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]
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Crumbs
We tiptoe when it rains. Desperate to avoid alley tiles central and fractured; teetering and ready to sling, slapping our ankles with sludge pooled and waiting just beneath.
Licorice-flavored cookies pinched and puckered, slick and brown as dog shit, spice scent indolent in tight souk streets; lingering sesame and cinnamon.
Kasbah corners dyed focally darker where tripping old men face the tall copper creases, lifting twilled djellabas to release acrid streams.
At times not even trying to avoid the thick, throbbing souk. Comforted by the purposefulness, the human heat of the throng. Folded into snaking masses. Mistaken as French. Mistaken as Spanish.
But lately thoughts of Michigan penetrate. Wooden colors so dark it’s always dusk past a clearing. Asphalt unravels, backroad fringe of loosed gravel. Center lines faded, tar patches like skin grafts. Light filters cautiously, through branches, through panes. Fat birds on repeat in the blue-yellow kitchen and sharp prism rainbows thrown seemingly without origin. Thinly carpeted stairs too steep, the smells musty and soothing. Jigsaws and doilies. Butterfly coasters with broken wicker weaves. Paneling, pictures, windmills, cattails, stuffed shells. Waxed rutabaga and pasties in foil. Blankets and soft beds, mason jars in a line. Snakes torn on driveways. Humidity. Dust.
And always “You betcha.”
But this is not my family. “Lulu” cradling her husband with her eyes, waiting, craving to carry his many lisping babies. Her sister-in-law chewing with teeth like square ice chips, a soft spot of grey rot coloring the front two’s divide.
Licorice-flavored cookies pinched and puckered, slick and brown as dog shit, spice scent indolent in tight souk streets; lingering sesame and cinnamon.
Kasbah corners dyed focally darker where tripping old men face the tall copper creases, lifting twilled djellabas to release acrid streams.
At times not even trying to avoid the thick, throbbing souk. Comforted by the purposefulness, the human heat of the throng. Folded into snaking masses. Mistaken as French. Mistaken as Spanish.
But lately thoughts of Michigan penetrate. Wooden colors so dark it’s always dusk past a clearing. Asphalt unravels, backroad fringe of loosed gravel. Center lines faded, tar patches like skin grafts. Light filters cautiously, through branches, through panes. Fat birds on repeat in the blue-yellow kitchen and sharp prism rainbows thrown seemingly without origin. Thinly carpeted stairs too steep, the smells musty and soothing. Jigsaws and doilies. Butterfly coasters with broken wicker weaves. Paneling, pictures, windmills, cattails, stuffed shells. Waxed rutabaga and pasties in foil. Blankets and soft beds, mason jars in a line. Snakes torn on driveways. Humidity. Dust.
And always “You betcha.”
But this is not my family. “Lulu” cradling her husband with her eyes, waiting, craving to carry his many lisping babies. Her sister-in-law chewing with teeth like square ice chips, a soft spot of grey rot coloring the front two’s divide.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Color
For nearly a week we charted the Atlas.
Mid- and then High-, our obnoxious and bold bus swinging wide beside canyon and pass. Horn-honks to warn walkers or those side-saddling mules with bony behinds, our legs stale from neglect.
Ifrane. Azrou. Middelt. Er Rachidia. Erfoud. Rissani. Merzouga. N’Kob. Ouarsazzate. Marrakech. Essaouira. El Jadida.
Home. Rabat.
Gaping breadth of the Draa Valley, scattered with viridian palm groves, bottle-necked or reaching. Drawn out Tizi’s taken at harrowing speed; the pathetic comfort of thin guardrails, often silver and smashed. Fording flooding red-clay rivers; violent eddies tucked beside their catalyzing curbs.
Once we hit the Sahara I was in no mood for company. Summiting clipped peaks, the distance was deceiving. So alone that at wind’s pause, all I heard was shifting sand. I had seen The Dune in the distance, watched it from the SUV window, already claiming it.
My heels digging into her crest.
In reality the endeavor was more trying than anticipated; all the “lesser” mounds at her feet managed to rise and dive with considerable frequency and height. Bare feet leaving crescent-shaped divots, condensing on the upslope and stretching on the lee. The wind we had encountered by-car had yet to abate, intensifying at each apex, my blown body leaning into its exfoliating hiss. I reached her peak in degrees, screaming AL HAMDA ALLAH until the scarf protecting my face flexed concave, white gauze on my tongue stifling and complete. The wind there was ripping. Tearing sand in sharp torrents and lifting in layers. Licking the dune into a sharp overhang.
I had conquered the copper flanks.
Stumbling down sharper sections, I descended her wide splay, passing our group’s male members on their way up. The trip back significantly harder, hiking out of sorrel shadows as dunes are not equilateral triangles as much as they are right.
Before dawn we mounted dozing camels, 45 in all, having slept off last night’s red; the heavy clang of Gnawa castanets barely penetrating walls of desert mud. Their gait was slippery and their padded feet wide like snowshoes for sand. The sun rose ssssslllowly from behind dim and distant dunes, each of us shivering and clutching, cameras armed and aching for that first splash of blinding molten gold.
As had been the practice with our program , each meal was a feast. Appetizer of chopped legumes with carrot, beans in bowls, spiced olives red from harissa and rice in strange shapes. Flatbread without butter, we pinched cumin, soaked sauces. Then we’d have soup. Hot harira ladled swiftly, mashed bean or lentil, spoons tinking white ceramic and hands raised for more. Once we had sardines, bones soft so to swallow, silver skins sticking to our fingers and forks. Fat fish for our entrée, skin taut with wet white meat. Or joint tagines heaped with okra, squashes, soft yellow, orange, green; chunks of goat hugging bone. “Berber pizza” pre-sliced and steaming, almonds and amber meat falling from between the coarse circular loaves cooked long underground. Fruit platters for dessert; whole oranges and apples, bananas all freckled and never overripe. Tea often followed, but was difficult to depend on. Often steeped too long- what table is served last?
In Essaouira the beach pounded and we collected Thuya boxes, tawny bracelets mocking birdseye. Bargaining for striped silk and mapping skinny souks with tired white feet.
We returned in gradation. And unfolding thickly pilled blankets in yellow and navy, I was home.
Trip pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/sarah872014591
Mid- and then High-, our obnoxious and bold bus swinging wide beside canyon and pass. Horn-honks to warn walkers or those side-saddling mules with bony behinds, our legs stale from neglect.
Ifrane. Azrou. Middelt. Er Rachidia. Erfoud. Rissani. Merzouga. N’Kob. Ouarsazzate. Marrakech. Essaouira. El Jadida.
Home. Rabat.
Gaping breadth of the Draa Valley, scattered with viridian palm groves, bottle-necked or reaching. Drawn out Tizi’s taken at harrowing speed; the pathetic comfort of thin guardrails, often silver and smashed. Fording flooding red-clay rivers; violent eddies tucked beside their catalyzing curbs.
Once we hit the Sahara I was in no mood for company. Summiting clipped peaks, the distance was deceiving. So alone that at wind’s pause, all I heard was shifting sand. I had seen The Dune in the distance, watched it from the SUV window, already claiming it.
My heels digging into her crest.
In reality the endeavor was more trying than anticipated; all the “lesser” mounds at her feet managed to rise and dive with considerable frequency and height. Bare feet leaving crescent-shaped divots, condensing on the upslope and stretching on the lee. The wind we had encountered by-car had yet to abate, intensifying at each apex, my blown body leaning into its exfoliating hiss. I reached her peak in degrees, screaming AL HAMDA ALLAH until the scarf protecting my face flexed concave, white gauze on my tongue stifling and complete. The wind there was ripping. Tearing sand in sharp torrents and lifting in layers. Licking the dune into a sharp overhang.
I had conquered the copper flanks.
Stumbling down sharper sections, I descended her wide splay, passing our group’s male members on their way up. The trip back significantly harder, hiking out of sorrel shadows as dunes are not equilateral triangles as much as they are right.
Before dawn we mounted dozing camels, 45 in all, having slept off last night’s red; the heavy clang of Gnawa castanets barely penetrating walls of desert mud. Their gait was slippery and their padded feet wide like snowshoes for sand. The sun rose ssssslllowly from behind dim and distant dunes, each of us shivering and clutching, cameras armed and aching for that first splash of blinding molten gold.
As had been the practice with our program , each meal was a feast. Appetizer of chopped legumes with carrot, beans in bowls, spiced olives red from harissa and rice in strange shapes. Flatbread without butter, we pinched cumin, soaked sauces. Then we’d have soup. Hot harira ladled swiftly, mashed bean or lentil, spoons tinking white ceramic and hands raised for more. Once we had sardines, bones soft so to swallow, silver skins sticking to our fingers and forks. Fat fish for our entrée, skin taut with wet white meat. Or joint tagines heaped with okra, squashes, soft yellow, orange, green; chunks of goat hugging bone. “Berber pizza” pre-sliced and steaming, almonds and amber meat falling from between the coarse circular loaves cooked long underground. Fruit platters for dessert; whole oranges and apples, bananas all freckled and never overripe. Tea often followed, but was difficult to depend on. Often steeped too long- what table is served last?
In Essaouira the beach pounded and we collected Thuya boxes, tawny bracelets mocking birdseye. Bargaining for striped silk and mapping skinny souks with tired white feet.
We returned in gradation. And unfolding thickly pilled blankets in yellow and navy, I was home.
