Ashora, Art, and Closed Doors

It's been a busy few weeks in Marrakesh, and now that that the Moroccan Independence Day has arrived I finally have some time to sit down and write. As winter sets in at home in Massachusetts, the mild rainy season has arrived in the city. The days are cool and sunny for the most part, and on my walk to school in the mornings through the fresh air I can see the peaks of the Atlas Mountains covered in the recent snowfall. The leaves have begun to fall from some of the trees and there are intermittent periods of bone-chilling rain, but there are still flowers blooming across the city and days of bright sunshine and warmth. As Thanksgiving and the holidays approach, I do find myself feeling homesick for the New England winter and all my friends and family together at home. However, life here is full to the brim of exciting new activities, hard work, and fun times with the Ibarkis. It is hard to feel lonely or homesick when Yassir is running into my room to play, Oumaima and Zineb are calling me to come join them studying, and my host parents are sending a constant stream of support and warmth. I am so lucky to be living with such an amazing family, and having the Ibarkis has gone so far towards making up for the fact that I am not living with my mom and dad, don't have my friends here with me, and don't have the same wide network of people that I usually do at home.

Over the past couple weeks, my host sisters and I have had a lot of fun times together.  The holiday of Ashora was two weeks ago, and we went to my host mom's friend Fatima's house for delicious couscous. Afterwards, Zineb and I donned jelabas and went out into the chill of the night in search of the Ashora fires. Every year, the boys of each neighborhood gather brush and sticks and light an enormous bonfire. We found them preparing to light the fire next to my gym, and we watched with Yassir and the dry straw and sticks went up in flames. Some boys had brought drums, and they beat a deep rhythm as their friends grabbed pieces of flaming straw and spun to trace pictures of whirling sparks in the air. We watched the celebrations with Yassir from beside the warmth of the flames, taking in the heat and the music. The next day, as is traditional on Ashora, my host mom doled out portions of candied nuts, small cookies (the croichlets I talked about in my last post), and dried fruit to each member of the family. We each have a small bag of treats called feccia that we will eat as snacks in the days to come. I love the small celebrations and traditions like this that are so characteristic of each Moroccan holiday, and I'm glad I was able to see Ashora.

Last weekend, Oumaima and I traveled with the other Americans to the town of Ait Tourir and painted a mural at a private school that doubles as an orphanage. The school is part of the international organization SOS Children's Villages, and it works to provide about 100 Moroccan orphans with an incredible standard of living and a great education. The walls of the private school are covered with murals that volunteers have painted to brighten the red walls and make the beautiful complex even more welcoming. As we walked up to the site we were going to paint, lines of schoolchildren passed us and I received the most enthusiastic welcome I have ever seen in my life. About 50 little girls broke out of their line to come over and talk to us, kissing our cheeks and spouting the only English words they knew to clamoring for our attention.  We had an impromtu competition to see which one of the girls could roll their "r"'s the best, and we watched them walk back through the winding buildings laughing and trilling high "r"'s out over the lines. While the children were in class, Oumaima and I worked with two girls from the town to paint the French alphabet on one of the walls of the school. After we were finished, we got into a spontaneous face-paint war with Mohamed and John, and we ended up with some true masterpieces on our faces. After an official tour of the orphanage, we returned to Marrakesh. Oumaima and I decided to walk to hour and a half home from the bus station, and we ended up walking through the giant central square Djemma al Fna with John and Seth. Djemma a Fna comes alive at night with dancers and snake charmers and the frenetic music of performers, and we wandered through the thick crowds taking in the atmosphere until we reached the street food vendors. We sat on rickety stools and ate snails from their shells. They are cooked in a flavorful briney broth that is almost overpowering, and the hot steam rising from the bowls warmed us in the cooling desert night. Afterwards, we continued on through the rows of stalls to a vendor who sold a deep red tea mixed with spices. The tea was steaming hot and tasted of cinnamon and peppermint laced with an infusion of exotic flavors that I could not put my finger on. The heat of the liquid and the spices warmed me to my core, and Oumaima and I walked home through the lively streets of the city in good spirits.

