A Month in Blog-Form

"Well, you know you make me wanna' (Shout) Kick my heels up and (Shout) Throw my hands up and (Shout) Throw my head back and (Shout) Come on now..." The soft rise and roll of the Middle Atlas blessed my eyes for miles on end. Brown and green hills spotted with shephards and sheep; autumn New England leaves in Switzerl-- Ifrane, that is: reds and yellows and pure bliss; forlorn tourist stands off-road attented by withering sun-swept men, jellaba-cloaked and tired. Nothing 'dramatic'. No sunset, no palmeries, no camels, no gorges, snake-charmers, or snow-capped peaks. No green mediterranean water, no "Rick's cafe", no awe-some kasbahs. Around a bend, and the first glimpse of white, sandstone, mud-straw buildings. SHOUT. The music pulsed and I pulsed with it. Alive, eyes drawn, heart pounding. Over a month ago, and yet my heart pulses again with mere recollection as I type. Return to Fes.

***

My Morocco is not a mystery, an exotic dream, Africa, an illusion. My Morocco is dusty. My Morocco is religious, medina streets (which may or may not be trash-spotted), traditional, boys in streets, cafes, talking to me while I pass by and pretend to be deaf. My Morocco is mint tea (the "unique" national drink that was, in fact, introduced by the British not so long ago) and fresh-squeezed orange juice, harira and tagines and coucous (ksk-ksu) fridays and shibekia. My Morocco is not flawless. My Morocco is the ElAamouri family, Bab Ziat, where prayer rugs come out five times daily as I ponder religion in my life and theirs. My Morocco is people fighting to survive, people surviving quite nicely, thank you, and the vast spectrum in between. My Morocco is darija and, to be frank, not french.

***

Nighttime, and I lie sprawled out in the saloon, blanket half over my legs, half over Ahmed's. Stuffed from fries, lemon chicken, and peach-lemon smoothie. Darija homework in my lap, English homework in his. Al Jazeera blabbers away.
--"She are going...?"
--"No, she is going."
--"Why?"
Words, "THE CORPORATION", flash on the screen in bold red letters, arabic underneath, and the american flag waves ominously in the backround.
~"shnu hadak brnammaj?" (what is that [tv] program?)
~"ma n3rf, shi haja 3la l'mirikan w Bush" (i don't know, something about america and bush)
~"iyea m3loum, welakin shnu akhor," (yea, of course, but what else)
From commercials back to the interview of an American Jewish lawyer defending the rights of Arabs in the States who have suffered in the wake of 9/11. My host mother and father pull me away from my books for half an hour to talk about jewish-muslim relations world wide and how many jews work side-by-side with arabs in america, morocco, globally. A similar conversation to the one I have nearly every night with them, each with a new dilemma or situation to contemplate. Israel/Palestine? Kosher/Hallal? Armies. Prayer. People.

***

I wander along remote and wind swept dirt roads lined by construction men and sparks, leaving early morning class at SACAL Fes. Across a large street, a beach is being built, apparently. There is no ocean or lake or body-of-water-suitable-for-a-beach in (very very inland)Fes. Strange? The sheep herd that lives on the first floor of the building next to SACAL grazes lazily amongst high-class complexes (moroccan suberbs, kind-of) that rise from the dust around me. I exchange "labas"s with the nike-suited shepherd, my friend. My mind wanders like my feet-- "helent?", no "helemt?" --as I stumble over new vocabulary and get confused with the word "I dreamed". After ten minutes, I arrive at the bus stop, where Moroccans stare at me like I arrived out of a space ship. Every day, the eyes. Foriegners don't take the bus.

