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