Trip pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/sarah872014591
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Provisions
After late-night tea, the intercom buzzes. Frantically and in Arabic, my family shifts. Men rise, the women shake worried heads. “Mskeen. Mskeen!” Unfortunate. “Lulu” flits bulkily into the master bedroom, all voices heighten and “Sidda” stands up on a backless sofa near the latched window, throwing open the fogged glass. The three ladies stick their heads out, and propelled by curiosity, I follow in suite. Across the third floor alley-way window, smoke is filtered by chipped blue shutters beneath faint streetlight. Necks craning, palms against a metal sill, the four of us look on, desperately scanning as a house fire pocks living room cushions. “Buggy” leans away, her bulk threatening to lose its balance right on a fat and droopy chocolate cake spanning the coffee table center. She laughs as “Sidda” steadies her, the back-of-the-throat hissing spittle and hack only made possible because “Buggy” has no back teeth.
DID YOU UNDERSTAND?? “Sidda” yells to me over the static of Avenue Mohammad V via cell.
No. I didn’t understand. I thought she was going to “Buggy’s” house for the night and “Vivi” was staying in Rabat. They KNEW I was spending the night at Amy’s.
I tried, over the badgering barter of men in striped sweaters selling salt-and-garlic snails, pulled from their shells with safety pins. But the staircase echoed. And the concept was fuddled.
NO! I DID NOT UNDERSTAND. ONE MINUTE. I AM RETURNING. I AM RETURNING TO THE HOUSE NOW. ONE MINUTE.
OK YULLA BYE.
When I returned, “Sidda” had already left. “Vivi’s” darija just tied me in knots, only understanding when she told me to pack, now. To get my “pajama”.
Oh, I thought. Looks like I’m going to Amy’s house AFTER dinner at “Buggy’s”.
And 25.5 hours later I was still at “Buggy’s”.
“Shep” opens the Qur’an, flicking the magnetic lid of his reading-glass case and clearing his throat. His recitations are long and nasally, necessarily so because of the incredible duration of verses meant to be spoken-sung in a single breath. Two minutes in and single glassy tears have parked themselves in the permanent vales below “Vivi’s” eyes. She follows along under her breath, few words on queue and rhythmically rocking.
The cuisina is central. Bickering, “Vivi” coils skinny legging-clad limbs beneath her, shaking her head at her daughters’ operatic tales, intonated with such sincere drama I can’t look away. “Sidda” uses her head, her upturned nose and mousy upper lip. The flesh on her wrist cuffs itself, cutting a clear bracelet-like crease in circumference.
I sit down for bread and butter, hot cups of too-sweet tea. Breakfast is not yet over and “Buggy” is already well into lunch preparation. “Vivi” slyly pushes quarter-loaf after quarter-loaf of flatbread to my place at the table without making eye contact. Hoping that, by it being before me, I won’t be able to help but consume it. So. Much. Bread. I slice a piece through the center, dipping the knife into lumpy chunks of butter. Crumbs speckle the table from past kitchen-denizens and “Vivi” uses square-tipped fingers to gather these remnants. Once piled she pinches and brings the dregs to her jutting lower lip.
Nothing wasted.
I catch single words with satisfying familiarity, asking for meanings with those unknown but frequently overheard. Silent and small, always listening, I see the shutters bang open and vacuum out delicious bread-baking scents into the dirty street. The fleece blanket is fringed. Blunt carrots and potatoes are cleaned, cut, cooked. A soup bowl shapes rice into perfect hemispheres, inverted and centered on round platters; edible sandcastles sprinkled with sweet pepper slices. The lettuce leaves circle as would rays, cupping bleeding beets like green canoes. Parsley’d potatoes and carrots, now stove-top soft, fill the spaces between, separated by ramparts of slivered cucumber, quartered turnip. Gold vinegar and oil make a heavy garnish and the salads are “Sidda’s” masterpiece.
Sitting in the saloon. Or the cuisina. Or a bedroom.
Striking hulking poses, “Buggy” moves from stool to stove, stove to sink, emphasizing her epics with suspenseful silences… spacing - words - with - tyrannical - precision. Her head bobbles forward and back, toggling freely on a spring-like neck when it comes time to make a point. All the while, fists in motion. Skinningslicingcoringcleaving carrots. Knife held flush by thumb, she brings her hands up and before her chest, palms out. And pauses there. Gesturing with disbelief and withdrawal. Moroccan women have wide hands, working hands. Their feet are arch-less, bulbous, bony and disfigured. Thick toenails holding perpetually the deep copper of old henna. Breasts are not individual stores but a single swinging, falling, languid unit, one to be picked up, slapped over, strapped down. But really it’s the hands. You can see in their color, their folds and knuckles. “Vivi’s” left ring finger is resistant to neighborly cooperation, remaining constantly, stubbornly erect. Their hands have borne babies, they have been burnt and bruised, buckled, cracked. They have kneaded and darned and slapped and wrung. Years add spots and stunt nails but the fists of these women are ropy with muscle and beside them my hands are too poor and too white. “Buggy” tears the stale flatbread like its combed cotton when we prepare something like croutons. I try to match her haste, the blur of those fat-veined fingers. My compatriots own such solid hands.
Except for “Lulu”. Like a porcelain doll, her face and fingers are hand-painted. The rest of her body is large; as shapeless as a toy’s stuffed torso. “Lulu” is from France and mostly she is quiet, scrolling through cell-contacts, waiting. Mohammad is late. “…and now she wears hijab…” Slippers flat and faded, she scuffs from kitchen to computer and back, slicing skinned potatoes too slowly for her mother-in-law’s desperate pace. Only when the bearded, soft-bellied Moroccan rings up to the third-floor intercom does the pink slap her wide round cheeks. She slides coyly past doorframes, watches him sideways. Reddening because she knows that we know that she knows we know why she blushes. Catching eyes she looks away quickly. Her cherub face, over and down. Once Mohammad is in the house “Lulu” laughs.
Explaining in pitiful Arabic the concept of Lent, the practice of deliberately altering a habit for the holiday’s duration, is a task not for the faint of heart.
You are not eating desserts? For that whole time?? I understand. Kind of like Ramadan. Cookie? They aren’t very sweet.
No desserts? Can you at least eat chicken??
DID YOU UNDERSTAND?? “Sidda” yells to me over the static of Avenue Mohammad V via cell.
No. I didn’t understand. I thought she was going to “Buggy’s” house for the night and “Vivi” was staying in Rabat. They KNEW I was spending the night at Amy’s.
I tried, over the badgering barter of men in striped sweaters selling salt-and-garlic snails, pulled from their shells with safety pins. But the staircase echoed. And the concept was fuddled.
NO! I DID NOT UNDERSTAND. ONE MINUTE. I AM RETURNING. I AM RETURNING TO THE HOUSE NOW. ONE MINUTE.
OK YULLA BYE.
When I returned, “Sidda” had already left. “Vivi’s” darija just tied me in knots, only understanding when she told me to pack, now. To get my “pajama”.
Oh, I thought. Looks like I’m going to Amy’s house AFTER dinner at “Buggy’s”.
And 25.5 hours later I was still at “Buggy’s”.
“Shep” opens the Qur’an, flicking the magnetic lid of his reading-glass case and clearing his throat. His recitations are long and nasally, necessarily so because of the incredible duration of verses meant to be spoken-sung in a single breath. Two minutes in and single glassy tears have parked themselves in the permanent vales below “Vivi’s” eyes. She follows along under her breath, few words on queue and rhythmically rocking.
The cuisina is central. Bickering, “Vivi” coils skinny legging-clad limbs beneath her, shaking her head at her daughters’ operatic tales, intonated with such sincere drama I can’t look away. “Sidda” uses her head, her upturned nose and mousy upper lip. The flesh on her wrist cuffs itself, cutting a clear bracelet-like crease in circumference.
I sit down for bread and butter, hot cups of too-sweet tea. Breakfast is not yet over and “Buggy” is already well into lunch preparation. “Vivi” slyly pushes quarter-loaf after quarter-loaf of flatbread to my place at the table without making eye contact. Hoping that, by it being before me, I won’t be able to help but consume it. So. Much. Bread. I slice a piece through the center, dipping the knife into lumpy chunks of butter. Crumbs speckle the table from past kitchen-denizens and “Vivi” uses square-tipped fingers to gather these remnants. Once piled she pinches and brings the dregs to her jutting lower lip.
Nothing wasted.
I catch single words with satisfying familiarity, asking for meanings with those unknown but frequently overheard. Silent and small, always listening, I see the shutters bang open and vacuum out delicious bread-baking scents into the dirty street. The fleece blanket is fringed. Blunt carrots and potatoes are cleaned, cut, cooked. A soup bowl shapes rice into perfect hemispheres, inverted and centered on round platters; edible sandcastles sprinkled with sweet pepper slices. The lettuce leaves circle as would rays, cupping bleeding beets like green canoes. Parsley’d potatoes and carrots, now stove-top soft, fill the spaces between, separated by ramparts of slivered cucumber, quartered turnip. Gold vinegar and oil make a heavy garnish and the salads are “Sidda’s” masterpiece.
Sitting in the saloon. Or the cuisina. Or a bedroom.
Striking hulking poses, “Buggy” moves from stool to stove, stove to sink, emphasizing her epics with suspenseful silences… spacing - words - with - tyrannical - precision. Her head bobbles forward and back, toggling freely on a spring-like neck when it comes time to make a point. All the while, fists in motion. Skinningslicingcoringcleaving carrots. Knife held flush by thumb, she brings her hands up and before her chest, palms out. And pauses there. Gesturing with disbelief and withdrawal. Moroccan women have wide hands, working hands. Their feet are arch-less, bulbous, bony and disfigured. Thick toenails holding perpetually the deep copper of old henna. Breasts are not individual stores but a single swinging, falling, languid unit, one to be picked up, slapped over, strapped down. But really it’s the hands. You can see in their color, their folds and knuckles. “Vivi’s” left ring finger is resistant to neighborly cooperation, remaining constantly, stubbornly erect. Their hands have borne babies, they have been burnt and bruised, buckled, cracked. They have kneaded and darned and slapped and wrung. Years add spots and stunt nails but the fists of these women are ropy with muscle and beside them my hands are too poor and too white. “Buggy” tears the stale flatbread like its combed cotton when we prepare something like croutons. I try to match her haste, the blur of those fat-veined fingers. My compatriots own such solid hands.
