Mekness is a sizeable city about an hour away from Fes. We decided to visit as we had a long weekend for the holiday of Mohammed’s birthday and there was a special festival for this holiday in Mekness. We had planned to take a train there, but that didn’t work out as the station was crazy for the holiday, instead we bargained for a taxi to take us. John, Mark and I stayed in Mekness once we got there, and Phil and Alex went on to Moulay Idriss as they wanted to go for a hike. We spent the day at the festival, there was a tent city set up in an open area of town, all of these tents were selling food and tea and the city was swarming with people. It got to the point where we could hardly move to try to get around. People were everywhere selling things on the street, we saw a beggar with no feet and only one arm and a man with a cactus shoved into in his back, and safety pins through his skin everywhere, a woman was laid out on the street who had her leg and a half fused together near the knee and whose torso was completely twisted to be backwards, there were bands playing, drumming, dancing, and smoking hashish on every corner, and in an adjacent field was a carnival with a ferris wheel and all of the main attractions of a traveling carnival, at least one that was fun the 1970’s in the United States then sold to a Moroccan company, as it was no longer legally safe in the United States. The rides were filled with English writing and references to American pop culture. I didn’t go on any.
We eventually made our way to Moulay Idriss, which is about a half hour further along the road past Mekness. Moulay Idriss was just as beautiful as the first time, except that it rained most of the weekend, which was fine for the other four as they had lots of studying to do before their final for the first session, but, I was a little bored, I read a lot though, which was nice, and got to explore the town a little more. It is beautiful and purely Moroccan. I sat in the main square one night and just watched the people, no tourists, but people conversing and enjoying each others company, it seems to be a wholly self sufficient utopia, employing all of the rules of community building and being successful as a result.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
the desert - moroccoworld
This weekend I took a trip to the desert. It was a group expedition taken by 15 other ALIF students and one guys who works there. We chartered a bus and left from ALIF after class on Friday afternoon. The trip south to the desert was about 6 hours and went from the plains of Fez, up into the cedar forests of Ifrane, through the high snow covered peaks of the middle Atlas, down into oasis valleys hidden below the flattest arid shurblands and into hotel Xaluca. Hotel Xaluca likes to refer to itself as a Kasbah, a walled community built in the desert to protect the people, but it feels more like a theme park. We entered to a group of people belly dancing and singing traditional Berber music. We checked in and then headed to our rooms, to pass by the hotel’s own hamam, that said hamam in roman script as well as massage and Jacuzzi. The hotel was a series of about 15 buildings, some with rooms, others with restaurants, one bar, one mosque, one hamam, one store, all solely for the use of its guests. The pathways were landscaped with flowering trees, that I assume are not native to the area, yet, pretty nonetheless, and below each tree would be a broken ceramic pot, or an old basket, that was used to hide the lightbulb that lit the path, and make the experience seem more authentic, it didn’t work. Our rooms were filled with similarly kitschy artifacts, fossils and rocks and baskets. The hotel was immaculate and the services were the best I have seen at any Moroccan hotel, but I couldn’t enjoy them, I was too off put by the hollowness of it all.
The next morning we went swimming in the pool in the desert, got an American style breakfast and them headed out. We went to a little town and stopped and bought scarves so we could feel authentic on the journey, and keep the sun of our necks and potentially the sand out of our eyes. Our next stop after about an hour long bus ride was the Xaluca’s sister hotel in the desert. We went for a quick swim and had some tea here as well. At about 3 we made our way over to the camels and jumped on and headed on a camel trek in the desert. We formed a train of 17 camels and each one had a guide walking across the sand. The camel ride took 2 hours into the desert to a little oasis area that must have had a spring under it, there was no visible water, but there were trees and bushes growing. The area stood in the shadow of the largest sand dune in morocco, so it was already shaded from the sun. In order to catch the sunset, we jumped off of the camels, my hip flexors aching from the awkward saddle and my legs chaffed from where they had been bouncing all day against my camels stomach, and scrambled up the dune, that was probably 1000 feet above the camping area. Climbing a giant sand dune is not easy, and only four of us made it to the top and I was the only one who made it in time to see the sun set across the desert. From that vantage point I could see this whole piece of desert, it was about 15 miles wide, and I could see the edge of it on both sides of the mountain, one side in morocco and the other side reaching the to Algerian border. My camera died at this point, from sand inhalation, it still does not work. On my way back down I met Farrin on the ridge of the dune and watched the stars come out, reciting the nursery rhyme I remembered from my childhood, “star light star bright first star I see tonight, I wish I may I wish I might have this wish I wish tonight.” We sat and talked for a while about our lives, as everybody else had already descended the mountain, and the sun had set we couldn’t really see the camp and I, as cliché as it sounds, really think that I felt the solitude of the desert. It was if she and I were there alone.
We made our way down the dune and found everybody hanging out around one small lantern, talking and enjoying ourselves. Eventually, we were served a nice kefta tajine, and men who worked at the campsite played some music for us and we danced and they taught us to play along a little, we pretty much just banged some drums along with the beat. Some of the group made their way to bed, and finally there were only 5 of us left and about 5 of the men who worked there, we talked for a long time, about camels, how much they cost, where they get them (the illegal camel trade from Algeria is the best way to get one) their gestation period, and so on in crude French as nobody in the group spoke French really well, we each only had a little experience with the language. So it was a conversation that I understood well. Eventually the men found some rugs for us and laid them out and we sat under the stars, with no light pollution, watching the stars and learning their names in Amazigh, the Berber language, and finally they gave us some blankets and instead of going back to our tents we slept, or tried to under the stars, I just laid watching them for hours seeing more shooting stars than I could count. I slept a little, and just before sunrise we were woken up and we trekked out and watched the sun rise over Algeria, each with a dune to ourselves. A while later we took our camels back to the hotel another two hour trek, one in which the novelty had worn off and the chaffing was more acute. We took breakfast at the hotel and then headed back north to Fes, in the bus, with everyone a little sad to leave and a little cranky after little sleep. The ride back was just as dramatic, the oasis was like a scene from star wars, we dropped off the shrub land into a perfectly green canyon, where flowers were blossoming and life seemed perfect in contrast to its surroundings. We drove through huge gorges, and back across the high shrublands, back to the cedar forests, were we saw a troupe of Barbary apes, and continued back to fes. Coming back into fes is always a beautiful thing, as the city can be seen from about an hour away in 3 of four directions. We watched the sun set over the mountains we were driving out of and slipped back into town, and back into the regular pace of life, having visited Moroccoworld and left with a smile.
The next morning we went swimming in the pool in the desert, got an American style breakfast and them headed out. We went to a little town and stopped and bought scarves so we could feel authentic on the journey, and keep the sun of our necks and potentially the sand out of our eyes. Our next stop after about an hour long bus ride was the Xaluca’s sister hotel in the desert. We went for a quick swim and had some tea here as well. At about 3 we made our way over to the camels and jumped on and headed on a camel trek in the desert. We formed a train of 17 camels and each one had a guide walking across the sand. The camel ride took 2 hours into the desert to a little oasis area that must have had a spring under it, there was no visible water, but there were trees and bushes growing. The area stood in the shadow of the largest sand dune in morocco, so it was already shaded from the sun. In order to catch the sunset, we jumped off of the camels, my hip flexors aching from the awkward saddle and my legs chaffed from where they had been bouncing all day against my camels stomach, and scrambled up the dune, that was probably 1000 feet above the camping area. Climbing a giant sand dune is not easy, and only four of us made it to the top and I was the only one who made it in time to see the sun set across the desert. From that vantage point I could see this whole piece of desert, it was about 15 miles wide, and I could see the edge of it on both sides of the mountain, one side in morocco and the other side reaching the to Algerian border. My camera died at this point, from sand inhalation, it still does not work. On my way back down I met Farrin on the ridge of the dune and watched the stars come out, reciting the nursery rhyme I remembered from my childhood, “star light star bright first star I see tonight, I wish I may I wish I might have this wish I wish tonight.” We sat and talked for a while about our lives, as everybody else had already descended the mountain, and the sun had set we couldn’t really see the camp and I, as cliché as it sounds, really think that I felt the solitude of the desert. It was if she and I were there alone.
