jessie wanders

Self-evident

2011-08-19T07:36:00.002-04:00

My friend is afraid of witches. Maybe it's more to the point to say that I have recently realized that I am not particularly afraid of witches. I am afraid of people. Mean people, mostly. I've spent more of my waking life than I care to admit worrying about what people think about me. Usually, when someone has made up their mind that I am not their cup of tea, I become preoccupied by the potential significance of my various incarnations, incarnations that may turn out to be actual reflections of myself that may not be very flattering.

But somehow when confronted with a witch who most definitely did not care for me, all I wanted to do was sit down and talk to her.

This weekend I returned to Moulay Bousselham for the second time this month to get down to the business of pre-dissertation research. My previous trip had been purely for leisure, but I'd heard something that piqued my interest. Evidently there was a shrine where infertile women went for healing. Sounded like medical anthropology to me! I needed to investigate further.

My source for this information cannot be said to be reliable in the strictest sense of the word. I have him saved in my phone as "Hassan Bird Guy," and he's exactly what he sounds like: a bird guy...expert...I think. He knows a ton about birds, which in any case makes him an absolute expert compared to me. When I was little I wanted a pet bird but my parents refused to get me one. Knowing nothing about the different kinds of birds (if it has wings then it's a bird, right?), I decided to take matters into my own hands and catch a bird in the Costco parking lot. Being a, shall we say, unathletic youngster, I failed to catch any birds. But I got wise to the situation and decided to go after the damaged ones that couldn't get away from me as easily. So I chased the ones that had one leg or a bum wing. Brains have always won out over brawn in my case. Except that when I finally got close enough to catch one, I realized it was covered in oil and filth and got so freaked out that I ran away from it. See? Brains.

Regardless, Hassan Bird Guy is an excellent bird guide who gives tours on his boat on Merja Zerga, the big lagoon in Moulay Bousselham that is a famous birdwatching destination. I met him first when Ankit and I hired him to take us out on the merja. While we were out on the water he pointed to the shore opposite Moulay Bousselham and told me that infertile women went to shrine there.

"Why?" I asked.
"Because they can't have babies," he replied simply.
"Yes, but what do they do there?" I pressed.
"They visit. They visit so God will give them babies." He answered as though it were patently obvious.

When Zaz and I went to Moulay Bousselham I knew we needed a boat to get to the other side of the merja, so I called Hassan Bird Guy. As we waited to meet him by the other floukas for hire, I asked a few people nearby about the shrine with varying degrees of success. One man who had just moved to Moulay Bousselham five years ago had no idea what the white building on the opposite shore was. A gendarme who was monitoring the boats and the fishermen told me that yes, it was a shrine and yes, infertile women when there. But it wasn't a shrine for infertile women.

"They stand in the ocean and let the waves hit them seven times. But it's not the shrine or the waves or magic that gives them babies. It's God. Everything from God."

When Hassan came I told him that we needed to go to the shrine he had told me about. He readily agreed, glanced at the gendarme a few meters away, and told me that he would have to accompany me. When I asked him why he told me that a woman had been raped over there.

"There?" I pointed at the shrine.
"Well, no. Not right there, way over on the mountain where there are only dunes. But no woman can go over there alone. They need a chaperone. It's a zone interdit."
"So she wasn't raped at the shrine."
"No."
"But you need to come with me?"
"Yes," he said, glancing again at the gendarme. "That's why he is here."
"Because a woman was raped on the other side of the mountain on the other side of the lagoon?"
"Yes."

We went back and forth for a few minutes discussing the logistics and just how interdit the zone actually was, and finally set off for the shrine.

As it turns out, Ramadan isn't prime time for shrine watching, and when we got there it was deserted. We still got to look around and go inside of the tomb of Sidi Abd Jleel Tyar, the saint buried in the shrine. There was a lot of writing on the walls, some of it just scribbles in pen, people's names and phone numbers, but there were also messages written in henna. Zaz explained to me that this was people's way of showing affection for the place, and that sometimes they just left splotches of henna on the walls instead of written messages. On the wall to the left of the entrance someone had written "الله" in broad strokes. Others had left more complete sentences. One that stood out read, "Allah help us all" in crumbling henna.

After awhile we decided to leave Sidi Abd Jleel Tyar's shrine and cross back to Moulay Bousselham to visit the shrine of the city's namesake. We hoped to find the caretaker there and learn a bit more about both of the shrines. There are several shrines crowded onto a single hill at the mouth of the lagoon, but the two most famous ones belong to Sidi Abd Jleel Tyar and Moulay Bousselham. The two men were supposedly friends, although versions of the story differ as to whether both men were Egyptian or whether Sidi Abd Jleel Tyar was Persian. The two men also supposedly had a disagreement about which of them was more powerful, and some stories say that Sidi Abd Jleel flew across the merja to his final resting place, which is why he got to extra monicker, "Tyar."

Zaz and I went to Moulay Bousselham's shrine while Hassan went to the mosque to pray. The first person we talked to was an extremely old man with no hair or teeth who had lost the use of his legs. We entered the tiny, low-ceilinged room where he sat. Once inside I was struck by the overwhelming smell of urine that greeted me, and the sight of a grave to the right.

"Who is buried here?" I asked after we were seated.
"Leave it buried." The old man mumbled. After a few moments he began to work his lips over his gums and said at length, "they cheated him, the bastards, but they're paying now with God."
"Who?" I asked tentatively.
"Leave it buried." He repeated huskily.

We talked for a bit about what he used to do when he "was strong," and "when there were still the French." Eventually we exited into the fresh air and went over to the tomb of Moulay Bousselham where two women were lying at the door. We sat down and talked with them for awhile.

While we were talking to the women the witch came.

"What's going on?" said a loud voice behind us that sounded like it belonged to a burly, hoarse man.
"We're sitting and talking." said Zaz.
"To whom?"

A small man appeared at the woman's side. He was thin with stooped shoulders, and was positively dwarfed by the large, stalky woman with whom he now conversed. She had tied a scarf around her head, but her dark, hennaed hair had fallen down around her neck in places. She had a large black mole on her left cheek and a green spot near it that was the same color of Berber tattoos. The man sold knick-knacks at the entrance to the shrine, but had left his post to come speak to the woman. He rasped something to her that I couldn't make out, he didn't have any voice, hoarse or otherwise. The two if them made quite a pair, I thought.

"We were talking to the old man over there but he doesn't really talk, meskine." said Zaz sympathetically.
"He talks, why wouldn't he talk?" the woman practically demanded.
"We wanted to know more about Sidi Adb Jleel Tyar," I ventured.
"He doesn't remember," she said. "All of the people who remember are dead."

At this point the man began to rasp something to the woman who cut across him in a guttural, annoyed tone. The two of them began to argue about who did or did not remember, and who was or was not dead. Eventually the woman stalked off and disappeared through an open door opposite the door to the tomb.

"She's a witch, you know," whispered one of women next to us.
"How do you know?" I asked.
"Everyone knows," she shrugged. "She's always here. She lives here. She's a witch."
"She's scary!" said Zaz nervously. "I don't like her."

Again, I had the impression that there was something self-evident that I had failed to grasp.

Eventually Hassan returned with the caretaker, but not before the women became convinced that the reason I was so curious about the shrine across the lagoon and infertile women was that I, myself, was infertile. I tried multiple times to explain that I was a researcher and just wanted to know more about the shrine and how women deal with infertility, but it didn't seem to make any difference. The younger of the two women kept fixing me with a searching look and saying, "you'll have children." When I asked her how she knew, she replied matter-of-factly, "You don't look infertile."

The caretaker walked past us and unlocked the door to the tomb.

"See?" said the woman smiling, "your key unlocked the door." She patted my arm reassuringly. One of the dominant ways of expressing fertility and infertility that I've encountered in Morocco is language and metaphors that draw on the juxtaposition of open and closed, flowing and blocked. "You'll have children."

We walked inside the room containing the tomb and the door closed behind us. We walked around the tomb seven times while the two women prayed and touched parts of the grave or the fabric covering it and kissed their hands. The young woman had come for healing from dizziness and rubbed the cloth draped over the grave against her forehead. Moulay Bousselham's shrine is best known as a place where the mentally ill go to be healed by being locked in the tomb for 24 hours.

As we made our turns around the tomb, the women kept me close to them and instructed me to touch the grave and rub my hand on my abdomen. They then told me to rub my belly against the side of the tomb to become "open." When we'd finished walking around the grave the young woman had me touch a rock that supposedly belonged to Moulay Bousselham and rub my stomach.

"You'll become pregnant this month."

I didn't have the heart to tell her once more that I wasn't infertile. Nor did I care to explain that I was actually the proud owner of an IUD.

When we tried to exit the tomb we found the door locked. After trying to pull it open a few times with no success, we all giggled nervously at each other. Then Zaz started knocking loudly and insistently on the door. While we waited in the tomb I wondered aloud if the witch had any theories about fertility and infertility she might share with us.

"She was SO scary. I didn't like her. She was horrible," shuddered Zaz.
"Yeah but it would be so cool!" Zaz eyed me with a strange expression on her face.

The door swung open and Hassan appeared as a dark silhouette against the bright daylight. He laughed loudly and said, "Saaafi! You have to stay in there until noon tomorrow!" We all laughed and pushed past him.

As we said goodbye to our other companions, the young woman assured me once again that I would have a baby, and that she had a special sight for these things.

I watched her as she walked away, passing the witch who sat scowling in her doorway, and resigned myself to having two more versions of myself out there that I couldn't control.

Improvising

2011-08-08T18:38:00.001-04:00

My life is complete, for I have now gone swimming in the glittering turquoise waters of the Mediterranean. One of the benefits of my accidental sojourn at the Tunisian booze cruise was that the hotel was situated on a peninsula bordered by a bay to the southwest and a northeastern beach upon which gentle waves continuously lapped. The private beach came complete with dozens of straw parasols, numerous beach chairs, and of course a full bar.

On my first full day aboard the booze cruise I found a spot right at the water's edge and set up camp. The one minor drawback about the whole situation was that one of the employees in charge of the jet ski and kayak rentals had, within hours of my arrival, taken a bit of a liking to me. He had also apparently made it his goal to be as off-putting as possible in his fascination with me. Despite my repeated "no thank yous" to his offers to take me into town for the evening, he repeatedly came to my chair with new offers, disquieting stares, and a flurry of oddly personal questions and comments. Eventually he seemed to realize that his plan of attack wasn't getting him anywhere, because instead of continuing to talk to me, he just pulled up a chair ten or fifteen meters away from me and sat staring at me with his back to the ocean.

It's harder than one might imagine to avoid eye contact with someone who is pointedly, almost aggressively staring at you.

After I started to get a sore neck from staring pointedly in the opposite direction, I decided to go for a swim. This was a bit more complicated for me because I hadn't thought to bring a bathing suit with me to Tunisia. It hadn't occurred to me that, although I was speaking at a conference, the conference hotel would certainly have a pool, and more importantly: Tunisia is on the Mediterranean! As ill-equipped as I was, I was determined to swim in the ocean. I have never met a body of water that I didn't like. So I improvised. I donned a black pair of men's boxer briefs (to the victor go the spoils in wars and relationships alike) and a black tank top long enough to cover the unnecessary support pouch and opening in the crotch. I looked ridiculous, like some kind of cross-dressing remix of those old bathing costumes.

As I made my way to the water, my "companion" ran to my side and offered to take me out into a kayak or on a jet ski. I declined his offers, rushing farther into the water once I realized that he wasn't allowed to stray too far from his post lest a tourist came in search of seafaring adventure. I waded until I was deep enough to tread water and then pulled my feet up and floated there, bobbing with the swells. I floated on my back, toes sticking out of the water and pointing up towards the sky that mirrored the brilliant blue of the sea.

After awhile I looked back towards the shore to find that my admirer had grown tired of waiting for me and left, so I decided to return to my chair to sun myself. As I emerged from the surf I realized that my "bathing costume" was sagging in all the wrong places and clinging in the most unkind ways. I struggled with the soggy fabric and eventually coaxed it back into a less obscene shape, although it didn't stop water from pouring through the pouch between my legs. I comforted myself by telling myself that the potbellied old men who stood, hands on their hips, proudly displaying their orb-like physiques while their tiny bathing suits clung for dear life to their narrow little butts looked considerably more ridiculous than I did. At least I couldn't stop staring at them.

After settling back into my seat I discovered that my magazine wasn't nearly as entertaining as watching my fellow beach-goers. For some reason the booze cruise was singularly popular among Czech tourists. I was particularly enthralled by a family near me. Evidently there was some kind of mini-family reunion in progress between what I took to be two nuclear families and a grandmother. There were several small children, a teenaged girl, and a toddler. The toddler was blonde, barrel chested, and had a very round head with two huge blue eyes set deeply beneath a bulging forehead. He also apparently had the most fascinating hands in the world because he kept staring at them in wonder, spreading his fingers in front of his face to varrying effect.

Then my absolute favorite thing happened. He took his wondrous hands, plunged them into the sand, and pulled out to heaping handfuls of white beach. Then he parted his small pink lips and dumped as much of the sand as he could into his mouth. He seemed very surprised that his choice had yielded such distasteful results. To remedy the situation, he took his tiny sand-coated hands, shoved them back into his mouth, and proceeded to scrape his tongue. Meanwhile, the father was roughly spreading sunscreen over his daughter's back with the side of his hand while balancing a cigarette between his fingers as he gesticulated to the rest of the group with his free hand.

Potentially negligent parenting aside, it is my personal belief that all toddlers are just a little bit damaged, anyway. At least I was. There is a series of pictures in my parents' house that chronicles my own misadventures with eating things off the ground. In the first photo, my mother and grandmother sit smiling at the camera while I investigate something on the ground. In the second picture I hold it up to the camera. In the third photo I pop it into my mouth, while my mother and grandmother continue smile in the background. In the fourth and final picture I seem to be reconsidering my decision with a vaguely disconcerted look on my face and a dirt covered finger at the corner of my mouth. I suspect that this genre of photos is not unique to my family.

When I got tired of watching the toddler's crash course in problem solving and had started to overheat in the midday sun, I walked back into the surf. As soon as my feet touched the water I was overtaken by an intense need to pee. I have the same impulse when I get into the shower, take a bath, or get into a pool. The extent to which I am able to successfully resist this urge is usually circumstantially contingent. In this case, the closest bathroom was all the way back in the middle of the hotel, which at the time seemed like an inconceivable distance to cross. Marveling that anyone would think to plan for a full bar on the beach but not any kind of bathroom, I made up my mind and moved into deeper water.

Anyone who tells me that they don't pee in the sea is lying, as far as I am concerned. Everybody pees in the sea. Some people even pee in showers and pools and bathtubs, although that wasn't my immediate concern as I swam away from the shore. What was my immediate concern was sorting out the mechanics of voiding my bladder while treading water. Moreover, there was the problem of my "swimming costume." Had I been in a proper bathing suit I doubt that I would have thought twice about peeing in it. There's something about the elastic, fast-drying material of a bathing suit that makes it socially acceptable to do things we'd never do in a similar state of undress in other contexts...like walking around in a bathing suit for all the world to see. Cotton and spandex form the fault line between public indecency and, in this case, pragmatic outdoor urination. In any case, I couldn't just pee into my boxer briefs. That seemed far too much like incontinence to me. But I also really didn't want to scamper over the hot sand back into the depths of the booze cruise to find a proper bathroom.

I compromised.

Still treading water, I pulled off the boxer briefs and clutched them tightly in one hand. Once on a vacation with friends one of the girls lost her bikini bottoms in the ocean (long story) and one of us had to run back to the beach and bring her a towel to prevent her from bearing all to the other beachgoers. Having no one but my unwanted admirer to bring me cover in the event that history repeated itself, I was determined to hold fast to my knickers, even if it meant that I rotated in slow, wobbling circles while I did my business (it meant exactly that).

After I finished, I swam away from the now suspiciously warm water and eventually made my way back to the beach. When I arrived back at my chair my suitor resumed his vigil, and I resumed my resolute stare in the opposite direction. In doing so, I found that the sand-eating toddler was now joined by his slightly older sister who had ripped off her bathing suit and was running around like the Coppertone baby's naughty sibling. She started to frolic in the surf and then paused, squeezed her tiny brown thighs together for a moment, and then squatted and peed in the breakwater.

I grinned at the little girl, realizing that only a few years, a little bit of compromise, and some spandex separated our different ways of dealing with a shared problem. Still, I can't help but imagine what my gentleman caller would have done if I had popped a squat right in front of him.

Solo Act

2011-06-28T08:36:00.001-04:00

It can be a strange thing, learning to be alone. Rather, it can be strange learning to travel alone. This seems like a bit of an illogical statement for someone who, up until this spring, had travelled almost exclusively alone and never with any kind of romantic partner. The last year, however, has brought major changes in the way that I travel (think: "Road Trip!! Woo!") and a sharp decrease in time that I spend alone with my thoughts thanks to school and new relationships. So upon my recent return to Morocco and subsequent trip to Tunisia I was struck by the realization that no matter how bustling and full of life a city may be, I am left to my own thoughts for company. Although I tend to make my fair share of friends while living out of a suitcase, I don't generally have anyone with whom I can ponder aloud in a truly genuine capacity, which is the most isolating part about being alone for me.

This is almost certainly exacerbated by the fact that I tend to ponder altogether too much. That is a thought that has occurred to me when I'm thinking to much, and then I ponder it for far too long.

At the same time, there is something almost preposterously liberating about being the only person I know in a new place. I can talk to whomever I want, experiment with my own character during my sojourn, make mistakes and have successes without the sneaking suspicion that my companions are watching and keeping score. Traveling alone is a unique opportunity to try out different answers to the same old questions (Who are you? Why are you here? Are you married? Are you Muslim? Don't you want to be? Can I have your number?), to make friends or to just drop off the grid for awhile.

There are, however, some drawbacks to going it alone while playing tourist in a new place. These usually center on the hotel rather than on adventures in the street. In the street I could be anyone's sister, daughter, spouse, or friend, and I could be going anywhere to do anything. If I eat somewhere alone, it's anyone's guess as to why and so generally I don't get too many invasive questions. The hotel, however, tends to be a slightly different scenario. I was in Tunis to present at a conference, and one day I overslept and missed the first morning session. I had done this accidentally-on-purpose because I was presenting later in the day and had suffered my characteristic insomnia the night before. I reasoned that a full night's sleep and an opportunity to run through my talk a few times were more important than perfect attendance.

In the morning, in dire need of caffeine, I went down to the hotel restaurant where the conference was paying for our meals. After the usual morning pleasantries, I grabbed some food from the buffet (before the end of my trip I became an absolute expert at Tunisian buffets) and asked a waiter for two cups of coffee. Seeing that I was alone, he assumed that I had misspoken, and came to my table with a single cup and a pot of coffee.

He began to fill my cup, asking, "why are you alone?"
"Because I'm late for my conference." I replied. He laughed as he finished filling my cup and made to hand it back to me.
"But," he said suddenly, pulling the cup out of my reach, "are you alone here in Tunis?"
"No," I said, reaching again for the cup, "I'm here with a conference."
"But you're alone?" he pressed, continuing, "No friends or family?"
"I made friends here."
"Meskina." He concluded the interrogation with finality, and handed me my cup.

Nothing like a healthy serving of misplaced pity to go with my morning coffee.

My second hotel was yet another story. Once my complimentary stay at the Golden Tulip had ended along with the conference, I searched online and found a pretty good deal at a hotel on the water in Gammarth, a beach town to the northwest of Tunis. The fact that my stay would be "all inclusive" of food, snacks, and alcohol failed to raise any alarm bells for me, and I merely congratulated myself in finding food and shelter on the beach for two nights for less than $100 total.

I started to become more concerned, however, when no one recognized the name of my hotel. After driving around in circles and racking up a whopper of a cab fare, my cabbie stopped at a fourth and final hotel to ask if they knew where on earth my phantom resort was. As it happened, my hotel didn't really exist anymore, and the name had changed to "Caribbean World." A quick consultation of my admittedly faulty mental atlas confirmed my suspicion that I was very far away from the Caribbean. What's more, my mental atlas hinted that I might be on the Mediterranean Sea, a tourist destination in it's own right without appealing to any other tropical destination. I realized with resignation that this was going to be a "Caribbean" themed hotel with some major artistic liberties involved. The bungalows painted in varying shades of migraine-inducing neon interspersed with an illogical mix if arabesque and pirate-inspired decorations proved me right.

