tiny slivers of coveted gum, smacking succinctly as the she pounds and pulls.
Circling the yard, crash of patchwork gates; so many dirty, broken things still serving an exact and tiny purpose.
Our dinner guest was beanied, his prayer faster than عباد[Aubaud]'s, creating a sort of Qur'anic echo in the whitewashed room, walls 18-inches thick. زهورة breaks out the student’s photographs again. She unwraps never-been-used coils of rope. “American,” she exacts, shaking the cables in front of me, indicating their origin by pointing at the girl's image.
A kitchen sponge. “American.”
An oven mitt. Serrated knife. Minnesota book. “American... American... American...” I nod, annoyed. “Yes,” I say with finality, “I understand. Yes. From America.”
We review the girl’s pictures and E picks through them, handing me those featuring their previous student.
“American,” he says, nodding toward the images, “A-mer-i-can.”
“YES. I know. American,” I respond, ready to scream, “I understand. I KNOW.”
زهورة motions letter-writing on her fist again, spilling forth incomprehensible darija although her point is clear. “From America,” she passes her hand over the table, gift-strewn.
عباد hands me an apple and pushes the knife toward me, “American,” he says, gesturing toward it.
“I UNDERSTAND,” I say slowly, teeth clenching, “It’s all from America. OK.” Their guest, sticking dirty fingerprints over the center of each photograph pauses and points at the tiny black and white TV screen near the door.
“Malikee,” my king he enunciates. “Yes,” I nod, “I know this.”
“MALikee,” he tries louder, عباد and زهورة looking from me to the screen and back. “YES,” I try, exasperated. “OK. YES.”
“MAL-I-KEE,” he stabs with his finger, “Shoofee hoo-a!”
“MALIKEK,” I almost scream. YOUR KING. “I UNDERSTAND.”
I am so done.
Once I have spent a sufficient amount of time sitting near زهورة at her loom post-lunch, I manage to break away, spending each lazy afternoon alone in a high clearing; head in the wildflowers and the whole world sideways. My mom would love this.
زهورة tells me to come and I follow, down the sloping prickly-pear path. I am not allowed to hold the rope. I am not allowed to lead the donkey. I cannot stand near the well while she bails.
I am here to watch.
Tadpoles scatter into violently green algae when she drops the bucket. The donkey’s too-delicate hooves tiny and tilted like the boxes of Pointe shoes. Tick tock on layered shale.
In a very real way I am recognizing how education is a luxury of affluence. I think sleep is, also. Love. Vanity.
She makes the same motion, relentlessly addressing the letter that is her hand. “Baity al-Druz,” زهورة says over and over. The Druz’s House. Where I’m supposed to send the letter. The photographs. The gifts.
Herding the slanted pasture in mid-morning, I stretch the rubber of a bottle cap and later tear burs and copper mud from fresh, nappy wool. Before breakfast I baby powdered my roots to soak up the oil. Threatening dim goats with my splintering bamboo staff.
Trying to ask about their family, again I’m inundated with demands for a letter.
“Baity al-Druz.”
زهورة tells me an article of clothing I own is “zwena,” beautiful. I point at the piled pieces in turn, “This?” I ask, “this one?” When I get to the bottom of the pile, a hidden pair of leggings, زهورة nods.
“Zwena,” she says slowly, staring pointedly into my eyes and at length, unsmiling.
My true utility is making itself clear.
At night we layer wool blankets. Impossibly thin for being heavy as chain mail; vacuum-packing me to the hard rag-tie floor.
Then the day came when I breached new ground, when my hair held the shape of a ponytail once the rubber band had been removed.
I hadn’t gone a full week without bathing since I was probably six.
My eyes catch on the purple circles inside each knee. Surprisingly, these soft spots seem to have only made the piling of my joints easier for nocturnal posturing, like how the bruised hips of a grocer’s apples solidify the stacks.
She turns the half-loaf, warming it over the soot and coals, pouring me another glass of pale, clove-spiced “coffee”.
In case I’d had the chance to forget, she prompts me. “Baity – ”
“Al-Druz,” I finish, “I know. I KNOW.”
“Wakha,” she responds, satisfied.
Eventually we pile back into the bus, greasy-haired and malodorous as the livestock we slept beside. Passing above-ground tombs, long and raised like an inflated pool chaise. Many palms having been submerged and are now ugly-orange with sloppy henna. Anxious to know whether the lines on our ankles are the work of sun or filth, our smokers power through twice their average consumption during the sole bathroom break. We curse the students whose families packed them hard-boiled eggs for-the-road; the heat, fatigue and mountain roads making it impossible to read, impossible to think.