Except for “Lulu”. Like a porcelain doll, her face and fingers are hand-painted. The rest of her body is large; as shapeless as a toy’s stuffed torso. “Lulu” is from France and mostly she is quiet, scrolling through cell-contacts, waiting. Mohammad is late. “…and now she wears hijab…” Slippers flat and faded, she scuffs from kitchen to computer and back, slicing skinned potatoes too slowly for her mother-in-law’s desperate pace. Only when the bearded, soft-bellied Moroccan rings up to the third-floor intercom does the pink slap her wide round cheeks. She slides coyly past doorframes, watches him sideways. Reddening because she knows that we know that she knows we know why she blushes. Catching eyes she looks away quickly. Her cherub face, over and down. Once Mohammad is in the house “Lulu” laughs.
Explaining in pitiful Arabic the concept of Lent, the practice of deliberately altering a habit for the holiday’s duration, is a task not for the faint of heart.
You are not eating desserts? For that whole time?? I understand. Kind of like Ramadan. Cookie? They aren’t very sweet.
No desserts? Can you at least eat chicken??
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Album
check out
"Side B"
for pics from my time independently in Morocco/family's visit and
"Fez wa Meknes"
for pics from our recent excursion
http://picasaweb.google.com/sarah872014591
"Side B"
for pics from my time independently in Morocco/family's visit and
"Fez wa Meknes"
for pics from our recent excursion
http://picasaweb.google.com/sarah872014591
Monday, February 8, 2010
Launder
January 31st came, and I peed sitting down for the first time since December.
That morning I had zipped the final roughly-pilled sock inside bloated baggage, donning in layers what refused to fit. The month had raced by, too quickly even to decide between excitement or anxiety in the boom of its finale. I had spent an evening at the opera, watching Carmen; jarring the air and throwing from round diaphragms their deepest, raspiest Spanish, the women’s voices bordering wails. But January ended and the curtain swished shut and the taxi was hailed and then there was Hotel Texuda and white-white sheets and a remote-control wall heater.
I stepped into the shower.
“Go ahead,” I dared the steamed curtain, “Tell me to get out. You. Just. Try.”
What followed was an “orientating” whirlwind; five days of lectures, lessons, lunches we could never finish. Unlike Oman, here our group is monstrous, population pushing sixty. My roommates were terrific, the other fifty-some girls seem pleasant enough, and the male presence, although scarce, proves fair.
Day 1 of orientation was capped off with the language placement test.
Duh. Duh. Duhhhh.
It appears they waste no time.
But lo and behold, I don't remember the last time I felt as empowered and proud as I did following the oral section of that test. Somehow I successfully, although by no means perfectly, held an authentic exchange.
I mean in Arabic, folks.
I understood questions and even managed comprehensible responses, a feat because as my plane touched down in Oman’s August I couldn’t formulate sentences; Arabic was my bane.
Over the course of the week we covered health, history, harassment. Bartering, politics, news, rules, religion. We unfolded fears and perused student guidelines; discussed home-stays and handbooks, finalized schedules. Divided by level, we briefly pricked dialectical basics; later advised on bargaining, on locations and landmarks. We sat and we walked and we stood and we sat and every night our mattresses were soft and blankets tucked tightly; all minds heavy like thick-bottomed boats.
It was exhausting.
After a month and a half of waking when I wanted, going where I wanted, doing what I wanted, contemplation and reflection spanning hours or afternoons, the continuity of it all threw me for an absolute loop. I couldn’t spend thirty minutes with a glass of tea and buttered baguette, a new sun painting soft lattices behind the legs of both me and my chair. No free lunch hour to shift on the green bars of a park bench, Al-Kitaab on one thigh, dried dates on the other.
And as if that weren’t enough, as if the assignments, the activities and nine-to-five (or six) educating weren’t wearing all on their lonesome, I was expected to TALK to people.
Like express myself. Articulate responses. And in English.
Like I conveyed to my dad, it’s a question of going from hermit to socialite. And the transition scrubs you down, wrings you out, and hangs you up to dry. A group of us partied that first night. And then Monday. And then Tuesday. And then Wednesday. And then I threw in the towel. Don’t misunderstand, I was glad at the start. Not only could I speak and be spoken to, bounce ideas and emotions off human beings, I was also able to assist in everyone else’s cultural- and spacial-transition. But just because I have information doesn’t mean I need feel responsible for sharing it. This I am learning. People can figure things out on their own. I did.
January’s close saw me tracing an Andalusian quarter; the serpentine road buckling back on itself like the forced pulse of free hands outside windy car windows. I have lived a Moroccan winter. My time here pre-class has worked to define and direct, to regulate my over-activity, to settle.
But it separates me.
Like the movie scenes where one person freezes in the center while everyone else fast-forwards around them. They are stoic, maybe seated, and their surroundings resemble only threads and blur. I see the students’ excitement, their panic and zeal. And I’m accidentally apart. I can take you to the Western Union, to the Arab Bank, to a cell phone kiosk. The wireless café is there. This theater shows Moroccan films. Chocolate…yeah I know a place. And this street takes you past the closest grocery. The English bookstore. The Botanical Gardens. Rabat’s beach. Each minaret does a recitation. If they have pits then they are dates, not figs. Usually the pastille is topped with sugar and cinnamon. It’s “khams”, Mohammad Al Khams. The hijab can be pinned, but it’s easier just to tuck. He’s asking you your age.
Here, I’ll show you.
Thursday, I listened to nervous run-ons while the rest of the circle crossed their arms and offered up soft-ended questions as the home-stay families arrived. I was thankful for my own stillness. My deodorant was not tested; I didn’t worry my schedule into soft folds.
But it would be nice just to relate. I didn’t chew my nails before the cross-town drop-off or pull shyly at an earring during the bargaining excursion and none of this would be annoying in the slightest if one other student… I don’t know, matched?
“Vivian” is old; the wrinkles of her face leaving little room for features. She dramatically clutches her chest; tambourines thick, hennaed fingers against a tea tray and dances in the kitchen for me. “Shooma,” she says, scooting me from the suds and dinner dishes, shame. After each meal she discretely removes her bottom teeth at the sink, throwing back bubbled murmurs in deep dialect over her shoulder. Talking. Always. To the bed, her soup, a wall, the kitchen, her daughter.
Sometimes “Sidda” responds. Thick wrists white and round, she humors her mother when necessary and forgets that I know no French. The first evening we only exchanged one word in English: “pantry”. She sends me kisses across the green-tiled riad, pinches my cheeks in the tv room. “Youmkin aghasel melabissi?” I ask, filthy, January clothes falling from my arms. We pull out the tiny electric washer, “Sidda” pointing, pulling. I bail buckets of warm water into its cavity, spinning the plastic dial and watching the soap swish right and left.
Upon entrance of my first load the water turns black.
Instantly.
Like the color of dirty, highway snow and the women get wide eyes.
We rinse, wring, carrying buckets of clothes and pins up one staircase. And then another, until we break into the warm butter sun of a rooftop in a sea of rooftops; corrugated covers, cement and plaster, satellites, everything square, a sky-scraping surface of clotheslines and canopies.
They introduce “Sidda’s” other siblings as her “little sister” and her “fat sister”. We sit around the low-lying table, my hands allowing space around the scalding glass of tea that steams from between them. The women boil milk, adding cubes of sugar and sometimes a spoonful of instant coffee. “Vivian” pulls out the white cake box. We eat oranges after meals. Or during them. And often in-between. Artfully maneuvering spoons, they peel tender meat from bones atop our couscous or stuff kefta sausages into flatbread sandwiches, piling them on the tablecloth before me. The women laugh, rewrap their scarves; they grab each others’ hands, gesture at breasts and eyes, talk too quickly about pains in their stomachs, their jaws. Wide hands separate long-stemmed herbs, peel pink and gold potato skins. “Vivian” touches her tongue to the top of a loaf, testing its age and leaving small patches of shine. Reclining, I run my knife beneath the paper-thin peels, looking from one face to the next, following voices and sometimes swatches of conversation.
Rabat is a dream.
But I am separate.
And the scariest thing is I kinda don’t care...
Self preservation is a skill to be sure, but what of self-fulfillment? Shouldn’t I crave peer relationships, exploration and experimentation? Wining and dining and awkwardly practicing Arabic (and French)? Tripping over curbs and swaggering in skinny jeans?
That initial electricity has calmed. My encompassing contentment so unlike the students’ thrill, their delight in the unknown.
But mashallah, seheeh?
That morning I had zipped the final roughly-pilled sock inside bloated baggage, donning in layers what refused to fit. The month had raced by, too quickly even to decide between excitement or anxiety in the boom of its finale. I had spent an evening at the opera, watching Carmen; jarring the air and throwing from round diaphragms their deepest, raspiest Spanish, the women’s voices bordering wails. But January ended and the curtain swished shut and the taxi was hailed and then there was Hotel Texuda and white-white sheets and a remote-control wall heater.
I stepped into the shower.
“Go ahead,” I dared the steamed curtain, “Tell me to get out. You. Just. Try.”
What followed was an “orientating” whirlwind; five days of lectures, lessons, lunches we could never finish. Unlike Oman, here our group is monstrous, population pushing sixty. My roommates were terrific, the other fifty-some girls seem pleasant enough, and the male presence, although scarce, proves fair.
Day 1 of orientation was capped off with the language placement test.
Duh. Duh. Duhhhh.
It appears they waste no time.
