A Walk in the Palms

The days here are starting to grow warm and mild, and with the sea change in the weather I have begun to start my day a different way. In the cold, dark mornings of winter here, I would leave my frigid house before sunrise to catch a taxi, walking quickly down my deserted street past the wild dogs lying still and numbed by the cold.  There is always a slight element of uncertainty walking in the dark here, a partially-justified fear of the shadows. My neighborhood is quite safe, but I always hurried towards the main street in the dim morning light, my arms crossed against the inescapable chill of the night. 

As the mornings have grown lighter and more mild, I wake up with the sunlight streaming into my room and eat breakfast with Yassir and Oumaima and my host parents before school. Our family breakfasts are a wonderful weekday routine that has become one of the best parts of my day. Yassir and Oumaima are usually rushed, but I always sit with my host mom and chat with her over steaming glasses of tea and warm bread. As the sun rises higher, I pack my schoolbag and set off for school, walking through my neighborhood, a place called Amarchiche. These days, the sunlight is strong and warm even at eight in the morning, and I no longer need to wear a jacket. I walk out through my neighborhood in the growing warmth and pass by the university next to my house. Zineb went to school here when she was younger, and the crowds of students outside are always laughing and happy. I cut through a deserted lot that has become a de-facto street for students on their way to class and continue on my way, passing by crowded bus stops and bakeries. The scent of freshly baked bread and cookies wafts out of the ovens into the streets, and the shouting of children on their way to school fills the air. A playground full of toddlers and young mothers comes up on the corner, and I turn onto a different street lined with cafes. Students and adults sit relaxing before their obligations start, pulling chairs around crowded tables on the patios to enjoy tea and msimmon, a delicious Moroccan pastry, with their friends.  A beautiful rose-colored mosque presides over the neighborhood, its minaret rising at the distant corner from a bed of orange trees. Here, I leave Amarchiche behind and walk to school along a large avenue called Fessi. The street is flanked with tall palm trees and apartment buildings with restaurants, banks, shops, and cafes on the first floors. It is full with the bustle of an awakening city in the morning. Shopkeepers open their doors, hanging their wares outside and sweeping suds of soapy water from their morning cleaning out onto the street. Vendors spread msimmon dough to cook on on hot stone surfaces outside cafes, wrapping cheese and honey in the pastry as a cheap breakfast to go.  Donkey carts mingle with cars, buses, bicycles, and motorbikes on the crowded street, and the traffic is a strange mix of the ultra-modern and the traditional. I join the groups walking on the sidewalks, weaving between girls in the smocks of the mandatory school uniform here and packs of boys swaggering in an unbreakable line, heading towards my destination with the rest of them. 

Since the weather has turned, I have not taken a cab to school once. I either walk the 50 minutes to school or take my host father's bicycle. The bike is a large, ungainly piece of machinery with broken gears, and I always feel a certain thrill of independence (and a little bit of terror) when I ride on the crazy streets here. I am probably the only person in the entire city of Marrakesh who wears a helmet on a non-motorized bike, and everyone on the street always gives me a slightly confused look. A blonde girl, in my neighborhood, is a fairly uncommon sight. A blonde girl who chooses to not take a taxi but rides a bike and looks incredibly stupid doing it (I wear a brightly colored and misshapen helmet) is just an amusing sight for most people. However, I've come to love the utility of riding the bike and all the advantages that come with it. A big one is that I largely avoid being followed or yelled at on the street when I'm on the bike. I love my walk to school, but I also have to put in headphones and have my vocabulary notebook out in front of me to have an enjoyable experience. If I am looking around, I always end up making eye contact with a man on the street and proceed to have an experience that either annoys, revolts, or scares me. To deal with this unfortunate facet of life here, I download a new music album onto my phone every morning and listen to it with the volume up high. I also multitask by memorizing the vocabulary that my teacher gives up every day (approximately 25 new words every day in addition to our textbook work that I have to be able to pronounce, spell, and use correctly by the next day).  Instead of staying up an extra hour at night to memorize these words, I have a special small notebook that I look at on my walk to school to memorize the vocabulary. I've always been a kinetic learner, and I think this habit has helped me learn a lot. In addition, it sends a pretty serious "Leave me alone" vibe to everyone on the street, which is a huge plus. The only downside to this strategy is that occasionally women in my neighborhood have thought I am a tourist trying to read a map. One day, I was stopped three separate times by women asking me if I needed help finding directions back to Gueliz. It took a little bit of time to convince them that I did, indeed, live way out in Amarchiche. 