Back home but without my key and "Vivi" out for the mid-day meal, I go up to the roof, the perfect sun. Hiking my skirt up past dirty thighs, I sleep in the light. I soak it in and I sleep in the white African light.
زهورة [Zhoura]’s hands are calloused, rough as peeling burns. Sheafed like the morning I stuck my thumb in a spout of teapot steam; coarse with dead and dying skin.
A calf is used to prime all four teats. Udders swollen and vein-ribbed with weight, the small cow’s desperate grip makes the Young Mother kick in reflexive protest. زهورة breaks him away, restraint rope fraying, blue beneath brown. She milks all four in turn, leathery fingers pulling, squeezing the hot milk in frothy blasts. The sound against an empty plastic pail, muffled by an ascending cushion of perfect white foam. Starbucks $3.55 Macchiato foam; glistening, popping and weightless. The Young Mother filling many small pails before her calf, writhing, wrenching wide-eyed is loosened.
Old Mother gave only a small bubbling bucket, contents slackened, her flaccid, sagging breasts encased by the sharpest of pelvic bones. Points and creases, mud and feces on her neck, her matted flanks.
زهورة spins the wooden stake up her chocolate shin teasing combed wool batting into catching; matting the foreign pieces seamlessly into beautifully imperfect skeins. Cord twisted and spun, pilled and strong.
She wakes me to make bread. “Msammen.” Kneading, full-fisted while she squats between her thighs. Entire body weight. Sticky. Wet. Devoid of ingredients, consistency stringy and weak like cheap gum chewed too long. Oil, milk, flour. Saufee. She smears it into three, makes the first a long flat oval and douses it with oil. From one end she gathers, rolls and flattens, then pats down the log lengthwise, tucking the outermost layers into its center, a sheathed spiral. Smashing the cinnamon-roll-structured ball, the thick and slick tortilla is thrown sputtering into the hearth-heated skillet, sizzling until flipped. Once fried, زهورةcrunches it slightly, held like a dinner plate, until rifts and fissures lift and spread over its shiny face. Slapped on a plate, drowned in olive oil and globs of soft foam butter that melt on contact and slide along contours. My fingers so slick, tiny tea glass requires the bracing of ten fingers, its contents sweet enough to catch my throat and make me cough.
Bamboo wielding, she drives me out to brickle-barbed pasture after the cows and calf, before the three goats their coats manifesting the spectrum from spoilt cream to caramel. When they nibble at buds beside me, small spring saplings finally coming undone, زهورة scolds in my direction, indicates a motion to strike out so I shoo them. “Not the trees,” is her implication.
When I take out my camera, her modeling is immediate, pressuring.
By the stove. Before pots and pans. A pile of blankets, tagine-in-hand.
She pulls me, “Hadji!” from room to room, refolding her hijab, straightening sparse shelving, unfolding her latest woven-wool rug. Stock-still and unsmiling. She unpacks a bag of photos, showing me her son, grandchildren.
Directing me to take pictures of the pictures.
Demanding to “shoofee” the photographs, once taken.
She begins a pile sent by a previous student, handing me images of the girl, images that the girl had taken of her.
زهورة instructs me to send her the photographs I had just captured, her poses laughably redundant when compared with the other student’s pile.
“Send me these pictures. Like the other American,” she motions the addressing of a letter with her fists.
Beside the olive tree. Beside the loom.
She mimics writing, the fingers of her right scratching the ham of her left, “Send me these from America,” she grovels in darija.
At night I find my lower back like Old Mother's. Sharp and distinct. Her skin taut around open sores like burnt black plastic. Hide already cured in sporadic spots devoid of hair.
I watch her at the loom. She told me to, after all. “Gillsee,” I’m instructed. So I sit, reading de Bernières. It must be lonely here. The flies jump from our knees to the rims of our leban glasses, the milk sour and pulpy, not at all like local grocers’. When we swat, they lift obediently, resettling without hesitation. The flies call our bluff – we pose no real threat.
زهورة beats the virgin wool, combing and compressing it amongst the stiff, wooden frame. Black lines bordering the wild gamut of Technicolor X’s. She watches me when I watch her, chewing tiny slivers of coveted gum, smacking succinctly as the she pounds and pulls.
Circling the yard, crash of patchwork gates; so many dirty, broken things still serving an exact and tiny purpose.