What I failed to realize until later was that not only would I be spending my time in Caribbean World: Tunisian Remix, but I had also landed myself smack dab in the middle of a land-bound booze cruise. The day-glo orange wristband tht the receptionist attached to me was the first giveaway. Yes, "all-inclusive" meant my stay not only included food and snacks, but also all of the low quality booze, middle aged man-thongs, and unfortunately saggy speedos a girl could ask for. In true booze cruise fashion, there were lots of strange resort hookups in progress, usually across generational and language gaps. I guess you don't need to be able to swap stories about where you were when Sputnik launched if only one of you was alive back then and neither of you have conversation on your minds.

This was all fine--in fact it was none of my business to begin with--except that people kept assuming that I was there to do the same thing. A young woman sitting alone on a booze cruise is apparently fair game for employees and guests alike. It absolutely never occurred to each successive person who came and tried to initiate a flirtation with me or asked me out for an evening coffee that I might be perfectly happy to sit alone and feast on the bounty of people-watching prospects in peace. Headphones, sunglasses, and reading materials were no match for the most persistent of prospective suitors, who simply pulled out my headphones or removed my sunglasses to deliver the same urgent message:

"Vous êtes très belle."

This, I think, is why European and American cougars just love maghrebi men who are on the prowl. They don't mince words and the tell these women exactly what they want to hear.

Despite these disruptions of my futile attempts at solitude, being alone provided me with the opportunity to make friends with some genuinely kind-hearted and curious people. I got to talk with some lovely girls, an older and deeply sweet man, and a Tunisian woman who was at the resort with her young son because, as she put it, "I need a vacation from my husband every few months." I got to sit and talk with this sassy and headstrong woman for a few hours over white wine while we watched the sun set and the booze cruise reached a fever pitch. An impromptu dance party had started a dozen meters away, with some of the resort employees joining in the hilarity. One of the young male employees came and attempted to drag me from my seat, and the woman told me she was going to turn in for the night, leaving me to fend for myself. As we drew near the group of intoxicated and sweaty, dancing bodies, one stood out from the rest. A male employee was running around in full drag dancing with the other merrymakers. When he saw me he grabbed my hand and pulled me into the center of the dance circle and promptly pressed my face into his padded bra.

After struggling against his embrace for a few moments I came up for air, laughing and high-fiving him as I backed away from the group. I saw my gender-bending friend around the resort during the rest of my stay, and when I checked out he made me promise to come back. While nodding and smiling and bidding him farewell, I vowed to myself that I never would.

Coming and Going

2011-06-25T11:03:00.001-04:00

It's funny the things that get engrained in you over time. Before I came back to Morocco, I had my doubts about the extent to which I would be able to jump back into my life here. I worried that things would be too different, that I had lost the language or wouldn't be able to get around. As my departure became imminent, I had nightmares about being unable to communicate, or in dreams found myself lost in a dystopic version of my old neighborhood where my friends derided me and daily acquaintances didn't recognize me.

In short, my anxiety was kicking into high gear.

But if I became convinced that I was about to spend three months making an idiot of myself, the check-in and boarding experience at Royal Air Maroc helped me begin to let go of this fear. I arrived at JFK two hours before my flight to find a mob of people jammed into some semblance of a winding line, most groups with at least three oversized bags per person. I resigned myself to a long wait and took my place at the back of the cluster. As I waited a tall, burly man with a scruffy face and another clean-cut boyish looking guy came and stood behind me. From eavesdropping on their conversation I learned that the dark, hulking one worked for Blackwater and was on his way to Sierra Leone, and that the younger one was a recent Westpoint graduate who was trying in vain to seem very impressive to Mr. Mercenary.

It wasn't going very well.

I continued listen as Mr. Mercenary became increasingly vocal about his displeasure that we had been waiting for 45 minutes and hadn't seemed to make any progress. I became increasingly amused by his attempts to get special treatment by demanding to check in at the first-class counter or complain to attendants that he was going to miss his flight to Casablanca.

The attendants only smiled wryly and said, "this is the line for the flight to Casablanca."

After over an hour of waiting and being subjected to Mr. Mercenary's drawling and deeply self-satisfied overview his work, sweet relief came in the form of one would-be-passenger having a complete meltdown. Apparently there was some kind of problem with his reservation. Namely, he didn't have one. He started shouting in Darija at the Moroccan ticketing agent, beating his palms on the counter, waving his passport in the air and then slapping it back down on the counter's edge. Other passengers were starting to get involved, jokeying for a position closer to the action. Mr. Mercenary wondered aloud if the man should be physically removed before a brawl broke out, obviously fancying himself the man for the job.

"No chance of a real fight," I thought, "he's getting way to many people involved to actually have to follow through with a blow." This is how it seems to work in my experience, anyway.

After almost two hours I finally got to check in. I asked the man behind the counter if the plane would be leaving on time (nowish) or if I had time to go grab the several bottles of water that I require for a trans-Atlantic flight. He chuckled and assured me that the plane would definitely not be leaving on time. Sometimes inefficiency has its perks.

I whizzed through security and was about to dash off to the nearest airport convenience store when I noticed a security officer struggling to explain a pat-down search to a very old Moroccan couple.

"SIR," he shouted in English at the old man, "I AM GOING TO PAT YOU DOWN NOW LIKE THIS." He pantomimed on his own body, patting his arms and torso. The old man only smiled a bit and started to mirror the security guard's movements, obviously thinking that he had been instructed to pat his own body.

"NO SIR," the guard bellowed, "I'M GOING TO DO IT TO YOU." He pantomimed again, only to have his actions mirrored by the old man another time.

"WILL YOU TELL HIM?" the security guard pleaded with the old man's wife.

The old lady only turned to her husband and, laughing slightly, said "I don't understand him."

The security guard became distressed and looked around for help, his eyes coming to rest on what must have been my thoroughly amused expression. I walked over and began translating the guard's questions to the old man while his wife looked on. Once the guard was sufficiently convinced that the old man posed no threat and didn't have any weapons in his hat he waved the couple through. The old woman squeezed my hand and said, "shukran binti" as I turned to leave. I turned and practically sprinted off to buy water, calling "afwan ya hajja" over my shoulder as I went.

My rush was completely unwarranted, however, because when I arrived at my gate I encountered another mob, this time shouting and surging towards the gate. An airport employee was shouting instructions in English over the din of French and Darija.

"PRE-BOARDING ONLY! ONLY PASSENGERS WITH BABIES OR THOSE NEEDING EXTRA ASSISTANCE!!"

It continues to mystify me that in international terminals like those in JFK or SFO, where 80% of passengers speak little to no English, the airports don't have a translator on hand. On the other hand, getting furious and screaming in English seems to work out so well for them. Don't fix it if it ain't broke, as they say.

The group became so large that it blocked the entire walkway to the other gates and backed up into the bathroom. Some passengers began to berate the employee with the various languages at their disposal, insisting that they should be allowed to board, too. The employee became so exasperated that she put up one of those retractable cordons to separate the gate from the passengers. This proved to be a gross miscalculation, because it only made those waiting more upset. People began hopping over it, bending under it, and eventually unhooking it entirely and pushing their way towards the gate.

I'm not actually sure how the whole mess got resolved. At some point people were allowed on the plane, and soon everyone was fighting about the overhead bin space for their three or four carry-on bags. When I finally reached my seat I sank into it gratefully and smiled at the very pretty, somewhat fancy woman sitting next to me.

She scowled at the bickering passengers and lamented, "it's always like this."

"Yeah," I said, "I remember."

On Muscle Memory (or: Inexorable Humanity)

2011-05-03T16:46:00.000-04:00

Pain is our first and most consistent teacher. We learn to avoid the things that will hurt us, adapting our world views accordingly. And it’s not enough to take someone else’s word for it—we have to test things out for ourselves.

Maybe we’ll be different.

I remember when I was little I used to sit and make crafts with my mother. Throughout my life these little projects have changed, but the ritual itself remained one of the few things we could agree on as I grew up and learned to hurt. I remember once we were working with dried flowers and straw hats or something equally useless for anything other than hanging limply on the wall. We were cooking on the stove while we heated up our glue guns. As I stood at my mothers hip watching her stir the pot, I had the urge to reach out and touch it. My mother blocked my hand from the flame of the stove, saying that I would hurt myself. I moved away to stand alone and sulk next to the counter. As I stood there I noticed something dripping from the tip of one of the glue guns. I began to wipe it away, and—finding the molten glue stuck to my finger—I experienced a searing pain.

I didn’t want to mention that I’d managed to burn myself while brooding over having been stopped from doing just that. I suffered in silence, babying my blistering finger throughout the rest of our craft date, gritting my teeth everytime I had to push the dried flowers into the hot glue. Anything was better than admitting my mistake and being subjected to an explanation of why I should listen the first time. So my blister got worse, but it eventually healed thanks to the wonders of Vitamin E procured from a friend’s house.

It might be worth noting that my own stubborn will and determination to “see for myself” frequently causes me more harm than good.

And yet, I can’t help but contemplate the consequences of a life without pain. For those individuals that do not feel pain thanks to severed nerves or a failure of the extremities to communicate with the brain, it seems as though life becomes a string of warnings and stories about pain that remain unsynthesized by sensory experiences. I also wonder about what happens when we are too immediately rewarded for lashing out in the wake of an injury. If we are vindicated while still howling in pain, do we learn the cost of our retaliation? Do we grasp the importance of healing, grieving, and hopefully learning to forgive—even if it means forgiving ourselves and those that teach us to hurt?

I suspect not. In my experience, it takes time and contemplation to truly understand pain’s lessons, whether on a personal or national scale. Why all this emphasis on memorials if not to remember? What do we remember if not the experience of coping with and recovering from loss?

In any case, learning from the stories of others eventually fails to suffice, and we have to experience pain for ourselves. All the tales of “The Lost Generation” and the horrors of “The War to End All Wars” aren’t enough to prevent generation after generation from steeling themselves for the ravages of their own Great Wars. We become involved in our own stories, our own entanglements and we experience the high-flying emotions that are the stuff of the stories that we will someday pass down. But the tall tales come at a cost, and that cost is stubbornly human and painful. We learn to fear for loved ones and for ourselves, surviving silences, distance and panic attacks through sheer determination and the occasional perfunctory call or email (how distant now, those letters from the front?). The sleepless nights, the scars, and the disillusionments are not stories that we relish in the retelling. They are beacons, altars to the parts of ourselves that learned to hurt.

So I wonder now, as we all seem to turn inward and contemplate the retelling of our own histories and master narratives, are we learning anything? Can we be reflexive enough to learn from the inexorable humanity of our legacy? Will muscle memory be enough to save us from continuing the cycle of injury and retaliation? I would like to think that we are all learning to keep our hands out of the fire, but these are our own stories, hard-won through personal loss, pain, and the liberal use of topical analgesics. We can’t learn these lessons for each other, but we can share them and hopefully become less fearful. Even the worst pain eventually fades, after all.

Insomnia

2011-04-16T23:48:00.000-04:00

I could sleep to sound of freeways
now
to the cars humming past
I could sleep
to the sound of the sixteen wheeler
roaring by,
booming, booming,
against the deep
dark pavement.

I wonder what it smells like in the rain
in the middle of the freeway.

I could sleep to the sound of freeways.
The noise
the comforting din
and still always hear
that still-small voice
whispering
What if...?
What now...?

What next?

I could sleep to the sound of freeways—
now.

Retrospective

2011-04-13T23:43:00.001-04:00

I can hear you smile in the dark
It said
as though I were hearing some kind of confession.
As though
through all the defenses
so carefully laid
all the dehumanized shell
so publicly advertised
I’d gotten inside
under the skin
into the blood
somehow, against all odds—

And yet…
Delivered like some kind of admonishment,
as though
once upon a time
I could have retreated
spared us all of this, and in the end
run for cover.
But
it was too late for all of that now.
It could hear me smile in the dark.
What else wasn’t I hiding?
Beneath the cover of darkeness
or beneath the hot,
burning spotlight?
Might as well have been either.

It’s all the same fleshy underbelly
waiting.
All the same in the dark.

The Hunt

2010-12-19T21:36:00.000-05:00

There’s something about the holidays that always prompts me to pause and take stock of my life. I don’t mean this in the topical, “what should my New Year’s resolution be?” kind of thing. A long time ago I resolved to stop making New Year’s resolutions and thus stop constantly setting myself up for failure. It’s the only resolution I’ve ever actually kept.

No, as the days get shorter and the nights get longer, and the sheets feel ever-colder to my toes each time I climb into bed, I can’t resist the urge to queue up a highlight reel and think of where I am now in comparison to where I’ve been in previous years. That is to say, I have a standing reservation with the Ghost of Christmas Past.

Maybe it’s all the yuletide cheer talking, but I always feel a dull ache somewhere behind my ribcage, like I’m testing Freud’s theory of melancholia—mourning without object. It’s a kind of hyper-remembering, one that has no particular goal, nothing to be recovered or healed, just a fixation on Jessies-gone-by, poking around the past as though looking for something that isn’t even there.

In many cases, the legwork of the recollecting comes easily. All I need to do is pause and compare my physical location with that of past years. The last few holiday seasons have provided ample ground for this kind of contradistinction. My semi-nomadic lifestyle these past years has meant that since 2007 I have spent each holiday in a different location, complete with a different cast of characters and preoccupations. The interesting thing about remembering all of these past holidays is that there hasn’t been much Christmas-y about them. If there has been any acknowledgment of the season at all, it usually revolves around a tree and a full glass of eggnog.

What can I say? I’m a sucker for pine-fresh scents and any drink that calls for spiced rum.

Last year, tree-trimming and eggnog drinking reached such levels of hilarity in the Taunton home that the night ended with Jon throwing me over his shoulder like a sack of (drunken) potatoes, carrying me up the stairs, and banishing me to bed. That didn’t deter me from actively participating in the conversation happening in the living room, even when upside-down at the top of the stairs. Needless to say, the next day was much more subdued and involved several doses of Tylenol.

The year before that, starved for anything that resembled holiday cheer, Rachel and I went to the Mega Mall in Rabat and drove go-karts around and obstacle course set up on an ice skating rink, ate sushi, and ogled one of the only Christmas trees in town. On Christmas day, itself, we had friends over to watch “It’s Christmas, Charlie Brown” and I made French fried. While our friends were great sports about it, I don’t know if we did a very good job of translating the Christmas spirit.

Maybe some of the melancholia comes from not having many Christmas traditions. My family has long since defected from any kind of church, and so Christmas Eve services would, to my eyes, be more of a sociological experiment than an opportunity for spiritual reflection. Although I do like all of the candles and most of the music. I also avoid the annual shopping pilgrimages like the plague. This is my attempt to keep from being swallowed by a sea of smarmy, simpering salespeople, tinny Christmas jingles, and stores vomiting cheer in the form of sales and admonishments to prove that I really love my loved ones by buying them something they absolutely don’t need.

…bah humbug?

Lest I start to sound too much like Scrooge instead of a slightly jaded gal who may or may not grapple with seasonal affective disorder, I should say that there is one tradition in the Newman family that, without which, I absolutely could not accept that the holidays even existed.

Christmas Tree Hunting.

Ever since I was little, my family and I would pile into the car and make the (then seemingly interminable) trek to Sonoma County to one of the tree farms and hunt for the perfect Christmas tree. Now that we’re based out of Sonoma County the actual trip is somewhat less exciting, but the hunt is no less epic. Every year someone is, as a matter of principle, cranky and disgruntled. This person will dislike every tree that has ever grown under the sun. Someone else will play the underappreciated but always vital role of Switzerland. This person will remain neutral, mediating between stakeholders in an attempt to speed things up so we can get out of the damned cold and get some hot drinks.

Then there’s me.

While now I play my role with a bit more sarcasm thrown into the mix, I’m usually out of my mind with excitement, and completely irritating to everyone around me thanks to my obnoxious glee that we are all together, standing on the side of a muddy hill while arguing about how best to contribute to deforestation. Last year I berated my brother for no less than an hour, alternating between sweet supplications and violent threats of physical injury until he finally agreed to come for The Hunt. Once we were both in the car, I bounced up and down in the back seat squealing until he put on his headphones and turned away from me.

I store up every ounce of my holiday cheer for The Hunt, which is perhaps why I have so little left over for anything else. Evidence of this fact exists somewhere. Yes, floating somewhere in the land of lost objects that we call our family home there is a video, the memory of which has been haunting me lately. In it I am probably 10-12, an age range that was not particularly kind to me. I am chubby. I am sporting an exquisitely butch haircut. I am, more importantly, wearing jingle-bell earrings and a Santa hat.

As though the mere fact of my existence hadn’t been embarrassing enough, I decided, in my Hunt-inspired delirium, to do an impersonation of Looney Tunes’s Tasmanian Devil. For those of you who may not have had the good fortune to witness one of my impersonations, let me say that I always commit 100%. My unfortunate, pre-teen self was no exception. As if this weren’t bad enough, my brother had been manning the camera and decided to treat the viewers to some slow zoom action, ending with a singularly unforgiving close-up of my flushed, glistening face as I contorted it into snarls and grunts.

Now that’s what I call brotherly love.

Still, I didn’t care. Even after watching the video and seeing how ridiculous I looked, I couldn’t help but lose my damn mind every year when we set out for The Hunt. This kind of obstinate irrationality also factors into my tree preferences. Every year, I insist on getting the biggest, most imposing tree we can find. It must be taller than the 8-ft measuring pole. Moreover, it must be robust and proud, none of this meek and mild crap for my tree, save it for the manger.

But we Newmans are an exceptionally stubborn bunch, and I share this trait with the other members of my family. This means that no one will ever agree on a tree the first time around. Alliances must be formed, treaties drafted and broken. The squabbles that used to ensue when I was younger were generally of epic proportion, usually ending in someone stomping off into to trees for awhile. This stubbornness also means that my parents have, until last year, refused to get a bigger tree stand. Every year they swore that they’d get a reasonable tree, but every year I threw myself against the wall of their resolve with such blind determination that they ultimately capitulated and we brought home an impossibly large tree that was much too big for our flimsy stand.

Vaulted ceilings are your friend if you’re a child with delusions and Christmas tree grandeur. However, my ultimate victory in getting a behemoth tree also meant that dodge-the-falling-tree became a yearly pastime in my house. Usually there were no serious casualties—an ornament here, a nearly-crippled cat there, but nothing too sensational.

Still, I sort of love that this is my family’s tradition. It’s as dysfunctional and ridiculous as we are, and even if no one is speaking to each other by the time that it’s all over, I still feel a warm glow in my chest that I got everyone to do it again. Even though we don’t do much with the tree—presents have long since given way to cash deposits, and the pitter-patter of little feet is now replaced by tired grunts and bickering—I can’t help but stop and smile when I see that tall tree decked out in twinkly lights.

This year, I’m not sure what we’ll do about a tree. Yet again, I’ll be spending the holiday in still another location than before. This time I’ll be with 25 screaming, crying Sicilians (huddled masses of offspring and spouses included). In this case, I might get my fill of family dynamics without the annual Hunt. I mean, how much crazy can a girl really ask for without being greedy?

As I walked the class last week, reflecting on this very idea, I passed the Forestry School. On the lawn they had several felled Christmas trees with a sign saying that they were for sale. I was struck by the irony that a school for sustainable forestry would be selling trees that would ultimately make their way to the curb in a few weeks, but beyond this, I thought that the trees looked awfully sad. For a minute I considered giving one of them a home. Then I thought about what the jingle-bell-clad Tasmanian Devil would have to say about that and decided against it.

“Nah,” I thought as I walked away, “Way too easy.”

Casa Voyageurs (Archives Revisited)

2010-12-04T12:25:00.000-05:00

Another piece pulled from the archives: I wrote this in Febrauary 2009 after a night spent sitting at the Gare de Casa Voyageurs in Casablanca. Yeats was right: life is a widening gyre.