But lo and behold, I don't remember the last time I felt as empowered and proud as I did following the oral section of that test. Somehow I successfully, although by no means perfectly, held an authentic exchange.
I mean in Arabic, folks.
I understood questions and even managed comprehensible responses, a feat because as my plane touched down in Oman’s August I couldn’t formulate sentences; Arabic was my bane.
Over the course of the week we covered health, history, harassment. Bartering, politics, news, rules, religion. We unfolded fears and perused student guidelines; discussed home-stays and handbooks, finalized schedules. Divided by level, we briefly pricked dialectical basics; later advised on bargaining, on locations and landmarks. We sat and we walked and we stood and we sat and every night our mattresses were soft and blankets tucked tightly; all minds heavy like thick-bottomed boats.
It was exhausting.
After a month and a half of waking when I wanted, going where I wanted, doing what I wanted, contemplation and reflection spanning hours or afternoons, the continuity of it all threw me for an absolute loop. I couldn’t spend thirty minutes with a glass of tea and buttered baguette, a new sun painting soft lattices behind the legs of both me and my chair. No free lunch hour to shift on the green bars of a park bench, Al-Kitaab on one thigh, dried dates on the other.
And as if that weren’t enough, as if the assignments, the activities and nine-to-five (or six) educating weren’t wearing all on their lonesome, I was expected to TALK to people.
Like express myself. Articulate responses. And in English.
Like I conveyed to my dad, it’s a question of going from hermit to socialite. And the transition scrubs you down, wrings you out, and hangs you up to dry. A group of us partied that first night. And then Monday. And then Tuesday. And then Wednesday. And then I threw in the towel. Don’t misunderstand, I was glad at the start. Not only could I speak and be spoken to, bounce ideas and emotions off human beings, I was also able to assist in everyone else’s cultural- and spacial-transition. But just because I have information doesn’t mean I need feel responsible for sharing it. This I am learning. People can figure things out on their own. I did.
January’s close saw me tracing an Andalusian quarter; the serpentine road buckling back on itself like the forced pulse of free hands outside windy car windows. I have lived a Moroccan winter. My time here pre-class has worked to define and direct, to regulate my over-activity, to settle.
But it separates me.
Like the movie scenes where one person freezes in the center while everyone else fast-forwards around them. They are stoic, maybe seated, and their surroundings resemble only threads and blur. I see the students’ excitement, their panic and zeal. And I’m accidentally apart. I can take you to the Western Union, to the Arab Bank, to a cell phone kiosk. The wireless café is there. This theater shows Moroccan films. Chocolate…yeah I know a place. And this street takes you past the closest grocery. The English bookstore. The Botanical Gardens. Rabat’s beach. Each minaret does a recitation. If they have pits then they are dates, not figs. Usually the pastille is topped with sugar and cinnamon. It’s “khams”, Mohammad Al Khams. The hijab can be pinned, but it’s easier just to tuck. He’s asking you your age.
Here, I’ll show you.
Thursday, I listened to nervous run-ons while the rest of the circle crossed their arms and offered up soft-ended questions as the home-stay families arrived. I was thankful for my own stillness. My deodorant was not tested; I didn’t worry my schedule into soft folds.
But it would be nice just to relate. I didn’t chew my nails before the cross-town drop-off or pull shyly at an earring during the bargaining excursion and none of this would be annoying in the slightest if one other student… I don’t know, matched?
“Vivian” is old; the wrinkles of her face leaving little room for features. She dramatically clutches her chest; tambourines thick, hennaed fingers against a tea tray and dances in the kitchen for me. “Shooma,” she says, scooting me from the suds and dinner dishes, shame. After each meal she discretely removes her bottom teeth at the sink, throwing back bubbled murmurs in deep dialect over her shoulder. Talking. Always. To the bed, her soup, a wall, the kitchen, her daughter.
Sometimes “Sidda” responds. Thick wrists white and round, she humors her mother when necessary and forgets that I know no French. The first evening we only exchanged one word in English: “pantry”. She sends me kisses across the green-tiled riad, pinches my cheeks in the tv room. “Youmkin aghasel melabissi?” I ask, filthy, January clothes falling from my arms. We pull out the tiny electric washer, “Sidda” pointing, pulling. I bail buckets of warm water into its cavity, spinning the plastic dial and watching the soap swish right and left.
Upon entrance of my first load the water turns black.
Instantly.
Like the color of dirty, highway snow and the women get wide eyes.
We rinse, wring, carrying buckets of clothes and pins up one staircase. And then another, until we break into the warm butter sun of a rooftop in a sea of rooftops; corrugated covers, cement and plaster, satellites, everything square, a sky-scraping surface of clotheslines and canopies.
They introduce “Sidda’s” other siblings as her “little sister” and her “fat sister”. We sit around the low-lying table, my hands allowing space around the scalding glass of tea that steams from between them. The women boil milk, adding cubes of sugar and sometimes a spoonful of instant coffee. “Vivian” pulls out the white cake box. We eat oranges after meals. Or during them. And often in-between. Artfully maneuvering spoons, they peel tender meat from bones atop our couscous or stuff kefta sausages into flatbread sandwiches, piling them on the tablecloth before me. The women laugh, rewrap their scarves; they grab each others’ hands, gesture at breasts and eyes, talk too quickly about pains in their stomachs, their jaws. Wide hands separate long-stemmed herbs, peel pink and gold potato skins. “Vivian” touches her tongue to the top of a loaf, testing its age and leaving small patches of shine. Reclining, I run my knife beneath the paper-thin peels, looking from one face to the next, following voices and sometimes swatches of conversation.
Rabat is a dream.
But I am separate.
And the scariest thing is I kinda don’t care...
Self preservation is a skill to be sure, but what of self-fulfillment? Shouldn’t I crave peer relationships, exploration and experimentation? Wining and dining and awkwardly practicing Arabic (and French)? Tripping over curbs and swaggering in skinny jeans?
That initial electricity has calmed. My encompassing contentment so unlike the students’ thrill, their delight in the unknown.
But mashallah, seheeh?
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Shower
Sit tight, child-of-mine. This one’s a doozy.
The night I left Oman it rained. Not a delicate or benevolent rain, not a rain to lift the indolent jasmine or relieve the wheezing desert date palm. It was a heavy-handed scourge; a storm of the gods one could say (but only in passing for even this would hint at sacrilege if "There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah")
Meadow and I stuffed rags beneath the door frames and reached out our curious fingers beyond the overhang to test the veracity of such a scarce and sacred shower.
But the water came too fast and too fierce to seduce and then quench the barren desert. She required gentle intonations in the bedroom to let down her guard, not the violence and excess that flooded our streets. We threw my luggage over what was once a curb but was now a levee and then I was gone. I think Oman wept with relief that night.
I know exactly why this account is so tardy, the bulk is intimidating.
- See there? Even now I’m unsure as to how to attack
In Casablanca, moss grew in the underpass along the train track; it painted the cracks of stone walls. There were trees in the parks and grass on the medians and mold in the grout and on the ceiling and in my lungs.
I rode the train from the airport; high backed brown leather and a ticketmaster’s silver punch. Coming from the wet heat of the Gulf, Morocco’s damp winter was a welcomed relief. And then an absolute nightmare. One does not easily transition from scorching to soggy; I had little clothing for climate numero dos. Basically it had never really occurred to me that Africa could know winter.
I remember watching the window as our plane swooped toward tarmac, up until the jarring jolt when rubber met road, I remember thinking you aren’t there yet, you can still take it back. But the plane hit and I bit (the bullet, so to speak) and decided to let Morocco do with me what she would.
That first afternoon in the hostel I slept. Actually I spent a lot of time in bed those few weeks in Casa, willing myself into the unconscious, or at least trying to, for the city was not as endless as I had dreamt.
It took little time to accept that the sheets were clean but the bed was not, the shower was hot if you followed someone who had paid for heated water, no, your orange juice couldn’t be exchanged for another glass of blissfully steaming mint tea, and of course it would begin to rain while you were strolling sans-umbrella.
I spent as much time as the weather allowed in exploration; my pointy leather slippers damp from brown puddles and cat piss, their red dye bleeding onto my heels. From coarse wooden carts I bought swollen avocados, bananas of the purest yellow. As in Oman, I purchased, and ate, dried dates by the kilo, sucking the familiar meat from their pits. In the heart of the medina we shoppers walked single file between stands and shops. Butchers flayed and cut before us, using pulleys to hoist rib racks into the air, organizing organs along their sticky sills. Mounds of stemmed oranges, lemons, freckled pears, and apples the size of grapefruits stood stacked pyramid-style on threadbare tarps. Powdered cumin, cinnamon, saffron, cloves rose like colored sand from their cuffed, burlap bags. Khobz halu, khobz taweel, round loaves so fresh and warm that passing bread buggies on the street felt like going indoors. Tiny turtles crawled over one another, their front feet pointing oddly inward, beside iced boxes of mussels, fish waiting to be de-scaled. But once my brain had carbon copied the labyrinth souks into its juicy folds I realized that I was bored.
When booking my stay at the hostel, the online service allowed only for the reservation of double rooms (which, flying solo, I didn’t need) and only for a period of 6 days or less (which, needing housing till my parents arrived, could appear problematic). But, knowing my own susceptibility for anxiety concerning the prospect of instability, I booked that room, for those days, figuring that I could move to a dorm bed post reservation and prior to my family’s yuletide vaca. I spoke to many hostel employees (in both English and Arabic) about the situation, each in turn assuring me (in both Arabic and English) that when the time came, the transition would be swift and effortless.