***

Back from early morning class exhausted and hungry. Doorbell. "Shkun?" (Who?). Lauren. Wait a few moments. Door swings open suspiciously, revealing an empty hallway. Ahmed, I know you're there! But he isn't there, I realize after a few seconds of waiting stupidly on the doorstep for him to jump out. So I proceed towards the stairs and... "AH!" He jumps out, of course. Every single day. But I still scream, honestly surprised. Upstairs, food is cooking. I greet Fatima and ask permission to wash my clothes. "Only if I can help" she tells me, knowing that I will insist on doing it myself, but wishing to help my incompetant in-her-eyes self so that my clothes will actually end up cleaner than they already are. We run water. I scrub and scrub and then she tries to be sly in re-scrubbing everything that I finish with. Waste of time, you think? Not at all. Soap fights with Fatima and learning new vocabulary about sports-- this is her sport, and she is victorious, always. I stretch afterwards when my back aches while she laughs at me.

Up to the terrace to hang clothes. Other women are always on the terrace, it seems, hanging clothes and chatting. Today, a new woman is there, whom I greet despite her suspicious eyes (first time I encounter anything similar). She edges away from me and soon disappears indoors. She lives on the top, third, floor of our building. I find out that her husband "has a beard", Fatima says, "religious extremist", she says, "despises Americans", she enlightens me. "Has a problem in the head" Fatima tells me later. Interesting. Someone like me does not normally encouter someone like my upstairs neighbor. They do well at avoiding us. I wonder what a further encounter with her would be like? (only other attempts at such were with her husband who ignored me twice when greeted him with an "asalaam aleikum" when our paths crossed on the steps outside the building).

***

Zoom hours forward to nightime, sun has set and call to prayers have sounded. I sit reading homework in the saloon after having spent the afternoon with Fatima; we took a nap in the saloon (you have probably noticed that most of my time is spent here), I helped her begin dinner preparations, we drank tea (with her mint fresh from the north--none of the withered Fes stuff is allowed in the ElAamouri household), she told me a story about corrupt cops and her aunt, and now we relax with blankets around us. She watches the Moroccan cooking channel, I practice my vegetables.

Abderrahim arrives home from medrasa (school) around 6:30 where he teaches biology to high school students six to eight hours a day. Ahmed comes running upstairs soon after, throws his bags down and runs back out to play in the street. A high-ranked high school freshman, he has school 8-12 and 2-6 daily, with rotating subjects, from Quran to English, Science and Mathematics, Art, etc. Othman arrives home from vocational high school around 8pm where he spends his days learning tailor-ship and various handiman skills (his partial deafness is a problem in a country where the handicapped are rarely able to overcome anything other than unnoticeable dissabilities). We eat at 9.

***

I half-run after Fatima as we make our way uphill towards Bou Jeloud. Noone harasses me when I walk in her shadow. She struts proudly, head held high, shoes shined, no-bullshit expression stretched tightly across her face, eyes narrowed head on. If she walked into a brick wall, I´m pretty sure it would crumble to her sides. She would not be caught missing a step. And no, nothing special has happened, this is Fatima outside the home.

We are coming from making jellabas together. I see a camel head hanging from a post and almost step on a man´s chicken. Fatima pulls me to the right just in time. A man leans over his cart stirring a large vat of popping popcorn. I am warped back in time to a street around the corner from Xin Xin Jia Yuan in Xian where I bought near-daily bags of sweatened popcorn from my hunched over chinese popcorn seller three years ago. I am pulled out of nostalgia by the melody of Winds of Change, a song that I learned four years ago at Seeds of Peace, blasting from a little hanut. I have never, ever, heard that song anywhere else and have been futily searching for a copy of it for four years. Memories...

***

I stumble and fall over trying to put my enormous black backpack on and Fatima laughs at me while a tear drops down her face. Once back on my feet, I give her a few last hugs and kisses. She shoves a bucketful of her famous shibekia into my hands, for my mom in Boston, she says. Eight in the morning, Othman and Ahmed have left for school after Othman danced for me one last time, and Ahmed showed me a majic trick revealing a scarf that the family gave me as a going away present. The Fassian air is clear and crisp, the house smells of fresh hubs in the oven, and Abderrahim makes me promise I will be back. I strap my other back over my shoulder and waddle out the door and down the stairs with Fatima. She is crying a little harder now. I cannot remember the last time I cried. Tears drip down my face. As I walk away from the building, Fatima stands in the doorway waving; I am in a storybook. It all feels unreal. Three months. Morocco.