We made our way down the dune and found everybody hanging out around one small lantern, talking and enjoying ourselves. Eventually, we were served a nice kefta tajine, and men who worked at the campsite played some music for us and we danced and they taught us to play along a little, we pretty much just banged some drums along with the beat. Some of the group made their way to bed, and finally there were only 5 of us left and about 5 of the men who worked there, we talked for a long time, about camels, how much they cost, where they get them (the illegal camel trade from Algeria is the best way to get one) their gestation period, and so on in crude French as nobody in the group spoke French really well, we each only had a little experience with the language. So it was a conversation that I understood well. Eventually the men found some rugs for us and laid them out and we sat under the stars, with no light pollution, watching the stars and learning their names in Amazigh, the Berber language, and finally they gave us some blankets and instead of going back to our tents we slept, or tried to under the stars, I just laid watching them for hours seeing more shooting stars than I could count. I slept a little, and just before sunrise we were woken up and we trekked out and watched the sun rise over Algeria, each with a dune to ourselves. A while later we took our camels back to the hotel another two hour trek, one in which the novelty had worn off and the chaffing was more acute. We took breakfast at the hotel and then headed back north to Fes, in the bus, with everyone a little sad to leave and a little cranky after little sleep. The ride back was just as dramatic, the oasis was like a scene from star wars, we dropped off the shrub land into a perfectly green canyon, where flowers were blossoming and life seemed perfect in contrast to its surroundings. We drove through huge gorges, and back across the high shrublands, back to the cedar forests, were we saw a troupe of Barbary apes, and continued back to fes. Coming back into fes is always a beautiful thing, as the city can be seen from about an hour away in 3 of four directions. We watched the sun set over the mountains we were driving out of and slipped back into town, and back into the regular pace of life, having visited Moroccoworld and left with a smile.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Stories of Abdelsalem
The Rifi
The people of the Rif are sometimes referred to as “the second Germans” by the sophisticated city- dwelling Fassis. The Rif has a sordid, yet, proud tradition of resistance. In the struggle for Spanish control guerilla armies combined and protected the usually feuding tribes of the Rif. The small, underdeveloped tribes of the Rif were able to defeat entire Spanish armies, as late as the 1920’s as a result of their intimate knowledge of their terrain, and its inaccessibility to foreign troops. They set up their own state, which ruled relatively autonomously, although it was soon defeated as the French and Spanish combined forces. Eventually, as the Moroccans repelled the French and a new government was set up, using the old monarchy, the Rifi found themselves rebelling again. This time against the Arabs who took over and did not provide any governmental representation to the Rif peoples, this rebellion was only put down with the force of over half of the Moroccan army and a diplomatic visit by the crowned prince. Today the rif is still a place of popular dissent as it took much later for them to receive modern technological and infrastructural developments. The Rif people speak their own dialect of the Berber language Tamazight, called Rifia in Arabic. The history of the Rif, and the character of it’s culture leaves them with the stereotype of hotheaded hicks. The modern Rif are known for three things, their hashish, their kif and their guns, not things that any Rifi would be proud of.
In an attempt to explain the word fake, Abdelselam’s story-filled mind jumped right to the Rif.
“A couple of years ago, out in the Rif, a group of men decided to make a deal with some Germans. These Germans had come to the Rif looking to buy some Hashish to bring back to Germany and sell. They went to one of the most important drug peddlers in the area and asked for a ton of hashish.”
“A ton?” I retorted, he had said the word in English, apparently it is the same, still, a ton.
“Ieewa, a ton. A lot of kilos,” he replied chuckling, either at the absurdity of the story or my skeptical face. “So, the Rifi said “okay” and they set a date when the Germans would return and they would make the deal, god willing. The Germans came back and a successful deal was made and they took their hash back to Germany. But the devious Rifi, they had tricked the Germans, instead of giving them the Hashish they wanted, the Germans found a ton of henna, a much less desired or expensive commodity. So the Rifi, in their joy after tricking the Germans went to the bank to use the money they received from the Germans, they were promptly arrested, for the Germans had given them counterfeit, fake, German currency. They complained, “but it was from the Germans, it is them who is responsible” to no avail. The Germans soon returned to complain about the bad stock they had been given, only to be quickly arrested by the Moroccan authorities. Each group went to jail, and are still spending their days side by side in the same jail.” He guffawed his way through the last three sentences, his laughs with their audible undertone -those ignorant Germans and Rifi, how stupid could you be?.
“One Franc in Business is Better than 1000 Francs in Wages”
My book for colloquial Moroccan Arabic goes through a series of everyday encounters that I am expected to have in morocco and uses dialogues to teach me the important vocabulary for each one. This particular chapter was about bargaining, my adverse feelings toward the subject prefer the word haggling, it’s more deviant that way. So, we spent about 3 classes talking about haggling and the Moroccan economy, and Abdelselam spit out this Moroccan proverb; “One Franc in Buisness is Better than 1000 Francs in Wages,” he does this often, and I usually don’t understand them, but this time he wouldn’t just explain it and decided that I had to go ask a Moroccan about it and I had to write a composition about its meaning. Talk to a real Moroccan? Who does that?
I put it off and realized the morning before class that I still hadn’t talked to a Moroccan. I quickly scribbled my interpretation of the proverb. Implying that it is important to keep money in business and not just keep it for one person, that way the economy can grow and become more robust, I was throwing out my best colloquial vocabulary at this point, making it sound logical and understood. After reading it in class he looked at me and said no, you are wrong. I had realized this before as my interpretation read like a western capitalists wet dream rather than an ancient Moroccan proverb. So, instead of getting to the topic of me not doing my homework correctly, I asked him for the history of the proverb, he didn’t mind jumping into storytime.
“The proverb is from the Jews, they have a special kind of intelligence,” he started. I thought, “I know where this is going.”
“The Jewish Arabs from a long time ago were traveling salesmen, they went by foot, either walking or by animal across the desert often, back and forth across the Arab world, trading and accumulating wealth, or not. They linked the arab world together, and thus, their proverb is pertinent to our discussion. They would journey across Africa, taking about two years from Morocco to the Saudi peninsula exchanging goods and stories along the way. Through their dangerous experiences they helped shape the economic relationships that are still in play today, creating and assisting the development of one unified Arab culture.“ He continued.
“Yeah, okay, but why is that important according to the proverb?” I questioned.
“Oh yeah, the proverb, the Jews discovered a certain type of intelligence. They have their own economy, and there is no director of their economy. As a result they have freedom and great responsibility. But it helped them develop this basic intelligence.”’
“I don’t understand.” My ever-ready expression of incomprehension slipped off my tongue.
“Do you prefer slavery or freedom?” He retorted, unforgiving of my blindness.
“Freedom, of course.” I slowly replied, not knowing if that was the right answer.
“Yes, well that’s what I am talking about.” Where did that come from? “A salaried job, work in a factory, work for a wage, is the work of animals. They are slaves of their employers. This is under the responsibility and the ability of man, he is not the slave of a watch, the slave of time, he has the basic intelligence to do more than that. The proverb is about having the freedom to participate in the economy for oneself it is about the freedom to work for oneself.”
“ Ahhh, fehimt,” I replied in understanding, “Freedom is a beautiful thing.”
The Cage of People
This story started out with another proverb, well it might have been on that Abdelselam made up, but it was an interesting discussion regardless. We were talking about traveling, another section of my workbook and he spouted out, “Travelling is the key to the cage of people.” What? I thought. Firstly, I didn’t know the word cage, but still after it’s explanation, the cage of people?
“When we are born, we are like computers, that have not yet been programmed, we are just empty and waiting to be filled up. For example, when you were born, did you have a choice of your parents?” He starts out.
“Umm, no. We don’t have a choice of our parents.” I cautiously replied.
He wrote parents on the board and drew a circle under it.
“We have no choice over our parents, and they can tell us whatever they want about the world. When we are at the age of entrance to school (there is a special word for that in Arabic), do we have a choice about our education?”
“No, we don’t have a choice of our education.”
“When your nose splits do you have a choice of your religion?”
“Nose splits?”
“When you reach the age of puberty your nose splits into two parts, Do you have a choice in your religion at that age?”
“No not generally”
“No, you do not have a choice in religion, repeat.” He wanted me to use the word for choice, so I would remember it.
“No I do not have a choice in my religion.”
“When you reach the age of adulthood, 21 or 13 years, depending on your culture, do you have a choice in your society?” Again I responded with a no. “All of these things make up the cage of people.” This whole time he had been making a diagram on the board, placing each influence at the cardinal arrows of a compass, and I was scribbling incessantly trying to copy it all down, like it were an urban geography lecture. “ And in addition to this we have between your parents and society, your culture developing, between society and education we have customs and traditions, between education and religion we have habits and between religion and parents we have relationships. All of these combined create ones cage. Each country has their own cage and we say that traveling is the key to the cage of people.”
“Okay I understand now,” I confirmed as he started in on a new diagram on the board, it was with two people inside a circle, one right-side up and one upside down, it looked like a yin-yang of stick figures. I copied it into my notebook, as if it were the most important thing I had ever seen. “ When we are in a foreign country, traveling, we are turned upside down. Am I the foreigner or are you?” He left the discussion abruptly with his rhetorical question and I nodded and smiled, letting him know that I understood, and appreciated his storytelling style. I often nod and smile and he often reciprocates when he appreciates my responses to his questions, or my ideas, repeating his favorite phrase, “Andik al Huq” “You have thruth”
Abdelselam and I have an interesting relationship, where we attempt to glean as much information from one another as possible. I have never before felt the kind of mutual respect that we experience in the classroom with a teacher figure. His attempt to make me use the Arabic language by discussion interesting topics has shifted to a clear interest in my perceptions, my interpretation and my experience of the world, and I reciprocate wholly, often sitting in silence attempting to find the best wording to question him on his experience and viewpoint of Morocco. I sometimes portray him as an unlearned arab, but that is not my attempt, he is a rather foolish old man who loves to learn and examine the world around him, always coming up with the truth in a way that I hadn’t previously thought of something. Today, in response to the traveling discussion he asked me to write a description of foreigners in other countries, their advantages and disadvantages, and my opinions. I went at it from an economic and cultural standpoint, saying that because of our money and our technology we have a lot of power as tourists to influence and change the culture of the place we are visiting, and including that this is mostly a bad thing when the culture starts to move toward one unified culture of the world, forgetting our diversity in order to gain economic prosperity and that as a result of this, we cannot fully analyze our own culture because we lack perspective. He replied, “andik al-huq” and asked me to ask him five questions about the topic. I asked on his opinion about travelers, do they change the society? Is it life better with the foreign funds? He said two things that really stuck with me. First, was that he questioned better or worse, saying that it was a pointless way to think about things, we judge better or worse on our current state of happiness, and that it is impossible to compare cultures or two different time periods on a scale of joy, I responded jokingly that there are questionnaires and studies that research these things, he said they are trash, and a way to live in the past. The second was more serious, he talked about violence, and how the biggest problem with modern culture is violence within the people. He sees little respect in Moroccans, most of them not willing to give a seat on the bus to the elderly, and most of them ready and willing to get in a fight at moments notice. I agree. I have seen more fist fights in Morocco than I have seen in my entire life, probably one a week, where young men, with nothing better to do get in scrapes about nothing, He said women and children and mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters are all violent, it is now the way of life. I asked him if we could change that? He said no.