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The air was sticky and thick. Warm, with only the slightest chill riding on the wind that raised the hairs on the back of my neck as I sat alone beneath the lone blue-white light of Platform Three. I was waiting for my train from Casablanca to Rabat. The opaque sky was made orange by pollution and intense city lights, but for a moment it lit up as lightning flashed overhead. I had been watching it move closer for a few minutes until rain pelted the metal awning that protected my metal seat from the elements.

As the lightning flashed again I thought about electrocution, worrying that perhaps I was surrounded by too many conductors of electricity. My worry slid away with each deepening breath that I took to smell the rain on the concrete. It’s been my favorite smell in the world for as long as I can remember. The earthy, sweet smell of the dust and the pungent wetness of the concrete never fail to lull me into a trance-like state of tranquility.

I can trace my life by this smell, by the sound of the rain, too. Key moments from childhood flash before my eyes as I remember days spent willing it to rain, longing for a great biblical flood and the inevitable school cancellations. I recall recent sleepless nights spent on my balcony watching as my gravel-filled alley became submerged in water, again praying for some great deluge, this time to wash the all-too-vivid stains from my cluttered mind. This was one of the only things that could console me in the dead of the most chilling winter I’d ever experienced: watching as the sky released heavy torrents from the deep grey clouds. The sound of each drop drummed torturous thoughts from my mind, as though bombarding me until I was too exhausted to stay awake.

As I shifted in my seat, I thought of the rain on a recent night as it hammered down outside of the window of a villa in Rabat on the first night that I realized that it was Spring. I had felt the first thaw as I wrapped my icy feet around the toes of a most unexpected addition to my life. It was easily past two o’clock in the morning, and I lay in an unfamiliar bed with a new character who had entered from stage left, and gazed out of an open window at the grey night. I had been unprepared for this night; had seen no stage directions and was completely unfamiliar with the blocking, but inside I felt part of me slide back into place, like a dislocated joint that had been aching for months as I gave myself over to all things unscripted. I wouldn’t have been so comfortable lying next to this not-quite stranger, listening to the new rhythm of new lungs, if it hadn’t been for the familiarity of the rain. The feel and smell of new skin were soaked in the comfort of my utter reliance on the rain for stasis. He assimilated easily into my thoughts, ushered in with each pitter-patter that brought me peace. About everything.

As I sat on the platform at the train station thinking, I saw a man approach me and then hesitate just out of the corner of my eye. He mumbled something that at first I didn’t understand. He repeated in French, “I don’t think you should be out here with all of the metal. It’s not good.”

I smiled and thanked him in Darija, taking stock of my surroundings once again. I was by no means the tallest structure in my general area, and would have felt that I’d earned it if a bolt of lightning somehow managed to skirt past the metal telephone poles and the metal canopy to strike the metal arm of the metal chair upon which I sat. Now that, I thought, would make a story. Besides, short of forcibly relocating me, anyone would have been hard pressed to cajole me into the smoky train station, away from the hypnotic cadence and smell of the squall.

The rain came down harder, splashing off of the pavement and onto my feet, protected only by small woven sandals. I tucked them underneath me and continued to sit, cross-legged, meditating. It seemed ideal to me. I was in the midst of a storm but not subject to its wrath, and I had enough time to sit and take it all in before my train. The ticket checker had thought I was crazy when I walked out onto the platform, telling me that it was nearly an hour before my train. I had only smiled and tucked my ticket into my pocket as I walked over the tracks to the correct platform. He just didn't understand.

I shivered and flipped up the collar of my jacket to protect my neck from the cold. A deeper chill ran through me as the empty train that had been sitting in front of me blew its shrill horn and pulled away, depriving me of the shelter that I hadn’t known I’d had. I couldn’t help but feel slightly more exposed to the wind as well as to the shadowy world beyond my seat once I recognized the train's absence. The loudest clap of thunder bellowed in the clouds with a percussive force that I felt in my ribs. It lasted so long that I looked around in alarm, expecting to see buildings set aflame. But the city remained tranquil to my eye and I settled back into my seat, watching as more people gathered on the platform as the rain dissipated. I hunted in my bag and, amidst the next flash of lightning, took a long sip from my water bottle—also made out of metal—and sat back in my seat.

I wanted to curl up on the bench, pull up a blanket of wet cloud and disintegrate into the thick, humid air, becoming one with the sweet smell I’ve come to love. I might have sat there all night, impassive, vacant; only rooted to the world through gravity and the force of each drop of rain. I could have, even would have, but I had someone waiting for me at the other end of the track. For the first time in a very long time someone was there waiting for me to pull into the station, and I felt that it would have been bad form to keep him waiting. Instead, I’d come back to the city that I had started to call home, hop up into his car and kiss him like that first night of Spring and listen to the rain as it pounded on the roof of the car and washed the away the world beyond the windows.

I shook my head free of this enticing thought and chuckled to myself, thinking of the poetic irony of being surrounded by metal in the middle of a lightning storm. So much of my life lately has felt like I’ve been living in a lightning rod that never fails to be struck—hard. But somehow I was still there, sitting as though in defiance of the storm, reformed and perhaps re-energized by the force of each core-shaking crash.

Strumming Heartstrings (Or: Archives Revisited)

2010-11-26T16:29:00.000-05:00

I wrote the following essay (and attendant playlist) roughly a year ago (Novemberish 2009), before I came back to the United States for the holidays after about a year and a half in Morocco. The applicability of this piece to my life right now is stunning (naked episodes in front of the heater notwithstanding). Behold:

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Weathering a soul-crushing breakup of “General Hospital” proportions does a lot for your sense of perspective. Namely, having your plans blow up in your face changes your ideas about what really constitutes the end of the world. Surely, you might say, the end of your relationship would put an end to your existence. A year ago I would have agreed. A year ago I would have sworn that the end of my relationship would automatically trigger a fatal disintegration of my insides, causing my heart to plummet into my stomach where it would be consumed by my own hateful bile.

But relationships end and your heart and bile remain mercifully distinct from one another. Perhaps your body becomes temporarily concave to reflect the vacuum left in your heart, but in general your cuteal cells do their job by keeping the relevant systems and organs separate. This all depends, of course, on your personal rate of regeneration. My own was, for the most part, remarkably fast—with some lingering repairs still sorting themselves out.

But we are regenerative creatures and heal we must. Eventually we no longer struggle to maintain equilibrium and instead, against all odds, we begin to thrive. This can be a subtle transition and might pass unnoticed until something draws it to your attention. Cheeks hurt from smiling for the first time in recent memory and stomachs do back flips from unfamiliar butterflies. In my case, I remained in many ways unaware of my regrowth until I realized that the “you” in songs had changed. Only then did it finally occur to me that I had begun a new phase. Granted, there were clues. It wasn’t until one sunny day in late winter, however, when I was literally stopped in my tracks on my way to work because a song came flooding through my headphones, inundating me with new meaning, that it finally occurred to me that I was becoming different person. While certain songs will always be about specific people, there are others that have more fluid meaning or can at least be traced to other phases of my life and this reassures me.

This ability to designate periods—or in some cases epochs—is crucial to my sense of perspective. My relationship to music is a good indicator of the various chapters of my life. This is unsurprising given that my family is almost universally musical, and given my seeming inability to date non-musicians in my earlier years (a habit currently proscribed by international treaty and best friends everywhere). This intimate relationship to music means that some songs and artists become temporarily off-limits when breakups or transitions occur. Just like other shared territory that must only be revisited at your own risk, so too must musical terrain be treated with caution.

Eventually, though, such vigilance becomes unnecessary and trepidation is replaced by a healthy sense of perspective. Suddenly the songs that you once thought spoke solely to your timeless love and spiritual connection to that now-stranger seem a bit saccharine, and songs used for catharsis (read: masochism) reveal themselves to be the most thoroughly dramatic examples of musical myopia.

Beyond this, you gain other points of reference. As time passes even simple phrases like “a year ago” gain new meaning. Time itself becomes more nuanced. I am about to pass into a time in which “a year ago” has nothing to do with the scorched earth of my past life. Instead this seemingly innocuous phrase will refer only to my life in Morocco. This will be a rather watershed moment for me given that I frequently grappled with “a year ago” in my previous reckonings. As I return home it occurs to me that it will have been more than a year since I’ve seen my brother, my Grandmum, my house, my street. Christmas this year will throw into sharp relief the last year’s challenges and this year will be devoid to trips to Mega Mall just to see the inaccurate “New Year’s decorations” (which are nothing but ill-conceived Christmas decorations). This year will not include the special Christmas French Fries that I taught myself to make last year to keep sane amidst all my woe. I won’t lie naked in front of my heater in an attempt to keep warm. I won’t worry about black mold or the stifling effects of grief in the dark winter.

Time, in effect, will take on a new system of meaning as everything takes one step back into more distant memory. This new system comes with its own playlists, habits, butterflies, and memories. In the past year I have learned not only that my heart is unlikely to disintegrate, but also that it is capable of patience and steadiness that I had thought was impossible for someone of my temperament. I have learned that Gorilla Tape really does fix everything, how to say concise farewells, and how to navigate Moroccan transportation. I have learned to extend compassion to myself, and also how to make soup from scratch. I have learned how to operate a manual transmission and a pressure cooker. I have learned how to let someone know me without consuming me. I have learned to say yes. I have learned to say no. I have learned to say when enough is enough.

In brief (and don’t we all wish I could be): I have learned to shuffle songs and to recognize that life goes on, and that “you” is ever-changing. As am I.

An Anachronistic Musical Review (2008-2009):
-Cath…--Death Cap for Cutie
-Past in Present—Feist
-Lonelilly—Damien Rice
-Be Ok—Ingrid Michaelson
-Wrecking—Laura Veirs
-Made Concrete—The Republic Tigers
-Night Watch—Tegan and Sara
-Sinkin' Annie, Down, Down, Down, Down—The Republic Tigers
-The Next Time You Say Forever—Neko Case
-Your House—Jimmy Eat World
-Canal Song (End of Sentence)—Iain Archer
-In California—Joanna Newsom
-Living Room—Tegan and Sara
-Galaxies—Laura Veirs
-Giving Up—Ingrid Michaelson
-Help I’m Alive—Metric
-The Pharaohs—Neko Case
-Lately—Helio Sequence
-The day I lost my voice—Copeland
-Light Up—Tegan and Sara
-Half Asleep—School of Seven Bells
-You, Me, and the Bourgeoisie—The Submarines
-Nugget—Cake
-Let It Happen—Jimmy Eat World
-You Haven’t Told Me Anything—Keane
-Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots pt. 2—The Flaming Lips
-Paperback Head—Tegan and Sara
-Soft Shock—Yeah Yeah Yeahs
-No One Really Wins—Copeland
-My Only Offer—Mates of State
-Blindness—Metric
-So Long—Ingrid Michaelson
-I Need Some Fine Wine and You Need to Be Nicer—The Cardigans
-This is Everything—Tegan and Sara
-Long Division—Death Cab for Cutie
-The Chain—Ingrid Michaelson
-Silver Lining—Rilo Kiley
-Sick Muse—Metric
-Venn Diagram—Lisa Hannigan
-A Town Called Malice—The Jam
-Touch Me I’m Going to Scream pt. 1—My Morning Jacket
-Does Not Suffice—Joanna Newsom
-Someday—Tegan and Sara
-Map of the World—Monsters of Folk
-Swimming Pool—The Submarines
-Airplanes—The Local Natives
-Skeletons—Yeah Yeah Yeahs
-Do You Realize???—The Flaming Lips
-Drink Deep—Laura Veirs
-People Got a Lotta Nerve—Neko Case
-Have One on Me—Joanna Newsom
-Sleepy Head—Passion Pit
-Alligator—Tegan and Sara
-Cover What You Can—Copeland
-Sort Of—Ingrid Michaelson
-15 Step—Radiohead
-Ragged Wood—Fleet Foxes
-Peace and Hate—The Submarines
-Off the Record—My Morning Jacket
-Iamundernodisguise—School of Seven Bells
-Bad Reputation—Joan Jett and the Heartbreakers
-Floorplan—Tegan and Sara
-Ocean and a Rock—Lisa Hannigan
-Breakin’ Up—Rilo Kiley
-Carry You—Jimmy Eat World
-Ahead of the Curve—Montsters of Folk
-Don’t Lose Yourself—Laura Veirs
-Masochist—Ingrid Michaelson
-Kiss Me Again—Jessica Lea Mayfield
-Knife Going In—Tegan and Sara
-Bluish—Animal Collective
-Ragged Wood—Fleet Foxes
-Like O, Like H—Tegan and Sara

Magic Moments

2010-08-10T10:50:00.000-04:00

Although my experience with Nurse Betty, PhD, was undeniably unsavory, it is not the strangest thing that has happened to my pelvis at the hands of a medical practitioner.

It is now widely accepted among health professionals and owners of vaginas that annual exams are a “best practice.” In fact, the annual exam is rather the minimum in terms of checkups (ideally you should get a pap and a blood test before/after each partner). In the advent of STDs, sex becomes less the “free love” of our parents’ day and more “risky business.” For this reason, using protection and getting tested regularly is not only a sound medical practice, but also way more effective than crossing your fingers. Moreover, annual pelvic exams aren't just about STDs, they're also your best bet at catching cancers and cysts and other things that can get up to mischeif in the Cave of Wonders and its environs. So just go. [Obligatory PSA finished.]

Before men reach the age where prostate exams become par for the course, I think women get the short end of the stick during annual exams—or to go for the obvious pun: we get the short end of the speculum. Few things really get my blood moving like hoisting myself onto a table and into a set of stirrups, knowing full well what awaits.

I don’t mean to sound like I’m complaining. On the contrary, I love having a vagina and love taking good care of it. I do, however, believe that every vagina should come with a healthy sense of humor. Maybe I simply go through life looking for hilarity, but I usually find that I don’t have to look very far—particularly when it comes to genitals and sex. As with most other things, I think that if you’re not laughing then you’re not doing it right.

My last pelvic exam in the US before moving to Morocco is a case in point.

Much like my recent visit to Nurse Betty, I found myself in need of a physical exam and corresponding paperwork before I could get on with the next phase of my life. Unlike Yale’s rather perfunctory exam, the State Department was not going to let me start my Fulbright until they (or the doctor of my choice) had given me a thorough going-over. The most obvious explanation for the Fulbright’s attention to the minutia of my health is that they like to imagine fledgling scholars high on the promise of life bent over in a gown that gapes in the back. It’s a way of showing us our natural place in the academic pecking order.

In all seriousness, the true purpose of the exam was to make sure I didn’t have a serious or chronic condition that would go without treatment in the [allegedly] sub-standard medical conditions in whatever [exotic, distant] country in which I’d be living. Never mind that according to the World Health Organization’s report in 2000, Morocco’s "overall health system performance" outranked that of the United States in by nearly ten places. Forget all that! I was going to be roughing it, dammit!

Regardless, the Fulbright physical was so detailed that even my doctor in southern California, where I lived at the time, leafed through the extensive paperwork while shaking her head and muttering things like, “why do they need that?...oh well that’s just silly.” Finally she looked up at me and said, “seeing as you’re not a 60-year-old man I’m going to assume that your imaginary prostate is in working order rather than poking around up there if it’s all the same to you.”

I heartily agreed.

I would however, still need my annual pelvic exam before fleeing the country. She did me the small kindness of stepping out of the room and allowing me to slip out of my clothes in privacy. I have mixed feelings about standing on ceremony like this because it seems a bit self-deluding to think it will make the slightest difference. While I don’t like being surprised while I’m undressing, I really have no problem just dropping trou in front of the person who’s going to be poking around between my knees. They’re getting in there whether I’m shy about it or not.

One thing that also tickles my fancy is the way some gynecologists narrate their every move. It’s kind of like listening to a sports commentator except the playing field is my cervix. Certainly, a bit of advanced warning helps, but I don’t necessarily need to know everything that’s going on. The doctor busied herself with setting up shop between my legs and I tried to relax while I waited for first contact. After she had done some preliminary poking around it was time for the speculum. “Here we go!” she said brightly, as though we were embarking on some kind of gal-pal adventure.

Then, as though on cue, the room was filled with a cheerful whistling.

Lest you think that “Magic Moments” by Perry Como was already as corny as it could get, let me insist that you track down a whistling version of the song. Then make it your ring tone. Then leave your phone on “loud” during your pelvic exam.

It is common knowledge in my family that my mother has the uncanny ability to call at exactly the wrong moment. If you are checking out at the market with your arms full of produce and wrestling with your wallet, expect a call. If you are negotiating a tricky tangle of overpasses on unfamiliar freeways, be prepared to make small talk. If your gyno has just inserted a speculum into your vagina, prepare to die of embarrassment.

In my mother’s defense, it might be genetic. My dad jokes about the “text message fairy” that assaults his phone with messages from every member of the Newman Family Circus not only en masse but also usually at an inopportune moment. As with other things, however, I suspect that the force is stronger with my mother than those of us who inherited her genetic gifts secondhand.

The whistling continued. My doctor froze. I clenched (mistake). She looked up at my mortified face and for a split second no one spoke. Then we both started laughing—no easy feat when a speculum is involved. I apologized for not turning off my phone and she allowed me to dismount in order to silence my mother's call. The whistling stopped. As we assumed our positions she paused.

“Was that ‘Magic Moments’?” she asked.

I assured her that as far as I was concerned it certainly had been most magical.

Elif Shafak: The Politics of Fiction

2010-07-16T15:40:00.000-04:00

For all you Wanderers in the quest for knowledge: another inspiring TED Talk, this time by Elif Shafak. She discusses the politics of fiction, in addition to its function (or assumed function) in the realm of identity politics. Definitely worth watching.

To Smear or Not to Smear? or: The Perfect Pelvis.

2010-07-16T15:35:00.000-04:00

“Well,” she said simply, “you have perfect genitals.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said, pulling the drape down over my knees as she turned away.

I couldn’t be sure if she was being hyperbolic or merely trying to make up for being rude and condescending for the last thirty minutes. Then again, maybe I really did have perfect genitalia.

I was in my doctor’s office, and the “she” who had just cast an appraising eye on my vagina was a nurse practitioner who, as far as I was concerned, could give Nurse Ratched a run for her money. She had spent the better part of my appointment lecturing me for not having one of the forms for my physical evaluation which is why the compliment caught me a bit off guard—although I suppose someone using superlatives with reference to my vagina would have been given me pause, regardless.

When I’d made the appointment for my physical, the receptionist had informed me in wide valley girl vowels that the doctor wasn’t available but I could see a nurse practitioner. I agreed. She then informed me—or perhaps warned me—that I would have to see Betty (or so we’ll call her).

“Is that ok?” she asked.
“I really don’t care, I just need someone to verify that I don’t have a second head or Ebola or something.”

It is my personal belief that the receptionist was aware that I didn’t know who Betty was—or rather, I had blocked her memory from my consciousness during the six years that I’ve been away from home and seeing different doctors. Betty, as it turned out, is the tight lipped, mirthless little woman who once brought me to the verge of tears by bullying me about a UTI. She had insisted that I wasn’t a virgin, and that I probably had an STI. As it turns out I only had a UTI, I was a virgin, and Betty was a very mean woman.

Betty is not a woman who smiles—at least not at me. She has severe, pale eyes and skin the color and texture of rice paper wrapped tight around her skull without crow's feet or smile lines. People who do not smile make me nervous. I always end up trying to make them smile and my inevitable failure to do so renders me a babbling cartoonish version of myself. Needless to say I did not make Betty smile, particularly because on my recent visit to her I seemed to have ruined her day.

There had been some confusion upon my arrival at the office as to why I was there. The chipper old woman who brought me back to the exam room informed that I was there for a pap smear. I informed her that I was not. As far as I am concerned, surprise pap smears are never an option. I need to be thoroughly physically and mentally prepared for anything that involves a pelvic exam and the word “smear.” No, it simply wouldn’t do.

“Oh well, I think you might as well get undressed anyway,” said the woman frowning at me, and then she left the room.