In the afternoons, I go back home on the same route. Sometimes I stop on my way, resting in the soft afternoon sunlight on a park bench or stopping at a cafe that is nestled into a small garden between apartment buildings. I meet Zineb there and we drink coffee and talk, sitting under the trellises with their long tangles of hanging purple flowers. When I'm alone, I put in my headphones and study my vocabulary as I walk, but I still feel an immense dissatisfaction about the way I have to conduct myself on the streets here. I've written before about how I don't feel quite like myself when I walk around here, since I have to force myself to look unfriendly and closed off. Normally, there are no repercussions for how closed off I am, but the other day I had a very unfortunate interaction. I had met one of Zineb's friends once before on the street with her, and he is a student at another English language school here. He invited us to come hang out with him and his friends and the Americans from the other school, but he lost Zineb's phone number. One day, I was walking past the university and he saw me from his car and tried to catch up with me so he could tell me about our logistics. In America, we (especially girls) are conditioned to be afraid when someone follows you in a car. In Morocco, this isn't as big of a deal -- robbers are much more likely to be on foot or on a bike. My host mom has told me that if a man in a car is following you, you should be happy because he really can't do anything to you. However, in America we are taught that someone following you in a car means you are in danger. This teaching transfers over to Morocco quite poorly, but it is almost impossible to forget 19 years of instinct and not freak out when someone starts driving alongside you and following you to your house. The boy was wearing a hat and I did not recognize him, and I ignored what he was saying to me (I've developed a shockingly good filter against male voices here). I did a couple loops around my block since I didn't want him to see where I lived, and he kept following me, making u-turns so he wouldn't lose me. Finally, I walked to a narrow part of the street where he couldn't turn around and waited until he was beside me. I screamed at him to go away and sprinted to my house, annoyed, frustrated, and fumbling with my keys so I could get inside before he saw where I lived. 

The next day, Zineb told me that she had ran into her friend and he had told her that I had been incredibly rude to him on the street and he couldn't understand why. I put two and two together and realized he had been the boy following me in the car. Although he shouldn't have kept following me as much as he did, I still felt really bad and now, because of the way I acted, he hasn't invited us again to hang out with his friends. I really wanted to meet these people, and I'm really disappointed that I have to act this way and make these mistakes. There really isn't an alternative, because if you act any other way you open the door to the vast, vast majority of cases in which the boy doesn't know you and you should be trying to get away. I can deal with having to ignore people on the street and not feeling so much like myself, but I really hate that this comportment leads to situations like this one. 

When I'm occasionally out at night, I walk home on Fessi as far as I can. Zineb and Oumaima and I love to go out to eat pizza at a cafe called Jannat (the Arabic word for paradise), and we go there often on Saturday nights. The street is full of Moroccans enjoying the night breeze and lights. The city turns out after dark, and it is a lovely feeling to mingle among the crowds of people shopping and eating out under the palm trees that line the avenue. When I'm not alone, I walk all the way home through my neighborhood in the dark. The vast majority of the streets in the area are safe, but there are a couple of areas that we always walk very quickly through. There is a certain feeling of discomfort that I always feel walking here at night, and this is a part of Morocco that I know I will not miss. At nighttime, you walk quickly and silently, avoiding eye contact and watching the shadows behind you. Zineb tells me that she knows Allah will take care of her at night, but I have nothing else other than my own wits and faith in the strangers on the street to protect me. Although I know I am probably never in danger of physical harm, I still get scared, and I hate that I have to be scared. I remember walking back to my home in Sudbury at night quite often from a house close to mine, and I never felt scared. The one time I ever felt afraid was when a car stopped beside me, and it turned out to be a policeman asking me if I was alright. I'm beginning to really love Morocco and life here, but differences like these show me the parts of my home that I took for granted and the parts of life here that I will never truly be able to adapt to. 