(It’s important here to note that part of my persistence resulted from the fact that a large party of Moroccans, maybe 30+, were currently residing in the hostel, leaving me unsure as to whether there really would be a bed available for me once my six days were up. Some mornings required the rearrangement of furniture in the two-story main room to accommodate my one-person breakfast tray complete with packets each of butter and jam, and a basket with three small baguette cross-sections, and, to my eternal am-delight, a small square croissant containing a thin strip of chocolate frosting at its base, so thin in fact that in the beginning I avoided the brown smudge completely, assuming its origins were of relation to cockroach or mouse. But I digress –)
The morning of my twenty-foot-transfer, I packed my bags and informed the hostel employee that I was ready, doggoneit, move me. But it was Thin-Grumpy-Gray-Shoes and not Balding-Pate-Club-Hand, and as I should have now come to expect from a man of his demeanor, he looked at me like I was stark-raving-mad, like I had requested THREE glasses of tea for breakfast.
He explained to me that they didn’t have any room with dorm beds. “Where is this room?” he demanded. And besides, ALL of the Moroccan people are here and “you don’t want to be with these people.”
Well, I thought to myself, if you’re telling me not to stay in your establishment, I’m inclined to listen.
Which only left the small question of “where in God’s name am I going to sleep tonight?” To which Gray-Shoes reluctantly, but successfully all the same, tied a few knots in the souk streets with me riding his skinny tail, landing me at the grand-o Hotel Victorie.
Here, behind the shuttered window of my inner room I wrapped and rewrapped Christmas presents for my family, organized and reorganized my humble windowsill pantry, packed and repacked my bloated black bags.
It was here with my face beside redundantly geometric tiles and my hands wrinkled and slick from the moisture I brought in via umbrella and jean hems, that I came to two life-realizations. The air in my room was so damp, the rain outside loud enough to penetrate the heavy, arched front door and subsequent hallway, that if it had been hot you could have steam cooked me like sticky rice.
But it was not hot. In fact it was cold. And that was worse.
This life was both easier and harder than that of the hostel (I use the term “life” here loosely since I was in both establishments for a combined 14 days). Unlike my previous accommodations, in Hotel Vic I had a socket. Yes siree bob. An electrical outlet, and I can’t emphasize the importance of this small wonder for my nightly dinner-and-a-movie dates (by plug-powered laptop) with me myself and I. However, at the Vic we were most definitely not provided with breakfast, which was no real issue, but the fact that the sheets were not clean, that I had to lie among and between the stains and hairs and dust of Lord knows who was immensely unsettling.
It was also impossible for a shower to be hot since there was only one knob. And one pipe. And doll, it wasn't attached to a water heater. Thus, there was one temp.
I didn’t expect hot water, and so this was no real bee-in-my-bonnet, but you better believe I craved it.
- Why bother, you ask? If I woke each day cold and wet why make the conscious decision to strip down in a tiled room with a window in the door (which reminds me of another story…) and CHOOSE to amplify, and thus extend and maintain my coldness and wetness?
Well pal, when you are in that position, that position of exceedingly limited choices, the few choices you can make, you do make. So when the choice came as to whether I would go to sleep each night in my grimy bed cold-wet-and-dirty or cold-wet-and-clean, I took the decision seriously, for it was one I was at liberty to make.
Not that all this fancy-talk, high-fallutin’ attempt at justification made the experience any more enjoyable. It was always a brief adventure, I made sure of that, and one that would take at least a day and a half between each bout, either to build up the mental stamina or to allow time for the Goosebumps to flatten.
I would turn on the water and race to the other side of the room. Holding my breath I would run in and out of the ample arctic stream depending on what stage of dry, soapy, sudsy, rinse that I was experiencing. You may think that the jogging would have made the situation more endurable, that sprinting circles among the white ceramic would have worked up a sweat to balance the shivers. What a stupid thing to think.
So filled with piss and vinegar as I was post shower, squeaky clean but chilled to the bone, I would often throw caution to the wind and frequent the local Café du Thé for a piping hot pot in the Moroccan style of loose mint and loads of sugar, a very unwomanly thing to do. Especially a white woman. Especially a white woman unescorted. AND in the late afternoon.
But, as adamant as I usually was about keeping a low profile, flying under the radar, and not rocking the Berber boat, I just wanted an f-ing cup of tea.
Hotel Victoire’s toilet situation never failed to call to mind both the hilarity and the degradation of the human race. In order to use the restroom, one was required not only to turn all dials to “Adventure”, but also to make the conscious down-shift into low-maintenance-mode.
The downstairs facilities were of the Turkish flavor, a detail that didn’t bother me in the slightest. No, I would have to say it was the stench, the absolute peel-paint-off-the-walls, hello-and-welcome-to-the-sewers-of-hell, sulfur-and-rot-and-mildewed-basement-of-my-nightmares odor that really threw the stick between my spokes. Before entrance, one found it necessary to steel one’s nerves and take a deep breath, since fresh air dwelt not in the company of that pit, which was only a problem because the door, water-logged and only connected to its frame via the single, highest hinge, required that one not only squat above the porcelain reincarnation of death-as-odor itself, but to lean forward far enough to hold the door – not closed, but less ajar – all the while not breathing and trying God knows how hard not to pee on one’s shoes.
- Why, you ask as before, why not use the upstairs bathroom?
I will tell you that I have never been one to devote much thought to toilets, and I’ve definitely never thought of them as being animate. But if that toilet were living, if it could act, I know we would have had a suicide on our hands, ladies and gentleman, that porcelain pot would have offed itself in hopes of some world beyond this one, leaving us to the mercy of his flat-faced brother downstairs. It’s not that this toilet had never been clean, I’m not totally convinced it had ever been flushed. And I say this not just because of what I saw, which was plenty, but because of what I didn’t: no handle to hurry an upheaval, no cord to commence a surge. Just old friend gravity. And a toilet that wanted to die.
- But get on with it, you egg. What inner insanity-turned-epiphany did you unearth? What were the realizations you mentioned??
First, I should note that I can only speak for myself, but I have come to find that being alone with one’s thoughts, and I mean alone with no distraction but what the brain can procure, is an exercise in both strength and endurance.
And is as sure a way as any to guarantee one’s descent into some lunacy or another.
Secondly, I must say that one realization led to the other, and this being the case, the two are ruefully intertwined, even with their possible contradictions.
1) Although a person can get used to anything, we each require different but particular conditions to make us feel human. I will shit in your Turkish toilet in rural Oman and clean myself with the flaccid hose. I will pick ants off my pillow and foreign hairs from my dishes, I will eat soggy bread without wincing and canned paté with a plastic fork. I will wear the same shirt for a week straight, go without shaving indefinitely, laugh at the prospect of putting on makeup and I will do these things for as long as you ask me to and I will never feel less human for it, it will never deprive me of my electricity, my living. However, if ever in this life I have NO prospect for clean sheets, if there comes a time when a hot shower is NOT in my eventual future, I will give up. I’ve gone without these two things before. It was there and I did it and it’s done. And I never want to do it again.
2) Understanding that one’s own humanity can be broken down into such small, trivial activities puts things in perspective. It’s strange to think about all the things that really aren’t so bothersome once they become mandatory, commonplace. Similarly it’s revealing to discover what petty circumstances are core to the health of one’s sanity. I would have never thought that clean sheets and hot showers would be worth more to me than the much more vast genres of good food and bodily-maintenance. But then, I didn’t decide this fact as much as it was something determined outside of my involvement, bringing me to my second key realization – understanding the absolute differences between wants and needs. Having never really considered it before, I see now the immense divide, and the implications thereof.
A need is something chosen for us, it is beyond us and therefore hierarchically above us, one could say. We need shelter, we need food, our bodies require that we sleep that we breathe. In that these are necessities, that we couldn’t survive without eating or drinking, without rest, they become impersonal. I do not have a say in whether I breathe; to live, I must, so it's not very... interesting. It is for this reason that wants are so key.
Wants demonstrate the mind’s, the body’s ability to choose, they express consideration and preference and intimate contemplation. To need a thing shows no passion because there is no selection, it is required. But to want a thing, now that is an emotion, that is a yearning beyond basic physical upkeep or mental maintenance. Wanting an achievement, a condition, a good, wanting a feeling, wanting a person – these are intimate, intense emotions in that the wanter consciously chose the wantee, and choice being outside the realm of the inherent, being remotely distant from what is innate or necessary, is thus the most valuable human condition that we have to offer.
(It is this difference, this articulation between the required and the desired, that needs to lead to a conversation after I return, a pending conversation that merely awaits my having the guts to initiate it)
Like most grown men I had seen in Morocco, the owner of the Vic was a smoker. This was a fact that established itself rather covertly, there were no skinny French Gauloises between calloused fingers or blunted butts beneath scuffed soles. Rather it was the flap of phlegm in his cough and the gray strings of liquid lung in the sink each morning when I brushed my teeth. He rattled and hacked and shook free greater and more impressive globules so that I marveled at his ability to take breath at all. Afternoons were spent in the faux-leather furniture of the Hotel’s “lobby” with his similarly-circumstanced friend, fumbling over creased playing cards, worn into ovals from use. Rarely they spoke, and when they did it was the unhurried and indifferent intonation of very old friends, a cadence employed between those who already knew it and didn't need to reiterate.
I found a nearby sandwich stand that became my favorite local haunt. I would order an omelette, be-dune fromage, be-dune chips, which, in the scrambled French-English-Arabic of Morocco meant only an egg sandwich without cheese or French fries. The bread was so warm, the omelette so moist, and the 5dh price tag ($0.66) so ridiculous, I returned often, and how.
And so I lived, counting down with ferocious accuracy the hours until my family arrived, the hours until the plane caught current over the East Coast and then the Atlantic, followed by Europe. And even as it did, and they did, when those three single-filed out of the terminal doors I started to cry and for a minute had nothing to say.
