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??
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
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?
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