Ttrek Salama

It might be that when you’re living abroad, if you’re not romanticizing your home country, you’re romanticizing the one you’re in. In Morocco we said: isn’t it nice? Nobody bragging about where they went to college or how many miles they ran, nobody giving you the evil eye when your baby makes baby noises. People sitting down with their families every Friday, taking a moment to pray five times a day, or stopping in the middle of the day for coffee, no matter what, sitting for hours on end, maybe not saying much but being together.

But then, sometimes in the same breath we’d say: in the U.S. (fill in the blank) works so much better; people are on time; a woman can have a beer in public; lunch doesn’t take seven hours.

We alternated between falling head over heels in love with Morocco and getting sort of frustrated. Did we romanticize it? Probably. Did we learn some things? Definitely. Ultimately it seems like the goal of living in another country is to come away with a respect for both the country you’re in and the one you’ve left. So instead of telling you “what we’ve learned” or pretending like we’re experts on this place that we're just starting to know, we’d like to wrap-up this blog with a few stories about things that happened, and that meant something to us while we were here.

It goes without saying that the overwhelmingly positive experience we had here, and the fact that we will be so sad to leave has to do with the people we met in Morocco, the people who made the trip to visit us and the support of the Fulbright organization. We are so, so grateful.

Evening

It’s bedtime for Cecily. While Kate is putting her down, I slip out the door to catch the last bit of light before darkness falls on Essaouira. I’m riding the bike that I bought the previous day from Said, a broken down old steel frame bike that I repaired in his shop and took home. I weave through the walkers in the medina, past the fish carts and cane sugar juice salesman, and past the beggars who cluster by the medina gates, kneeling on the ground or sitting in wheelchairs.

I miss the sunset by just a few minutes, and already the sky over the ocean is darkening oranges and purples. The wind is tearing down the beach, and I ride the bike on the hard sand just at the water’s edge, propelled by the wind, carving half figure-eights down the beach. The sky reflects off the damp sand, and, though it isn’t a particularly literary analogy, everything looks like the Rainbow Road level in Mario Kart—primary colors everywhere.

Time to go home, and I fight the same wind all the way back to the medina gates. In the darkening evening, I see one of the beggars pushing her empty wheelchair out of the medina, clocking out for the day. She gives me a smile and a cheery wave as we part.

Trek Slamaa

It took us three tries to say goodbye to everyone at Katerina’s, the amazing café below our apartment in Tangier. The first time, we wanted to say goodbye early, because we had a flight the next morning, and wanted to catch Katerina and our favorite waiters. Because they weren’t all there, we came back again that afternoon. That would have been it, but we realized that we wanted another cup of coffee in the morning, so we just kept showing up.

At Katerina’s, Cecily makes her usual rounds, held by everyone, laughing. Someone takes her behind the counter while we finish our coffee. One of the waiters is instructing her to remember him: “One day you will return here, and you will remember that you knew a waiter in Tangier.”

We take a last photo, and bid goodbye. In English, now: “I’m sorry that you are leaving. We had gotten used to you.”

Rebellion

I smoke…well, I smoke because I have to, she explains. But also, because it is a rebellion. The men do it. They sit openly, smoking in cafes. So I will do it too. She takes cigarettes out of a leather jacket. I had a big night last night. Do you like Pink Floyd?

Months later she sits on the floor with my baby and her nephew, helping her mother in the kitchen, translating between us. I’ve been invited over for Fridaycouscous. Elliot can’t come because her father is away. She doesn’t wear a headscarf. Her mother does. It’s complicated, she says.

Gifts

Cecily has received the following gifts during her time in Morocco:

· Three silver Hands of Fatima
· One banana wearing prison garb
· Three Dishes of Flan
· One turtleneck
· One Smurf
· Five Yogurts
· One beach bag with word “Tanger” stenciled on it
· Four Candy Bars
· One vial of Rosewater
· One small djellaba

Inshallah

I’m walking out of my French class with Hichem. I am extra proud that he is my friend, because I met him all on my own, and he doesn’t speak any English. We are taking a French class together, though his French is much better than mine. In class, Hichem is engaged and outspoken, while I sit and listen and rue my accent and vocabulary. He’s nice, though, and we share a workbook most days.

When we walk out onto the streets at 9 PM, everything is alive. Cars race along the cobble streets, students buy popcorn from a street vendor, and the restaurants and cafés are packed. I realize that it’s been a long time since I was out, at night, with other people around. Our home in Idaho is so quiet at night, which is something that I like. But I realize, I also really like this. Hichem and I talk as we make our way back towards my apartment. As we part—he headed to join friends, me headed home to my wife and baby—I tell him that I’ll see him next Thursday in class. “Inshallah,” he says—God willing. I never see him again; he’s stopped coming to class.

Khlii 

“I’ve been thinking about your question, the one that you asked the students,” Hussein says to me in his faintly British-accented English. When we visit schools in Tangier, I often ask the students if there’s anything that I absolutely can’t miss while I’m in Morocco—foods, or things to see, or people to meet. “I did think of something, and I have a proposal,” says Hussein. He explains that there is a breakfast dish particular to Fes called khlii, and he suggests that my time in Morocco would be incomplete without trying it. I ask him what it is.

“Well,” Hussein says, “Khlii is a way of preparing meat. First, you take beef, and season it with many special spices. Then, the beef is cooked in fat for a whole night, the fat of the same cow from which it came. You see, it must be beef, because only beef could withstand this type of cooking. Then, it is stored in a jar for many months or even years.” He looks at me earnestly. “It’s extremely healthy.”

He Will Always Be Moroccan

He puts down the coffee and takes the baby, and just like that we’re sitting together, drinking our café nousnous on a quiet street corner, and it’s suddenly okay that we got up at five am because across the street there’s bougainvilla on a white wall and from the kitchen we hear the familiar greeting: squeals of delight and loud enthusiastic kisses followed by Cecily’s maniacal laughter.

He returns with the baby on his hip he gives her back. Your son, he says, he will always be Moroccan.

In The Market 

 A Moroccan man on his bicycle carelessly bumps the table, which has been carefully arranged by the strawberry vendor. The berries are perfectly ripe, and, almost as if in deference to the quality of the berries, the vendor has arranged them meticulously. The man on the bicycle stops, dismounts, picks up the strawberry that fell to the ground, kisses it, and returns it carefully to the table. Both men smile.