Our dinner guest was beanied, his prayer faster than عباد[Aubaud]'s, creating a sort of Qur'anic echo in the whitewashed room, walls 18-inches thick. زهورة breaks out the student’s photographs again. She unwraps never-been-used coils of rope. “American,” she exacts, shaking the cables in front of me, indicating their origin by pointing at the girl's image.
A kitchen sponge. “American.”
An oven mitt. Serrated knife. Minnesota book. “American... American... American...” I nod, annoyed. “Yes,” I say with finality, “I understand. Yes. From America.”
We review the girl’s pictures and E picks through them, handing me those featuring their previous student.
“American,” he says, nodding toward the images, “A-mer-i-can.”
“YES. I know. American,” I respond, ready to scream, “I understand. I KNOW.”
زهورة motions letter-writing on her fist again, spilling forth incomprehensible darija although her point is clear. “From America,” she passes her hand over the table, gift-strewn.
عباد hands me an apple and pushes the knife toward me, “American,” he says, gesturing toward it.
“I UNDERSTAND,” I say slowly, teeth clenching, “It’s all from America. OK.” Their guest, sticking dirty fingerprints over the center of each photograph pauses and points at the tiny black and white TV screen near the door.
“Malikee,” my king he enunciates. “Yes,” I nod, “I know this.”
“MALikee,” he tries louder, عباد and زهورة looking from me to the screen and back. “YES,” I try, exasperated. “OK. YES.”
“MAL-I-KEE,” he stabs with his finger, “Shoofee hoo-a!”
“MALIKEK,” I almost scream. YOUR KING. “I UNDERSTAND.”
I am so done.
Once I have spent a sufficient amount of time sitting near زهورة at her loom post-lunch, I manage to break away, spending each lazy afternoon alone in a high clearing; head in the wildflowers and the whole world sideways. My mom would love this.
زهورة tells me to come and I follow, down the sloping prickly-pear path. I am not allowed to hold the rope. I am not allowed to lead the donkey. I cannot stand near the well while she bails.
I am here to watch.
Tadpoles scatter into violently green algae when she drops the bucket. The donkey’s too-delicate hooves tiny and tilted like the boxes of Pointe shoes. Tick tock on layered shale.
In a very real way I am recognizing how education is a luxury of affluence. I think sleep is, also. Love. Vanity.
She makes the same motion, relentlessly addressing the letter that is her hand. “Baity al-Druz,” زهورة says over and over. The Druz’s House. Where I’m supposed to send the letter. The photographs. The gifts.
Herding the slanted pasture in mid-morning, I stretch the rubber of a bottle cap and later tear burs and copper mud from fresh, nappy wool. Before breakfast I baby powdered my roots to soak up the oil. Threatening dim goats with my splintering bamboo staff.
Trying to ask about their family, again I’m inundated with demands for a letter.
“Baity al-Druz.”
زهورة tells me an article of clothing I own is “zwena,” beautiful. I point at the piled pieces in turn, “This?” I ask, “this one?” When I get to the bottom of the pile, a hidden pair of leggings, زهورة nods.
“Zwena,” she says slowly, staring pointedly into my eyes and at length, unsmiling.
My true utility is making itself clear.
At night we layer wool blankets. Impossibly thin for being heavy as chain mail; vacuum-packing me to the hard rag-tie floor.
Then the day came when I breached new ground, when my hair held the shape of a ponytail once the rubber band had been removed.
I hadn’t gone a full week without bathing since I was probably six.
My eyes catch on the purple circles inside each knee. Surprisingly, these soft spots seem to have only made the piling of my joints easier for nocturnal posturing, like how the bruised hips of a grocer’s apples solidify the stacks.
She turns the half-loaf, warming it over the soot and coals, pouring me another glass of pale, clove-spiced “coffee”.
In case I’d had the chance to forget, she prompts me. “Baity – ”
“Al-Druz,” I finish, “I know. I KNOW.”
“Wakha,” she responds, satisfied.
Eventually we pile back into the bus, greasy-haired and malodorous as the livestock we slept beside. Passing above-ground tombs, long and raised like an inflated pool chaise. Many palms having been submerged and are now ugly-orange with sloppy henna. Anxious to know whether the lines on our ankles are the work of sun or filth, our smokers power through twice their average consumption during the sole bathroom break. We curse the students whose families packed them hard-boiled eggs for-the-road; the heat, fatigue and mountain roads making it impossible to read, impossible to think.