The Rifi
The people of the Rif are sometimes referred to as “the second Germans” by the sophisticated city- dwelling Fassis. The Rif has a sordid, yet, proud tradition of resistance. In the struggle for Spanish control guerilla armies combined and protected the usually feuding tribes of the Rif. The small, underdeveloped tribes of the Rif were able to defeat entire Spanish armies, as late as the 1920’s as a result of their intimate knowledge of their terrain, and its inaccessibility to foreign troops. They set up their own state, which ruled relatively autonomously, although it was soon defeated as the French and Spanish combined forces. Eventually, as the Moroccans repelled the French and a new government was set up, using the old monarchy, the Rifi found themselves rebelling again. This time against the Arabs who took over and did not provide any governmental representation to the Rif peoples, this rebellion was only put down with the force of over half of the Moroccan army and a diplomatic visit by the crowned prince. Today the rif is still a place of popular dissent as it took much later for them to receive modern technological and infrastructural developments. The Rif people speak their own dialect of the Berber language Tamazight, called Rifia in Arabic. The history of the Rif, and the character of it’s culture leaves them with the stereotype of hotheaded hicks. The modern Rif are known for three things, their hashish, their kif and their guns, not things that any Rifi would be proud of.
In an attempt to explain the word fake, Abdelselam’s story-filled mind jumped right to the Rif.
“A couple of years ago, out in the Rif, a group of men decided to make a deal with some Germans. These Germans had come to the Rif looking to buy some Hashish to bring back to Germany and sell. They went to one of the most important drug peddlers in the area and asked for a ton of hashish.”
“A ton?” I retorted, he had said the word in English, apparently it is the same, still, a ton.
“Ieewa, a ton. A lot of kilos,” he replied chuckling, either at the absurdity of the story or my skeptical face. “So, the Rifi said “okay” and they set a date when the Germans would return and they would make the deal, god willing. The Germans came back and a successful deal was made and they took their hash back to Germany. But the devious Rifi, they had tricked the Germans, instead of giving them the Hashish they wanted, the Germans found a ton of henna, a much less desired or expensive commodity. So the Rifi, in their joy after tricking the Germans went to the bank to use the money they received from the Germans, they were promptly arrested, for the Germans had given them counterfeit, fake, German currency. They complained, “but it was from the Germans, it is them who is responsible” to no avail. The Germans soon returned to complain about the bad stock they had been given, only to be quickly arrested by the Moroccan authorities. Each group went to jail, and are still spending their days side by side in the same jail.” He guffawed his way through the last three sentences, his laughs with their audible undertone -those ignorant Germans and Rifi, how stupid could you be?.
“One Franc in Business is Better than 1000 Francs in Wages”
My book for colloquial Moroccan Arabic goes through a series of everyday encounters that I am expected to have in morocco and uses dialogues to teach me the important vocabulary for each one. This particular chapter was about bargaining, my adverse feelings toward the subject prefer the word haggling, it’s more deviant that way. So, we spent about 3 classes talking about haggling and the Moroccan economy, and Abdelselam spit out this Moroccan proverb; “One Franc in Buisness is Better than 1000 Francs in Wages,” he does this often, and I usually don’t understand them, but this time he wouldn’t just explain it and decided that I had to go ask a Moroccan about it and I had to write a composition about its meaning. Talk to a real Moroccan? Who does that?
I put it off and realized the morning before class that I still hadn’t talked to a Moroccan. I quickly scribbled my interpretation of the proverb. Implying that it is important to keep money in business and not just keep it for one person, that way the economy can grow and become more robust, I was throwing out my best colloquial vocabulary at this point, making it sound logical and understood. After reading it in class he looked at me and said no, you are wrong. I had realized this before as my interpretation read like a western capitalists wet dream rather than an ancient Moroccan proverb. So, instead of getting to the topic of me not doing my homework correctly, I asked him for the history of the proverb, he didn’t mind jumping into storytime.
“The proverb is from the Jews, they have a special kind of intelligence,” he started. I thought, “I know where this is going.”
“The Jewish Arabs from a long time ago were traveling salesmen, they went by foot, either walking or by animal across the desert often, back and forth across the Arab world, trading and accumulating wealth, or not. They linked the arab world together, and thus, their proverb is pertinent to our discussion. They would journey across Africa, taking about two years from Morocco to the Saudi peninsula exchanging goods and stories along the way. Through their dangerous experiences they helped shape the economic relationships that are still in play today, creating and assisting the development of one unified Arab culture.“ He continued.
“Yeah, okay, but why is that important according to the proverb?” I questioned.
“Oh yeah, the proverb, the Jews discovered a certain type of intelligence. They have their own economy, and there is no director of their economy. As a result they have freedom and great responsibility. But it helped them develop this basic intelligence.”’
“I don’t understand.” My ever-ready expression of incomprehension slipped off my tongue.
“Do you prefer slavery or freedom?” He retorted, unforgiving of my blindness.
“Freedom, of course.” I slowly replied, not knowing if that was the right answer.
“Yes, well that’s what I am talking about.” Where did that come from? “A salaried job, work in a factory, work for a wage, is the work of animals. They are slaves of their employers. This is under the responsibility and the ability of man, he is not the slave of a watch, the slave of time, he has the basic intelligence to do more than that. The proverb is about having the freedom to participate in the economy for oneself it is about the freedom to work for oneself.”
“ Ahhh, fehimt,” I replied in understanding, “Freedom is a beautiful thing.”
The Cage of People
This story started out with another proverb, well it might have been on that Abdelselam made up, but it was an interesting discussion regardless. We were talking about traveling, another section of my workbook and he spouted out, “Travelling is the key to the cage of people.” What? I thought. Firstly, I didn’t know the word cage, but still after it’s explanation, the cage of people?
“When we are born, we are like computers, that have not yet been programmed, we are just empty and waiting to be filled up. For example, when you were born, did you have a choice of your parents?” He starts out.
“Umm, no. We don’t have a choice of our parents.” I cautiously replied.
He wrote parents on the board and drew a circle under it.
“We have no choice over our parents, and they can tell us whatever they want about the world. When we are at the age of entrance to school (there is a special word for that in Arabic), do we have a choice about our education?”
“No, we don’t have a choice of our education.”
“When your nose splits do you have a choice of your religion?”
“Nose splits?”
“When you reach the age of puberty your nose splits into two parts, Do you have a choice in your religion at that age?”
“No not generally”
“No, you do not have a choice in religion, repeat.” He wanted me to use the word for choice, so I would remember it.
“No I do not have a choice in my religion.”
“When you reach the age of adulthood, 21 or 13 years, depending on your culture, do you have a choice in your society?” Again I responded with a no. “All of these things make up the cage of people.” This whole time he had been making a diagram on the board, placing each influence at the cardinal arrows of a compass, and I was scribbling incessantly trying to copy it all down, like it were an urban geography lecture. “ And in addition to this we have between your parents and society, your culture developing, between society and education we have customs and traditions, between education and religion we have habits and between religion and parents we have relationships. All of these combined create ones cage. Each country has their own cage and we say that traveling is the key to the cage of people.”
“Okay I understand now,” I confirmed as he started in on a new diagram on the board, it was with two people inside a circle, one right-side up and one upside down, it looked like a yin-yang of stick figures. I copied it into my notebook, as if it were the most important thing I had ever seen. “ When we are in a foreign country, traveling, we are turned upside down. Am I the foreigner or are you?” He left the discussion abruptly with his rhetorical question and I nodded and smiled, letting him know that I understood, and appreciated his storytelling style. I often nod and smile and he often reciprocates when he appreciates my responses to his questions, or my ideas, repeating his favorite phrase, “Andik al Huq” “You have thruth”
Abdelselam and I have an interesting relationship, where we attempt to glean as much information from one another as possible. I have never before felt the kind of mutual respect that we experience in the classroom with a teacher figure. His attempt to make me use the Arabic language by discussion interesting topics has shifted to a clear interest in my perceptions, my interpretation and my experience of the world, and I reciprocate wholly, often sitting in silence attempting to find the best wording to question him on his experience and viewpoint of Morocco. I sometimes portray him as an unlearned arab, but that is not my attempt, he is a rather foolish old man who loves to learn and examine the world around him, always coming up with the truth in a way that I hadn’t previously thought of something. Today, in response to the traveling discussion he asked me to write a description of foreigners in other countries, their advantages and disadvantages, and my opinions. I went at it from an economic and cultural standpoint, saying that because of our money and our technology we have a lot of power as tourists to influence and change the culture of the place we are visiting, and including that this is mostly a bad thing when the culture starts to move toward one unified culture of the world, forgetting our diversity in order to gain economic prosperity and that as a result of this, we cannot fully analyze our own culture because we lack perspective. He replied, “andik al-huq” and asked me to ask him five questions about the topic. I asked on his opinion about travelers, do they change the society? Is it life better with the foreign funds? He said two things that really stuck with me. First, was that he questioned better or worse, saying that it was a pointless way to think about things, we judge better or worse on our current state of happiness, and that it is impossible to compare cultures or two different time periods on a scale of joy, I responded jokingly that there are questionnaires and studies that research these things, he said they are trash, and a way to live in the past. The second was more serious, he talked about violence, and how the biggest problem with modern culture is violence within the people. He sees little respect in Moroccans, most of them not willing to give a seat on the bus to the elderly, and most of them ready and willing to get in a fight at moments notice. I agree. I have seen more fist fights in Morocco than I have seen in my entire life, probably one a week, where young men, with nothing better to do get in scrapes about nothing, He said women and children and mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters are all violent, it is now the way of life. I asked him if we could change that? He said no.
