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.


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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.



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