We've been talking a lot about authenticity recently at the CLC with relationship to study-abroad. When most people think about Morocco, they probably think about traditional clothing, villages, and the cultural scene marketed to tourists in places like Djemma al Fna. Many people who come to Morocco probably look for authenticity in the obvious ways, like traditional culture. In a lot of ways, those things are all representative of a part of Moroccan society, but if you are looking for true authenticity, I think you should look at the way the people of a society live today. Although I live in a very certain sub-sector of the modern population, I think that this aspect of life here is just as important as the "traditional culture". My walk to and from school and my experiences surrounding it are probably the most authentic view of real Moroccan society that I will be able to give you in writing. It covers the beautiful, the bad, the good, and the frightening, and hopefully will help you understand more about my time here. No place is all good or all bad, and there are definitely many parts of life here that I do not love, but the whole reason I am here is to think critically about those parts of life and their corresponding aspects on the United States. I have written most of my earlier posts only about the edited and sugar-coated parts of life here, but as I become happier and more comfortable here I want to start recording what my life is really like. 

Overall, my experience here in the last few months has only kept getting better and better. I continue to spend basically all my time with my host family, and I really love hanging out with them. Arabic is going well, and I love teaching English. I'm living in a beautiful city flanked by dramatic mountains and lined with palms and orange trees, and I'm struck by how beautiful it is every time I step outside my house or go upstairs to hang my laundry to dry on the roof. The weather is sunny and mild, and I have found a second family that I am so happy with. I promise (sorry, Mom) to catch up and write about more of my experiences this winter soon, and I'm excited for the coming weeks.

A Very Belated Update: Christmas and a Wonderful Start to 2015

I’m writing from the sunny terrace outside of the salon at the CLC overlooking the basketball court. It’s recess at the school across the street, and I can hear the happy screams of the children. The midday sunshine is has started to feel spring-like, and as the frigid mornings grow more mild I am realizing how little time I have left here. It’s been more than a month since I’ve written, and I have a lot to record.

Before my parents and Cordelia arrived in Casablanca, I traveled with the other Americans to the small seaside town of Essaouira. White-washed buildings hug the coast with the charm of a slowly crumbling colonial city. When the Portuguese controlled parts of the Moroccan coast, they called this city Mogador. Over the years, the town regained its Moroccan name, but the influence of the Europeans is still present in the old forts that rise above the city. 18^th century cannons line the ramparts, and buttresses hang out over the rocky coast. The city itself moves with the slow rhythm of a beach town. It is a quiet escape from the crowds and craziness of Marrakech. The beach stretches for miles of pure soft sand, and to the south the city disappears. Other than the distant windmills rising out of the fog, the beach is a natural expanse of sand dunes and rocks undisturbed by civilization.

We stayed in a hotel with an breathtaking view of the waves breaking along the rocky shoreline to the north. The city walls drop away directly down to the ocean, and I spent my mornings reading on the sunny rooftop deck and listening to the soothing crash of the waves. 

One morning, Seth and I ran down the beach for miles away from the city. It was early, and we stopped halfway into our run to watch the sunrise. In the middle of the empty beach, a river cuts through the sand dunes and distant mountains. A mile from the wide mouth where it empties into the sea, a small town is nestled into the green hills. The sun rose through the dissipating clouds over the minarets of the village, and we watched in contented silence as the rays slowly spread over the beach. 

We continued along the coast and found a jellyfish the size of a small table that had washed to shore. Later, we rolled up our pants and waded out to the ruins of an old fort at the tip of a curve in the beach. Eroded by centuries of crashing waves, the fort had degraded into a haphazard pile of sandstone slabs. However, you could still make out the ramparts, the buttresses, and the windows. 

When we returned to the city beach, there were already pick-up soccer games starting on the beach. Ignoring the frigid morning air, we ran into the freezing waves in our clothes. I floated on my back staring up at the brightening sky, rocked by the motion of the waves. It was two days before Christmas, and I had been sorely missing New England and my family. However, moments like this one, staring up at the stunning morning sky from the shimmering water of the Moroccan coast, made me realize how worth it this experience is. I will have other Christmases with the people I love, but I will probably never again spend my Christmas Eve exploring a crumbling colonial Moroccan city in wonderment.