Monday, March 19, 2007
I skipped some time in between those last two posts, some important time, but just coming back from Moulay Idriss I had the beauty of the place stuck firmly in my mind. In the meantime I have come to love Fes, while my birds are still my best fassi friends, I am now getting out a little further along the animal kingdom and making friends with the neighborhood donkeys and street cats, one step closer to the humans who feed them.
I am continuously learning new things about fes, my area of town, my apartment and myself. In the past few weeks I have realized that I can pretty easily navigate any place on this half of the Ville Nouvelle, this side of Rue Mohammed Cinq. I have found a few great bakeries, a few new good places for food; specifically the only good cheeseburger outside of the United States. I can also make my way around the old medina, find the track, or a good place for tea. I have realized that my street is not as dead as it may seem originally, you just have to hit it at the right times. I have found the two best local soccer pitches, both are sidewalks that are a little wider than your average, maybe 30 feet instead of 15, one, the smaller, and less exposed is designated for the youngest kids, from about 6-11 the other is for the bigger ones, about 12-16. After 16 Fassi boys don’t play, they instead buy eurotrash clothes, fake diesel jeans are the most popular of this subdivision of the Fassi clothing market, chase girls or get jobs, at least the guys in this neighborhood. My apartment amuses me everyday. I have learned to open the main gate one-handed, and do it mindlessly now, only noticing when something goes wrong. I have become a successful cook. I can do wonders with some rice and vegetables or potatoes and cheese and turkey, or the best spaghetti Fes has ever tasted. I have learned when I can sit in the sun, Sundays- a little ironic I think – and when I cant; any day when they are working on the new apartment building next door, the men laugh at me and I think I make them mad as I just chill on the terrace reading or studying or watching the kids in the street. I have learned that I like to have everything clean and organized, and I don’t like to have too much. Two bowls for two people is perfect, why would I want or need more?
Last weekend my friend Adam from Middlebury arrived, he is in Italy for the semester, and decided to take a jump south to Africa for 5 days. I felt like a real resident of Fes for the first time as I showed him around the old Madina, and knowing where I was most of the time. He didn’t like it when I followed a little kid down a dark alley, but I just think he was nervous about being there, the kid really posed no threat, the big kids, his friends who were waiting at the end of the alley, however, were a little more imposing, we walked away quickly. We visited Ifrane together on Sunday. Ifrane was beautiful and discomfiting simultaneously. It was designed as a “French Pocket” in the middle of Morocco in the 1920’s. The city has no, or little, Moroccan architecture, and feels like a European suburb or something. Big chalet type houses, all with yards, were prominent. There was a beautiful park and a pond that didn’t belong in Morocco, even the grasses and trees seemed different. The town was in the mountains so instead of semi-arid lands instead the town was surrounded by ancient cedar forest. Al-Akwayn, Morocco’s prestigious American style private university, sits on the edge of Ifrane. I thought before coming to Morocco that it would have been nice to go there, I didn’t realize that going there would mean that I wouldn’t really be going to Morocco. It just felt rich, in the way that Middlebury does sometimes when I am walking by the Middlebury Inn, a place not of or for the people but of and for those with means, the opposite of the organic and genuine impression that I would get from Moulay Idriss the following weekend.
Adam and I spent the rest of his time here in Fes, walking around the city talking about our lives and our relationships with our friends. We had some heated discussions about what it means to be a friend, and what it means to care about people. It was good to take me out of my mindset where, “what does Fes mean?” is the most important question. Instead, he has helped me see that Fes and place sometimes can’t be metaphors for the human experience and human relationships, or at least that it takes more than metaphors and attempts at understanding, he helped me remember the value of human communication I guess. He and I spent some time with my friend Farrin, we visited part of the Medina and the hill above it, through him I was able to strengthen my friendship with Farrin and Adam, because we got to do the getting to know you again, its nice to really talk to people and learn about their lives, again.
This week was also time to say goodbye to Gertrude. It was relatively uneventful, although, I think she knows how much I appreciated her. Instead of classes with her, I now have them by myself. This is good and bad. I can’t get away with the same level of daydreaming, but I am using my Arabic all the time now, and going at a better pace. I learned all about the history of Tea in morocco the other day. It is fun to have cultural exchanges with Abdelselam, I explained to him what a tea bag was, in colloquial Arabic, I didn’t know how to say processed and packaged. He told me a sort of Moroccan folk-lore story about tea. One part of Moroccan culture, maybe Arab or Islamic culture in general, I’m not sure, involves the idea of paying for the truth. When someone lies about something he must, pay for the truth; for example if you say you are going to meet someone for dinner and don’t show up, you must pay them for the truth, and take them to dinner or do something else for them. In Abdelselam’s story he sets the scene as a party with about 40 of the big people in Morocco, big people being the bigwigs political, religious and economic. At each party one person is selected to make the tea, he for that day is the karim, the wise one. The man chosen to make the mint tea at this party did a bad job, he forgot the sugar, and mint tea with no sugar is unacceptable. So, in his wisdom, he declared to the party-goers that there was one glass of tea without sugar, and that the person who got this one glass of tea would have to pay for the truth, he apparently got this authority as the tea maker. Each person at the party said, “oh my tea is delicious, perfect, wonderful,” so that they did not have to pay for the truth. The tea-maker called them out, knowing that there was not one delicious glass of tea in the room, and because he knew of their lie, each of them had to pay for their truth. Thus, forty of the most important people in Morocco had to reward the one man because of their lies. After telling the story Abdelselam asked, “did you understand?” I said that I did and he replied, “oh wow, I felt like I was just talking.” That felt as good as understanding the story.
I am continuously learning new things about fes, my area of town, my apartment and myself. In the past few weeks I have realized that I can pretty easily navigate any place on this half of the Ville Nouvelle, this side of Rue Mohammed Cinq. I have found a few great bakeries, a few new good places for food; specifically the only good cheeseburger outside of the United States. I can also make my way around the old medina, find the track, or a good place for tea. I have realized that my street is not as dead as it may seem originally, you just have to hit it at the right times. I have found the two best local soccer pitches, both are sidewalks that are a little wider than your average, maybe 30 feet instead of 15, one, the smaller, and less exposed is designated for the youngest kids, from about 6-11 the other is for the bigger ones, about 12-16. After 16 Fassi boys don’t play, they instead buy eurotrash clothes, fake diesel jeans are the most popular of this subdivision of the Fassi clothing market, chase girls or get jobs, at least the guys in this neighborhood. My apartment amuses me everyday. I have learned to open the main gate one-handed, and do it mindlessly now, only noticing when something goes wrong. I have become a successful cook. I can do wonders with some rice and vegetables or potatoes and cheese and turkey, or the best spaghetti Fes has ever tasted. I have learned when I can sit in the sun, Sundays- a little ironic I think – and when I cant; any day when they are working on the new apartment building next door, the men laugh at me and I think I make them mad as I just chill on the terrace reading or studying or watching the kids in the street. I have learned that I like to have everything clean and organized, and I don’t like to have too much. Two bowls for two people is perfect, why would I want or need more?
Last weekend my friend Adam from Middlebury arrived, he is in Italy for the semester, and decided to take a jump south to Africa for 5 days. I felt like a real resident of Fes for the first time as I showed him around the old Madina, and knowing where I was most of the time. He didn’t like it when I followed a little kid down a dark alley, but I just think he was nervous about being there, the kid really posed no threat, the big kids, his friends who were waiting at the end of the alley, however, were a little more imposing, we walked away quickly. We visited Ifrane together on Sunday. Ifrane was beautiful and discomfiting simultaneously. It was designed as a “French Pocket” in the middle of Morocco in the 1920’s. The city has no, or little, Moroccan architecture, and feels like a European suburb or something. Big chalet type houses, all with yards, were prominent. There was a beautiful park and a pond that didn’t belong in Morocco, even the grasses and trees seemed different. The town was in the mountains so instead of semi-arid lands instead the town was surrounded by ancient cedar forest. Al-Akwayn, Morocco’s prestigious American style private university, sits on the edge of Ifrane. I thought before coming to Morocco that it would have been nice to go there, I didn’t realize that going there would mean that I wouldn’t really be going to Morocco. It just felt rich, in the way that Middlebury does sometimes when I am walking by the Middlebury Inn, a place not of or for the people but of and for those with means, the opposite of the organic and genuine impression that I would get from Moulay Idriss the following weekend.