Surely you must know what it’s like to be absolutely unequivocally alone, it’s probably one of those dreaded-but-necessary trials on the path toward adulthood. And if you understand the being of absolutely unequivocally alone, then you also recognize when you’re not. I thought of few things else in the preceding weeks. I wanted to see them, be mashed up beside them, between them. I wanted the three of them to hold me up, to pull out a chair, to be something soft but structured. Tired of the responsibility and monotony of total independence, someone take care of me dammit! my entirety shouted. And they did.
And I reveled in it. And rebelled from it. Gasped for air, but wanted to dive deeper.
Christmas night we exchanged presents. I distributed the Omani trinkets I had bought and wrapped. And rewrapped. I slept three hours that first night. Some would blame the treats my mom had packed for me, the homemade truffles and ginger cookies, the Good & Plenty’s, the peppermint marshmallows. But really it was because I didn’t want to miss it. Dear God please let me hold on to this to them to them here with me
The four of us wined and dined our way across the West Africa coast from Casablanca to Rabat, storing Morocco in our bellies, under our fingernails and in our eyes. Lindsay’s French was essential to the success of the visit. Toward the end we commented on her necessity with regards to reading menus. It was joked that if it weren’t for my sister and I, we would have never gone anywhere (Arabic – taxi drivers) and we would have never eaten anything (French – restaurants). And thus, if left to the devices of our parents, the four of us would never have left the airport and we would have starved to death. Not really. But kinda.
Together we wound through souks, saw the sites, we walked and walked and walked and although I was admittedly a tangled skein of stress on more than one occasion, feeling (inaccurately, of course) that I was responsible for the day-to-day administrative tasks of the vacation, it was such a relief to be on their role-call, their roster, to be staying somewhere under their name, to walk or talk or sit or sleep under their surveillance. I wasn’t alone. And the only “alone” I had dabbled in was a Casablanca variety that hadn’t sat well in my stomach.
Their last night, New Year’s Eve, we spent in a posh, rural guesthouse, heavy curtains, four post bed, crevettes and entremets, pâté de foie gras with thick copper jelly and vin vin vin. I didn’t want to go to sleep to wake up.
I was afraid, alright?
I said it. Don’t look at me like that. You must know what it’s like to be afraid.
But Rabat proved to be a horse of a different color. I keep telling the plethora of Canadians (weird, right?) that make their way through my Auberge de Jeunesse, Casablanca might have been residential, but Rabat feels livable.
The first thing I did was buy a set of bed sheets.
Directly outside the rust colored walls of the old medina, I wake each morning, sometimes earlier sometimes later, but never do I get out of bed before 8:30. Madam, that is a rule. Breakfast is served until nine and I like to make it out to the patio by quarter-till so that my Pouty-Faced-Habeebty doesn’t feel like she’s working overtime for my sake. Depending on the current hostel-holding for the morning, she tears me off either a half, third, or forth of baguette, plops it into the unraveling weave of a plastic basket, and pours me a cup of too-sweet mint tea. Ah-seer? Na-am, shukran, I say and begrudgedly she returns to the kitchen to retrieve my orange juice because you see, some morning I don’t have juice, and some I do. Just keeping her on her toes. I try to be the last resident on the patio (which is often easy since some nights I’m the only female guest) and I scoot the stubborn legs of my plastic chair into a spot in the sun (because some days we have sun!) and soak in the yellowgold like the lizards that skitter along our bathroom walls. My loving, if grumpy, Habeebty always tosses paisley-shaped bowls of butter and apricot jam into the center of our tables to prompt the communal feeding frenzy and although I never had a taste for it back home, the near-white butter draws my knife like flypaper, I dream of this cream and its tiny smooth taste. The marmalade is either orange and chunky or bronze and thin, but always, always it is too sweet and I avoid it, choosing instead its delicate and pale neighbor.
And the shower, oh the shower! Each morning, when I just can’t WAIT any longer, I throw the latch on the 3rd door from the right and wait until steam seeps hauntingly out the small slot of window above. And then, then it’s ah hamda allah, wall-a he, wall-a HE I speak in ferocious whispers. The stream is sporadic and splayed, its pin-holed head silly and dented and it’s my God, thank you, THANK YOU.
I spend each day differently. I like to have a single goal for each, and let the rest fill itself in as it sees fit. “Find the English Bookstore” happened last week, “Locate all three CCCL buildings” and “Buy a pair of good boots” were checked off long before. Frequently I have “Finish next internship application!” or “Get thee to a cyber café!”, but on certain special occasions the lists have included “See a movie at the cinema” and “ATM day!”
January 15th marked the dead-center-day of my stay in Rabat pre-classes. And, having survived so finely, and, being a dessert fiend as I am, I decided on this day to visit La Comédie, the Patisserie Boulangerie Café du Thé that I had often passed and just as often nearly fainted from the incredibly fine smells that wafted from its storefront. Flies, big and juicy as half-dried raisins tiptoed their impossibly sticky feet from pear tart to honey scone to buttered-almond-strudel-croissant, lifting in waves that resettled methodically after any half-hearted swat. But then, such is life. The dessert fork and knife that was placed beside my luscious slice of chocolate-almond-tart were delicate and miniature and I spent the afternoon in crosswords and amandes.
Crosswords occupy a good portion of my time, actually. My parents were good enough to procure not just edible treats, but literary ones as well. I divide my days between said “goal”, English crosswords, Arabic textbooks, Arabic journaling, walking walking walking and reading, attempting as much of this as possible in the quaint city park near my address. Even here, however, my guard must remain on full-alert, for although unwanted male attention isn’t considered the woman’s fault and thus the woman’s problem as was the case in Oman, the harassment is relentless. Bonjour, çe va? Since Casablanca: Day 1 Moroccan men have been grinding my gears, but when I am seated in the sun on a bench in the park, and the other half of the bench is vacant… well honey, I’m just asking for trouble. Ignoring an individual is less affective when they are in your face, when you are both stationary. There is nowhere to run.
January 18th – 130pm-230pm
#1
_ Gobbledy-gook-in-French
La attakalam faransia (I don’t speak French.)
_ Ah. English? (Hm. English?)
Na-am (Yes.)
_ I would, oo-reed, uh, have coffee with you? (Would you like to get coffee?)
La. Shukran. (No. Thank you.)
_ Ha! Layesh? (You are so funny! – Why not?)
El-ann la oo-reed. (Because I don’t want.)
_ You are English? (You are from England?)
La, ana min America. (No, I am from America.)
_ Ha! Oh! I do not like Americans. (Woah! I don’t like Americans.)
Ay-owa. (Ok.)
_ You are teacher? (She has an Arabic textbook – Are you a teacher?)
La. Tauleba. (No. Student.)
_ You are married? (Why isn’t this working? She must be married – Are you married?)
Na-am. (DearGodsaveme – Absolutely.)
_ Ah. Still I would like coffee? (Eh, whatever – So about that coffee?)
LA. Shukran. (NO. Thank you.)
…
#2
Bonjour, çe va?
…
#3
Bonjour, çe va?
…
#4
_ Bonjour. Something-in-French.
La attakalam faransia (I don’t speak French.)
_ Ah. English? (Hm. English?)
Na-am (Yes.)
_ You are English? (You are from England?)
La, ana min America. (No, I am from America.)
Ha! Oh! I LIKE Americans. (Woah! I LIKE Americans.)
…
The pigeons at our feet stage an impeccable impression of the very human goings-on above. Ducking and diving, the gals work ceaselessly in their efforts to avoid contact with the fanned and unfurled feathers of the dancing, weaving, pursuing males. How difficult to get one’s work done, to find enough small seeds and breadcrumbs, to survive the daily grind all on its own without having to worry about the obnoxious, aggressive persistence of these puffy, pacing roosters, these chunky-chested Charlies. Willowy and wearied, the small lady pigeons look up at me and in that second we are no longer categorized by feathers or fur, as avian or Sapien, our mouths seek the same snide remarks, our brains one-track and I nod toward her skittering form you SAID it, sister.
my very own "a day in the life" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viJau06bIxE
The night I left Oman it rained. Not a delicate or benevolent rain, not a rain to lift the indolent jasmine or relieve the wheezing desert date palm. It was a heavy-handed scourge; a storm of the gods one could say (but only in passing for even this would hint at sacrilege if "There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah")
Meadow and I stuffed rags beneath the door frames and reached out our curious fingers beyond the overhang to test the veracity of such a scarce and sacred shower.
But the water came too fast and too fierce to seduce and then quench the barren desert. She required gentle intonations in the bedroom to let down her guard, not the violence and excess that flooded our streets. We threw my luggage over what was once a curb but was now a levee and then I was gone. I think Oman wept with relief that night.
I know exactly why this account is so tardy, the bulk is intimidating.
- See there? Even now I’m unsure as to how to attack
In Casablanca, moss grew in the underpass along the train track; it painted the cracks of stone walls. There were trees in the parks and grass on the medians and mold in the grout and on the ceiling and in my lungs.
I rode the train from the airport; high backed brown leather and a ticketmaster’s silver punch. Coming from the wet heat of the Gulf, Morocco’s damp winter was a welcomed relief. And then an absolute nightmare. One does not easily transition from scorching to soggy; I had little clothing for climate numero dos. Basically it had never really occurred to me that Africa could know winter.
I remember watching the window as our plane swooped toward tarmac, up until the jarring jolt when rubber met road, I remember thinking you aren’t there yet, you can still take it back. But the plane hit and I bit (the bullet, so to speak) and decided to let Morocco do with me what she would.
That first afternoon in the hostel I slept. Actually I spent a lot of time in bed those few weeks in Casa, willing myself into the unconscious, or at least trying to, for the city was not as endless as I had dreamt.
It took little time to accept that the sheets were clean but the bed was not, the shower was hot if you followed someone who had paid for heated water, no, your orange juice couldn’t be exchanged for another glass of blissfully steaming mint tea, and of course it would begin to rain while you were strolling sans-umbrella.