On Christmas Eve, my friend Katie and I walked down to the beach at sunset. We watched the sun sink below the horizon behind the island that protects the harbor. A single minaret stands next to the abandoned fort, and our vantage point on the beach was perfectly positioned to watch the sun set directly behind the silhouette of the mosque. The long trails of wispy clouds were painted a surreal tapestry of pink and red and gold, and the colors reflected onto the draining sand flats of low tide. We stripped to our bathing suits and ran through the damp sand under the mirrored sky. The chill of the ocean took my breath away, and we submerged ourselves under the soft waves. The surface of the water was a shimmering pastel sheet in constant flux with the rise and fall of the swells. We stood knee-deep in the clear water of the harbor watching the last sliver of the glowing orb fall below the horizon.  As we walked back through the cooling night air, feeling the night wind pick up through our hair and whistle through the ramparts, I was reminded again of how experiences like this make my whole experience here worth it.

When we returned to our hotel room, we made hot chocolate and sat next to the French doors looking out at the city lights. I could hear the crashing of the waves as the tide receded, and we sat wrapped in blankets in the dark listening to Christmas music. The lingering chill from the water and the ocean breeze sneaking in through the cracks in the windowsill enhanced the warmth of the room. It was the one time that December in Morocco truly felt like Christmas, and we sat there listening to music and enveloped in the peace of the moment.

We returned to Marrakech for Christmas Day, and I went to church in the morning to watch Katie sing in her church choir. The city’s single church is situated right next to a mosque in the newer French neighborhood, and the service was packed full with tourists and locals alike. Although I do not usually go to church on Christmas, it was nice to be in a place that was celebrating. Christmas in Morocco is, obviously, just a normal day, and it was lovely to be in such a festive atmosphere and hear the beautiful carols that Katie and her choir sang.

That night, Margaret came over to my house and we made Christmas dinner for my host family. We cooked a huge vat of spaghetti topped with a spicy tomato sauce and baked chicken parmesan. We served the dish on a red platter along with brie and hot apple cider. Zineb and Oumaima decorated the table in the salon with a beautiful tablecloth and candles, and we spent the meal laughing and eating in an incredibly festive atmosphere. I wrapped some presents and candy for Yassir and put them under the miniature Christmas tree in my room, and he opened them with all the excitement of a little kid on Christmas morning. After dinner, Margaret, Zineb, Oumaima and I bundled up and climbed the ladder to the top of our roof. We lay on the tiles wrapped in blankets and gazed at the stars in the clear, cold night sky. Margaret sang Christmas carols, and her soft high voice rose over the sleeping city. I realized again how lucky I am to be here, even without my family, at Christmastime. I am so blessed to have found a new family here to celebrate with, and I can’t imagine a better Christmas in Morocco than my Christmas with the Ibarkis.

As we stared at the stars, my family was boarding a plane in Boston and traveling across the Atlantic. The next morning, I got on an early train to Casablanca to meet them. I sat next to a professor from the north of Morocco who studied at Kenyon and now teaches at a university in Ohio, and I passed the time talking with him. I met my family at our hotel, and it was so wonderful to see them again. They got their first glimpse of Morocco in a walk through the markets in Casablanca at twilight, and then we relaxed in the hotel together for the night. One of our family Christmas traditions is to watch The Grinch together, so we all bundled up in our bathrobes and gathered in my parents’ room. We exchanged gifts and watched the movie, and yet again it felt like Christmas in Morocco.

Unfortunately, I was very sick for most of the trip, but we still managed to have a good time. We started out early the next morning and visited the impressive Hassan II mosque in Casablanca, a modern and opulent construction that towers over the city from the Atlantic coast. That afternoon, after a long drive and a wonderful lunch, we arrived in the magical city of Fes. Over the next two days, we explored the winding, labyrinthine streets of the old city. We visited an old Quranic school in the depths of the medina, watched leatherworkers dying impossible quantities of leather in the ancient tannery, and wandered through markets packed with glittering wedding decorations, ornate sweets, wood carvers, leather workers and spice vendors.  

The ancient city of Fes spreads through one of the valleys between the foothills of the Middle Atlas Mountains, and we climbed to a high vantage point on one of the hills outside the city to take in the view. Leather from the tannery was drying on the hillside, and behind us fertile farms stretched over the rolling hills as far as the eye could see.  Fes was sprawled out below us in a mysterious puzzle of red roofs, green tile, and crumbling stone that somehow blended together with a stunning continuity. We gazed out at the city from beside the Merenid ruins on the hillside, taking in the strong stone walls and winding lanes from above. We watched the sun set from our hotel and spent one more night in Fes before we continued onwards.