Adam and I spent the rest of his time here in Fes, walking around the city talking about our lives and our relationships with our friends. We had some heated discussions about what it means to be a friend, and what it means to care about people. It was good to take me out of my mindset where, “what does Fes mean?” is the most important question. Instead, he has helped me see that Fes and place sometimes can’t be metaphors for the human experience and human relationships, or at least that it takes more than metaphors and attempts at understanding, he helped me remember the value of human communication I guess. He and I spent some time with my friend Farrin, we visited part of the Medina and the hill above it, through him I was able to strengthen my friendship with Farrin and Adam, because we got to do the getting to know you again, its nice to really talk to people and learn about their lives, again.
This week was also time to say goodbye to Gertrude. It was relatively uneventful, although, I think she knows how much I appreciated her. Instead of classes with her, I now have them by myself. This is good and bad. I can’t get away with the same level of daydreaming, but I am using my Arabic all the time now, and going at a better pace. I learned all about the history of Tea in morocco the other day. It is fun to have cultural exchanges with Abdelselam, I explained to him what a tea bag was, in colloquial Arabic, I didn’t know how to say processed and packaged. He told me a sort of Moroccan folk-lore story about tea. One part of Moroccan culture, maybe Arab or Islamic culture in general, I’m not sure, involves the idea of paying for the truth. When someone lies about something he must, pay for the truth; for example if you say you are going to meet someone for dinner and don’t show up, you must pay them for the truth, and take them to dinner or do something else for them. In Abdelselam’s story he sets the scene as a party with about 40 of the big people in Morocco, big people being the bigwigs political, religious and economic. At each party one person is selected to make the tea, he for that day is the karim, the wise one. The man chosen to make the mint tea at this party did a bad job, he forgot the sugar, and mint tea with no sugar is unacceptable. So, in his wisdom, he declared to the party-goers that there was one glass of tea without sugar, and that the person who got this one glass of tea would have to pay for the truth, he apparently got this authority as the tea maker. Each person at the party said, “oh my tea is delicious, perfect, wonderful,” so that they did not have to pay for the truth. The tea-maker called them out, knowing that there was not one delicious glass of tea in the room, and because he knew of their lie, each of them had to pay for their truth. Thus, forty of the most important people in Morocco had to reward the one man because of their lies. After telling the story Abdelselam asked, “did you understand?” I said that I did and he replied, “oh wow, I felt like I was just talking.” That felt as good as understanding the story.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
perfection
“This is the place where they invented the word idyllic.” – Mark said on our walk from the village of Moulay Idriss to the 3rd century Roman ruins at Volubilis. Moulay Idriss was founded by Idriss the I, also the founder of Fes and was one of the first Arab settlements in Morocco in the early 9th century. It was chosen sitting above Volubilis as it was decidedly more strategic to defend in the valley between two mountains instead of on the edge of an open plain. Within Moulay Idriss there is a mosque that was built in the early days of its founding by Idriss I to commemorate his kin, the prophet Mohammed. I was not able to visit as non-Muslims cannot enter mosques in Morocco. The town, until very recently, stuck to its Islamic traditions and did not let Christians sleep the night there, this was true so recently that in Phil’s 2004 travel guide for Morocco it says that it is impossible to do so, whereas my 2005 says that one can find a room to rent in a few places. There are no hotels in Moulay Idriss, only “Maisons d’hotes” , the Arabic translates to guest houses, but they are houses where people rent out a few of their extra rooms to travelers. We, with the help of a guide who we met on the edge of town, found one of these houses and bargained for a room that would fit Phil, Alex, Mark and I as well as for the price of dinner and breakfast that night. We paid about 120 dirhams each or about $15 for meals and a beautiful place to stay with a view of the entire city and the valley below from its terrace.
We had planned to visit Volubulis on Friday afternoon after we got to town and found the hotel, so we unfortunately had to rush the customary drinking of Mint Tea after a sale is made and we headed out on the walk to Volubulis. Most of the locals thought we were crazy that we didn’t want to hitch a cheap ride over there. I have decided that they are crazy for even suggesting such a thing. We strolled along the road, seeing the standard shepherds with their flocks of goats, sheep and sometimes a cow or two hanging around, as well as many families out enjoying their Friday afternoon, well the women and children sitting in orchards enjoying themselves. We decided to walk down a trail which we though connected to another road at that would put us closer to the entrance to the Roman ruins, it turned out to be a driveway, but the friendly proprietor of the house pointed us in the right direction along a foot path. The foot path lead us through the man’s olive orchard, toward Volubilis, and into a huge field of yellow flowers. The conditions were perfect. The sun was getting lower, it was probably 4 o’clock and the clouds were of the big puffy type, creating a powerfully dramatic skyscape and we could see for miles across the open plain. I asked Phil how far he thought we could see, after a lot of analyzing we decided the mountains in the distance that marked the end of the plain and the edge of our view must have been about 10 to 15 miles away.
We got to Volubilis, paid our 10 dirham entry fee, and started to explore the park. The grounds are massive and the ruins impressive beyond comprehension. There was an arc way that would rival the arc de triuph in Paris and ruins of a giant temple as well. The most impressive facets of the ruins were the mosaics that were uncovered. They were mosaic laid floors of the 3rd century depicting beautiful – the floor of the bathhouse covered in a school of fish, provocative – an image of a woman and her man, and amusing – one of a man riding a donkey backwards- scenes. These scenes, although dulled by their recent exposure to the elements, are intensely intricate and telling of the time period in roman history. Beyond their architecture and written word the mosaics show how the west influenced this area of Morocco and how their culture and that of the native Berber population became mixed at this distant, yet thriving, outpost of the Roman Empire. Beyond the sense of history I was experiencing it was amazing to watch the people there, a couple tourists who arrived on big busses, and then many families sitting together talking on the hill across from the ruins or walking around picking herbs and collecting them around the ancient structures. Volubilis was everything I could have ever wanted about a place, I had a strong sense of history, a strong sense of its modern function and finally as the sun started to set more an intensely beautiful setting.
It was Phil’s goal to see the sun set over Volubilis before we had come, he has seen many Roman ruins before and I don’t think he expected these ones to be as complete as they were, so he wanted to see them in a different light, that of dusk, this was an idea I had no problem with, but it would not be. We spent about an hour and half wandering the ruin as dark clouds were coming over the mountains to the east of us, not blocking the setting sun in the west, so we didn’t really care. We watched the east as a rainbow appeared coming out of Moulay Idriss, proving it was the pot of Gold we had already quickly seen, and as a more substantial storm came over the mountain a few kilometers away. We didn’t want to leave so we kept looking as the place emptied out, it was both stupid and a blessing. The rain hit hard and quick. The wind picked up and we couldn’t hear each other speak. We hid under some arches that were facing the right direction hoping to wait out the storm. It just got worse, we decided at one point to make a run for it. We sprinted across the ruins, hurdling ancient walls and splashing mud all over a group of retired American tourists who were struggling to haul their plastic hips up the hill to the parking lot. When we got to the parking lot there were no taxis left to bring us back to town and we had lost Mark. He had gone a different way to get out of the park and ended up taking refuge in a reconstructed olive press. We waited with a few shop owners who had been putting their things away, including locking their dog in the phone booth so he wouldn’t get cold, wet and sick, being in the rain all night nor would he destroy everything waiting inside their shop. From there we watched the sunset, through some of the heaviest rain I have ever seen. It was beautiful. I am sure at some spot in the valley below we, at Volubilis, were the start of the rainbow. We eventually called Mark on his cellphone to get him out of the park and the shop owner shared an expensive taxi with us back to town, the whole time the driver couldn’t see due to the hail that had started to fall along with the rain and the shop owner was ranting erratically about the taxis in town and trying to make friends with me at the same time.
We got back to Moulay Idriss and ran back to the Hotel, those who were out in the storm must have laughed as a group of crazy soaking wet tourists were running through their serene little town, yelling to each other so we could be heard and laughing hysterically at the ridiculousness of our adventure. It felt good to run. I had stayed behind to pay the taxi driver and sprinted up the mountain after my friends, it felt like I was racing again, in the pouring rain, free of any inhibition just plugging away as fast as I could to catch my friends. I got that sensation for about the third time that day that if I just opened up my arms and flapped a few times I would catch the wind and fly.
We made it back to the hotel, soaked and with no spare clothing. I had brought a few extra shirts with served us well, but we were all pant-less for a night. This only became awkward at dinner time when we were asked to dine downstairs where the family usually eats. We had to brave our cold wet jeans, but again, it was worth it. Homemade kefta tajine is incredible especially with a kettle of mint tea waiting for us as well. I have not had Moroccan food yet that has displeased me, something that comes as a great surprise.
In the morning we ate breakfast on the terrace under the morning sun, I could find no signs of a huge rainstorm the previous night, only perfectly blue skies. We waited around as our shoes and clothes dried a little more and then we went out an explored the city. It was the perfect city. We weren’t treated as tourists as we are in Fes or any other big city, where everyone thinks they can get some money from the white guys, but instead we were able to sit around and talk to a group of kids for almost a half hour. The city was painted in every color, unlike Fes’s old medina which is pretty uniform, giving it an organic and almost bohemian feel. It was a picture of urbanism in its truest sense, there was no access for cars in most of the city and it was perfect that way, people were walking everywhere, seeing each other and greeting each one along the way. We ate lunch in a croweded square as the city had its Saturday souk going and the people from all around ventured in to buy and sell goods. Most people were dressed traditionally in their brightest spring colors making the city vibrant and alive. We then decided to make the trek back to Volubilis. The trek was just as beautiful as the day before, if not more so. In the yellow field we had visited the day before now there were reds, oranges, purples whites and blues who had popped open after they got some water. My camera ran out of battery power so I made a list of the beautiful things I saw and wanted to remember; goats, streets, flowers, butterflies, shepherds, mud, rain and flying in the wind was the list that I stained my hand with in blue ink, they are all simple yet perfect little things that moulay Idriss and Volubilis gave to me over the weekend.
