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.