Back home but without my key and "Vivi" out for the mid-day meal, I go up to the roof, the perfect sun. Hiking my skirt up past dirty thighs, I sleep in the light. I soak it in and I sleep in the white African light.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Glass
And when I saw her she was sudden and blue.
Color like a beach-brochure with thick, unlikely cockpit karsts, hunching their green Spanish shoulders behind. The Mediterranean. Glow of phosphorescent teal despite coursing veins of rain down tight car windows.
I had told her two months ago. And then six weeks. Then four. Never sharing my sense of pending urgency, two-digit days became singular before she asked me to bring in my passport, scrawling an address in quick Arabic script. The police station. Rue Patrice Lamumba. You see, Morocco doesn’t issue “visas” per say, but the endorsement they stamp behind short glass and airport lines is only good for three months post-date.
Mine had been branded “December 12th”.
It was raining and I maneuvered the medina head-down, left hand clutching umbrella so as to rebuff its affinity for slapping inside out. Wet line running down a skeletal metal spoke and into my sleeve. Taxis sparse in such weather. I snagged one, partially occupied, with a gruffy-voiced driver, who proceeded to rear-end the soda semi before us. Both parties waved each other on, we passed the main square, slid into unfamiliar streets netting memorized landmarks. He slowed the cab and with a jerk of the fist, signaled my exit. Wandering with relief, having survived the endeavor’s initial leg I teetered off curb and across tile in the general direction with which he had thrown fingers. Asking at one building, the doorman commenced an embarrassing clatter of furious clapping from down the street when I had gone too far, when I had passed the station entrance.
Once inside, arching metal detector. Attempting to explain to a tall officer, him responding in French, my explaining in Arabic that it’s a language I don’t speak… He instructs me to enter by the other door, but as it was difficult enough to find this one I manage to make enough of a spectacle that he decides to escort me. Through the geometric chisel of hallways, side rooms, offices, past the heart of the building and to its opposite. Once inline, he removes me, snaking in reverse. Another room of beige-grey. The three women inside first try French and then Arabic. The one seated and nearest losing her patience with spectacular speed as I sputter through the extent of my juvenile vocabulary.
I guess my class hasn’t reached Al-Kitaab’s “Jill’s Trip to the Office of Visa Renewal” chapter yet…
They ask me lengthy questions in their “ksh”y, vowel-less darija. And I wonder what the hell I have gotten myself into.
For a newly-dated stamp they need proof of my school affiliation in Rabat, do I have a paper saying such? No. I try calling her. And then I call again. I try a different Activities Coordinator. Twice. Followed by the Academic Director, the Center’s owner. No answer.
The women standing, plaid pea coat, tries to coax me through questions, giving small gifts of English when her knowledge allows. I answer what I can and Grumpy orders a redial. One call, two. Finally I get through, offering my cell and the exchange is brief, harried notes taken. Notes I can’t read. Once complete, they hand over a chicken-scrawled list.
Seated and irritable, Grumpy enunciates with gelatinous condescension the items I must gather.
Proof of my taking class.
Letter from the family I am living with.
Four passport photos.
White form completed and photocopied twice.
Pink form completed and photocopied four times.
“Make 3 copies. And this one. That. Makes. Four.”
I thank her instead of punching her. Apologizing to the women for being mono-linguistic, American, and pit-sweaty stressed, I fumble my way back through the police station’s webs.
When I had asked earlier where to acquire said photos, the look from all three mangled pity and distaste. A photo studio, of course. Still believing that such places lingered only in the tight corners of tired Sears department stores, choice of retractable backdrop and one free 8x12 with your order – I entered the first “studio” I passed and walked out with my small plastic packet of prints. Feeling considerably capable at this point, I returned to the Center, recounted my tale to her, awaiting response – what's the next step?
Too bad it expired Friday and was currently Tuesday.
Not nearly enough time to hustle my ancient mother to the correct government office for her statement, and consequential written documentation, concerning my residence in her home. She was hospitalized last week because of high blood pressure complications. She can’t eat salt for pete’s sake.
Since the letter was thus out of the question, the Center’s owner, my Academic Director, seemed the best resource for smart answers. And thus we implored. Waving strong hands at my finger-pinched forms, he told us that obtaining a new stamp in the legitimate fashion, by way of bureaucracy, was not only too lengthy but was inclined toward failure. The easiest and most obvious thing to do would be to visit a Spanish enclave – Morocco’s northern shore hosting two – so that upon re-entry to Morocco I could finagle the extension I was seeking by default of entrance.