We made it back to Volubilis, but decided not to go in, we sat at a café outside and drank some Fanta Lemon, the best flavor ever invented, its carbonated lemonade, and eventually wandered back to town, got a cab to Meknes and took the train back to Fes, watching the sunset from the train and reflecting on our perfect weekend.
We had planned to visit Volubulis on Friday afternoon after we got to town and found the hotel, so we unfortunately had to rush the customary drinking of Mint Tea after a sale is made and we headed out on the walk to Volubulis. Most of the locals thought we were crazy that we didn’t want to hitch a cheap ride over there. I have decided that they are crazy for even suggesting such a thing. We strolled along the road, seeing the standard shepherds with their flocks of goats, sheep and sometimes a cow or two hanging around, as well as many families out enjoying their Friday afternoon, well the women and children sitting in orchards enjoying themselves. We decided to walk down a trail which we though connected to another road at that would put us closer to the entrance to the Roman ruins, it turned out to be a driveway, but the friendly proprietor of the house pointed us in the right direction along a foot path. The foot path lead us through the man’s olive orchard, toward Volubilis, and into a huge field of yellow flowers. The conditions were perfect. The sun was getting lower, it was probably 4 o’clock and the clouds were of the big puffy type, creating a powerfully dramatic skyscape and we could see for miles across the open plain. I asked Phil how far he thought we could see, after a lot of analyzing we decided the mountains in the distance that marked the end of the plain and the edge of our view must have been about 10 to 15 miles away.
We got to Volubilis, paid our 10 dirham entry fee, and started to explore the park. The grounds are massive and the ruins impressive beyond comprehension. There was an arc way that would rival the arc de triuph in Paris and ruins of a giant temple as well. The most impressive facets of the ruins were the mosaics that were uncovered. They were mosaic laid floors of the 3rd century depicting beautiful – the floor of the bathhouse covered in a school of fish, provocative – an image of a woman and her man, and amusing – one of a man riding a donkey backwards- scenes. These scenes, although dulled by their recent exposure to the elements, are intensely intricate and telling of the time period in roman history. Beyond their architecture and written word the mosaics show how the west influenced this area of Morocco and how their culture and that of the native Berber population became mixed at this distant, yet thriving, outpost of the Roman Empire. Beyond the sense of history I was experiencing it was amazing to watch the people there, a couple tourists who arrived on big busses, and then many families sitting together talking on the hill across from the ruins or walking around picking herbs and collecting them around the ancient structures. Volubilis was everything I could have ever wanted about a place, I had a strong sense of history, a strong sense of its modern function and finally as the sun started to set more an intensely beautiful setting.
It was Phil’s goal to see the sun set over Volubilis before we had come, he has seen many Roman ruins before and I don’t think he expected these ones to be as complete as they were, so he wanted to see them in a different light, that of dusk, this was an idea I had no problem with, but it would not be. We spent about an hour and half wandering the ruin as dark clouds were coming over the mountains to the east of us, not blocking the setting sun in the west, so we didn’t really care. We watched the east as a rainbow appeared coming out of Moulay Idriss, proving it was the pot of Gold we had already quickly seen, and as a more substantial storm came over the mountain a few kilometers away. We didn’t want to leave so we kept looking as the place emptied out, it was both stupid and a blessing. The rain hit hard and quick. The wind picked up and we couldn’t hear each other speak. We hid under some arches that were facing the right direction hoping to wait out the storm. It just got worse, we decided at one point to make a run for it. We sprinted across the ruins, hurdling ancient walls and splashing mud all over a group of retired American tourists who were struggling to haul their plastic hips up the hill to the parking lot. When we got to the parking lot there were no taxis left to bring us back to town and we had lost Mark. He had gone a different way to get out of the park and ended up taking refuge in a reconstructed olive press. We waited with a few shop owners who had been putting their things away, including locking their dog in the phone booth so he wouldn’t get cold, wet and sick, being in the rain all night nor would he destroy everything waiting inside their shop. From there we watched the sunset, through some of the heaviest rain I have ever seen. It was beautiful. I am sure at some spot in the valley below we, at Volubilis, were the start of the rainbow. We eventually called Mark on his cellphone to get him out of the park and the shop owner shared an expensive taxi with us back to town, the whole time the driver couldn’t see due to the hail that had started to fall along with the rain and the shop owner was ranting erratically about the taxis in town and trying to make friends with me at the same time.
We got back to Moulay Idriss and ran back to the Hotel, those who were out in the storm must have laughed as a group of crazy soaking wet tourists were running through their serene little town, yelling to each other so we could be heard and laughing hysterically at the ridiculousness of our adventure. It felt good to run. I had stayed behind to pay the taxi driver and sprinted up the mountain after my friends, it felt like I was racing again, in the pouring rain, free of any inhibition just plugging away as fast as I could to catch my friends. I got that sensation for about the third time that day that if I just opened up my arms and flapped a few times I would catch the wind and fly.
We made it back to the hotel, soaked and with no spare clothing. I had brought a few extra shirts with served us well, but we were all pant-less for a night. This only became awkward at dinner time when we were asked to dine downstairs where the family usually eats. We had to brave our cold wet jeans, but again, it was worth it. Homemade kefta tajine is incredible especially with a kettle of mint tea waiting for us as well. I have not had Moroccan food yet that has displeased me, something that comes as a great surprise.
In the morning we ate breakfast on the terrace under the morning sun, I could find no signs of a huge rainstorm the previous night, only perfectly blue skies. We waited around as our shoes and clothes dried a little more and then we went out an explored the city. It was the perfect city. We weren’t treated as tourists as we are in Fes or any other big city, where everyone thinks they can get some money from the white guys, but instead we were able to sit around and talk to a group of kids for almost a half hour. The city was painted in every color, unlike Fes’s old medina which is pretty uniform, giving it an organic and almost bohemian feel. It was a picture of urbanism in its truest sense, there was no access for cars in most of the city and it was perfect that way, people were walking everywhere, seeing each other and greeting each one along the way. We ate lunch in a croweded square as the city had its Saturday souk going and the people from all around ventured in to buy and sell goods. Most people were dressed traditionally in their brightest spring colors making the city vibrant and alive. We then decided to make the trek back to Volubilis. The trek was just as beautiful as the day before, if not more so. In the yellow field we had visited the day before now there were reds, oranges, purples whites and blues who had popped open after they got some water. My camera ran out of battery power so I made a list of the beautiful things I saw and wanted to remember; goats, streets, flowers, butterflies, shepherds, mud, rain and flying in the wind was the list that I stained my hand with in blue ink, they are all simple yet perfect little things that moulay Idriss and Volubilis gave to me over the weekend.
We made it back to Volubilis, but decided not to go in, we sat at a café outside and drank some Fanta Lemon, the best flavor ever invented, its carbonated lemonade, and eventually wandered back to town, got a cab to Meknes and took the train back to Fes, watching the sunset from the train and reflecting on our perfect weekend.
Friday, March 9, 2007
ALIF
I am having a hard time really becoming a part of Moroccan society, I am white and thus, as long as I live here, I will always be a tourist. Arabs say that race does not matter. They are blind. The place that I get the most cultural learning is in fact my class on colloquial Moroccan Arabic, not as a result of any specified learning agenda or syllabus, but because of make up of my class and the discussions that we have. My class, my only class, consists of me, Gertrude, and a professor, we have two, each one of different days; their names are Abdelselam and Toufik.
Gertrude is the highlight of my class. She is a 33 year old nun from the democratic republic of Congo. Gertrude speaks no English, and no Standard Arabic, only French, and a little bit of colloquial Arabic. I do not know how we ended up in the same class, and at first it was extremely frustrating, but she as her job implies has been a godsend. Gertrude is round, I have no other description that fits her has snuggly. Physically every feature that she carries has a rounded softness, she is not fat, not close to it, yet everything about her is round, I have never seen eyes so circular or cheeks that have such a perfectly circular curve. Her voice is so full, in a distinctly central African way, that the only word I can use to describe it is round, the opposite of angular, there are no sharp edges nor would there ever dream of being any. Additionally, her personality is entirely welcoming, warm and devoid of sharp edges. She becomes angry or confused and she can do nothing but shake her head, shrug, and laugh it off, knowing that she will be able to figure out whatever is wrong later, waiting for a chance to cycle back around to figure out her question. Even the way she moves her lips trying to get her mouth around a new word or a new sound is circular, it is as if she reaches out her lips and tries to catch the word in her mouth turning her lips inward and not allowing the word to get away from her.