When Betty entered the room a few seconds later without so much as a warning knock on the door I was half-naked, gown falling off my shoulders, jumping up and down on one foot in an attempt to wrestle my tights off. I had worn a dress and tights because I had not anticipated having to strip down, and also because I wanted to wear the lightest clothes possible in case I was to be weighed as part of my physical. Jeans, it is commonly known, add 15-20 pounds.

“So,” sighed Betty as she eyed me over the top of her glasses, “You’re here for a pap.”
“No I’m not,” I said definitively before launching into a lengthy explanation of what I actually needed. I handed her my paperwork.
“Well why are you undressed then?” she asked with what I thought was an unnecessary level of exasperation.
“The nurse told me to get undressed.”
“Actually,” sniffed Betty as though I'd offended her, “she’s a medical assistant.” She then stood up and walked from the room, ordering over her shoulder, “get dressed.”

I was glad I’d decided not to bother putting my tights back on because I’d hardly pulled my dress over my head when Betty barged back into the room.

“You’re missing a form. These instructions say that you do need a physical.”
“I know. I’m sorry, I thought that’s what I said. I—” Suddenly I found myself talking to Betty’s palm. She’d held up her hand in my face.
“Get undressed again and I’ll sort this out.” And with that, she was gone.

I got undressed again, nearly breaking into a sweat with the effort of tearing my clothes off quickly enough to avoid being caught in the buff. My efforts, however, were wasted because Betty left me in the stuffy room for ten minutes before reappearing. By this time I felt like a kid on Time Out, a sensation that wasn’t assuaged by her launching into a lecture about how grad school should teach me better organization.

“When I got my PhD,” she continued importantly, “I think the main thing I learned was to solve problems.” She then informed me that she’d found the missing form on the Yale website for new students (which incidentally was exactly where I’d found the forms, but must have dropped one on the way), and that when she was in academia she saw this kind of disorganization in her students constantly.

Betty proceeded to give me a physical, clucking to herself as she came across my tattoos and piercings. By the time she’d completed my breast exam and was working her way ever southwards, I’d broken into a nervous sweat. The combination of being groped and lectured is not one I’d ever experienced before, and not one that I hope to encounter ever again.

Mercifully, Betty had agreed that a surprise—and I suspected somewhat punitive—pelvic exam would be unnecessary, although the form did require a cursory exam.

“It has a category for ‘genitals,’” Betty said.
“You mean you need to make sure I’ve got them? Because I could tell you that.”
Again Betty did not smile, but rather sighed as she peered between my knees.
“Perfect.”

I left the office feeling thoroughly harassed, not only thanks to Betty’s impeccable bedside manner and my farcical strip-tease, but also because the office seemed to have none of my medical or vaccination records. This meant that I had to go get my blood drawn, a process that always causes me anxiety and severe bruising. When I returned a few days later for the results of my blood test with bruises that made me look like a junkie, Betty ignored me. When I passed her on my way from the waiting room to the exam room led by my favorite little medical assistant I grinned sheepishly at her when she looked up and seemed to look through me rather than at me and then looked back down at her paperwork—without smiling, of course.

The little woman led me into the pediatric exam room where I would get a basic shot for mumps, which according to my blood tests I either hadn’t gotten or had been insufficient. She pottered around the colorful room, giving me reassuring pats on the shoulder.

“Not that you mind needles,” she said sensibly as she eyed my tattoo, “but it won’t hurt. You might be a bit sore later.” Then she brandished a bandaid that had a hologram design. “Look at what you get after! I love it when they’re fun designs.”

I wanted to hug her.

I saw myself out of the office after the medical assistant had given me my shot and made a slight ceremony of affixing my amazing bandaid to my shoulder. Betty passed down the hallway without greeting. Glad to see the back of her, I decided to take my perfect vagina out for ice cream not only as a reward for surviving Betty and for having perfect genitals, but also for being brave about my shot. Old habits die hard, I guess.

Fair Warning

2010-07-11T23:46:00.000-04:00

I am going to talk at length about vaginas.

Not necessarily right this second, but in the essays that follow. Although I will make jokes and employ the occasional euphemism, I will also use the word vagina because that’s what it’s called, dammit. Contrary to popular belief, vagina is not a dirty word although many other names for it are.

All that to say that I have been pondering the pelvis lately. I seem to be collecting a critical mass of experiences and stories, nearly all of them funny, that pertain directly to its health and maintenance. I think this is somewhat unavoidable as a woman in my twenties. Gone are the days when I could claim youth or chastity to avoid the "joys" associated with a pelvic exam. (PSA: Ladies, if you’re over 18 and/or sexually active go climb onto an exam table at your doc's office. It’s just good business.) I have also experienced the unique mix of vanity and masochism that leads women to allow a stranger to pour hot wax on their crotches in name of hairlessness.

While having my pinkest parts looked over and handled by a stranger isn’t exactly my idea of a good time, it’s a necessary piece of owning, caring for, and loving a vagina, at least as far as annual exams are concerned. With regard to waxing, "necessary" is in the eye of the beholder. Moreover, I find that trips to the gynecologist or forays into the world of waxing can also provide much needed opportunities for hilarity if you’re willing to laugh at yourself, which I think I've established I am.

This little note serves as fair warning to the squeamish or prudish that in the essays that follow I will discuss some of my more noteworthy adventures as the owner of a vagina, or Adventures in Vagina Land as I’ve started to call them. They include stories from living in Morocco and the US and range from medical to aesthetic, and they will be labeled accordingly for your reading pleasure. I will be as tactful as possible in the telling of these stories, walking the line between frankness—or what my dad has dubbed the “Jessie Cringe Factor”—and bad taste.

Then again I will be talking about vaginas, so if the mere mention of the V-word makes you go all cross-eyed and creeped out, we probably aren’t friends anyway.

Pedestrian Crossing

2010-06-08T03:51:00.000-04:00

I’ve been doing a lot of walking lately in an attempt to ward off the general malaise that I have come to believe results from driving everywhere. It’s also an excellent way to physically sort out all of the dizzying dynamics that accompany family togetherness (be warned, there is no such thing as “free” rent or food). So I’ve been doing a lot of walking. I spend time people-watching while I slurp caffeine in an attempt to coax prose from an unfocused brain and temperamental pen that I won’t throw away because it’s supposed to work, dammit.

The walking also facilitates the people-watching, which then helps with the writing. When I drive places the world goes by too quickly, with muted sounds and smells and consistent temperatures—in short, it’s nothing like actually being outside and smelling things, feeling things, seeing things. Thanks to my daily walks I have already seen things I would never have noticed in a car. The other day I found a half-decomposed cat or raccoon and each time I pass it on my way out of my neighborhood I overcome the creeps a little more and take a closer look. I have also discovered things that don’t involve my affinity for the macabre. I found a garden that I’d never noticed before, and I can’t wait until I can sit in it without my allergies turning me into an oozing snot monster with watering eyes. Also, I didn’t know that there was a cluster of Mexican and Asian markets down the street from my neighborhood, including a joyeria which, although I know they don’t technically sell joy I can’t help but giggle and feel happy when I see the sign.

The walking is also my attempt to maintain a degree of continuity between my American and Moroccan lives. In Morocco I really came to enjoy not having a car. Although I took taxis to and from work, walking always added a bright spot to my day. I got to see what was happening in the city and participate in the action unfolding in the street. I’ve heard that trying to keep some things consistent can help with culture shock, and I need all the help I can get. Some people find language buddies, listen to the same music, cook the same food, or nurture habits that they picked up when they were abroad. Because I can’t frequent clubs and embassy bars or smoke French cigarettes while living at home, I walk around the city listening to music and then sit in cafés with an arsenal of books, notebooks, and pens while pretending that I’m not a feckless drain on society. This is probably the healthier option, given the choices.

One thing that really struck me upon returning to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave was how dizzy I felt when I walked around various towns the first few times. I realized that part of this was due to the mild case of vertigo I had from seeing all the buildings and familiar landmarks from a different (pedestrian) perspective. I also couldn’t decide whether to look at my feet or up to the horizon when I was walking, so my eyes shifted between the two, leaving me a bit off-balance.

For me, walking in Morocco involved a strategic combination of staring straight ahead with an impassive expression on my face (often mistaken for smoldering ire, as I’ve noted elsewhere), or looking at the ground. I do this to varying degrees whenever I travel to new cities to avoid gawking at the unfamiliar sights and giving myself away as “not from around here.” In Fes I memorized several routes through the convoluted medina based on the ground.

For example: to get from my house in Bab Ziat to my friend’s house in Bab Rcif, I’d turn right out of my door, walk past the toothless mul hanout (shopkeeper) who always told me to punch my home-stay brother, bear right at a fork, continue down the hill a ways over several sets of ramped stairs (modified to get carts over the sharp edges), dodge the donkey and horse poop on these stairs (it was always there), turn left then right at the first manhole, duck under scaffolding (erected in some parts of the medina to keep its walls from collapsing), right at the next manhole, left at the third manhole, downhill past two hanouts, and the house is on the left. I can still see it vividly, and the memorized route almost never failed to get me there in one piece.

Almost.

When my parents came to visit during my first winter in Morocco I took them back to Fes. By then I’d been living in Rabat for a few months and I was already becoming a soft city girl, despite my friend Susannah’s protests that I was still Fessia f l qlb, or a Fessi girl at heart. I got a bit turned around in Rcif because my uphill route from the bab (door) in Rcif was, during my time in Fes, marked by some construction happening near a fruit market. Once the construction had been completed I’d lost my landmark and blew straight past the turn to her street because I’d never bothered to look up before.

A similar thing happened this spring when my brother and dad came to visit. Once again I got confused down in Rcif and ended up taking a pretty circuitous route. A teenaged boy who had offered to show us around earlier had followed us down the hill to Rcif from Ziat and the first time I took a wrong turn he became infuriatingly persistent, informing me that I was lost.

“I’m not lost!” I retorted, once again. “I used to live here.” He didn’t believe me. He alternated between hitting on me and trying to guide me, which is annoying but common. Because the Fes is crawling with tourists, residents can make a buck or two acting as faux guides (false guides) and taking clueless foreigners through the medina. It happens anywhere with a medina and a paragraph in a Lonely Planet guide. It became such a problem in Marrakesh (or “The Zoo” as I call it) that Moroccans can now be stopped and questioned and potentially arrested just for walking with foreigners. This once happened to an American friend and me when we were walking with a Moroccan friend in Marrakesh. My friend and I watched helplessly as the man was hauled off to jail on the back of the cop’s motorcycle despite our vehement protests, and so the drama unfolded.

That being said, I certainly hadn’t refused the boy in Fes out of fear for his safety, and to be fair he was pretty harmless. He did cross the line, however, when he started to touch me and tried to take my sunglasses off my face because he wanted to see my eyes. It is thanks to the street harassment and “faux guiding” that the vacant stare and downcast eyes came in handy in Morocco. The vacant stare kept me from looking like I was marveling at how “quaint” or “ancient” people’s homes were, and the foot-watching helped avoid accidental eye contact that could be mistaken for an invitation to follow me for several blocks.

Faux guides and raging levels of teenage hormones aside, I found myself suddenly unsure of my footing once back home in America. For one thing I’d grown accustomed to walking in the street and sharing the road with motorists, carts, bikes, and other pedestrians and now I feel strangely left out when I walk on the sidewalk. The other thing that I find deeply disconcerting is the whole yield-to-pedestrians thing that some states have going on. When I was in New Haven, CT with my mom I had been back in the US for just over a week, and it showed in the way I crossed the street. I used to relish timing my crossings so that oncoming traffic would just barely zoom past. I liked feeling like I could give the bumper a little love pat the way that athletes pat their teammates’ butts. But in New Haven you’d think that I was jumping in front of a moving train the way my mother cried out in panic (although jumping in front of moving trains in Morocco is a story all on its own).

“Jesus Mother!” I screamed from the middle of the street, “are you trying to get me killed? You scared me!” Ultimately we decided to settle the matter once we were both on the sidewalk.

In Boston, however, it was nearly impossible to cross the street without someone slamming on their breaks and yielding to me. At first I was so alarmed that I just froze, rooted to the spot. Eventually, though, I started yelling at drivers.

“What are you doing?” I yelled at one car, “You’re a car for chrissakes!”

Given my predilection for yelling at other drivers—whether or not I’m actually in a car of my own—it’s no wonder that Rachel and I coined the term “belligerent pedestrian” after many months of walking and yelling at cars together in Morocco. But if I was a belligerent pedestrian in Boston it was only because drivers insisted on aggressively yielding to me. I literally could not stand on the side of the road without a car stopping for me. A few times I crossed the street simply out of a sense of obligation after a few motorists practically locked their breaks on my behalf when they saw me looking at the road. All I wanted to do was look at the shops and cafés on the other side of the street!

Roz, who had also been a Fulbrighter and one of my closest friends in Morocco now lives in Boston for graduate school and corroborated my observations.

“No it totally freaks me out.” she said, “It’s really confusing when they stop like that! Half the time I’m still deciding if I even want to cross!”

Roz, like me, had definitely acclimated to the rules of the road in Morocco before she returned to America, particularly because she purchased and taught herself how to drive a motorbike during her time there. This harrowing feat aside, it was nice to know I wasn’t just making this stuff up. In fact, she informed me, it was a law in Massachusetts to yield to pedestrians, much like it is in California.

As I walked and drove around Boston I started to notice signs about “saving lives” as a result of this new law, but couldn’t help but wonder how many car accidents and multi-car pile-ups had resulted from people suddenly coming to a halt like that.

Aside from feeling like I’m trapped in the children’s story "Make Way for Ducklings," I’m doing my best to adapt to pedestrian culture in the US, or at least in the Bay Area. I almost forgot that the tight-lipped, quasi-grimace that people make when they pass strangers in the street is supposed to be a smile. Don’t smile at strangers in Boston, though, it only makes them angry. Never before have I felt like my happiness so deeply offended a complete stranger than when I smiled at a Bostonian who actually scowled and swore under his breath when he passed me. I thought he might actually yell at me.

On the other hand, I was walking down the street in the town where my parents live and a man riding a big hog of a motorcycle with a handle-bar mustache grinned at me and gave me the thumbs up when he passed me. This is why I am a Northern Californian at heart.

Although the walking isn’t for everyone. After the first time I walked from my parents house into downtown my mother asked me how it went.

“Did you feel safe?” she asked with maternal concern.
“Where?” I asked, flummoxed.
“Walking.” she clarified.
“Oh. Yeah.” I answered. “It was kind of boring, actually. No one tried to run me over and the only crazy dude I saw didn’t so much as say ‘boo!’ to me.”
“Oh…good.” she said, slightly confused, and the walked away.

Now that I am back in the Bay Area I’m learning to strike a balance between studying the pavement and grinning like an idiot at everyone who crosses my path. It’s still a work in progress, but I’m sure I’ll get a hang of it just in time to move across the country to a new town with new rules.

On Baggage

2010-05-20T15:00:00.000-04:00

My dad always says, “three moves are as good as a fire,” meaning that if you move enough times you’re liable to start chucking anything and everything in the interest of simplicity. Keepsakes that you thought you’d treasure forever become junk and the notes and ticket stubs and receipts seem to multiply and constitute mounting evidence that you could be clinically diagnosed as a hoarder.

I moved roughly once a year during undergrad and for two years running I moved twice a year between housing for Residence Life staff during the academic year and housing for summer staff and back again. Twice. Somewhere in there I experimented with living in an off-campus apartment but decided that paying rent just wasn’t for me, plus I kind of loved being a Resident Advisor—power outages, midnight fire alarms, and the (not so) occasional visit from the paramedics because a student was having a bad trip included. The “free” housing was fabulous but constantly packing and unpacking was not.

Growing up, my family played Musical Houses a bit on the military base where I was raised. My life “on base” was marked by transition. The base changed hands from the Air Force to the Coast Guard, then parts of the base turned into civilian housing, my dad got promotions and then retired, and each of these changes was accompanied by a move. In retrospect I suppose I found all of this instability really unsettling, because I used to have recurring nightmares about trying to go home but not knowing which house to go to. In the dream I’d take the wrong way home and end up where I thought my house was supposed to be but instead I’d find a huge gaping hole in the ground full of rubble. I’d try to find my house in the heaps of broken pavement and dirt, but inevitably I would fall into the hole, unable to get out. The weird thing is that in the dream I hadn’t really gone home at all, but to a street where a friend used to live before she moved away as so many military kids did.

I’ve been having a lot of nightmares recently, too, all about leaving Morocco. Even now that I’m back in the US (today marks two weeks in the States) I can’t stop dreaming about moving away from Morocco. In some dreams I end up on the ledge of a high-rise building looking out over city lights clutching a bulldog or a baby that has appeared in my apartment and wandered into harm’s way. In other dreams I have a terrible fight with Rachel and leave in the middle of the night only to get lost and unable to find the airport. I had a dream this week that I was waiting for a flight in Casablanca watching my plane come in for a landing when all of a sudden it fell out of the sky. I watched the grizzly plane accident, saw the wreckage up-close and walked through bits of burning cargo, saying that I couldn’t get on the plane. Everyone kept assuring me that I should just find a seat and get ready for my flight, regardless of my protests.

Clearly there is a disturbance in my psyche.

As a result of all of the moving when I was young my family and I refer to different streets where we have lived to mark the passage of time. Scott Circle refers to our first house in California where I was between the ages of four or six, maybe seven years old. My memories from this time are fragmented and more emotive than factual. I was sent to my room once and crept down the hallway to listen from the stairs to what was happening in the house. I started to play with a nightlight and electrocuted myself, which I remember being a bizarre sensation. I learned how to ride a bike on the steep hill at Scott Circle and I still remember the terrifying exhilaration of flying down the hill without training wheels and crashing into a tree at the bottom.

Westover Circle refers most of elementary school. In this house I ate a whole packet of silica gel accidentally-on-purpose and lay on the couch while my mom called poison control. I mourned when They cut down my favorite eucalyptus tree next to the house, believing whole heartedly the message in Fern Gully that trees could feel pain. I had a tree house that someone who lived in that house previously had built, and one day I fell out of it and lay on my back with the wind knocked out of me, staring up at the light filtering through a thick canopy of leaves. I tore off a piece of the tree’s bark in retaliation and was quickly consumed with remorse.

Las Lomas Drive marks the end of elementary school and my last years on base before my dad retired and we moved to Sonoma County. I had a room with three windows framed by trees at the end of a long hallway that my family dubbed “the bowling alley.” There was a fire road behind the house where I used to walk and sing songs to myself. I found a skeleton of a small animal on the heavily wooded road and was so freaked out to see a jawbone and teeth lying there so matter-of-factly that I didn’t go out there for awhile. One day a very pregnant deer lay in the shade under my window panting in the summer heat.

Maybe it’s because I lived in government housing for all but four years of my life and then lived in campus-owned housing for my college years that I never feel like anywhere I live is really mine. And really none of these houses were. I couldn’t paint my room or put nails in the walls or otherwise leave proof that I had been there, that I had existed.

When I came back home from Morocco for the holidays I drove back to the base and passed by the houses of old friends long gone, eventually stopping in front of the Las Lomas house. A woman was taking the garbage bins in from the driveway where I had once hidden in the car pretending to have run away. Someone had built a large play structure between my house and the house next door where my first “boyfriend” had lived. I had my first kiss in that yard. They had also put up a chain link fence between the back of the house and the low stone wall where my brother and I had once exploded a six-pack of my dad’s special Guinness in an attempt to save him from what we believed to be an inevitable descent into alcoholism and madness. Having been raised by the children of alcoholics (weren’t closet drunks par for the course as far as the parents of Boomers were concerned?), my brother and I learned of the evils of alcohol and believed that it could turn people into abusive monsters. Imagine our horror when we found beer in the refrigerator! Would our loving, engaged father turn into a raging lunatic with just one sip? So we took the cans outside and threw them against the wall until they exploded.

It was, after all, for his own good.

In fairness my dad took it extremely well. Seeing the hypocrisy of my parents’ message, he explained to us that drinking alcohol did not necessarily an alcoholic make, and started modeling a more moderate approach to the hard stuff. Teachable moments are my dad’s strong suit. Through all of these memories, though, my relationship to time is inextricably linked to space.