“So this weekend you will just make a short trip to Sebta,” he reasoned.
To which I countered, “Although… it expires… Friday…?”
Tiny choke in his throat.
“I should have been informed of this earlier,” he clipped, pensive.
You got that right, sugarpie, my eyes sliding toward her.
“I will think about what to do,” he continued, “and I’ll call.”
But he didn’t.
Afternoon became night and night became morning and I decided I was on my own. Backpack seams straining, I sped to the Center, intent on informing staff of my plan to justify my absence. Indignant that I had waited so long, ignored my instincts, depended on the guidance of someone apparently incompetent. I had done everything I could think of in order to AVOID this PRECISE situation.
Teeth-clenching urgency.
Regardless of intention I was now in a fix. I was barreling down alleys. I was going to Sebta.
Breathing hard, stomping doormat, I entered only to be handed a phone. She was on the other end. “The Center is offering you an escort. You will leave Thursday, tomorrow. Early.”
It took the day’s full remainder to slow my furious resolve, pack away the deliberate and decisive nerve I had donned AM.
“Jack.” My escort. Eight o’clock sharp.
We talked with lengths of spacing until I had exhausted my smoother repertoire. I did not know this man. Father to a young son. Catching, chain-reaction cough that quickened with anxiety, with speech. Milk but no coffee. Singing "When a man loves a women..." when it came on FM.
Passing torn tarp over banana trees, fragile like paper and snapping. Flock after flock of mud-sullied sheep, their herders stock-still and wrapped in plastic against the rain.
I wanted to say "mskeen" and then point. How unfortunate to spend all days, sodden ankles, sopping-chilled through cheap pullovers. What do their wives think when they stare off, post-dinner, a line of pebbled grit at their hairline, in their ears? Unfortunate to be so lonely, striking at stupid, blunt-faced sheep. But what do I know.
And the four hours dragged.
Rabat to Sale to Kenitra to Larache. Asilah to Tangier and then Sebta (Ceuta) on the coast.
Rolling, ascending; Northern coast so unlike the West. Road shiny and red from trickle and spill. Detours necessary where blacktop gave impression of upheaval, of tectonic interference, when really collapsed pockets beneath asphalt to blame.
“Put that you are here for tourism – don’t say anything about a visa.” Mist spotty when we parked, clerk behind the window grasping “Jack’s” passport. Then mine. The shake of his head. Glasses thick and yellowed, coloring circles around his eyes like sick and ancient bruises. A sudden exchange, “Jack” first playing innocent but the clerk was no fool.
It was the 11th of March, after all.
What then, “Jack” beseeched? Glasses like stains, the clerk blatant and foul. Him ribbed with impatience. We returned to the car.
“He knows you need a new visa. Says the only thing to do is talk to another man in-charge and see… I will call your Director.”
No answer.
“The Center, then.”
He’s out.
“His wife.”
On “Jack’s” side the conversation was a fierce flood of consonants, provoking fits of linked coughs and jutting hand gestures. I stared at tilted air vents, “Jack’s” hunch of grey hoodie. How tall was this man? Did he fold into the Ford? “He says to try talking with the boss. It’s the only thing to do.” And we walked heads down, from the car – lights blinking. A pithy, platformed entrance. No use playing dumb, “Jack” pleaded our case to the first thickset thug, nose round and pocked brown like a meatball, who shouldered through the door. Little interest, seeking proof of my Rabat-student status, he slipped back into monochrome, passport in paw.
“Jack” paced in pitted stutters. Rocking, see-sawing through the square. Not wearing his nerves on his sleeve as much as echoing them through canyons. In my head I willed him into stillness. Certainly this was no manifestation of confidence. And his constant shifting made me need to pee.
I stood, spine tilted as “the boss” came and went. Then returned. And then left. Each encounter an impossibly desperate discussion with “Jack”. Stout, prone to waddle, “the boss” waved us forward. And then drew us back. We moved when motioned, stopping when told. Thick dandruff like quartz flakes peppering his pate. I’m statue-still stationary, fists in fleece pockets. My feet defaulting to first-position. The passport was passed, “the boss” to his boss. The tale retold. Pointed looks, chins down. And then back to the platform. And then back to waiting.
Reluctant.
Ever
so
begrudgingly,
stubby fat fingers motioned consent.
Exhaling in sighs, “Jack” spoke without commas – re-entry would be easy, the hard part was through.