Later that week, I had a small run-in with an artist that was one of the most interesting interactions I've had yet in Morocco. I was walking down the street with two of my friends John and Tanner, and a man walked by us and asked us if we spoke English. He proceeded, bursting with enthusiasm, to tell us that he was just coming from the hospital from the birth of his first child. He said luck comes in threes, and he asked us to come to his shop in the market across from our school to have tea and paint. We said yes and entered the crowded market, weaving through the narrow alleyways around vendors and carts. His store was a small oasis from the chaos of the market, and we sat and drank tea with him while he told us about his wife and baby Sarah. After we had tea, he gave me an apron and told me to come stand by him next to a blank canvas on the wall. He blended colors and guided my hand across the pallet in a blur of dripping blues and yellows and reds until I had painted a softly lit desert on the canvas. I stepped back and he approached the painting. With deft strokes, he outlined two palm trees arching together in the middle of the desert and added contours to the dunes and sky. All throughout his work, he kept up a stream of steady commentary about the symbols in the painting and how his lines and colors reflected love in life. His English was a soft flow of broken sentences spelling out all the truths he held universal. It was amazing to hear him speak and watch him paint, and he told us to come back any time we wanted for a painting lesson in exchange for the chance for him to practice his English. He wrote my name on the desert painting in Arabic calligraphy and gave me a rose from the market on the way out.

It was a truly unexpected and amazing experience that was made all the more important because Tanner ended up leaving Marrakesh the next day due to family matters. I'm glad he got one last incredible interaction with this man in Morocco before he left, and I know everyone he touched in Marrakesh will be praying for him in the days to come.


On a happier note, yesterday was Oumaima and Yassir's birthday, and we had a nice celebration at home with their aunt Raja from Benimallal. She lives with their grandmother who I met earlier this year, and their grandmother sent me a beautiful scarf as a present! Apparently she liked meeting "the American", and I was really touched that she thought of me. I hope I get to see her in person later this year to thank her. During the celebration, I gave Oumaima and Yassir their gifts and we played games. We danced to traditional shabbi music and ate delicious Moroccan helwah (sweets/cake). My host dad bought a sparkler candle, and the celebration culminated when he lit the candle. The sparkler lit up, and I could see Yassir and Oumaima's laughing faces as they prepared to blow out the candle. We had a great night all together, and I can't wait for more birthdays together this year.

Yesterday, I continued my training for the Marrakesh Marathon (10 weeks to go!). I did a 14.5 mile run all the way down the beautiful avenue that stretches from the CLC to the outskirts of the city and then ran around the Menara basin with Seth. I'm glad I have someone to keep me company, and I really love the long, relaxed Sunday runs. My new shoes came in the mail last week, and I'm very hopeful about my prospects for completing the marathon.

On that note, I had some very interesting experiences with the post office here when I tried to pick up my shoes. At first, I approached all the complications (having to present multiple forms of ID and being asked to pay a ridiculous amount of customs duties) with a generally annoyed attitude, and I tried to deal the problem by being assertive. There are two men who work as customs officers at the office, and they generally are very hard on people who are obviously foreigners in terms of how much money they ask from them. They were going to charge me $70 dollars to collect my small package. However, I very quickly realized that my assertive attitude and arguing in English was getting me nowhere with these men. I returned a couple days later and spoke solely in Arabic to them, smiled a lot, told them I was a student about to run in the Marrakesh marathon, and eventually ended up getting the "latifa" (nice) price of about $30. My experience in the post office really underscored my observations about the importance of interpersonal relationships here. Although most people I've talked to have advised me to be strong and assertive in my dealings here so as to not get cheated, I have found for the most part that the most effective primary approach is to get on the person's good side. If you approach most people here and begin to speak assertively in English or French, there is an initial withdrawal and the person tends to close off. Instead, saying a cheerful hello in Arabic and slowly working towards what you want is a far superior approach. I was struck by how different the men at the post office were between the two days I spoke with them. They changed from rude, closed-off employees to kind men laughing and chatting with me as they helped me out.

My experience with these men is a perfect example of how deeply layered Moroccan society can be. Behind the closed doors in the narrow winding streets of the medina, there are expansive palaces and secret gardens hidden from the eye of the casual viewer. The insides of houses can be drastically different from their outer traditional appearance. Many of these places are easy to overlook or misjudge, much like many of the people you meet on the streets here in Morocco. In the months to come, I hope to be able to delve more deeply into society here and discover what is really behind more of these closed doors, whether physical wooden ones or the seemingly blank face of a Moroccan acquaintance.

This week, I am traveling with Zineb and the Americans to Agadir, a town in the south on the ocean. I'm looking forward to a fun trip and I will update soon!