Abdelselam again is someone who I doubted highly at first. He walked into class, missing a couple teeth, with the thickest glasses I have ever seen and one eye that constantly squints. I thought he had just wandered in off the street. I was wrong. Abdelselam cannot spell, which drove me crazy for the first week as even vocabulary that I knew well was always wrong because of his crazy spelling exchanging short and long vowels and dods for dels in a way that any pervious Arabic teacher I have had would have abhorred. I am quite sure that he doesn’t know any standard Arabic. Darija- colloquial Arabic- is not by any means like standard Arabic, It is bastardized and creolized with French like it forgot who it was for a while and was running away from standard Arabic and not looking back. This is different to such an extent that when I was trying to ask someone on a bus a question in standard Arabic she replied in darija, “oh wow, you speak Arabic” implying that the language that she was speaking was not Arabic. So, back to Abdelselam, despite all of his qualities that are so unlike any informed teacher I have previously had, ones who place precision in a position of utmost importance, he is incredible. We have conversations, in Darija, about topics that I would have trouble successfully discussing in Arabic. These topics at first seem inane and boring, but the mixture of me, Gertrude and Abdelselam turns them into truly important and enlightening conversations.
The first of these discussions was on marriage, it was interesting to see the opinions of my Arab teachers and Congolese classmate, even if they were hard for us to get out and explain. Within the discussion Abdelselam talked about how he sees marriage as becoming too business-like. I countered with, “what about your Islamic history of marriage as a tool to connect families,” he replied, “that is Islamic marriage, that is from religion and it is not for business.” I say this as if he was spitting out an solely Islamic point of view, but as we discussed I am becoming able to see the truly worldly and learned experience that he provides to our class. The conversation then drifted to marriage between two men, Gertrude, immediately said, it is not right, absolutely, five minutes after explaining how she is not at all racist and respects all people. Abdelsalam went on to explain how he saw marriage like a bird, where one wing is a woman and one is a man, and it takes two wings to fly. I managed, to counter with “which wing is man?” he replied, “either, it’s not important.” I quickly shot back, “ then why cant man be both.” Gertrude, said “because” and he just nodded.
The second of these conversations, one which bridged two classes, was about the family relationship. Gertrude and I had both written little paragraphs about the topic. We, as we always seem to, had very different viewpoints. I spoke first in the first class about the relationship between brothers, I said the relationship between brothers is a pretty universal relationship, one of the few that lasts an entire life, one that is based upon love and trust. She did not agree. I was utterly confused. She said it cannot be the same because some people are poor and some are rich and some live in congo and some live in America, I was still confused. As she explained I slowly realized the context of family in which she was speaking. The family as children of God, where we are all brothers and sisters. So, Abdelsalam in his great wisdom assigned us to each write a new paragraph about family relationships in general, as children of God. We returned to class today with our paragraphs in hand and read them stumbling through our grammar, and my attempt to sound smart in darija by throwing in standard Arabic words, that just didn’t work out. Abdelselam told us to put our papers away and just say what we were trying to say. My point of view was that there are different scales at which families exist, but that in the end family of God is a broken one. One where individual needs and desires are more important than those of our brothers and sisters. Again Gertrude disagreed. I did not think of the context in which she would be understanding my ideas, as a nun in the catholic church she has given up her life in Congo, her family, and her home, to ignore her individual needs and desires and do good for others, for her brothers and sisters. It was eye opening see how what I see as a universal cultural norm, looking after oneself, to be totally refuted by this beautiful round person sitting in front of me, her eyes pleading me to understand her broken Arabic and her experience in the world. We admitted that each other had spoken truths and we moved on, changing our starting question from “do all people exist and act as brothers and sisters to each other” to the infinitely more difficult, “how do I become a true brother to all of my siblings?”
This conversation was still on my mind as I left class and I sat outside with my friends Federika and Farrin. Farrin was really upset about not doing well on a test, and was complaining, and Rasha another student in her class was sitting at the end of the table and absolutely flipped out on Farrin. This was similar to an incident some of you may remember in Ross with me my freshman year. She screamed, “Grow up, stop whining, stop questioning the teacher and take some responsibility for yourself and your actions, you are driving me and everyone in the class crazy” in the harshest tone I have heard in a long time. It hit Farrin hard. She had a really hard time even going back to class after that. Rasha is Pakistani but has studied in the Unites States and England at elite universities loves to talk seriously about politics and the New York Times. Farrin is from Brattleboro, Vermont, walks with a serious limp and did not go to college, she is 20 now, her parents work two jobs, and she has been saving up for a year to come learn Arabic. Rasha is Middlebury, and Farrin, in my mind, is a glimpse at the real world. Everything that Rasha said was something that I would hear and respect at Middlebury, to a certain extent, but in this situation, I realized that I was just put in the middle of an awkward, but real situation pitting the elite against the poor and helpless, and it hurt to watch, seeing what I could very easily become. It made me reflect on Gertrude and Abdelselam and my opinions of them and their shortcomings, the bad spelling and inability to speak English or pick up Arabic as quickly as me, and how they are not really shortcomings, they singularly real life, something more beautiful and more inspiring and better than the fabricated and pretentious world of upper middle class America.
Gertrude is the highlight of my class. She is a 33 year old nun from the democratic republic of Congo. Gertrude speaks no English, and no Standard Arabic, only French, and a little bit of colloquial Arabic. I do not know how we ended up in the same class, and at first it was extremely frustrating, but she as her job implies has been a godsend. Gertrude is round, I have no other description that fits her has snuggly. Physically every feature that she carries has a rounded softness, she is not fat, not close to it, yet everything about her is round, I have never seen eyes so circular or cheeks that have such a perfectly circular curve. Her voice is so full, in a distinctly central African way, that the only word I can use to describe it is round, the opposite of angular, there are no sharp edges nor would there ever dream of being any. Additionally, her personality is entirely welcoming, warm and devoid of sharp edges. She becomes angry or confused and she can do nothing but shake her head, shrug, and laugh it off, knowing that she will be able to figure out whatever is wrong later, waiting for a chance to cycle back around to figure out her question. Even the way she moves her lips trying to get her mouth around a new word or a new sound is circular, it is as if she reaches out her lips and tries to catch the word in her mouth turning her lips inward and not allowing the word to get away from her.
Abdelselam again is someone who I doubted highly at first. He walked into class, missing a couple teeth, with the thickest glasses I have ever seen and one eye that constantly squints. I thought he had just wandered in off the street. I was wrong. Abdelselam cannot spell, which drove me crazy for the first week as even vocabulary that I knew well was always wrong because of his crazy spelling exchanging short and long vowels and dods for dels in a way that any pervious Arabic teacher I have had would have abhorred. I am quite sure that he doesn’t know any standard Arabic. Darija- colloquial Arabic- is not by any means like standard Arabic, It is bastardized and creolized with French like it forgot who it was for a while and was running away from standard Arabic and not looking back. This is different to such an extent that when I was trying to ask someone on a bus a question in standard Arabic she replied in darija, “oh wow, you speak Arabic” implying that the language that she was speaking was not Arabic. So, back to Abdelselam, despite all of his qualities that are so unlike any informed teacher I have previously had, ones who place precision in a position of utmost importance, he is incredible. We have conversations, in Darija, about topics that I would have trouble successfully discussing in Arabic. These topics at first seem inane and boring, but the mixture of me, Gertrude and Abdelselam turns them into truly important and enlightening conversations.
The first of these discussions was on marriage, it was interesting to see the opinions of my Arab teachers and Congolese classmate, even if they were hard for us to get out and explain. Within the discussion Abdelselam talked about how he sees marriage as becoming too business-like. I countered with, “what about your Islamic history of marriage as a tool to connect families,” he replied, “that is Islamic marriage, that is from religion and it is not for business.” I say this as if he was spitting out an solely Islamic point of view, but as we discussed I am becoming able to see the truly worldly and learned experience that he provides to our class. The conversation then drifted to marriage between two men, Gertrude, immediately said, it is not right, absolutely, five minutes after explaining how she is not at all racist and respects all people. Abdelsalam went on to explain how he saw marriage like a bird, where one wing is a woman and one is a man, and it takes two wings to fly. I managed, to counter with “which wing is man?” he replied, “either, it’s not important.” I quickly shot back, “ then why cant man be both.” Gertrude, said “because” and he just nodded.
The second of these conversations, one which bridged two classes, was about the family relationship. Gertrude and I had both written little paragraphs about the topic. We, as we always seem to, had very different viewpoints. I spoke first in the first class about the relationship between brothers, I said the relationship between brothers is a pretty universal relationship, one of the few that lasts an entire life, one that is based upon love and trust. She did not agree. I was utterly confused. She said it cannot be the same because some people are poor and some are rich and some live in congo and some live in America, I was still confused. As she explained I slowly realized the context of family in which she was speaking. The family as children of God, where we are all brothers and sisters. So, Abdelsalam in his great wisdom assigned us to each write a new paragraph about family relationships in general, as children of God. We returned to class today with our paragraphs in hand and read them stumbling through our grammar, and my attempt to sound smart in darija by throwing in standard Arabic words, that just didn’t work out. Abdelselam told us to put our papers away and just say what we were trying to say. My point of view was that there are different scales at which families exist, but that in the end family of God is a broken one. One where individual needs and desires are more important than those of our brothers and sisters. Again Gertrude disagreed. I did not think of the context in which she would be understanding my ideas, as a nun in the catholic church she has given up her life in Congo, her family, and her home, to ignore her individual needs and desires and do good for others, for her brothers and sisters. It was eye opening see how what I see as a universal cultural norm, looking after oneself, to be totally refuted by this beautiful round person sitting in front of me, her eyes pleading me to understand her broken Arabic and her experience in the world. We admitted that each other had spoken truths and we moved on, changing our starting question from “do all people exist and act as brothers and sisters to each other” to the infinitely more difficult, “how do I become a true brother to all of my siblings?”