Unintentionally awkward, we toured Spain’s Sebta. “Jack” assuming I harbored great ambitions to shop. My sentiments on the visit being solely visa-related. We walked the main strip; saw the marina, old churches. Him ducking into baby boutiques, seeking out the perfect “onesie”. When at last he found it, he said lunch was on the Center. Destination McDonald’s in true foreign chic, car curling and bowing to Amy Winehouse’s tatty intones.
Later we parked amid sheet-metal warehouses, their garage doors wound back to reveal troves of new goods. Transnational trade. Minus all tariffs. Port town, after all. “Jack’s” trunk packed with glossy bundles of diapers, their name-brand cost in Sebta half that of Rabat.
Re-entry caused problems we thought we’d surmounted. Hour-long car line pre-tollbooth packed carport. Once reached, by dumb luck, new clerk glimpsed old stamp; his thumbing for fresh pages revealing our motive…
The shake of the head. “Jack’s” evident exhaustion.
And so we parked. Again.
And begged that morning’s window clerk. Again.
Who sent us down the street. Again.
Where we waited outside squat cinderblock. Again.
(Appeals valid only to “the boss” and his boss.)
The first complete English sentence he had spoken all day was “Jack’s”
“I hope the same men from this morning are here…
You said it, buddy.
“Naim, ana ayou-dan,” I said nodding.
Relief solidified once we had found them. And then collapsed as they peered without recognition at my rain-damp face. Amplified weather had necessitated my donning a second coat, but honestly, how many blond Americans pass that door in a day? We never dreamed we’d have to jog memories after the commotion we’d caused.
When they saw I WAS me, and “Jack’s” pleads reached a pitch, the hairline-flecked boss sighed surrender and signed.
Signature not enough, “Jack” was still forced through hoops once back at our booth, cars honking in anger.
And then finally, the sound.
So sudden and simple. The smack of a stamp. Mission: complete.
After that we were quiet. Four hours reversed. The fog was like ice cream from metal-spoon scoops; coiling in bolls that hollowed upon entrance.
I practiced and practiced, repeating the phrase, and Rabat was beneath us so I turned left to say, “Shukran, shukran kather-an. Bseebeb anta, youm-kin aub-kaa fee al-Magreb.”
It sure as hell wasn't Shakespeare, but the point got across.
Thank you, thank you so much. Because of you it is possible for me to remain in Morocco.
[Sebta/Ceuta pics uploaded]
Color like a beach-brochure with thick, unlikely cockpit karsts, hunching their green Spanish shoulders behind. The Mediterranean. Glow of phosphorescent teal despite coursing veins of rain down tight car windows.
I had told her two months ago. And then six weeks. Then four. Never sharing my sense of pending urgency, two-digit days became singular before she asked me to bring in my passport, scrawling an address in quick Arabic script. The police station. Rue Patrice Lamumba. You see, Morocco doesn’t issue “visas” per say, but the endorsement they stamp behind short glass and airport lines is only good for three months post-date.
Mine had been branded “December 12th”.
It was raining and I maneuvered the medina head-down, left hand clutching umbrella so as to rebuff its affinity for slapping inside out. Wet line running down a skeletal metal spoke and into my sleeve. Taxis sparse in such weather. I snagged one, partially occupied, with a gruffy-voiced driver, who proceeded to rear-end the soda semi before us. Both parties waved each other on, we passed the main square, slid into unfamiliar streets netting memorized landmarks. He slowed the cab and with a jerk of the fist, signaled my exit. Wandering with relief, having survived the endeavor’s initial leg I teetered off curb and across tile in the general direction with which he had thrown fingers. Asking at one building, the doorman commenced an embarrassing clatter of furious clapping from down the street when I had gone too far, when I had passed the station entrance.
Once inside, arching metal detector. Attempting to explain to a tall officer, him responding in French, my explaining in Arabic that it’s a language I don’t speak… He instructs me to enter by the other door, but as it was difficult enough to find this one I manage to make enough of a spectacle that he decides to escort me. Through the geometric chisel of hallways, side rooms, offices, past the heart of the building and to its opposite. Once inline, he removes me, snaking in reverse. Another room of beige-grey. The three women inside first try French and then Arabic. The one seated and nearest losing her patience with spectacular speed as I sputter through the extent of my juvenile vocabulary.
I guess my class hasn’t reached Al-Kitaab’s “Jill’s Trip to the Office of Visa Renewal” chapter yet…
They ask me lengthy questions in their “ksh”y, vowel-less darija. And I wonder what the hell I have gotten myself into.