The next day, we visited the Roman ruins of Volubilis, a key town for Roman traders on their way to Spain. I had never seen ruins of this scale, just an old Roman theater in Cadiz, and I was blown away. The town was situated on the top of a ridge overlooking fertile flatland, and the gray stones rose up dramatically against the rainclouds in the distance. The remnants of an old temple and the columns of a central meeting place still remained, topped by haphazardly constructed storks’ nests and surrounded by the preserved foundations of houses. Some houses still had their original mosaic tiles on the floors, and it was incredible to see the intricate designs still there 1,700 years later. 

We walked through the old gates and on the stones of the Via Appia, taking in the ruins of the arcades and neighborhoods. It’s amazing to me that these ruins still exist at all, and the fact that they are in Morocco absolutely blew my mind. Since everyone in my family loves history and we all took Latin all one point, we were fascinated and spent about half an hour longer at the ruins than our guide was expecting us to. He was a middle-aged man from a nearby town who spoke broken English and was incredibly excited that I knew some Arabic. In the hour we spent there, he told us many stories about the ancient town and helped us navigate the ruins with a better understanding of the place.

Later that day, we visited the imperial city of Meknes. Fortified with three walls by a paranoid ruler in the 14^th century, Meknes is an impenetrable town. We visited the remains of the same king’s granary and his deserted stables. The walls were overgrown with ivy, and I felt like I had stepped into a mystical secret garden. By chance, the American ambassador to Morocco was also visiting the granary at the same time we were, so we got to see him and his entourage.

After Meknes, we continued south to the coast to the capital city of Rabat. Rabat has the comfortable, clean feel of a very moneyed city – the streets are wide and well-kept, the market is beautiful and calm, and there are long walkways stretching along the Atlantic coast filled with walkers and families. We visited the Chellah first, a lush garden of flowers and blooming trees built around the ruins of a Roman and Islamic city. The Roman city was lost to history hundreds of years ago until its excavation, and now a few remnants – the stones of the market, gravestones, and a headless statue – are scattered throughout the grassy hillside. Down below, a small complex from the 12^th century still rises above the treetops. A small minaret tiled in the style typical of Andalusia marks the old mosque of the settlement. An earthquake destroyed much of the region long ago, but the minaret stayed standing. The garden is high on a hillside overlooking the wide, fertile delta of Rabat’s river, and the clear air is a haven for storks. Their nests cover the ruins and the trees, and the constant chatter of their beaks fills the air in an oddly peaceful racket.

From the Chellah, we continued on to the Oudaiyah, one of the oldest parts of the Rabat medina. Surrounded by fortified walls, the Oudaiyah is a charming town painted blue and white that is balanced on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Atlantic. No motorbikes or cars are allowed inside, and the residents still make their living in traditional ways. The town is peaceful and slow, the calm broken only by the occasional tourist and the calls of street vendors. We walked along the narrow streets taking in the sights, and eventually found ourselves in a massive plaza overlooking the Atlantic. You could see up and down the coast for miles, and we watched the waves break and roll into shore. We climbed down the steep stairs to the ancient fort below and explored the crumbling walls, the cool ocean breeze quick and lively on our faces. 

After wandering around the town, we left the ocean behind us and continued on south towards Marrakech. As we got closer, the climate began to change from the damp chill of the north to the bright sunshine and warmth of the south. We passed through the low hills to the north of the city, and my family was blown away by the stunning view of the snowcapped High Atlas in front of us. The mountains are massive, and they tower high on the horizon from hundreds of kilometers away on the flat plain. In Marrakech, we dropped my family’s bags off at their hotel and immediately headed out to Amarchiche to introduce them to my host family. From there, one of the best nights of my year commenced.

We asked the taxi to drop us off at the entrance to my neighborhood, and we walked past the pickup soccer games and sleeping dogs towards my house. I showed my family the incredible view of the mountains from my house, and suddenly we were interrupted by excited honking. Zineb had just picked up Yassir and Oumaima from school, and they stopped the car beside us. Yassir ran out of the car to introduce himself to “Michael Jackson” (his name for my dad), and my host sisters took Cordelia with them in the car.  From the very beginning, my host family and my family got along incredibly well. It was wonderful to watch my dad and my host dad try (and succeed!) to communicate with each other. I’ve always thought they are incredibly similar, and I was so happy they were able to get to know each other even with a seemingly insurmountable language barrier. My host mom and host sisters, in their typical fashion, were incredibly welcoming and warm, and with some translation help my mom and host mom were able to talk as well. We ate sfaa, my favorite Moroccan dish, all together that night. I will always remember my two families sitting around the massive round table in the salon that day, the air filled with laughter and the delicious scent of steaming cinnamon pasta. 