In Morocco it was had to re-program my attitude towards my living situation. I had originally only intended to stay for the nine month grant period, and after spending two months in Fes I was reluctant to put down roots in Rabat. I spent the better part of two or three months living out of a suitcase rather than properly furnishing my room. When I finally did decide to stick around I always had it in my mind that I’d only be there for another few months so there was little point in redecorating or otherwise investing in my home. It was all fleeting.

In the end I stayed put for almost two years, which feels very strange to actually say. I eventually did buy things like a desk and dresser, although recycled cardboard boxes played a key role in my storage solutions. Because the walls were made of concrete and cinder blocks, hammering things into the wall was out of the question and it took me until two months before my final departure to finally harass my friends with a power drill into coming over to put holes in the walls. Otherwise I fixed everything with duct tape and sheer ingenuity. No-frills functionality was the name of the game, and I saw no reason to buy curtain rods when Guerilla Tape and staples would achieve the same goal. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I think it’s one of my more endearing and underrated qualities. It’s also evidently hereditary. I hear that my Granddad had a penchant for quick fixes and used to fix things while saying it was only “Pro Tempore,” or “Pro Tem” which became code in my dad’s family for “deal with it or do it your-damned-self.”

In any case I was completely astonished when in the week leading up to my departure I found myself sitting in the living room surrounded by the evidence of a real life. New airline restrictions on checked baggage added a dash of hysteria to my already high-flying emotions. How in the hell was I supposed to fit everything into one bag of 23 kilos or less? It couldn’t be done by a mere mortal.

In the end I shed many other forms of baggage in the process of preparing to leave Morocco. I got rid of almost everything that couldn’t be replaced in the US, trying to unlearn the just-in-case mindset I’d developed during the last two years. You never know when you’ll need that twist-tie, Ziploc bag, or safety pin. But as I prepared to leave shoes with holes in the soles, pants with holes in the crotch, ripped shirts (why, for heaven’s sake, did all of my clothes look like they had lost a fight with a lawn mower??), half-empty bottles of face wash and shampoo—all were disposable and thus discarded.

I cut up photographs and jettisoned items with overly totemic value that I’d been saving for a ceremonial burning and exorcism. Little was spared. I even cut off all of my hair in a long-awaited act of metaphysical closure and dissociation from all that had come before. It was time to move on.

It didn’t stop there. Despite my best efforts I still ended up paying for overweight baggage (Three kilos over the limit! So close and yet so far.) and I still had a wild hair up my nose when I got home to California. Not only did I completely rearrange the furniture in my bedroom but I also ripped posters and collages from the walls, collected three bags of clothes to donate, and dusted, all during my first 24 hours on the continent. In this case it seemed that one move was a as good as three fires.

I also made a trip to Home Depot which almost sent me into shock. After soliciting my dad’s help in moving some furniture, we determined that I needed some kind of shelf or headboard and that we would build it ourselves. After my dad cut and sanded the wood to fit the desired specifications we set about drilling real holes in the walls. We had installed shelves in this room before, but something about the decisive efficiency of the project dazzled me after the Pro Tem way of life.

As my dad drilled I started putting things away in the dresser that I had used throughout my childhood and then abandoned for an Ikea dresser in college. I had just rescued it from the garage and now it stood shoulder to shoulder with its Ikea rival. I looked at the stained and scratched surface of the painted wood and decided that it was in desperate need of stripping and refinishing. As I made a mental note to start the project soon I noticed something. There in the corner were my initials carved deep into the wood. I had done it in a moment of defiance when I was in middle school, then got cold feet and tried to paint over it with silver nail polish which just made the initials stand out even more. I had also carved my middle name into the dresser during a phase when I insisted on being called Marie in fifth grade while attending a hippie charter school where we sat in teepees and learned about Krishna.

My dad finished drilling and I couldn’t help but smile, realizing that there it was: proof that I had existed all along—fires and discarded baggage notwithstanding.

More Shock, Less Culture.

2010-05-16T16:12:00.000-04:00

I am amazed sometimes by what we can live without. Or more to the point, I am amazed by how we can convince ourselves that certain things are necessary for leading a happy and balanced life. In this case comfort breeds entitlement breeds scores of people glued to flat-screen TVs, typing on obscenely powerful laptops (guilty), driving in cars that could house a small family over distances that we could easily walk, talking to ourselves on Bluetooth headsets.

Sometimes I feel like Berenger in Ionesco’s absurdist play Rhinocéros watching while everyone around me turns into idiotic rhinos. No one says anything because everyone is a rhino. It’s been making me cranky.

And lest I wax superior let me add that I am now the proud (and a bit bewildered) owner of a Blackberry phone that, as I understand it, could probably remotely launch a rocket or simulate detailed war games. When back in the US I have to struggle against the alluring ease and convenience of a car and actually use my legs to walk places. I get a little thrill every time I order an iced coffee to go, something I haven’t been able to do for nearly two years.

In her fantastically well-written memoir Scribbling the Cat, Alexandra Fuller beautifully and astutely describes the bewilderment that she experiences when returning from Zambia where her parents now live (having moved from Zimbabwe) to her own home in America, observing:

“instead of feeling glad to be back, I was dislocated and depressed. It should not be physically possible to get from the banks of the Pepani River to Wyoming in less than two days, because mentally and emotionally it’s impossible. The shock is too much, the contrast too raw. We should sail or swim or walk from Africa, letting bits of her drop out of us, and gradually, in this way, assimilate the excesses and liberties of the States in tiny, incremental sips, maybe touring up through South America and Mexico before trying to stomach the land of the Free and the Brave” (43).

I first read this passage while sitting at a café in the Frenchy neighborhood of Agdal in Rabat, and even as I sat in the midst of the socio-economic elite I felt a sense of trepidation. I had taken myself out for lunch as a treat, but something told me that my idea of luxury had changed a bit during my time in Morocco. When I come home after having been away it’s tempting to fall back into the soft life of luxury I so thoroughly took for granted before I decided to get the hell out of dodge and decide what it was that I really wanted, what I actually needed. And really most of it is luxury, pure and simple. We need precious little to actually live, and I think it takes even less to be content. Contentment, after all, is a mindset and not a material state, right?

Whining about being a "poor" student at any of the world-class universities in one of the wealthiest countries in the world starts to sound awfully ungrateful if you listen long enough. I once had a conversation with a young Moroccan man who couldn’t understand why I had left America to live and study in Morocco. He just kept saying that if he were me, he’d have stayed put. Was he right? Was I complicit in the creation of poverty tourism or Orientalist notions of “quaint” and “simple” living in the developing world? Was my presence as confusing and borderline insulting as he made it sound? For me, those are seriously disquieting questions and my answers change with my mood. On my “black dog days” it all seems grotesquely futile, and I wonder if I am doing more harm than good. I've been thinking a lot lately about Napoleon’s army of scientists and academics showing up in Egypt to produce and disseminate knowledge, imagining themselves to be the bearers of some divine light.

Then again, if it weren’t for those imperialist white men, I might not have read about Orientalism. If I hadn't stumbled upon an amazing Women's Studies program at UC Irvine I might not have started to peel back the layers of the ideas I’ve received throughout my life; might not have stoked the fire of my own brain and puzzled over the contradictions and inconsistencies that excite me. I may never have learned to probe deeper and look for more. And so it goes, round and round in my mental labyrinth until I get worn out. On my tomb stone it should say, “yes, but…”

Of course entitlement isn’t uniquely American. And what does it mean to be “American” anyway? There are so many identities, so many experiences, so many truths that would conflict with my own very privileged experience. A homogeneous “Americanness” just doesn’t exist, the same way that a singular Moroccan identity is completely imaginary. I knew Moroccans who only deigned to go to the medina, and at that point they were driving there in their Mercedes. They told me I lived in the ghetto. I'm pretty much positive that they never once rode a bus and only rarely got into a taxi. I had a friend who benefited from his family’s affluence and could dabble in work and projects as they interested him, owned property in a beautiful resort town, and spent most of his time smoking and sleeping. That reality seems at the outset like it has nothing to do with the life of the albino twins in the Rabat medina who beg change from tourists. And yet both are true.

This is why I get irritated when people want to know about the "authentic" or "real" Morocco. Maybe I feel like I should have figured it out, or be able to give these people what they want. Even worse are the “oh how exotic” sighs that rush forth after people find out I’ve been living in Morocco. I'll just go ahead and say it: I never rode a camel because I didn’t want to get fleas and they stink. The only monkeys I’ve ever seen are on leashes and in diapers, usually in the Jamâa al Fna but once I saw one in the entrance to a nightclub. I was so surprised to see it coming out of the shadows that I screamed. Typical. Foreigner freaking out over a monkey. Say what you will, many of those suckers are downright mean, leash or not.

While I was home for the holidays someone asked me, “what is the single greatest thing you have learned about Morocco?” I decided I didn’t want to touch the seriously questionable premise of that question with a ten-foot pole (What do you mean by "greatest?" Greatest to whom? Does that mean good or bad?...), so I just shrugged my shoulders and said, “they eat a lot of bread.” The woman was really disappointed by my unhelpful answer, probably hoping that I’d tell her that everyone really did walk around in those god-awful “harem pants” (seriously, who’s idea was it to name them that?) that dread-locked, European hippies wear when they come to stay in expensive riads in Fes while refusing to shower because it’s not “natural.”

But I really did eat a lot of khobz in Morocco, and I relished getting the loaves when they were fresh out of the oven, still warm and slightly crispy on the outside and soft and steamy on the inside. Khobz constitutes the universal utensil, and I really enjoyed using the bread to mop up sauce in tagines or to rip apart pieces of chicken. It seemed to me that “they eat a lot of bread” was just as true as anything else I could say and significantly less tricky to convey in a sound bite without over-simplifying a frequently complicated and contradictory experience. Fortunately I had failed the exciting world traveler test and the woman turned away to talk to someone else and I was left in relative peace.

It’s not as simple as a tidy black or white comparison—this or that, America or Africa, East/West/North/South, rich or poor, educated or illiterate—although many people will try to make it seem that way. One of my friends and I contemplated starting a drinking game that involved taking a shot whenever someone described Morocco as a “crossroads between North and South, East and West” during our Fulbright orientation. In any case bouncing from L’Océan, Rabat to Finsbury Park, London to San Francisco, California to New Haven, Connecticut in less than two weeks has given me a wicked case of vertigo (taking the New England lexique for a spin there).

As I write this from a café next to the Hall of Graduate Studies at Yale during my own little fact-finding mission in New Haven I find myself looking at a blonde undergrad in spotless Dockers, a polo shirt and Topsiders while a heavily tattooed man with half of his head shaved orders soy lattes for himself and his equally inked girlfriend. A homeless man has come to the other side of the window next to me and is waving his hands wildly in my direction, yelling about something before he gets distracted and wanders away.

Generalizations be damned!

I have been back in America for less than two weeks and in many ways I feel like I know less than I did when I left. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe I’m the one with the head of a rhino. Maybe that’s not actually a bad thing. So I sit and munch on a hummus wrap that cost almost half of my daily budget in Morocco, sip iced coffee from a 100% compostable cup and straw that are made entirely from corn and decide that it’s time to sort myself out. And until such a time as I have it all figured out I'll do my best to keep laughing at all the absurd rhinos, myself included.

Laundry List

2010-04-13T08:06:00.000-04:00

I have noticed a series of non-sequiturs that I’ve been turning over in my mind. Many of these revolve around clothes, particularly underwear. Here follow two tales in which I explore the deeper truths of existence as they relate to stain removal.

Part One: Panty Raid

The first story that comes to mind involves bureaucracy, the postal service, and my birthday. Oh, yes: I almost forgot about my white lacy panties! This was not the first time I have received underwear in the mail. Adolescent Victoria’s Secret purchases aside, I had in fact asked my father to send me underwear in the mail. When I originally packed for Morocco I brought sensible underwear. I thought that if I were going to be chaste then I needed to dress accordingly. This thought grew out of a naïve assumption that celibacy equates asexuality, which of course it doesn't. At the time I thought it would help me "keep it in my pants" if my underpants were less exciting (false).

Nevertheless, the time came when I decided that I needed something less sensible. When I thought it might be a situational exigency, I asked my dear old dad to send me a special package. The situation came and went without my new knickers, but I was soon back at square one: celibacy—indefinitely. Back to chastity panties it was. But then the package arrived and I had to do the walk of shame to Poste Maroc. This is also the first time that a government employee would touch my underwear. Alas, it was not to be the last.

All of my packages come from the US so they have to go through customs in Rabat. It is very rare for packages to arrive at my house. This means that when a package arrives I have to go to Centre Ville to claim my packages at Douanes in the post office. There are some things that will hold you up. Electronics, for example, will be heavily taxed—but more on that later. My old panties should not, in any case, be subject to search or seizure, correct?

Incorrect.

Apparently picking up my package at the post office also includes an all expense-paid trip Shame Town (Hshouma Ville as I dubbed it on the day in question) when some older man rummages through my pro-biotic supplements and toothpaste. And panties. It would have been a saddening experience to open that package of hopeful panties in the privacy of my own anguish—without an audience. But the Poste is a busy place and is usually moderately crowded. So the man looked through my underpants in front of a room full of people and then sent me on my way of burning humiliation. But maybe after the fact I’m just projecting the trauma of another incident involving lingerie and international mail.

This other event happened on my birthday. I had asked my parents for a new camera for my birthday because the one I’d bought for Morocco and been destroyed by the sand on a trip to the Sahara. A pretty compelling case, I thought. They agreed. They sent me a special package armed with the knowledge that I might be taxed for my birthday package if it seemed like the camera was a brand new. Taxes on my birthday? That’s like getting birthday cake on your new dress!

As I went to pick up my package I had a momentary crisis of faith. What if they had forgotten to take the camera out of the package? The thought stopped me in my tracks. As a show of faith in the universe I had neglected to bring the small fortune that I might have paid to liberate my camera. But I should have had faith in Paul Newman. Surely as direct descendant of his genius I must have a respect for the madness (or the method therein)—a madness to which I am rightful heir. Obviously.

We were just getting to the part where everyone ogles my package (sorry) when I stepped back from the theoretical abyss and regained my confidence. Surely Paul Newman had thought of something. And boy, had he ever. Because he knew the location of my underwear in my storage unit back home, he had improvised a new packing method.

When the older man decisively cut through the bottom of the package I felt the familiar burning sensation of having my dirty laundry aired in public. If only I’d known how literally that emotion would manifest! Behold: the rest of my underwear stash that I’d left in America for a rainy day…in July. Upon seeing the piles of underpants the man behind the counter stepped back and almost imperceptibly an expression of recognition bloomed on his face.

“You!” his eyes seemed to say as they met mine. I shrugged and smiled nervously. I hadn’t been expecting panties.

He began to thumb gingerly though my underthings when he determined that they warranted a second opinion. He called his colleague “Simo” and Simo made himself available. So Mustachio (as he shall be known henceforth) and Simo scrutinized my lacy things. Mustachio picked up a pair of box cutters and began to flick my underwear to and fro. I became concerned that they couldn’t hold up to such brutality. Just as I was about to protest, it happened.

Airborne.

I watched in horror as they took flight with a flick of the wrist and seemed to hover in the air like a cloud borne on the breeze. Then they began to flutter down to the cold marble counter in their lacy white glory.

There are preferable ways for underwear to land in public: face down or face up. My cruel cloud chose the latter and exposed its dirty underbelly to a room full of people.

The woman next to me gave a little cough of a giggle as she eyed the underwear. There it was for everyone to see: a stubborn stain that hadn’t come out despite multiple washings and spot treatments (spotting being the operative word). That is why I had left them in the US even though I had only worn them that one fateful time when I thought I was clear of menstrual threats to my brand new white panties. But now there they were and I thought it couldn’t get any worse.

Wrong again.

Mustachio gestured to them with the box cutters and asked gruffly, “old, right?”
“Old.” I said, feeling as though a huge chasm might open up beneath my feet and swallow me whole. “But clean!” I added hastily, “Old and clean.” The man eyed the stain with skepticism. Simo snickered.
“Shame,” I thought to myself futilely.

As it turned out the lacy whites had been wrapped around the new camera in a modest leather case. Mustachio picked it up and I snatched up my panties and waved them towards the camera.

“That too. That’s old too.” I tried to waft the menstrual pantie stain shame onto the camera. It must have worked, because Mustachio returned the camera to the box, which he presented to me. I took it, winking at the giggling woman. I walked outside and smiled to myself under a healthy blush and the summer sun.

Part Two: Hang ‘Em High or Not at All.

One might deduce from the previous parable that underthings are to be snickered at. Or that at least some modest giggling is in order. But this fails to take into account the shops in the Old Medina boasting a clamor of bras and panties on display to be perused and haggled over. No giggling. Underwear is of course not inherently shameful any more than a t-shirt is shameful. Nor are menstrual stains. I wish that I had had the fortitude to explain this to the giggling onlookers in the post office, but alas, I am still learning and growing.

Then there’s the inevitable laundry situation.

My laundry man has seen it all and lifted many a stain. He’s folded thongs and granny panties alike and greets everyone with an open hand and a broad grin. I never feel self-conscious exposing my secrets to him via the laundry. I mean honestly, the man’s wife brought soup to my house during Ramadan and his naughty little son and his gaggle of friends come begging for candy and attention at our apartment. He’s a safe zone. Laundry Guy: safe.

Then there’s my self-appointed big sister. She also brought me soup once when my brother and dad were visiting. She’s always offering to bring me things and fix my problems. She doesn’t like to see me alone in the apartment and was relieved to see me in the company of family. Big sis: safe zone?

This fabulous woman also insists on taking my laundry whenever she sees it. The only problem is that she uses the tried and true yet salt-prone method of drying the clothes on a line. Fancy that, a real clothes line! Our neighborhood stumbles into the Atlantic in mild confusion, and so the ocean breeze plays a key role in line drying. This means crunchy clothes. Atlantic: crunchy. But she insists. So I once gave her something that needed special Big Sis love.

Rachel had lent me a blouse to wear out one night because I found myself without club-ready digs. (Notice the repetition: when I went back to the US for the holidays I returned my sexy underwear back to their stateside storage in anticipation of my celibate future. Having a long distance relationship does that to me. In any case I took all of my "sexy clothes" back to the US as well, which is why I needed to borrow something to wear for night on the town.) Of course, because I was borrowing the shirt I promptly spilled wine all down the front of it. Twice. Then a friend who was trying to be helpful poured salt on me, insisting that it would absorb the red wine. The mixture congealed and became very suspicious looking. I didn’t dare touch it after that. I handed it over to Big Sis and she frowned at it. She held it up to her nose and sniffed it. Then—to my abject horror—she licked it! She squinted at the blouse and delivered her diagnosis.

“Wine.” She said.
“Yes.”
“And something else.”
“Salt.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”

Big Sis: not-so-safe zone.

When she brought me soup during my family’s visit she busied herself in the kitchen looking for somewhere to stash some treats she brought me. She opened the freezer and saw a big bottle of gin that my dad and I had bought at the sham teleboutique-cum-speakeasy in my neighborhood. She paused, regarding it.

“It’s my dad’s,” said Judas.
She shrugged. “I like to drink too, wine and beer mostly.”
“Me too,” I agreed.

Big Sis: Switzerland.

In any case she has the endearing habit of wrapping my dirty underwear with care when she takes my laundry. I might add that she does this to hide it from public scrutiny with the full knowledge that she will later hang them up and they will flap in the breeze the next day.

And that’s when I realized that there is no such thing as “our little secret,” and even the most embarrassing stains somehow make their way to the light of day and the counters of post offices. We just have to grin and bear it. After all, everyone’s got dirty laundry.

Finishing School

2010-03-27T08:05:00.000-04:00

I really have got to work on my posture. Chalk it up to the relaxing social norms or the virtual disappearance of standard etiquette from modern life, but something has gone wrong. I mean, honestly, who reads Emily Post anymore—modern debutantes and pageant queens of any kind excepted?