For a newly-dated stamp they need proof of my school affiliation in Rabat, do I have a paper saying such? No. I try calling her. And then I call again. I try a different Activities Coordinator. Twice. Followed by the Academic Director, the Center’s owner. No answer.
The women standing, plaid pea coat, tries to coax me through questions, giving small gifts of English when her knowledge allows. I answer what I can and Grumpy orders a redial. One call, two. Finally I get through, offering my cell and the exchange is brief, harried notes taken. Notes I can’t read. Once complete, they hand over a chicken-scrawled list.
Seated and irritable, Grumpy enunciates with gelatinous condescension the items I must gather.
Proof of my taking class.
Letter from the family I am living with.
Four passport photos.
White form completed and photocopied twice.
Pink form completed and photocopied four times.
“Make 3 copies. And this one. That. Makes. Four.”
I thank her instead of punching her. Apologizing to the women for being mono-linguistic, American, and pit-sweaty stressed, I fumble my way back through the police station’s webs.
When I had asked earlier where to acquire said photos, the look from all three mangled pity and distaste. A photo studio, of course. Still believing that such places lingered only in the tight corners of tired Sears department stores, choice of retractable backdrop and one free 8x12 with your order – I entered the first “studio” I passed and walked out with my small plastic packet of prints. Feeling considerably capable at this point, I returned to the Center, recounted my tale to her, awaiting response – what's the next step?
Too bad it expired Friday and was currently Tuesday.
Not nearly enough time to hustle my ancient mother to the correct government office for her statement, and consequential written documentation, concerning my residence in her home. She was hospitalized last week because of high blood pressure complications. She can’t eat salt for pete’s sake.
Since the letter was thus out of the question, the Center’s owner, my Academic Director, seemed the best resource for smart answers. And thus we implored. Waving strong hands at my finger-pinched forms, he told us that obtaining a new stamp in the legitimate fashion, by way of bureaucracy, was not only too lengthy but was inclined toward failure. The easiest and most obvious thing to do would be to visit a Spanish enclave – Morocco’s northern shore hosting two – so that upon re-entry to Morocco I could finagle the extension I was seeking by default of entrance.
“So this weekend you will just make a short trip to Sebta,” he reasoned.
To which I countered, “Although… it expires… Friday…?”
Tiny choke in his throat.
“I should have been informed of this earlier,” he clipped, pensive.
You got that right, sugarpie, my eyes sliding toward her.
“I will think about what to do,” he continued, “and I’ll call.”
But he didn’t.
Afternoon became night and night became morning and I decided I was on my own. Backpack seams straining, I sped to the Center, intent on informing staff of my plan to justify my absence. Indignant that I had waited so long, ignored my instincts, depended on the guidance of someone apparently incompetent. I had done everything I could think of in order to AVOID this PRECISE situation.
Teeth-clenching urgency.
Regardless of intention I was now in a fix. I was barreling down alleys. I was going to Sebta.
Breathing hard, stomping doormat, I entered only to be handed a phone. She was on the other end. “The Center is offering you an escort. You will leave Thursday, tomorrow. Early.”
It took the day’s full remainder to slow my furious resolve, pack away the deliberate and decisive nerve I had donned AM.
“Jack.” My escort. Eight o’clock sharp.
We talked with lengths of spacing until I had exhausted my smoother repertoire. I did not know this man. Father to a young son. Catching, chain-reaction cough that quickened with anxiety, with speech. Milk but no coffee. Singing "When a man loves a women..." when it came on FM.
Passing torn tarp over banana trees, fragile like paper and snapping. Flock after flock of mud-sullied sheep, their herders stock-still and wrapped in plastic against the rain.
I wanted to say "mskeen" and then point. How unfortunate to spend all days, sodden ankles, sopping-chilled through cheap pullovers. What do their wives think when they stare off, post-dinner, a line of pebbled grit at their hairline, in their ears? Unfortunate to be so lonely, striking at stupid, blunt-faced sheep. But what do I know.
And the four hours dragged.
Rabat to Sale to Kenitra to Larache. Asilah to Tangier and then Sebta (Ceuta) on the coast.
Rolling, ascending; Northern coast so unlike the West. Road shiny and red from trickle and spill. Detours necessary where blacktop gave impression of upheaval, of tectonic interference, when really collapsed pockets beneath asphalt to blame.