I spent as much time as the weather allowed in exploration; my pointy leather slippers damp from brown puddles and cat piss, their red dye bleeding onto my heels. From coarse wooden carts I bought swollen avocados, bananas of the purest yellow. As in Oman, I purchased, and ate, dried dates by the kilo, sucking the familiar meat from their pits. In the heart of the medina we shoppers walked single file between stands and shops. Butchers flayed and cut before us, using pulleys to hoist rib racks into the air, organizing organs along their sticky sills. Mounds of stemmed oranges, lemons, freckled pears, and apples the size of grapefruits stood stacked pyramid-style on threadbare tarps. Powdered cumin, cinnamon, saffron, cloves rose like colored sand from their cuffed, burlap bags. Khobz halu, khobz taweel, round loaves so fresh and warm that passing bread buggies on the street felt like going indoors. Tiny turtles crawled over one another, their front feet pointing oddly inward, beside iced boxes of mussels, fish waiting to be de-scaled. But once my brain had carbon copied the labyrinth souks into its juicy folds I realized that I was bored.
When booking my stay at the hostel, the online service allowed only for the reservation of double rooms (which, flying solo, I didn’t need) and only for a period of 6 days or less (which, needing housing till my parents arrived, could appear problematic). But, knowing my own susceptibility for anxiety concerning the prospect of instability, I booked that room, for those days, figuring that I could move to a dorm bed post reservation and prior to my family’s yuletide vaca. I spoke to many hostel employees (in both English and Arabic) about the situation, each in turn assuring me (in both Arabic and English) that when the time came, the transition would be swift and effortless.
(It’s important here to note that part of my persistence resulted from the fact that a large party of Moroccans, maybe 30+, were currently residing in the hostel, leaving me unsure as to whether there really would be a bed available for me once my six days were up. Some mornings required the rearrangement of furniture in the two-story main room to accommodate my one-person breakfast tray complete with packets each of butter and jam, and a basket with three small baguette cross-sections, and, to my eternal am-delight, a small square croissant containing a thin strip of chocolate frosting at its base, so thin in fact that in the beginning I avoided the brown smudge completely, assuming its origins were of relation to cockroach or mouse. But I digress –)
The morning of my twenty-foot-transfer, I packed my bags and informed the hostel employee that I was ready, doggoneit, move me. But it was Thin-Grumpy-Gray-Shoes and not Balding-Pate-Club-Hand, and as I should have now come to expect from a man of his demeanor, he looked at me like I was stark-raving-mad, like I had requested THREE glasses of tea for breakfast.
He explained to me that they didn’t have any room with dorm beds. “Where is this room?” he demanded. And besides, ALL of the Moroccan people are here and “you don’t want to be with these people.”
Well, I thought to myself, if you’re telling me not to stay in your establishment, I’m inclined to listen.
Which only left the small question of “where in God’s name am I going to sleep tonight?” To which Gray-Shoes reluctantly, but successfully all the same, tied a few knots in the souk streets with me riding his skinny tail, landing me at the grand-o Hotel Victorie.
Here, behind the shuttered window of my inner room I wrapped and rewrapped Christmas presents for my family, organized and reorganized my humble windowsill pantry, packed and repacked my bloated black bags.
It was here with my face beside redundantly geometric tiles and my hands wrinkled and slick from the moisture I brought in via umbrella and jean hems, that I came to two life-realizations. The air in my room was so damp, the rain outside loud enough to penetrate the heavy, arched front door and subsequent hallway, that if it had been hot you could have steam cooked me like sticky rice.
But it was not hot. In fact it was cold. And that was worse.
This life was both easier and harder than that of the hostel (I use the term “life” here loosely since I was in both establishments for a combined 14 days). Unlike my previous accommodations, in Hotel Vic I had a socket. Yes siree bob. An electrical outlet, and I can’t emphasize the importance of this small wonder for my nightly dinner-and-a-movie dates (by plug-powered laptop) with me myself and I. However, at the Vic we were most definitely not provided with breakfast, which was no real issue, but the fact that the sheets were not clean, that I had to lie among and between the stains and hairs and dust of Lord knows who was immensely unsettling.
It was also impossible for a shower to be hot since there was only one knob. And one pipe. And doll, it wasn't attached to a water heater. Thus, there was one temp.
I didn’t expect hot water, and so this was no real bee-in-my-bonnet, but you better believe I craved it.
- Why bother, you ask? If I woke each day cold and wet why make the conscious decision to strip down in a tiled room with a window in the door (which reminds me of another story…) and CHOOSE to amplify, and thus extend and maintain my coldness and wetness?
Well pal, when you are in that position, that position of exceedingly limited choices, the few choices you can make, you do make. So when the choice came as to whether I would go to sleep each night in my grimy bed cold-wet-and-dirty or cold-wet-and-clean, I took the decision seriously, for it was one I was at liberty to make.
Not that all this fancy-talk, high-fallutin’ attempt at justification made the experience any more enjoyable. It was always a brief adventure, I made sure of that, and one that would take at least a day and a half between each bout, either to build up the mental stamina or to allow time for the Goosebumps to flatten.
I would turn on the water and race to the other side of the room. Holding my breath I would run in and out of the ample arctic stream depending on what stage of dry, soapy, sudsy, rinse that I was experiencing. You may think that the jogging would have made the situation more endurable, that sprinting circles among the white ceramic would have worked up a sweat to balance the shivers. What a stupid thing to think.
So filled with piss and vinegar as I was post shower, squeaky clean but chilled to the bone, I would often throw caution to the wind and frequent the local Café du Thé for a piping hot pot in the Moroccan style of loose mint and loads of sugar, a very unwomanly thing to do. Especially a white woman. Especially a white woman unescorted. AND in the late afternoon.
But, as adamant as I usually was about keeping a low profile, flying under the radar, and not rocking the Berber boat, I just wanted an f-ing cup of tea.
Hotel Victoire’s toilet situation never failed to call to mind both the hilarity and the degradation of the human race. In order to use the restroom, one was required not only to turn all dials to “Adventure”, but also to make the conscious down-shift into low-maintenance-mode.
The downstairs facilities were of the Turkish flavor, a detail that didn’t bother me in the slightest. No, I would have to say it was the stench, the absolute peel-paint-off-the-walls, hello-and-welcome-to-the-sewers-of-hell, sulfur-and-rot-and-mildewed-basement-of-my-nightmares odor that really threw the stick between my spokes. Before entrance, one found it necessary to steel one’s nerves and take a deep breath, since fresh air dwelt not in the company of that pit, which was only a problem because the door, water-logged and only connected to its frame via the single, highest hinge, required that one not only squat above the porcelain reincarnation of death-as-odor itself, but to lean forward far enough to hold the door – not closed, but less ajar – all the while not breathing and trying God knows how hard not to pee on one’s shoes.
- Why, you ask as before, why not use the upstairs bathroom?
I will tell you that I have never been one to devote much thought to toilets, and I’ve definitely never thought of them as being animate. But if that toilet were living, if it could act, I know we would have had a suicide on our hands, ladies and gentleman, that porcelain pot would have offed itself in hopes of some world beyond this one, leaving us to the mercy of his flat-faced brother downstairs. It’s not that this toilet had never been clean, I’m not totally convinced it had ever been flushed. And I say this not just because of what I saw, which was plenty, but because of what I didn’t: no handle to hurry an upheaval, no cord to commence a surge. Just old friend gravity. And a toilet that wanted to die.
- But get on with it, you egg. What inner insanity-turned-epiphany did you unearth? What were the realizations you mentioned??
First, I should note that I can only speak for myself, but I have come to find that being alone with one’s thoughts, and I mean alone with no distraction but what the brain can procure, is an exercise in both strength and endurance.
And is as sure a way as any to guarantee one’s descent into some lunacy or another.
Secondly, I must say that one realization led to the other, and this being the case, the two are ruefully intertwined, even with their possible contradictions.
1) Although a person can get used to anything, we each require different but particular conditions to make us feel human. I will shit in your Turkish toilet in rural Oman and clean myself with the flaccid hose. I will pick ants off my pillow and foreign hairs from my dishes, I will eat soggy bread without wincing and canned paté with a plastic fork. I will wear the same shirt for a week straight, go without shaving indefinitely, laugh at the prospect of putting on makeup and I will do these things for as long as you ask me to and I will never feel less human for it, it will never deprive me of my electricity, my living. However, if ever in this life I have NO prospect for clean sheets, if there comes a time when a hot shower is NOT in my eventual future, I will give up. I’ve gone without these two things before. It was there and I did it and it’s done. And I never want to do it again.
2) Understanding that one’s own humanity can be broken down into such small, trivial activities puts things in perspective. It’s strange to think about all the things that really aren’t so bothersome once they become mandatory, commonplace. Similarly it’s revealing to discover what petty circumstances are core to the health of one’s sanity. I would have never thought that clean sheets and hot showers would be worth more to me than the much more vast genres of good food and bodily-maintenance. But then, I didn’t decide this fact as much as it was something determined outside of my involvement, bringing me to my second key realization – understanding the absolute differences between wants and needs. Having never really considered it before, I see now the immense divide, and the implications thereof.
A need is something chosen for us, it is beyond us and therefore hierarchically above us, one could say. We need shelter, we need food, our bodies require that we sleep that we breathe. In that these are necessities, that we couldn’t survive without eating or drinking, without rest, they become impersonal. I do not have a say in whether I breathe; to live, I must, so it's not very... interesting. It is for this reason that wants are so key.