Maybe it’s a problem with fashion these days. I can’t help but ogle women from years gone by and their fictional (and seriously revamped) counterparts on the show Mad Men. These women in their high-waisted skirts and blouses carry themselves so uprightly, even if only in posture. They move with poise—and a healthy dose of repression in the face of staggering chauvinism and misogyny—around the office.

source

With today’s popular pubis-grazing, low-slung pants maybe slouching is a necessary evil to keep our pants up. It’s arguably difficult to slouch if wearing a fitted belt at the natural waist. In this case it might not be an inherent reverence for posture that leads us to strike such dignified poses when properly belted. Frankly, I find it difficult to slouch in such a belt because of the ever-present belly vs. constriction battle waged whenever I wear a belt that actually does its job. In this case, it’s more of a girdle effect than anything else.

But it works for some people, like the lovely Joan.

source

My bad posture is undeniably born of a deeper, discordant psycho-somatic relationship. Perhaps it’s not my posture but rather my perception of my stature in the grander world scheme that leads me to conduct myself with painful self-effacement at times. It’s a learned behavior cultivated during periods of chronic over-responsiveness. I’d spring to adapt myself to the situational exigencies and in some cases—in some relationships—that meant making myself much smaller for significant epochs of my life.

Ok, maybe I haven’t been around long enough to have already experienced “significant epochs” in my life, but sometimes it’s about the view from the ground, you know?

Regardless, I have recently become aware of a dangerous tendency towards self-deprecation in myself and some members of my urban tribe—that is, my adoptive family of other women and friends. I see brilliant women wracked with confusion and guilt, spending time making excuses for their brilliance, for their success, for their passion. I have been one of them. I have spent years of my life apologizing for my success, apologizing for my goals and my refusal to settle. Ironically, I have been settling all along. I have been accepting less than my due because I didn’t know how to believe in myself enough to accept the fruits of my labor.

source

Receiving a compliment was a most excruciating experience because I had no idea how to react. To say thank you seemed to indicate my agreement, and how egotistical could a person be to believe that they are worthy of praise? So instead I engaged in the uphill battle of simultaneously trying to improve myself and achieve while never stopping to ask what I was trying to achieve. Even to this day I look at my résumé and wonder if I really did all of those things. I wonder if admissions boards and employers will see through the ink and paper and judge me according to my own impossible standards.

The issue of my poor posture is also inextricably linked to my efforts to take up less physical space in this world. If I couldn’t explain away my achievements then at least I could do my best to make myself less physically dominant. I, like many of my peers and childhood playmates, shrank and starved my body in an effort to make it more acceptable to some elusive panel of faceless judges. I worried about fitting in, about being pretty enough, about being worthy of praise.

source

The other day I got into a cab and the driver extolled my physical beauty, telling me that the first thing he thought when he was me was, “Praise God, look at that beautiful girl. God bless her. She needs a handsome man because she is so pretty.” When I got out of the cab I felt bathed in a familiar feelings of conflict. On one hand the man had been trying to pay me a compliment, but on the other hand my worthiness had been determined before we even spoke. He had deemed me worthy of blessings and marriage based solely on my appearance that morning on the corner as I hailed a cab. This praise was not only inseparable from my physical appearance but also my femininity, sexuality, and attractiveness to a male. The very words intended to praise me also robbed me of my subjectivity.

It’s not praise worth having.

In any case, it’s time to forge some new paths, to learn some new behaviors. This is particularly pertinent as I prepare to make the transition to graduate school. If I am going to come across as a believable PhD candidate I am going to have to start acting like a big girl. I am going to have to start asking myself questions. Some of these aren’t life’s more pressing questions and fall into the category of quotidian considerations. Questions like:

“Is it really easier to throw your clothes on the floor than it is to hang them in the closet?”
or
“Are you only going to eat leftovers because you don’t want to put on real pants to go outside?”

But some of them start to become statements and questions that get at the heart of deeper issues, like:
“Maybe you don’t have to care so much about what anyone else thinks.”
or
“In whose shadow are you living?”
or
“It’s good enough.”
and most revolutionary of all:
“You are good enough.”

source

I believe it’s important to start somewhere. Baby steps. And these baby steps become leaps and bounds and soon we’re thinking critically and questioning things. If we can stop carrying ourselves like dejected and insecure teenagers then maybe we will learn to stand up and demand to be treated like women with dignity and subjectivity who are worthy of respect.

And maybe I will be a hot mess in graduate school at Yale. My shirts will be rumpled from the floor-storage-routine, and my students and peers will think I am a caricature of myself. Maybe I am sometimes. But I’ve seen cartoons of myself and I think they’re pretty funny. The important thing, the bottom line, is that I will start to move through this world with my head held high and a bemused smile on my face because I know I am worthy, that I belong, and I fit in this world that I want to change. No girdle required.

Required Reading for other Wanderers

2010-03-26T07:00:00.000-04:00

I have been really inspired by Eve Ensler's talks about her new book, I Am An Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls. And a big thank you to my wonderfully feminist father for sending me the videos. The apple doesn't fall from far from the tree.

Enjoy, inspire, share!

A little preface and background info at 92nd St Y:

Eve Ensler's inspiration TED talk and monologue.

-j-

"Bring More Cars!" or, a Good-Natured Rant.

2010-03-15T07:22:00.000-04:00

Commuting, for many people, is part of daily life. We plan out routes based on construction, traffic flow, nearby coffee options, or public transit schedules. I have had limited exposure to the commute universe. I spent summers and holidays commuting to temp jobs in Cubicle Land, and a summer commuting to classes, but other than that is hasn’t really been a major part of my existence. Driving into San Francisco is predictably stagnant at certain times of the day, while Los Angeles sends the unseasoned driver into a kind of panic in the face of perma-rush hour until we eventually resign ourselves to spending an indeterminate amount of time stuck in four lanes of gridlock. Put on a good playlist, adjust the AC, and relax.

This photo of my personal hell found here.

However, in recent months, commuting has become more of a staple in my life. Over the summer I commuted to an internship, and now I commute to an editing job with the same company, but at an office farther away from my home. The time that it takes me to get to and from work has doubled as a result of this new office location which is, evidently, is impossible to reach unless you take the most roundabout route ever.

My office is on the complete opposite side of town, southeast of my neighborhood. Thanks to the extensive tramway construction across the city, all direct paths have become convoluted messes. Last week I sat in gridlock for 15 minutes waiting for a turn to get through a single intersection. It cycled through the green/red lights six times before we moved even an anxious inch.

My extreme irritation might have been assuaged if it hadn’t been for the fact that I woke up at 6:45, left the house at 7:45 and absolutely needed to get to work by 8:30 to complete a time-sensitive project. I also might not have gotten so upset if we had been heading South towards my office instead of North towards Centre Ville. Most cab drivers take me North through Centre Ville before heading East, past the palace and then out of the fortified walls that surround much of downtown. Then we head South along the perimeter of the city before making our way to my office. Essentially I get to make a big rectangle around the city.

I also might not have been so put out if the cab driver had hastened to take me to my destination rather than stopping to get gas—much to my disbelief—and left my meter running while assuring me through my protests that it would only take une minute.

While my rectangular route is a bit circuitous, it’s not terribly time consuming if attempted during off-peak hours. So, of course, I have to take this route past all of the ministries and embassies and the palace right when all of the diplomats and the rest of the cadres are trying to get to their offices. Over by the palace and an exit from the walled-in part of the city, traffic funnels into two lanes in order to exit single-file through two doors in the wall. This is a reduction from the loosely interpreted 3-4 lanes that take up the road before it narrows. Not only does traffic grind to a stop as a result of this ill-conceived maneuvering, but it also joins up with a major street for inter-city commute.

This is where it gets interesting.

First, 1-2 buses pull out into the intersection leading up to the bab (door), and block traffic for 3-4 light cycles. Last week, for example, I stared at the side of a bus stuck in the intersection for 11 minutes while another bus pulled out and helped stop traffic in all directions. At this point pedestrians and motorcyclists without helmets get thrown into the mix as they try to weave their way through the impacted intersection. Horns honk. People gesticulate. Sometimes people get out of their cars to fight with other drivers who have in some way affronted them.

Commute traffic in Rabat, picture from this local paper.

The other day my cab driver was put out by a driver of a grand taxi who refused to pull forward at a light to allow us to turn right behind him. My cabbie honked. The other car inched forward. He honked again. He hung out of his window, waved his arms, and shouted, “move it, buddy!” Finally he yanked on the emergency brake, got out of the car, and yelled at the other driver right when the light turned green. Because he was already out of the car he had to follow through with his mission, and so stood in the intersection and berated the driver while other cars honked at him because now it was his fault that traffic was held up. My cab driver had left me sitting in the back seat. I hate when this happens because I am never sure what to do with myself. Do people hold me mutually responsible for the backup because I’m sitting in the offending car with a bemused smile on my face?

But on this day that I sat staring at the side of the bus, I soon realized what the problem was. The traffic drama was caused by a cop who did not understand some basic tenets of directing traffic. Although the traffic lights in Rabat are all automatic, they can be over-ridden and turned into manual lights. Here was a police officer standing with the electrical box open, operating the lights by hand. Now, I believe that there is a very good reason for automated lights. I also believe that there are times (special events and the like) when it is necessary to override these lights. I do not, however, think that the prime time to do this is in the middle of rush hour traffic at one of the busiest intersections in the city. I believe that, with a little planning and programming, it is possible for traffic lights to be very efficient ways to manage rush hour. However, when we replace all that with one poor guy standing there blowing his whistle, waving his arms, and managing the switch, I think we’ve defeated ourselves a bit.

This artistic rendering of just such a roundabout in Rabat found here.

My cab driver, clearly flustered by the confusion, lit up a cigarette and promptly started smoking it nervously, flooding the cab with thick, milky clouds. Good thing I hadn’t washed my hair.

It’s necessary to be a fairly understanding passenger in these situations. The driver-passenger relationship is a symbiotic one, and squabbling would only turn a frustrating situation into a nearly unbearable one. Today, another passenger in the cab demurred that our cab driver wanted to be the “mul triq” or the king of the road, and imitated his erratic driving and horn honking. Although she was right the cabbie didn’t find this amusing and turned all of his road rage onto her.

There is a certain method to the madness for most people who drive for a living, and this should only be questioned with tact and caution. Certain maneuvers become totally feasible in the face of blood-boiling gridlock. In my neighborhood there are a lot of one way streets that can turn a short errand into an exercise in circumnavigation unless one takes drastic measures.

I've also survived traffic exactly  like this in Egypt. 

Taxis  are  the black and white cars with metal bars in top. 

Picture from failblog 

There are some tricks that could easily be incorporated into what Jon calls the SOPMOD: Standard Operating Procedures for Moroccan Offensive Driving. A prime example includes throwing the car into reverse at any given moment. The other day I saw a car reversing up a one way street so that the car was facing the right direction but going against the flow of traffic—fast. Other cars simply veered out of his way.

Thanks to some of these more creative driving solutions the concept of motion sickness also becomes more flexible. Jolts and starts, abrupt braking, gear grinding, horn honking and—most embarrassingly—stalling all influence the way that the passenger’s stomach experiences the wild ride. Other environmental factors raise the stakes. The smell of diesel can make taking cleansing Yogic breaths a bit more difficult. When it rains cab drivers alternate between rolling the windows up and down to moderate the rain-in-the-car to foggy-windows ratio.

This is another thing. Few people seem to be as efficient in managing their defrosting needs as I’d like them to be. My dad maintains almost obsessive control over his AC/defrost functions when driving, and as a result steamy windows have been come of my major pet peeves as a passenger. Ineffective use of windshield wipers also makes me edgy, no matter where I am. So, when I find myself unable to see out of any windows in a cab and am unable to roll down any windows because the driver has removed the crank handles from all windows but his own (a common practice here), I sometimes struggle to remain calm.

If you’d let me roll down a window maybe you wouldn’t have to hunt for that scrap of newspaper to smear across the windshield so you can see that car reversing towards us!

I would consider alternative transportation methods but the bus system has gone all wonky with the tramway construction and a buyout by a French company that now manages the bus companies. Bus workers have been striking fairly regularly since last autumn, and now the buses run about a third as often and are twice as packed. It’s significantly cheaper than my cab ride to work, but I haven’t done the necessary leg work to figure out how to get to my office by bus (read: riding arbitrary buses to figure out where they go—there are no published bus schedules or routes).

At the end of the day, I wonder what the relative difference is between standing packed together inside of a bus that’s stuck in the middle of an intersection, staring down at a smoking cab driver and stressed white girl who’s late for work, and my current routine. Just a change of perspective, I guess. It’s all part of the SOPMOD, and is thus part of my daily life now. One of the benefits of my crazy commute is that when I arrive at work alive and with all my limbs I can’t help but feel fairly accomplished. It’s the little things that count.

Confessions of a Wino

2010-02-26T07:40:00.000-05:00

One night I sat on the floor of my salon and I drank red wine alone. I’ve heard that it’s bad form to drink alone, but I’ve also heard doctors say that red wine is good for you. Besides, that’s not the only thing I’ve been doing alone lately. And truly, once you go through all of the effort of tracking down the wine in Morocco you have a sense of entitlement to drink it that borders on urgency. Then again that might just be my case.

The two bottles that I’d bought the day earlier were not as hard won as others. I have spent mornings after having a meltdown on the previous night in search of reinforcements for the next evening only to confront shuttered windows and closed iron gates. Inclement weather and emotional exigencies give wine hunting an added layer of excitement.

Soon, however, you learn the benefits of planning for unseen emotional landmines and situational variables alike. For example, don’t bother trying to find alcohol on high holidays. The most notable example of such a holiday is Ramadan. On my first time around I thought it was just obscenely difficult to obtain alcohol in Fes. Now, however, I realize that I was living in the old medina during Ramadan, which of course meant that I was left high and dry (emphasis on dry). Having learned from my rookie mistake the year before, I was not planning on being caught off-guard the next time the Holy Month rolled around.

In July I coerced Jon into driving Rachel and me, armed with shoulder bags and backpacks, to the nearest Marjane which is basically the Moroccan equivalent of WalMart. It’s one of the few places that has a semi-reliable liquor store. Some other grocery stores like Label Vie tend to have something in the way of a petit cave but this is by no means a given. For example, the Label Vie in the northeastern neighborhood of Hassan in Rabat might have an excellent wine selection. Don’t be fooled! If you charge downstairs for the dirty-dealing basement operation in the southwestern (and distinctly less affluent) neighborhood of L’Océan you will be sorely disappointed! You will be accosted by a sparkly-eyed, mop carrying employee who will ask you why you are going down into the store room. He will then smile knowingly and ask, “did you think we had alcohol down there? Ehh?”

“Certainly not,” you will briskly reply.

My most recent trip to the petit cave was at the Label Vie next to my office in the southeastern neighborhood of Suissi. This new office location is a godsend. The last office was located right next to a salon that lured and tempted me into weekly mani-pedis and the most regular waxing schedule of my life. I knew that it was time to cut back when everyone—beauticians, manicurists, hairstylists and receptionists alike—knew my voice over the phone.

In any case, the new office appeals to my pragmatic side. The closest food options near my last office comprised of a small bar in the very upscale gym that could only offer water, bananas, and espresso by way of nourishment. The new office is next to a shopping center of sorts that expands on the back of the ever-faithful Label Vie grocery store. Here my lunch options are limitless. Do I want Moroccan TexMex? What about Moroccan sushi? Moroccan pizza? Or Moroccan fast-food Moroccan specialties?

The other day I had braved the 30DH cab ride to the office only to discover that the technician had reconfigured the wireless to be stubbornly incompatible with a Mac. Can’t we work this out? When multiple attempts at troubleshooting failed, the IT technician gave me a sheepish grin and a PC laptop.

“I don’t understand les Macintoshes.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I didn’t understand les PCs…nor les PCs avec les French keyboards. After several botched attempts and typing on the laptop I gave up. The PC didn’t even have any applications from Microsoft Office, and as I was translating a PowerPoint presentation there wasn’t much point in continuing with the laptop. My supervisor told me to go home and work from there.

I left, but before I got myself home I went grocery shopping. Grocery shopping can be a simultaneously comforting and disheartening experience. Some things are the same. Refrigerated goods, for example, can all be found in a cluster of meat and dairy. But sometimes the grocery store can be a bit challenging. Is cream cheese a cheese or a yogurt? Or a cream? Do they even have it? Rachel was out of town for a job so I was on my own for the foreseeable future. I decided to treat myself. Imitation cream cheese, little biscuits, and smoked salmon. It took me forever to find real saumon.

On my way to the checkout counter I spied a petit cave. Why was I even surprised? This area of town is crawling with foreigners like me buying real saumon fumé. I made my way past the 800DH Veuve Cliquot champagne and settled for some sensible 30DH and 70DH bottles of red. I should note that this day was part of my “budget experiment” in which I armed myself with the equivalent of $20 and dared myself not to need more. This experiment was borne out of necessity more than curiosity, because I still hadn't been paid by my job. So I bought my wine. But I hadn’t brought enough money. I was 95DH over. I started trying to figure out what to return, but the clerk had it handled. She confiscated my saumon fumé which brought me back under the limit. Unfortunately now I had all of the necessary salmon accessories without any of the salmon! I had been really excited for the salmon.

I left feeling a bit dejected, clutching my wine and faux cream cheese, and caught a cab. The cab driver took me over hill and vale, and unlike the cabbie I got in the morning he did not make me sing Arab love songs with him for my keep. Instead this cab driver picked up two women headed in the opposite direction and alerted them to my presence: “this is an American but she speaks darija so watch out!” he said by way of hello.

All in all I had a lovely time talking with the women in the cab while trying to keep my wine bottles from rolling around in the back seat. When we parted ways we exchanged kisses and promises of future engagements to their sons living in Lebanon. The cabbie continued on his winding way and in the time it took us to traverse another quarter of Rabat he had proselytized to me, asked me if I was married and—based on my reactions to the two previous topics—determined that I was not, in fact, Moroccan.

“No,” I smiled, “I’m American.”
“Too bad.”

So on this night I sat with a new record and a bottle of wine on the floor and felt tired. I thought about the seemingly interminable phase of my life in which I seem to be stuck, thought about all the waiting I’ve been doing; all of the anticipating. I felt spread thin over the globe, with pieces of my psyche scattered from Morocco to Afghanistan to California. I felt impatient and listless at once. So I drank wine.

I sat on the floor and contemplated the map of the world hanging on the wall opposite from me. I tried to think about Pangaea. I closed one eye, cocked my head to the side and squinted, imagining the whole world as one fused mass. I did away with state lines and international borders. I reduced oceans and seas to mere lakes and streams. I solved world hunger. I negotiated world peace.

I made it that simple.

Then I got up, lit a candle, and sighed.

Public Disturbance

2010-02-19T14:05:00.000-05:00

I have become accustomed to people staring at me in Morocco. When I walk down the street people turn to watch, particularly if Rachel and I are together. Restaurants become places where we are sometimes scrutinized more carefully than the menu. This, I fear, will have the effect of making me the most impossible narcissist. Here, chances are that people are staring at the foreign girl. But when I was back in the US I had the odd sensation of blending in, of appearing inconspicuous—and thus disappearing. It was simultaneously liberating and mildly disconcerting. I felt invisible.

On the other hand, the blatant staring may be contagious. Now I find myself gawking curiously at foreigners or other people of interest. Moreover, staring at public scenes is fair game. During public skirmishes I enjoy the sensation of watching; of knowing that for a few minutes someone else is attracting all the attention. I once huddled outside of a hookah bar with a crowd of other patrons after someone threw a rock and shattered the front window. We watched as a young man ran through the streets without his shirt on, clutching a handle of vodka and broke the windows of other store fronts with bricks and rocks that he picked up as he made his way through the neighborhood. I felt bad for being such an obvious spectator, but what else was I supposed to do? It seemed pretty noteworthy.

On this night a young man turned to Rachel and me and mused, “you like watching fights.”

It’s true, I have watched my fair share of fights and have come to the conclusion that if two men are going to fight they would have done it already without involving everyone in a three foot radius. I watch these altercations with interest but without much hope of follow-through. Some women, on the other hand, mean business. On a bus I saw a heavy set woman clad head to toe in miss-matched leopard print—from her hijab to her stiletto boots—attempt to vault over a row of seats in order to swing her leopard print purse at the head of the lady taking the tickets because she refused to make change for the Leopard Lady’s friend. As it happened I was on the side of the ticket taker because I too thought it was a little ridiculous to try to pay for a 4 dirham fare with a 200 dirham bill.