“Put that you are here for tourism – don’t say anything about a visa.” Mist spotty when we parked, clerk behind the window grasping “Jack’s” passport. Then mine. The shake of his head. Glasses thick and yellowed, coloring circles around his eyes like sick and ancient bruises. A sudden exchange, “Jack” first playing innocent but the clerk was no fool.
It was the 11th of March, after all.
What then, “Jack” beseeched? Glasses like stains, the clerk blatant and foul. Him ribbed with impatience. We returned to the car.
“He knows you need a new visa. Says the only thing to do is talk to another man in-charge and see… I will call your Director.”
No answer.
“The Center, then.”
He’s out.
“His wife.”
On “Jack’s” side the conversation was a fierce flood of consonants, provoking fits of linked coughs and jutting hand gestures. I stared at tilted air vents, “Jack’s” hunch of grey hoodie. How tall was this man? Did he fold into the Ford? “He says to try talking with the boss. It’s the only thing to do.” And we walked heads down, from the car – lights blinking. A pithy, platformed entrance. No use playing dumb, “Jack” pleaded our case to the first thickset thug, nose round and pocked brown like a meatball, who shouldered through the door. Little interest, seeking proof of my Rabat-student status, he slipped back into monochrome, passport in paw.
“Jack” paced in pitted stutters. Rocking, see-sawing through the square. Not wearing his nerves on his sleeve as much as echoing them through canyons. In my head I willed him into stillness. Certainly this was no manifestation of confidence. And his constant shifting made me need to pee.
I stood, spine tilted as “the boss” came and went. Then returned. And then left. Each encounter an impossibly desperate discussion with “Jack”. Stout, prone to waddle, “the boss” waved us forward. And then drew us back. We moved when motioned, stopping when told. Thick dandruff like quartz flakes peppering his pate. I’m statue-still stationary, fists in fleece pockets. My feet defaulting to first-position. The passport was passed, “the boss” to his boss. The tale retold. Pointed looks, chins down. And then back to the platform. And then back to waiting.
Reluctant.
Ever
so
begrudgingly,
stubby fat fingers motioned consent.
Exhaling in sighs, “Jack” spoke without commas – re-entry would be easy, the hard part was through.
Unintentionally awkward, we toured Spain’s Sebta. “Jack” assuming I harbored great ambitions to shop. My sentiments on the visit being solely visa-related. We walked the main strip; saw the marina, old churches. Him ducking into baby boutiques, seeking out the perfect “onesie”. When at last he found it, he said lunch was on the Center. Destination McDonald’s in true foreign chic, car curling and bowing to Amy Winehouse’s tatty intones.
Later we parked amid sheet-metal warehouses, their garage doors wound back to reveal troves of new goods. Transnational trade. Minus all tariffs. Port town, after all. “Jack’s” trunk packed with glossy bundles of diapers, their name-brand cost in Sebta half that of Rabat.
Re-entry caused problems we thought we’d surmounted. Hour-long car line pre-tollbooth packed carport. Once reached, by dumb luck, new clerk glimpsed old stamp; his thumbing for fresh pages revealing our motive…
The shake of the head. “Jack’s” evident exhaustion.
And so we parked. Again.
And begged that morning’s window clerk. Again.
Who sent us down the street. Again.
Where we waited outside squat cinderblock. Again.
(Appeals valid only to “the boss” and his boss.)
The first complete English sentence he had spoken all day was “Jack’s”
“I hope the same men from this morning are here…
You said it, buddy.
“Naim, ana ayou-dan,” I said nodding.
Relief solidified once we had found them. And then collapsed as they peered without recognition at my rain-damp face. Amplified weather had necessitated my donning a second coat, but honestly, how many blond Americans pass that door in a day? We never dreamed we’d have to jog memories after the commotion we’d caused.
When they saw I WAS me, and “Jack’s” pleads reached a pitch, the hairline-flecked boss sighed surrender and signed.
Signature not enough, “Jack” was still forced through hoops once back at our booth, cars honking in anger.
And then finally, the sound.
So sudden and simple. The smack of a stamp. Mission: complete.
After that we were quiet. Four hours reversed. The fog was like ice cream from metal-spoon scoops; coiling in bolls that hollowed upon entrance.
I practiced and practiced, repeating the phrase, and Rabat was beneath us so I turned left to say, “Shukran, shukran kather-an. Bseebeb anta, youm-kin aub-kaa fee al-Magreb.”
It sure as hell wasn't Shakespeare, but the point got across.
Thank you, thank you so much. Because of you it is possible for me to remain in Morocco.
[Sebta/Ceuta pics uploaded]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)