This conversation was still on my mind as I left class and I sat outside with my friends Federika and Farrin. Farrin was really upset about not doing well on a test, and was complaining, and Rasha another student in her class was sitting at the end of the table and absolutely flipped out on Farrin. This was similar to an incident some of you may remember in Ross with me my freshman year. She screamed, “Grow up, stop whining, stop questioning the teacher and take some responsibility for yourself and your actions, you are driving me and everyone in the class crazy” in the harshest tone I have heard in a long time. It hit Farrin hard. She had a really hard time even going back to class after that. Rasha is Pakistani but has studied in the Unites States and England at elite universities loves to talk seriously about politics and the New York Times. Farrin is from Brattleboro, Vermont, walks with a serious limp and did not go to college, she is 20 now, her parents work two jobs, and she has been saving up for a year to come learn Arabic. Rasha is Middlebury, and Farrin, in my mind, is a glimpse at the real world. Everything that Rasha said was something that I would hear and respect at Middlebury, to a certain extent, but in this situation, I realized that I was just put in the middle of an awkward, but real situation pitting the elite against the poor and helpless, and it hurt to watch, seeing what I could very easily become. It made me reflect on Gertrude and Abdelselam and my opinions of them and their shortcomings, the bad spelling and inability to speak English or pick up Arabic as quickly as me, and how they are not really shortcomings, they singularly real life, something more beautiful and more inspiring and better than the fabricated and pretentious world of upper middle class America.
Monday, March 5, 2007
Satellites Satellites and No Satellites
One of the quirkiest things I have discovered in my short time in Morocco is the Moroccans’ love for satellite television. So, it did not come as a surprise that as I ate lunch on Friday I saw my neighbors across the street installing a new dish on top of their house, to aide the 3 that are already there. I watched the men work and saw a heated discussion take place deciding where to put the newest addition to their collection. They decided on the highest point on the rooftop where the covered stairway exits to their veranda, it couldn’t really go anywhere else without taking another one down, and Allah knows that would be too much work. On every rooftop one sees satellite dishes, without fail. On top of my house there are 8 satellite receivers, all for one permanent resident. Khadija, our landlady, I will refer to her henceforth as “the old lady” as Phil my flat mate likes to call her. From my terrace it is possible to see 62 different satellite receivers, on about 8 surrounding buildings. The skyline of Fes does not have dramatic sky scrapers instead it is just that of circular white-ish grey rusting dishes.
After class Friday a friend asked me, “hey are you going to casa?” and I responded, “no, I didn’t know people were going, but, okay.” So I took a one-night trip to Casablanca for the 21st birthday of one of the students studying here. Going to Casa was only the first part of the journey, the second night was a surprise trip to Madrid for the real birthday party, I didn’t make that leg of the journey. Casa was, what Fes isn’t, in terms of night life, and by that I mean to say that a night life exists in Casa. So we arrived around seven after a 4 hour train ride and found a hotel that could take in all 14 of us, for 70 dirham a night, about 9 dollars. We then went to a bar/resaurant for dinner, I am pretty sure the place was more of a bar than a restaurant but used the restaurant half of the establishment as a façade for its, less culturally acceptable real business. This was evident through both the quality of the food and the dark hallway that had to be walked through in order to get from the main restaurant area to the back room bar. The restaurant had some live entertainment that would come in and play music and walk around and dance from time to time, it was more strange than entertaining. After dinner we visited a friend of most of the students I was with who had studied at ALIF last semester and now has an apartment in Casa, then it was off to another bar/night club. We walked into the bar through a restaurant and then had to go into the basement to get to the actual dancing/bar area. Other than the 7 women in our group there were 3 other women in the basement and about 30 men, debauchery in Morocco seems to be reserved for men only. We didn’t do much mixing with the locals.
Saturday morning I rode with the group to the airport and checked to see if I could get a really cheap seat of the flight to Madrid with them, I couldn’t, it was 238 euros after they had all paid about 50 for the round trip. So I made my way back to Fes on my own. I took the train and as I left Casa I found another, much stranger, skyline covered in satellite dishes, a Moroccan shanty town. These may have been the best living almost homeless people I have ever seen. Their shacks made out of cement blocks and roved in rusting sheet metal, the biggest being about 20 feet by 20 feet, all had satellite dishes resting on their rusty roofs. One such of these shacks, no doubt a rather prosperous or large poverty stricken family had built a second story onto their shack. It was strange to see such development in a place so poor, but I guess that must come with time, one has enough money to add on top of his tiny house but, either does not have the means to move or is too attached to his community, and thus, the supposedly ephemeral ghetto town turns into a real community, with two story shacks and satellite dishes.
I have just spent the last hour sitting out on my terrace. Tonight’s entertainment was not of the avian kind but of the astrological kind instead. The show I have been watching is a full lunar eclipse of a full moon. I didn’t know this was happening tonight so it came as a welcome rest after my day’s travels. The night sky over Fes is surprisingly pleasing, I would expect much less in a city of a million people. In addition to the relatively low light pollution, there are not the distractions we see in an American sky, I watched the moon for over an hour and saw only two planes fly by. Tonight lucky me got to see, in one night, what it usually takes a month to see. As Earth’s shadow curtained the moon, the rest of the sky came out to play. While the light pollution from the moon dissipated, some of the more elusive nighttime players made an appearance above the city of Fes. With the moon full, Orion, Cassiopeia and the Big Dipper all give great performances, but as it’s light fades 7 of our favorite sisters and the Dipper’s little counterpart show up and show off. The moon during a lunar eclipse is unlike any other moon, the sunlight’s glow, and reflections off the earth are obviously still shining on the moon, leaving a big orange hanging in the sky that matches the ripened oranges all around Fes. Studying the night sky over Fes has, however, left me with one probing question; where are the satellites that send the Moroccans their beloved signals?
After class Friday a friend asked me, “hey are you going to casa?” and I responded, “no, I didn’t know people were going, but, okay.” So I took a one-night trip to Casablanca for the 21st birthday of one of the students studying here. Going to Casa was only the first part of the journey, the second night was a surprise trip to Madrid for the real birthday party, I didn’t make that leg of the journey. Casa was, what Fes isn’t, in terms of night life, and by that I mean to say that a night life exists in Casa. So we arrived around seven after a 4 hour train ride and found a hotel that could take in all 14 of us, for 70 dirham a night, about 9 dollars. We then went to a bar/resaurant for dinner, I am pretty sure the place was more of a bar than a restaurant but used the restaurant half of the establishment as a façade for its, less culturally acceptable real business. This was evident through both the quality of the food and the dark hallway that had to be walked through in order to get from the main restaurant area to the back room bar. The restaurant had some live entertainment that would come in and play music and walk around and dance from time to time, it was more strange than entertaining. After dinner we visited a friend of most of the students I was with who had studied at ALIF last semester and now has an apartment in Casa, then it was off to another bar/night club. We walked into the bar through a restaurant and then had to go into the basement to get to the actual dancing/bar area. Other than the 7 women in our group there were 3 other women in the basement and about 30 men, debauchery in Morocco seems to be reserved for men only. We didn’t do much mixing with the locals.
Saturday morning I rode with the group to the airport and checked to see if I could get a really cheap seat of the flight to Madrid with them, I couldn’t, it was 238 euros after they had all paid about 50 for the round trip. So I made my way back to Fes on my own. I took the train and as I left Casa I found another, much stranger, skyline covered in satellite dishes, a Moroccan shanty town. These may have been the best living almost homeless people I have ever seen. Their shacks made out of cement blocks and roved in rusting sheet metal, the biggest being about 20 feet by 20 feet, all had satellite dishes resting on their rusty roofs. One such of these shacks, no doubt a rather prosperous or large poverty stricken family had built a second story onto their shack. It was strange to see such development in a place so poor, but I guess that must come with time, one has enough money to add on top of his tiny house but, either does not have the means to move or is too attached to his community, and thus, the supposedly ephemeral ghetto town turns into a real community, with two story shacks and satellite dishes.
I have just spent the last hour sitting out on my terrace. Tonight’s entertainment was not of the avian kind but of the astrological kind instead. The show I have been watching is a full lunar eclipse of a full moon. I didn’t know this was happening tonight so it came as a welcome rest after my day’s travels. The night sky over Fes is surprisingly pleasing, I would expect much less in a city of a million people. In addition to the relatively low light pollution, there are not the distractions we see in an American sky, I watched the moon for over an hour and saw only two planes fly by. Tonight lucky me got to see, in one night, what it usually takes a month to see. As Earth’s shadow curtained the moon, the rest of the sky came out to play. While the light pollution from the moon dissipated, some of the more elusive nighttime players made an appearance above the city of Fes. With the moon full, Orion, Cassiopeia and the Big Dipper all give great performances, but as it’s light fades 7 of our favorite sisters and the Dipper’s little counterpart show up and show off. The moon during a lunar eclipse is unlike any other moon, the sunlight’s glow, and reflections off the earth are obviously still shining on the moon, leaving a big orange hanging in the sky that matches the ripened oranges all around Fes. Studying the night sky over Fes has, however, left me with one probing question; where are the satellites that send the Moroccans their beloved signals?
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