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?