Wants demonstrate the mind’s, the body’s ability to choose, they express consideration and preference and intimate contemplation. To need a thing shows no passion because there is no selection, it is required. But to want a thing, now that is an emotion, that is a yearning beyond basic physical upkeep or mental maintenance. Wanting an achievement, a condition, a good, wanting a feeling, wanting a person – these are intimate, intense emotions in that the wanter consciously chose the wantee, and choice being outside the realm of the inherent, being remotely distant from what is innate or necessary, is thus the most valuable human condition that we have to offer.
(It is this difference, this articulation between the required and the desired, that needs to lead to a conversation after I return, a pending conversation that merely awaits my having the guts to initiate it)
Like most grown men I had seen in Morocco, the owner of the Vic was a smoker. This was a fact that established itself rather covertly, there were no skinny French Gauloises between calloused fingers or blunted butts beneath scuffed soles. Rather it was the flap of phlegm in his cough and the gray strings of liquid lung in the sink each morning when I brushed my teeth. He rattled and hacked and shook free greater and more impressive globules so that I marveled at his ability to take breath at all. Afternoons were spent in the faux-leather furniture of the Hotel’s “lobby” with his similarly-circumstanced friend, fumbling over creased playing cards, worn into ovals from use. Rarely they spoke, and when they did it was the unhurried and indifferent intonation of very old friends, a cadence employed between those who already knew it and didn't need to reiterate.
I found a nearby sandwich stand that became my favorite local haunt. I would order an omelette, be-dune fromage, be-dune chips, which, in the scrambled French-English-Arabic of Morocco meant only an egg sandwich without cheese or French fries. The bread was so warm, the omelette so moist, and the 5dh price tag ($0.66) so ridiculous, I returned often, and how.
And so I lived, counting down with ferocious accuracy the hours until my family arrived, the hours until the plane caught current over the East Coast and then the Atlantic, followed by Europe. And even as it did, and they did, when those three single-filed out of the terminal doors I started to cry and for a minute had nothing to say.
Surely you must know what it’s like to be absolutely unequivocally alone, it’s probably one of those dreaded-but-necessary trials on the path toward adulthood. And if you understand the being of absolutely unequivocally alone, then you also recognize when you’re not. I thought of few things else in the preceding weeks. I wanted to see them, be mashed up beside them, between them. I wanted the three of them to hold me up, to pull out a chair, to be something soft but structured. Tired of the responsibility and monotony of total independence, someone take care of me dammit! my entirety shouted. And they did.
And I reveled in it. And rebelled from it. Gasped for air, but wanted to dive deeper.
Christmas night we exchanged presents. I distributed the Omani trinkets I had bought and wrapped. And rewrapped. I slept three hours that first night. Some would blame the treats my mom had packed for me, the homemade truffles and ginger cookies, the Good & Plenty’s, the peppermint marshmallows. But really it was because I didn’t want to miss it. Dear God please let me hold on to this to them to them here with me
The four of us wined and dined our way across the West Africa coast from Casablanca to Rabat, storing Morocco in our bellies, under our fingernails and in our eyes. Lindsay’s French was essential to the success of the visit. Toward the end we commented on her necessity with regards to reading menus. It was joked that if it weren’t for my sister and I, we would have never gone anywhere (Arabic – taxi drivers) and we would have never eaten anything (French – restaurants). And thus, if left to the devices of our parents, the four of us would never have left the airport and we would have starved to death. Not really. But kinda.
Together we wound through souks, saw the sites, we walked and walked and walked and although I was admittedly a tangled skein of stress on more than one occasion, feeling (inaccurately, of course) that I was responsible for the day-to-day administrative tasks of the vacation, it was such a relief to be on their role-call, their roster, to be staying somewhere under their name, to walk or talk or sit or sleep under their surveillance. I wasn’t alone. And the only “alone” I had dabbled in was a Casablanca variety that hadn’t sat well in my stomach.
Their last night, New Year’s Eve, we spent in a posh, rural guesthouse, heavy curtains, four post bed, crevettes and entremets, pâté de foie gras with thick copper jelly and vin vin vin. I didn’t want to go to sleep to wake up.
I was afraid, alright?
I said it. Don’t look at me like that. You must know what it’s like to be afraid.
But Rabat proved to be a horse of a different color. I keep telling the plethora of Canadians (weird, right?) that make their way through my Auberge de Jeunesse, Casablanca might have been residential, but Rabat feels livable.
The first thing I did was buy a set of bed sheets.
Directly outside the rust colored walls of the old medina, I wake each morning, sometimes earlier sometimes later, but never do I get out of bed before 8:30. Madam, that is a rule. Breakfast is served until nine and I like to make it out to the patio by quarter-till so that my Pouty-Faced-Habeebty doesn’t feel like she’s working overtime for my sake. Depending on the current hostel-holding for the morning, she tears me off either a half, third, or forth of baguette, plops it into the unraveling weave of a plastic basket, and pours me a cup of too-sweet mint tea. Ah-seer? Na-am, shukran, I say and begrudgedly she returns to the kitchen to retrieve my orange juice because you see, some morning I don’t have juice, and some I do. Just keeping her on her toes. I try to be the last resident on the patio (which is often easy since some nights I’m the only female guest) and I scoot the stubborn legs of my plastic chair into a spot in the sun (because some days we have sun!) and soak in the yellowgold like the lizards that skitter along our bathroom walls. My loving, if grumpy, Habeebty always tosses paisley-shaped bowls of butter and apricot jam into the center of our tables to prompt the communal feeding frenzy and although I never had a taste for it back home, the near-white butter draws my knife like flypaper, I dream of this cream and its tiny smooth taste. The marmalade is either orange and chunky or bronze and thin, but always, always it is too sweet and I avoid it, choosing instead its delicate and pale neighbor.
And the shower, oh the shower! Each morning, when I just can’t WAIT any longer, I throw the latch on the 3rd door from the right and wait until steam seeps hauntingly out the small slot of window above. And then, then it’s ah hamda allah, wall-a he, wall-a HE I speak in ferocious whispers. The stream is sporadic and splayed, its pin-holed head silly and dented and it’s my God, thank you, THANK YOU.
I spend each day differently. I like to have a single goal for each, and let the rest fill itself in as it sees fit. “Find the English Bookstore” happened last week, “Locate all three CCCL buildings” and “Buy a pair of good boots” were checked off long before. Frequently I have “Finish next internship application!” or “Get thee to a cyber café!”, but on certain special occasions the lists have included “See a movie at the cinema” and “ATM day!”
January 15th marked the dead-center-day of my stay in Rabat pre-classes. And, having survived so finely, and, being a dessert fiend as I am, I decided on this day to visit La Comédie, the Patisserie Boulangerie Café du Thé that I had often passed and just as often nearly fainted from the incredibly fine smells that wafted from its storefront. Flies, big and juicy as half-dried raisins tiptoed their impossibly sticky feet from pear tart to honey scone to buttered-almond-strudel-croissant, lifting in waves that resettled methodically after any half-hearted swat. But then, such is life. The dessert fork and knife that was placed beside my luscious slice of chocolate-almond-tart were delicate and miniature and I spent the afternoon in crosswords and amandes.
Crosswords occupy a good portion of my time, actually. My parents were good enough to procure not just edible treats, but literary ones as well. I divide my days between said “goal”, English crosswords, Arabic textbooks, Arabic journaling, walking walking walking and reading, attempting as much of this as possible in the quaint city park near my address. Even here, however, my guard must remain on full-alert, for although unwanted male attention isn’t considered the woman’s fault and thus the woman’s problem as was the case in Oman, the harassment is relentless. Bonjour, çe va? Since Casablanca: Day 1 Moroccan men have been grinding my gears, but when I am seated in the sun on a bench in the park, and the other half of the bench is vacant… well honey, I’m just asking for trouble. Ignoring an individual is less affective when they are in your face, when you are both stationary. There is nowhere to run.
January 18th – 130pm-230pm
#1
_ Gobbledy-gook-in-French
La attakalam faransia (I don’t speak French.)
_ Ah. English? (Hm. English?)
Na-am (Yes.)
_ I would, oo-reed, uh, have coffee with you? (Would you like to get coffee?)
La. Shukran. (No. Thank you.)
_ Ha! Layesh? (You are so funny! – Why not?)
El-ann la oo-reed. (Because I don’t want.)
_ You are English? (You are from England?)
La, ana min America. (No, I am from America.)
_ Ha! Oh! I do not like Americans. (Woah! I don’t like Americans.)
Ay-owa. (Ok.)
_ You are teacher? (She has an Arabic textbook – Are you a teacher?)
La. Tauleba. (No. Student.)
_ You are married? (Why isn’t this working? She must be married – Are you married?)
Na-am. (DearGodsaveme – Absolutely.)
_ Ah. Still I would like coffee? (Eh, whatever – So about that coffee?)
LA. Shukran. (NO. Thank you.)
…
#2
Bonjour, çe va?
…
#3
Bonjour, çe va?
…
#4
_ Bonjour. Something-in-French.
La attakalam faransia (I don’t speak French.)
_ Ah. English? (Hm. English?)
Na-am (Yes.)
_ You are English? (You are from England?)
La, ana min America. (No, I am from America.)
Ha! Oh! I LIKE Americans. (Woah! I LIKE Americans.)
…
The pigeons at our feet stage an impeccable impression of the very human goings-on above. Ducking and diving, the gals work ceaselessly in their efforts to avoid contact with the fanned and unfurled feathers of the dancing, weaving, pursuing males. How difficult to get one’s work done, to find enough small seeds and breadcrumbs, to survive the daily grind all on its own without having to worry about the obnoxious, aggressive persistence of these puffy, pacing roosters, these chunky-chested Charlies. Willowy and wearied, the small lady pigeons look up at me and in that second we are no longer categorized by feathers or fur, as avian or Sapien, our mouths seek the same snide remarks, our brains one-track and I nod toward her skittering form you SAID it, sister.
my very own "a day in the life" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viJau06bIxE
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