My dad and Yassir played soccer in the courtyard, my mom talked about education with my host mom, and Cordelia chatted with my host sisters. Yassir was thrilled to have found two new playmates – Michael Jackson and Cordelia – and he never stopped moving and laughing the entire time that they were here. As it grew late, we drove my mom and dad back to their hotel and Cordelia slept in my room with me. After everyone else went to sleep, we dressed in warm clothes and brought blankets to the roof with Zineb and Oumaima. We sat there talking under the vast starry sky, cuddled together in our warm clothes.

The next day was New Years Eve. We explored the huge network of souks in Marrakech, and I took my family to my favorite rooftop café overlooking Djemma al Fna. From the corner of the square, you can see the vast crowd moving below among the vendors, snake charmers, and musicians. The unintelligible blur of conversations rises up with fiddle music and smoke from food tents, and the shimmering lights below draw your eyes downwards. We drank steaming tea and ate dinner above the square, and listened as the evening call to prayer rose from the minarets over the lively city. That night, Cordelia and I stayed in a beautiful riad-style hostel deep in the medina. We went up to the rooftop and midnight and watched fireworks explode in the distance, listening to the crowds in Djemma al Fna and the festivities around us. Watching the fireworks over a maze of minarets and alleys with Cordelia next to me was a wonderful way to start 2015, and I am excited for what this New Year will bring.

The next day was my family’s last day in Morocco. After breakfast on the stunning rooftop of the hostel, Cordelia and I met up with my parents early. We walked along my favorite running route, a long park-like street with an incredible view of the mountains. I took them to see my school, the CLC, and to the beautiful Yves St. Laurent gardens, and we walked away from the bustling hub of the city out to my house in the Amarchiche neighborhood. My host mom had prepared a massive plate of couscous, and we gathered in the salon to eat together. My dad and host mom exchanged cooking tips, and my host sisters and I taught my family how to eat couscous with their hands.

A side note: Eating couscous without a spoon is a true art. First, you have to pull meat and vegetables from the steaming center to the side of the rounded communal dish and mix them in with the tiny grains of pasta. Next, you take the mixture in one hand and roll it back in forth in your palm using your fingers -- without using your other hand, as using your left hand is rude – until a compact ball forms. You then pop the ball into your mouth and construct a new one. I have not yet achieved the mastery of the couscous balls and I still end up with a fair amount of couscous on my lap, but in the next three months I hope to improve my expertise.

After our meal, my host sisters and I gathered buckets, soap, and all the necessary items for the hammam, the Moroccan bath. No trip to Morocco would be complete without a trip there, and we did not want my family to experience the tourist hammams. Instead, we took them to the fancy hammam next to my house.  The rooms are steamy and warm, and we hired scrubbers to clean my mom and my sister. An hour and several layers of skin later, I think they were the cleanest they’ve ever been. In my next post, I will explain more about the hammams, which are a very important part of life Morocco.

We returned to my house and ate a delicious dinner of beef and prune tagine, one of my host mom’s specialties. The food was delicious, and I loved being able to share yet another meal with both of my families. My host sisters dressed my mom and sister in traditional Moroccan takshetas (formal wear), and we stayed in the salon talking late into the evening. 

As with all good things, my family’s trip had to come to an end. They left very early the next morning after a family sleepover in their hotel room (I slept on the floor, naturally). Before they left, they all expressed to me how happy they were that they had been able to meet my host family and see what my life was like here. My parents were quite resistant and apprehensive, understandably, when I told them that I wanted to spend a year in Morocco with a family we had never met. However, they know now that I am in very good hands – I cannot imagine a host family better than the Ibarkis – and that my life here is safe and happy. I always knew that I had made the right decision coming here, and it makes me really happy that my parents seem to think the same thing now.

This post is already seven pages long, so I think it’s time to stop. I will write very soon about January, a month that was full of new adventures and the happiest month here yet!