Last week, Rachel and I were walking through our neighborhood on a weekday afternoon after ordering takeout pizza from our favorite spot. We decided to have ourselves a stroll while it cooked and stumbled upon another opportunity to stop and gape at a public spectacle. As we came upon the main street in our neighborhood we saw a very skinny middle aged man walking with two much younger adolescent girls. The man was disheveled and very affectionate towards both of the younger girls, and so I started referring to this man as Creepy Uncle Sal in true, flippant Newman fashion. At the corner a much older man in a maroon velvet suit (it was true love) bumped into one of the girls. He was clearly distracted and might have been drunk. In any case he did not apologize to the girl.

Uncle Sal, naturally, decided that this was a slight against him. So he picked a fight with Grandpa. “Are you drunk or what?” demanded Uncle Sal.

Grandpa growled something lewd about having sex with Uncle Sal’s mother. At this point Rachel and I quickened our pace until we were a safe distance from the dispute, which had now moved to the middle of the busy street. Once we were about half a block away we looked back at the fighting men to see how they were faring.

And then it happened.

I gasped and my hands flew to my face. Rachel spluttered in disbelief. “Oh…my…god!”

Grandpa had hurled another insult at Uncle Sal, who was at that point on the other side of the street. Upon hearing the latest slander, Uncle Sal started to walk across the street and then broke into a run. As he neared his adversary he wound up and slapped Grandpa so hard that the velvet clad gentleman staggered back a few steps (insert 'crushed velvet' pun here). The sound of Uncle Sal’s palm hitting Grandpa’s face echoed down the street. As we stood, shocked and watching, Uncle Sal took a few more steps towards the old man and slapped him a second time, again so hard that we would hear the sound of colliding skin down the street. The young man strode back across the street, effectively ending the conversation.

Rachel and I stood in the street in disbelief for a minute or two before we resumed our walk. I couldn't decide whether I was more shocked to see two men actually exchange blows, or if it was the age of the men that took me aback. Maybe it was both.

After a few moments we exchanged a look.
“Do you think the pizza is done yet?”

Just a reminder...

2010-02-14T12:08:00.000-05:00

Don't forget to wander.

ffffound

Recalulating Route...

2010-02-09T10:17:00.000-05:00

I have just returned to Morocco, a place where Mapquest is basically useless. Even if I were to successfully find an organization’s website online, the chances are slim that I could find accurate directions to the address listed without the help of a kindly taxi driver. Usually the best bet is to stop and ask multiple people in the area for directions, bearing in mind that many people might just point into an arbitrary direction rather than appear rude by telling you that they don’t know where you are going. For this reason among others I thought that I had become a pretty good problem solver over the last year and a half. I also tend to take pride in my decent sense of direction.

All of this, however, fails to explain why I found myself behind the wheel of a car screaming at a GPS device while I was in America for the holidays.

I was visiting Jon in North Carolina and I wanted to go to JoAnn Fabrics or maybe The Hobby Lobby to find some crafts and projects to entertain me while I sat around watching redundant reality TV while he was at work. I had Googled nearby craft stores in Fayetteville and even written down their addresses in my notebook just in case Jon’s GPS couldn’t recognize the name of the stores that I entered. I had been so excited to have access to a car that even Jon’s roommate Mike had become emotionally invested in my newfound autonomy and started asking me about how I was going to spend my day, offering advice and coming up with agendas.

The GPS, however, had other plans. Did I want to go to a sports and hobby store? Did I want to go to Ann’s Alterations? Did I want to change the city? Did I want to go to a different street? What about a different address on that same street? What if we just start over and try this again, and you can select the city and state?

After twenty minutes of sitting in the car arguing with the stupid piece of technology, I thought about giving up. I thought about walking back inside and pretending that I had already been out on the town. But the car that I was borrowing had a lot of what I call “character,” which included the habit of emitting a high-pitched screech after turning the key in the ignition, a hellcat’s shriek that alerts everyone in a two mile radius of the Camry’s awesome might. It also stalls. So as I sat outside of the apartment the car alternated between stalling and screeching until Mike finally came to the kitchen window and peered through the blinds at me. The jig was up. He knew I had been sitting in the driveway. Later he would tell me that he had thought about coming to help me but didn’t want to make things worse. It’s true that when he peeked through the window he had gotten an eyeful—I was in the middle of a caustic diatribe complete with handgestures directed at no one in particular.

Eventually by a combination of subborn will and dumb luck I found the store I was looking for, but my relationship with the GPS never quite recovered. Later that week I drove to Chapel Hill—the long way. The GPS took me through small towns and one lane country roads as though testing my threshold for tedium and McCain bumper stickers. All told, the drive to Chapel Hill took twice as long as my return. On the way home I followed the directions that I had written in my notebook in advance, having learned from my disasterous attempt to find the Hobby Lobby.

Thus, I was able to blame any navigation issues on the unreliable GPS rather than admit any fault of my own. I could chalk up any and all wrong turns to technology and leave it at that. Now that I am back in Morocco, however, this isn’t really an option. On the night that I arrived in Casablanca two of my friends, Chris and Mike, came to pick me up. I stood on the curb in the warm, wet air hoping to spot them before it started raining again.

“What are you doing, standing there looking lost?” asked Mike.
“I’m not lost.” I smiled.

I didn’t realize that I’d have to say this several times on the way home. I have made it my personal goal to help my American friends equipped with vehicles to find different routes within Rabat, particularly to and from my apartment. While Jon was in Rabat I taught him several ways around the city so that he could make educated decisions about his route based on traffic and construction. Some people, however, are more open to this kind of instruction than others. Mike, for instance, uses the same route to get everywhere, period. On the way back from Casablanca that night, however, he allowed himself to be swayed by Chris and my pleas that we could get across town in half the time if he just let me tell him where to go.

One thing that I love about Morocco is that it keeps my on my toes. I wasn’t expecting any variables on the drive home, which was really only tempting fate. So when we came to the first street that dead ended into a construction site for a new building I was confused and a little bit irritated.

“When did they put that there?” I demanded. Mike just sighed in deep irritation.

The rest of the drive home was full of other wrong turns and dead ends, because construction on the much anticipated intracity tramway has resulted in massive disruption of traffic. Luckily it was nearly midnight so there wasn’t any traffic and we were allowed to drive “creatively” to get where we were going. Chris turned around multiple times to check that I did, in fact, know where I was going.

“I’m not lost!” I wailed. “They went and changed everything while I was gone! It’s not my fault.” This was mostly true. I did know generally where I was, and I hadn’t anticpated all of the construction that upset my route.

After a little while Chris turned to Mike and asked, “Hey don’t you have a GPS in this car?”
I rolled my eyes in the back seat.
“Yeah, but I don’t know how to use it.”

Promise of Things to Come

2010-01-26T16:15:00.000-05:00

Flexibility is the name of the game. It's been a month of adjustments and readjustments. Adjusting my expectations for the future, adjusting to the idea of going back to Morocco, and readjusting to long distance relationships, accounting for time zones, and constant cell phone vigilance.

That being said, I have neglected this space most appallingly. But that is all about to change, with new tales of bemusement, absurdity and maybe just a little adventure coming down the line.

For now I leave you with this:

This stunning example of mind reading brought to you by the voice that said.

à bientôt.

-j

Welcome to the Gun Show

2010-01-04T03:46:00.000-05:00

On the entrance to the Fayetteville Gun Show Social there hung a sign that read: “unload your guns,” and a few lines below it warned, “…all of them.” This gave me pause. I was at least grateful that the sign hadn’t instructed the patrons of the Gun Show Social to discharge their weapons and resolved to pick my battles. On the other door was a sign forbidding the use of cameras or other recording equipment. I was disappointed.

Jon bought us two tickets and turned around to grin at me.
“What?” I asked.
“Do you know what I just did?”
“Tell me.”
Jon held out his arms and flexed his biceps and recited the pun, “I just bout two tickets…to the gun show.”
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered.
“Exactly.”

As I walked down the aisles of ammunition and magazines I paused over a display that included a tye-dye Lynnard Skynnard t-shirt. It was magnificent, but another table with Nazi knick-knacks presumably owned by former soldiers of the Third Reich distracted me.

In fairness, I could understand the ban on recording devices. Someone might take this stuff—like the “You lie, Obama!” t-shirts or photographs of portly, leather-clad men with awkward facial hair—completely out of context and give people the idea that the good gun-toting folk of Fayettville were nothing but a bunch of whack jobs.

As I walked past a group of ~~militant~~ military looking men with shaved heads, one wearing a pistol holster on his thigh muttered under his breath, “there are some weirdos here” as he eyed me.
“Funny,” I murmured, “I was just thinking the same thing.

Soon it was time to go.

I was warned about re-entry culture shock but I thought that I was exempt. I would only be home for two months, a glorified vacation by my standards. If I had stayed in the Bay Area maybe I wouldn’t have grappled with much more than readjusting to super sized drinks and bodies. As it turned out, these were among the least of my concerns after arriving in North Carolina for a two week visit. On the drive from the airport to Fayetteville, a military town full of active duty servicemen and gangsters, I saw an increasing number of signs advertising for 24-hr topless bars, waffle houses, and fried chicken. I became concerned.

“I warned you. There’s a strip club where people can go to eat breakfast. It hurts my feelings.” This is one of the tamer things that can be said about Fayetteville’s local flavor, which includes two enormous Wal-Marts, a McDonalds or Chic-fil-A on every corner, and at least a dozen pawn shops promising “Jewelry, Guns, and Musical Instruments,” usually juxtaposed with run-down peep show joints painted in some unfortunate shade of neon.

After a day of laying low in Jon’s apartment I was getting pretty terrible cabin fever. I didn’t have a car and nothing but Bojangle’s Fried Chicken or Burger King within walking distance, and that just seemed like a little too intense for my second week back in the country. When I could no longer stand my confinement, I decided to go on a walk along a bike trail behind the apartment complex. It had been pouring rain but it seemed to have stopped for the day so I bundled up and set off.

I had never realized this before, but there are lots of movies in which young women are attacked in heavily wooded areas. The woods in California are not like those on the East Coast. The tall, thin trees give the illusion of visibility while alluding to the possibility of limitless hiding places. This means that I spent the majority of my walk through the woods scanning my surroundings and feeling paranoid. I’ve bever been a jogger, and when I go for walks I generally choose populated areas. I didn’t see a single person on my walk other than a police car with a man in the front seat who I decided was an imposter and sexual predator.

After two of the four-mile trail I suspected that the path wasn’t looping around. I couldn’t remember if the trail was circular or not. On mile three the pervading tulle fog condensed into an outright downpour. I was soaked to the bone in less than five minutes. I decided to turn around, reasoning that at least I knew for sure that I could get home by doubling back. A squirrel jumped from a tree and launched itself in front of my face and I screamed bloody murder until a group of deer raised their heads and cast what seemed to be pitying glances in my direction. They seemed to say, “who screams at squirrels? Honestly.” I had to agree with them.

I walked the three miles back, cold and wet and cursing the heavens. When I got back the guys in the apartment tried not to laugh outright at the drowned rodent entering the apartment. Apparently I had chosen to venture out during the only lull in what was coming a pretty formidable storm front settling in over the area.

“Didn’t you see the forecast?” Asked Mike. I didn’t know how to work the TV yet so no, I hadn’t.
“I like to walk in the rain,” I answered, dripping on the carpet.
“Did you know that there used to be a serial rapist that attacked people on that path?”
“No, no I did not.” I made a mental note to kill Jon for suggesting that I use the trail.
“It’s ok though because they caught him.”

The next day when I was struck down by an ear infection and a runny nose Jon took me to get decongestants. As we walked below the neon awning at Wal-Mart I was filled with deep trepidation. I have read damning books and articles about “Wally-World” as I’ve heard it called, and part of me thought that I might be swallowed whole by the vast aisles of cheap stuff, never to return. However, we made it to the checkout counter without incident and Jon struck up an attendant with the clerk who, as it turned out, was also from California.

“What brings you out here?” asked Jon.
“The Lord,” replied the squat woman without hesitation.

I have now learned not to laugh unless I’m absolutely positive that I have heard a joke. On this night, however, it wasn’t until the woman from El Cahon wished us a “blessed day” that I realized that she did not share my sense that the idea of the Lord bringing anyone to Fayetteville was in any way amusing. As we left through the automatic doors a woman facing into the store nodded and said, “welcome to Wal-Mart.”

Jon sighed and rubbed my shoulders as I popped a decongestant in my mouth and vowed to learn how to shoot a gun.

No Smoking in the Lavatory

2009-12-07T13:28:00.001-05:00

I believe that it is possible to divide travelers into two categories: those that know how to use airplane toilets and those who do not. I seem to have been traveling with the latter group recently.

I am fairly well acquainted with the bathrooms in airplanes. A small, perhaps overactive bladder and my near pathological need to have water on hand guarantees that I always know where the nearest facilities are. Prolonged travel ups the ante a bit. Depending on my mode of transportation it could be many miles or hours until the next available toilet. In Morocco the term “toilet” can sometimes be a bit generous particularly if you are traveling by bus and are thus at the mercy of rest stops and gas stations. On the way to the Sahara I have to ration my fluids meticulously after having learned the hard way that five hours is the average time between stops on the journey to the desert that can take upwards of twelve hours. As for trains…let’s just say that walking along the tracks is likely to be a sensory experience in a different way than they portray in movies made in the 80’s.

But airplanes have the potential to be better unless you happen to be traveling with people in the second category of bathroom users as I tend to. On my flight to see Tyler in France someone who had used the little cabin seemed to have been unclear as to the actual location of the toilet. Meanwhile, the “flush” button may as well have been pure decorative flare as far as another person was concerned. Our flight back to Morocco was a true flying circus complete with passengers smoking cigarettes on the fuel-soaked tarmac, much to Tyler’s horror, and bathroom mini-dramas. One old Moroccan man tried to get up and use the toilet while the plane was taxiing on the runway and the British flight attendant, who belonged to the “slower and louder” school for cross-cultural communication, proceeded to bellow instructions at him in English, which he did not understand. This interaction repeated itself shortly after takeoff and once more before he was finally permitted to relieve himself. Another elderly woman also kept getting up before the “fasten seat belt” sign had been turned off and was repeatedly banished back to her seat which she could never seem to locate without the help of multiple passengers.

I like to think that I’m kind of a pro when it comes to timing my bathroom breaks on airplanes. On my recent flight to North Carolina I managed to time my last trip so that my return to my seat coincided perfectly with the flight attendants advising the passengers that we were beginning our descent in Raleigh and that we must remain seated for the duration of the flight. I gave myself a little pat on the back as I buckled my seat belt.

Eventually my travel companions on the flight from Lyon to Casablanca made their way to the bathroom and left their marks by the time that I got there. Living in Morocco has done a lot for my “ick” threshold. Because I don’t compromise when it comes to hydration I realized early on that I would have to get used to local toilets if Morocco and I were to make beautiful music together. Still, airplane bathrooms gross me out.

When it was finally time for me to investigate the sanitary situation onboard Mother Nature had introduced a special feminine variable into the equation. Because I can only afford to fly budget airlines that have strict baggage regulations, I had scrimped on some of my packing essentials and also failed to consult my calendar in the process. I left my seat and, with a sheepish grin on my face, approached the flight attendant who had been guarding the bathroom. I asked for her assistance and she frowned.

“I’m not sure if I can help you. I don’t even think I’m supposed to give you Tylenol.”

She must have seen the rising panic in my face because she pondered for a moment and continued, “well let me check with my supervisor. I’m new.” Before I could stop her she was on the phone to her male supervisor, asking him if she could provide me with the supplies that I required. She listened for a moment, nodded, and then hung up the phone.

“I can give it to you but you don’t even want to know what he said.”

I didn’t.

On my flight back to San Francisco from Casablanca the bathroom didn’t disappoint, either. It boasted an assortment of debris on the suspiciously wet floor. The wet floors might be what put me on edge. In this case the bathroom also had bar soap rather than liquid. I have no particular opinion about the merits of liquid as opposed to solid soap, but there was no tub for the bars so they just sat on the counter—until takeoff.

I am an aisle seat gal. I like to know that I can get up and go to the bathroom at any point during the flight. It’s a way to pass the time on the longer flights and also a way for me to manage my stress and belief that every plane I board can and will crash in a fiery blaze of glory. My in-flight anxiety comes and goes, but recently has coincided with a particularly high-impact flying schedule, the irony of which I find meager consolation when I’m gripping the armrests and rehearsing my exit strategy.

Even if I don’t take advantage of the freedoms that come with an aisle seat they are important to my psycho-somatic response to the flight itself. If I know that my mobility is dependent on another person’s comings and goings I will be consumed by obsessive thoughts about my bladder. On a flight from Rabat to Paris I was stuck in a window seat next to a woman and her husband who was paralyzed from the waist down. I had to literally climb over him to get into my seat. Although it crossed my mind to suggest that the man who was not, in fact, free to move about the cabin should sit in the window seat, I thought that this might come across as insensitive. Instead I chatted up the nice American couple and left the plane dehydrated and cranky.

My frequent visits to the toilet also mean that I experience it in all states of filth or cleanliness throughout the progress of the flight. On the flight back to America I was able to take advantage of the bar soap before it flew from its resting place and into one of the suspicious puddles under the toilet. At this point I had to think long and hard about the cost-benefit ratio of having marginally dirty hands or using potentially tainted soap. I leave it to the reader to decide.

During my visit to North Carolina Jon and I perused the aisles of a camping store where he was buying supplies and I stumbled upon the Portable Jon. This contraption is related to the Stadium Buddy, which aims to minimize trips to the bathroom by essentially providing a portable bed pan/catheter experience. While I would no sooner wear a diaper (not a flattering silhouette), I paused over this particular item. The witty name wasn’t lost on me as I tried to piece together the Jon Adapter—for lady mountaineer in all of us—and the Portable Jon. Ultimately I think that these kinds of products might do more harm than good, particularly given the potential for malfunction. Still, I couldn’t help but imagine myself at cruising altitude, bar soap and bathroom puddles far from my mind, with my Portable Jon by my side.

Anglais sur Abbesses

2009-11-01T17:44:00.000-05:00

It is a Wednesday in late October and I am sitting in my hotel room in Montmartre watching Tyler stack things on his forehead. It has been almost three years since I have seen him. Travel and conflicting schedules have necessitated that our friendship be maintained à la distance, but recently the fates have conspired in our favor and put us on the same side of the Atlantic for the first time in four years. While I am living in Morocco Tyler is living France and we decided to meet in Paris before going to Lyon and then on the Casablanca.

It’s a time for reunions, for hugs, laughter, and remembering.

It is hard to be homesick when you are traveling. By this I mean not that it is difficult to feel homesickness itself but rather that homesickness complicates the traveling. It seems illogical that I should long for a place that I spent my entire life trying to escape while I find myself in one of the cities that had been a major object of my flight fantasies.

Paris is everything that I was told it would be: full of stylish pedestrians, public toilets, expensive, alluring, difficult to leave. I also find it extremely evocative. With every step I take I risk falling down a rabbit hole of memory although I have never been here before. Paris reminds me of places and people that have changed my life. Seeing true autumn for the first time in years stops me in my tracks and nearly brings tears to my eyes. The slanting light, the changing leaves, the crisp air and sprinkling of overcoats remind me of autumns spent in the shadow of palm trees yearning for something difficult to define.

Tonight I am also yearning. Tonight in the dead of October I long for faces and voices an ocean away, and I feel reverberations of speeding along stretches of dark highway until I come upon landscape that signaled home. My pulse would burn behind my ribcage as I came closer, until finally I stood in the dark, quiet street and felt the cold air on my skin. Then, the echo of baggage on asphalt, the familiar racket of the front door and I’m on the landing hugging, laughing, talking as fast as I can before I vault up the stairs and close myself in my room and breathe deeply as memories wash over me. I sit through the deepening night and listen to the sounds of the still house, afraid to sleep although I don’t know why.