The Power of a Smile

By far one of the most important lessons I've learned here is to take pleasure in the little things. In Moroccan culture, the small interactions that compose your day are the heart and soul of social life. Happiness comes from a burst of laughter over a pot of tea, or seeing someone else's excitement when they greet you, and it's truly amazing how much a single interaction can change a day here.

After teaching my English class tonight, I went to the medina with my friends John and Seth. We met up with some of Seth's neighbors, and I headed home before it got too late. After I separated from the boys, I wandered through the gathering crowds in the darkness. In Djemma al Fna, it is almost a transcendent escape to walk alone through the rolling crowds, passing through the pools of lights and rising clouds of steam and the frenetic street music. I let the strange mix of languages flood my ears, blending into an unintelligible noise that nonetheless filled the night air. I've found that the inability to understand the majority of conversations around me is both a blessing and a curse. The drawbacks are obvious, but I sometimes enjoy the white noise. When I'm unable to comprehend, it is far easier to lose myself in the sounds and sights of a place while still feeling that peculiar sense of mutual loneliness and community that a crowd brings.

Eventually, I walked out of the square towards the mosque that stretches high over the city skyline, illuminated against the stars. I hailed down a taxi to take me home and proceeded to have one of the best interactions I've had yet in Marrakech. Usually, taking taxis from Djemma al Fna is a fairly arduous process. Most taxi drivers who wait around the exit try to cheat tourists, and it's usually pretty hard, as a blonde white girl carrying a backpack, to convince them that I do want a ride to the suburbs and that I will not pay 20 euros instead of 20 dirhams. However, today I opened the door to the first taxi I found and greeted the driver with a cheerful "Salaam alaykoum!".  The driver, an old man with a messy gray beard, a grandfatherly twinkle in his eyes behind his glasses, and a well-worn jelaba, turned on his meter without me asking and we began to talk in Arabic. I told him about my Arabic studies as we drove through the crowded streets, and he told me about his children and his grandchildren. By the time we picked up two new passengers halfway towards my house, the driver was calling me "oukhtee" (my sister). However, the drive improved even more. One of the girls in the backseat turned out to be good friends with both my Arabic teacher and my older host sister, and she joined into our conversation. Thankfully, both she and the cab driver were kind and spoke slowly -- I was able to hold my own in the conversation, which made me really happy. By the time she got out of the car, we had exchanged contact information, and I hope to meet up with her in the days to come. During the 10-minute commute to my house, I continued to talk with the elderly cab driver, who introduced himself as Hussein. He decided to rename me Zineb, and in a fashion typical of many people told me I should really consider converting to Islam. (A side note: When I first got here, I was very unnerved when people told me I should become a Muslim. Since I didn't grow up religious, moving to a community where religion is woven into basically every aspect of life has been a huge shift that, at times, is shocking. However, I have come to realize that people telling me I should convert is almost a sign that they've enjoyed their interaction with me and want me to have a fulfilling life. While religion will probably never be an important part of my life, I've learned an incredible amount while I've been here and this suggestion no longer phases me). The most amazing part of the interaction was that he would not accept my money. He told me that he was happy to see someone putting so much work into learning Arabic, but more importantly that I have a generous smile. He wouldn't take money for the fare, and told me to call him if I ever need a taxi. This interaction demonstrates so well the power of a smile.

I've written before about the importance of interpersonal interactions here in Morocco, and I still do believe that every negative stereotype between Moroccans and Americans can be forgotten one friendly "salaam alaykoum" at a time. Some people in my class were talking about how in certain situations they don't like to say they are American here because they're afraid of a negative response. While I understand where they are coming from to some degree, I think one of the reasons why we are here is to proudly be American and change that response. There are many reasons for some Moroccans to have anti-American sentiments. However, wouldn't it be better if the first picture in their head wasn't news headlines, but rather a polite American student attempting to learn their language and get to know them? Those little interactions are, after all, the basis of civilian diplomacy. I know its effective because the first thing I will now think of when someone says "Arab countries" is not ISIS and violence, but my wonderful host sisters.

I'm sorry (especially to Grandad) for not writing for so long and I hope to catch you up on my doings throughout the past month tomorrow. It's been an incredibly busy and exciting month, and I can't wait to share it with you all. A preview of the post to come: running 26.2 miles through the palm trees in Morocco, skiing in the Atlas mountains, a trip to the magical city of Fes and a 4th century Roman city, the beginning of my teaching career, and much more!