Now I am sitting and listening to the creaking of our hotel that is tucked away in a quiet little street near Abesses. From the window of our room I can see into the windows of adjacent buildings that all face the same little alcove on which the buildings seem to turn their backs and huddle together against the city streets. Lit windows stand out from dark brick and through them I can see signs of home life: vibrantly painted walls, bookshelves, tables with food and dishes scattered about, a man hunched at a desk. I want to go to one of these homes and sit on a couch with a blanket in my lap, run my fingers along rows of books, walk on carpeted floors in my socks and tinker with the thermostat.

I sit and imagine home, trying to recall the feeling of complete intimacy with the place. Normally I would call this boring but right now nothing sounds more alluring than the quotidian.

I have come to feel at home in Morocco, particularly in my neighborhood where little girls give me kisses and shop owners smile and wave from behind their counters. But sometimes the things that keep me on my toes and give me a chuckle can also make me feel out of control, without a touchstone or element of security. I’m hoping that as I round the corner of the calendar into familiar seasons some of this will change. For me, knowing what to expect out of the coming seasons is a basic part of knowing a place. I can now think back to what I wore this time last year and remember the cold snap; remember the rain and the buying of heaters. It’s like getting to know a person’s moods until you can anticipate them rather than always just reacting.

Now as I wait for Morocco’s mood to turn colder I walk with Tyler into the cold, clear night. Cafés spill out onto the sidewalk and the intense warmth of outdoor heaters makes me want to sit and watch the world shuffle by over a glass of wine. Instead we push through the brisk air towards the Montmartre metro station a few blocks away from the cobblestoned street where our hotel nestles against apartments and other people’s idea of the quotidian. As we approach the iconic Metropolitan sign I hear something familiar above the sounds of the street.

We stop and stand in front of the jazz trio comprised of a singer strumming an arch-top guitar, a man plucking a standup bass, and a third figure playing the alto saxophone. The singer leans forward and croons English into his retro silver microphone. It was the English that originally caught my attention, and after they finish the song the singer playfully feigns a French accent as he thanks the crowd. A resident of a nearby apartment opens his window several stories above the street and yells to the band that enough is enough and the music has to stop. Tyler and I chat with the band and discover that the saxophonist is from San Francisco and instant bonding ensues.

This is one of the things that I love about traveling and living abroad: you never know who you are going to meet or how you will find little bits of home. We exchange stories and the saxophonist warns us to never use Craigslist Paris. Eventually the conversation ebbs and I thank the band for speaking English. The bemused saxophonist cocks his head as I turn and leave, his face breaking into a smile. Tyler and I make our way towards the station and hot air rushes up from the metro, blowing my hair back. As I skip down the stairs I imagine myself to be hopping down to the BART or MUNI and suddenly home doesn’t feel so far away, after all.

I Remember December

2009-10-21T18:01:00.000-04:00

I sit on my balcony in the chilling breeze and I exhale. I listen to the strange calm of the night in my crumbling neighborhood below. I sit on my balcony, toes frozen and thighs warm. My cheeks are hot. I sit on my balcony and I exhale. I sit on my balcony and pray for rain.

Changes happen in the fall. One way or the other, it seems that fall is a time for tumbling forward into something new. Spring takes all the credit for new beginnings as trees take new leaf and flowers blossom, but what’s to say that fall doesn’t signal its own set of significant transformations? It’s all about transitions, about phases.

For some people who are of a more solar-powered nature, the fall signals atrophy, winter weight, and Seasonal Affective Disorder. There are, however, some of us who thrive during this time. We are the small but resolute contingent that chooses to live in places like Seattle, London, or San Fracisco; that frowns into the brilliance of the summer sun and dreams of the waning winter light. During the first few minutes of a storm I can feel my skin tingle as though enlivened by the cloud banks. As the days get shorter and the afternoon highs begin to cool, I revel in the weakening golden light and the return of sweaters and scarves.

I sit on my balcony and watch the sea.

But real changes do happen in the fall. Usually it’s just when I’m hitting my stride—relationship dynamics become apparent, life goals clarify, and I settle into a comfortable rhythm. That’s when it’s time to shake things up. Relationships dissolve, life goals are obscured, and suddenly syncopation sneaks into my step. Life becomes arrhythmic. This is not to say that changes are bad. In my experience the vernal equinox throws into sharp relief those incongruities that had been lurking in the wings.

The inexorable need for reevaluation becomes undeniable and something must be done.

This autumn prompts more introspection than in years past as I struggle to reconcile my current location with the path I thought I began a year ago. I have seen every season in this country and watched as I transformed along with the lengthening days. This year as I wait for the cold snap I also find myself on the precipice of changes that will usher in yet another phase. It is, after all, all about phases. This fall ushers in an interim period as I wait for the cue to move forward. The current phase, although very deadline driven, is not terribly action oriented. This means that although it can feel like hell, it’s probably just Purgatory. In-between.

That makes this the perfect phase for Procrastination and Anxiety to explore their symbiotic relationship, for trashy teen dramas, spurts of productivity and spells of listlessness. It also makes this the perfect phase for mildly imprudent trips to reunite with kindred spirits, for planning, for impulse.

I sit on my balcony and I think of what comes next. The end of the week is cold, rainy Paris. It doesn’t matter what happens between now and then because the end of the week is cold, rainy Paris. The end of the week is flushed cheeks and rosy noses, umbrellas and numb hands, dark iron and slick concrete, deep puddles, strands of hair stuck to my cool, damp neck. The end of the week is tingling skin.

I sit on my balcony and I exhale, praying for rain.

again

2009-09-25T18:54:00.000-04:00

The lightning is still distant
I can tell
by how long it takes
for the rumbling
to reach my
prickling
ears.

I've missed you
my companion
the storm.

Raindrops wet
clink against
railing
against
puddles in pot-marked concrete.

The wind catches
hairs on the back of my neck and
as I sit
thinking of you
from my perch above it all
I shiver.

You run through my skin like
electric currents
and I think about

hello.

It became about you
even though I didn't mean it to.

Raindrops wet my feet.

-j

pretty pretty polka-dotty

2009-09-20T06:35:00.000-04:00

It is official: I, Jess Newman, have spots.

They always warned me that this would happen, along with the hair on my palms, crossed eyes, and stunted growth. In fairness, I am not tall and I do need glasses, but I’m pretty sure that if I were going to get hairy palms I would have them by now. But today, I Jess Newman, have spots.

Clearly, the only possible explanation for the spots is my recently rekindled cup-a-day coffee habit. I went running back to the open arms of the coffee bean when I started my job in August. I have a boss that expects accuracy and efficiency, a breath of fresh air from some of my experiences in Morocco, but not exactly my choice when I’m fasting for Ramadan. When I’m fasting for Ramadan, the cup of coffee that I chug in the wee hours of the morning is the only thing that can sustain me through uninterrupted hours sitting at a computer copyediting reports, writing in the language of international development and business. It is my belief that no one speaks international development on an empty stomach, least of all me, an intern without training in the field.

So I drink a cup of coffee so strong it could clean your engine, and let it fester in my empty stomach all day. It’s either that or I need to get addicted to speed so I can keep up with my well-fed co-workers. It’s hard to work at all during Ramadan, but it is even harder to work as an American who is fasting among American and French co-workers who are not. Jokes abound, including those about my “conversion experience."

All of this, of course, is decidedly beside the point. Fasting, for me, has been a chance to try to re-orient my frequently complicated relationship with food, to understand my extreme privilege as someone who knows where my next meal is coming from, and to show my love and support to my Moroccan friends who are fasting. My Moroccan co-workers think it’s great, but most of the expats I meet think I’m batty. Thus, the jokes.

That being said, fasting doesn’t get in the way of me getting my job done. The only things it really affects are my work hours. Ramadan hours are 9-3pm for people fasting, which means that once Moroccan-time and Jessie’s-hungry-time kick in it’s more like 9:30-3pm. This is not, however, the case when you stay at work until 5pm because your boss is still in the full 9-5 workday swing of things. I didn’t want to seem like I was making excuses not to work, but by 3pm steam is starting to come out of my ears and my stomach goes about the business of eating my brain for sustenance on the drive home.

I emerged after a meeting at five and my Moroccan supervisor looked at me, confused, and asked, “aren't you still fasting?” I said yes, but again felt like I had no room to complain. Fasting, granted, is a voluntary thing for me. I have the right to stop doing it at any time. But that’s not the point. The point is to fast because I don’t have to. Staying at work late is one thing, but I draw the line at coming in to work for 3id, the big holiday. I said that I would not be working…then I caved and offered to work from home. I’ve actually even taken on extra translating work to do at home, which, to be fair, I’m having an unreasonably good time doing. Look at the (spotted) backbone on me!

Which is why I, Little Newman, have spots. It couldn’t be for any other reason. I have been using my coffee percolator every day—being careful not to light my apartment on fire this time. I have tried other options, but this is the only way. The other morning I opened the jar of instant coffee, only to find something moving in it. It turns out instant coffee is a perfect habitat for cockroaches. Because the Nescafe kind of tastes like cockroach poop already, it doesn’t make much of a difference except for the enhanced texture provided by the occasional crunchy shell. This delightful treat, however, may cause spotting.

There is simply no other explanation for my variegated appearance. Obviously, the water quality is so superior here, that there couldn’t be anything getting into my skin that way. I even know a few people who have gotten sick because their systems were so overloaded by the nutrients in the water after they took a swim. It’s like taking a vitamin on an empty stomach: super good for you but may cause mild nausea.

Beyond this, the extreme humidity and perpetual dampness of my towels make a completely hostile environment for bacteria and fungus. We all know how fungi prefer hot, dry climates to warm, damp, dark ones. Plus, I’m constantly sweating so that should help cleanse me of any impurities.

Yes, it’s got to be the coffee. Why else would I keep seeing people with the same polka-dotted pattern? It’s because everyone, even little children, are drinking coffee at night during Ramadan, maybe even the occasional cockroach-infused Nescafé.

On the off-chance that I do actually have some kind of bacteria or fungus, I’ve been taking the proper measures. I’ve been rubbing myself with tea tree oil to cover the hippie-medicine approach, and then have been rubbing in some athletes foot cream in my skin to get the jock gods on my side, and occasionally even some Vagisil (also an anti-fungal) to get the goodwill of the OB/GYNs in the world. Unfortunately I realized that the tube that I got for this purpose was only anti-itch cream, so it’s not really doing anything other than compounding my deep and pervading sense of humiliation.

In America, I would probably go to dermatologist. But I don’t have insurance, so I wouldn’t be able to, anyway. Nevermind the fact that one of the reason's I'm still in Morocco is my government's inability to solve basic problems like my mysterious spots. In Morocco, there are several steps involved with identifying a dermatologist at all, and then there’s the matter of communicating my problem. This is unnecessary, however, because I already know that coffee is the cause of my affliction. As such, I will be seeking coffee rehabilitation services after Ramadan. Until then, vaginal cream and mortification it is.

UPDATE: I just tried to have a cup of tea rather than coffee, and once again almost burned down the apartment. In my sleepy, hungry delirium, I neglected to put water in the kettle. Imagine my surprise when smoke started creeping in from the kitchen. Luckily, I rescued the kettle before it was reduced to a nugget of charred metal, but I may never be able to drink anything other than coffee with confidence, again.

Ramadan in the Kitchen

2009-09-05T16:29:00.001-04:00

During Ramadan, there is a beautiful thing that happens after sunset: silence.

In the minutes and even hour leading up to maghreb (sunset), it’s hard to imagine that things will ever be still again. Kids play games of pick-up soccer in the middle of the street and tires squeal as cars inadvertently become part of the action, people rush from store to store trying to find last minute ingredients for the foods they will eat for ftour, the breaking of the fast. The fruit and vegetable markets are bustling with shoppers and all of the best produce seems to be out: shiny plump tomatoes, dewy heads of cabbage, and slick, fat fish with watery eyes lying on mounds of ice and their own viscera.

The best pastries are also out at this time, and I suspect that eating my body weight in sticky, honey-soaked shebakiyah is fast becoming my mission this Ramadan. I bought about a quarter of a pound on my way to ftour at a friend’s house, and, not wanting to insult his mother’s cooking (an issue of pride and contention among many of my Moroccan man-friends), I stuffed them into my purse for later. As luck would have it, there was plenty of shebakiya at ftour, so I ate my fill at the table and then helped myself to my secret stash on the way home.

During a month of fasting and thinking about the poor, gluttony doesn’t count after sunset, right?

It is funny, though, that during the one month that we are supposed to divert our attention away from food and creature comforts, they seem to define even more of our lives. Crankiness and short fuses abound, productivity plummets, and fights become a common sight—and I’m still just talking about myself.

Driving, in particular, lends itself to many meet-your-maker moments; glimpses of spiritual clarity brought to you by your local taxi driver. Combine the usual reckless endangerment with impatient and hungry drivers and you’ve got yourself a show—hold the snacks. The other day on my way home from work, my cab driver cut off another driver, and they spent several blocks leap-frogging past each other through rush-hour traffic, yelling through the open windows of their cars. When the other car finally caught up with us the driver proceeded to yell with renewed vigor. My cab driver put his thumbs in his ears and waved his fingers as he mocked the other man in a whiny, high-pitched voice.

It’s a month of goodwill toward your fellow man.

Last year, I didn’t fast for Ramadan. I had arrived one week after the start of the 30 day fast and then moved promptly to Fes. Feeling that I had done one better than merely “get my feet wet,” I didn’t participate but did my best not to eat or drink in public. Instead, I guzzled water in bathrooms and took refuge in cafés that still served food to foreigners and the occasional menstruating female (the qur’an excuses women from fasting during this time).

This year I am fasting, although I am still occasionally drinking water. My world outlook becomes bleak indeed when I am dehydrated, but I thought that I could still appreciate the purpose of fasting while sneaking surreptitious sips. So, I hide my head under my desk to drink from a bottle, hold my head under the faucet in the bathroom, or take hasty gulps when no one is in the room. Unfortunately this means that I end up spilling on myself more often than not, so I think my co-workers are bound to catch on sooner or later.

Breaking fast can feel a little pathetic without a host family to cook for you, so Rachel and I have been playing encore presentations of poor-white-girls for the benefit of our friends and neighbors. So far we’ve met with limited success, but the man who runs the local laundry thinks that we are so pathetic that he’s started making his wife and son bring us pots of harira (a hearty soup that is traditionally served for ftour and also conveniently one of my favorite Moroccan foods).

Did I mention that Ramadan is a time of charity?

Last year, it all seemed so chaotic and foreign, not to mention slightly illogical from where I sat with a full belly. No wonder people are cranky, they need a snack! One night, at a popular expat café, I heard the sound of ululating and clapping coming from another room. A harried-looking British woman resembling some cross between a lemur and a skeleton came rushing through. By way of unnecessary apology for the noise, she threw her hands in the air and said, “Moroccans, you see. It’s Ramadan in the kitchen.” Racial and neo-colonial overtones aside, I found her far more bewildering than the sounds of celebration coming from the kitchen. That is, after all, the sound that I feel like making every time I get to eat, whether or not I’m fasting.

Now, as the sun seems to sizzle below the lip of the sea, and the screeching tires fade, everyone is tucking in to break the fast. Even the mosquitoes are feasting, mainly on my sensitive, itchy skin. The only sounds in the city seem to be those of chewing and the occasional barking dog, begging to get in on the grub.

I sigh and try to relax as the tension melts from the humid air, and pop a pastry into my mouth. It’s even Ramadan in this kitchen.

Life in Technicolor

2009-08-25T20:00:00.000-04:00

I heard somewhere that we become chemically addicted to physical contact. It’s something to do with serotonin. They (whoever “they” are) have done tests in which physical contact improves sick people’s health, the most famous case of which being one where they co-bedded two premature twins, and the one what wasn’t doing so well suddenly recovered. Hugs have been called crucial to mental and emotional health—mostly by my father but I think he’s right. So, like all tenuously supported pseudo-scientific claims that I happen to agree with, I believe this theory to be absolute truth.

The touch of a lover is supposed to be especially problematic, with a good fondle or snog setting off a firestorm of chemicals and opiates in the brain that leaves us fiending when it is taken away. Even just the habitual contact, the touch on the shoulder, the brush in the hallway, the casual kiss on the cheek, can be deadly in its absence.

Habit forming.

I am fiending somewhere over the east coast of North America, over some place called Thunder Bay, which sounds like the title of a movie from the 1950s. Because I’m already feeling a bit self-indulgent, I imagine James Dean in a pair of cuffed jeans and his perfectly coiffed hair, standing on a precipice just before he gets into his black muscle car to race his nemesis over the cliffs. The plan is little shortsighted, granted, and the car is only black because everything is black and white, but when I get behind the wheel and rev my engine, it seems like Technicolor to me.

My reverie doesn’t last long. There is turbulence on my flight and I am suddenly possessed by the deep and seemingly indisputable conviction that I am going to die in a fiery plane crash, immediately. The plane levels out but poodle skirts and greased hair have faded from my mind. The old Italian couple sitting to my left is gently clasping hands, and the overhead reading lamp illuminates their physical contact like a spotlight. The overhead reading lamp is mocking me. I hate the overhead reading lamp.

The French man to my right has traded seats with his young son, who is gaseous and breathes through his mouth and has breath like sour candy. He is watching the Simpsons on the screen in the back of the seat in front of him and trying to edge me out of the armrest that is clearly my birthright. I can’t really blame him, though, he needs the leverage as he picks his nose and plays with his lips. He does not know what it means to say the kinds of goodbyes I have just said. He is still young. He is lucky. I hate the little nose-picking mouth-breather.

I am fiending over Thunder Bay and I hate the overhead reading lamp and the French mouth-breather. My list of enemies is growing with each mile I fly into the sunrise.

I am left breathless by goodbyes. They are so abrupt and final, no matter how much you may have anticipated them. The fact is, at some point that’s it. At some point you have the last kiss. It’s the last embrace, the last time you will smell your loved one’s neck, that unique and intoxicating mix of skin, hair, and cologne. Smells, too, are tricky. They evoke the strongest memories, even visceral responses, like the nearly irresistible urge to embrace the man in front of you at the interminable LAX security line, just because he’s wearing your boyfriend’s cologne.

Maybe that’s just me.

But you resist the urge to hug perfect strangers who are traveling with their girlfriends, and instead you find yourself fiending over Thunder Bay. Mouth-breather has stolen the armrest, and just as I’m starting to think really evil thoughts in his direction, he starts waving his hands and squealing happily at the screen. It’s completely disarming. It is also at this point that I finally realize that he is mentally disabled, and I feel like the devil, a true shatana for mentally turning him into a caricature. So I let my nasally challenged nemesis have the armrest, though that’s not all that I seem to have lost, recently.

Voyeurism and Nicotine

2009-08-25T19:51:00.000-04:00

It’s hard to find a quiet place to grieve in Morocco. On the day that Jon went to America to be with his family, I initially refused myself that quiet space. I went to the Oudayas, had lunch with friends in an attempt at normalcy and then dropped off laundry, bought some unripe fruit, and studied for the GRE. Productivity is my form of coping. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized that the grapes were nearly raisins and the bananas were green. I could feel my resolve wavering, but I didn’t want to crash until I showered.

Showering is a therapeutic experience for me even in the best of times, and I had moved my things out of Jon’s house shortly after we got the news, so I hadn’t had any of my things to take a real shower on the morning that we drove from his house to the airport. So I had braved deranged hair, oily skin and eyes crusty from crying without complaint. I had put on some waterproof mascara which was ultimately self-defeating because it just ended up crumbled rather than smudged beneath my eyes. Later, when I felt myself slipping, I froze the grapes to have as icy treats, and stood in a cold shower. I even washed my hair and shaved my legs. Then I called my father and, as I have done many times this year, cried.

I returned to my usual post on the balcony to listen to music and contemplate smoking a cigarette. It’s a habit that I had successfully given up, but it sounded really comforting in a self-destructive sort of way because it was born from circumstances of emotional stress exactly like this.

Well, not exactly.

As I looked at the ocean and squinted against the glare of the afternoon sun on the white buildings of my crumbly neighborhood on the sea, I saw a familiar sight. A man had walked into the empty lot across from my building. This lot is home to trash, rubble, broken bottles, and is also a popular spot for public urination. Thus, I have, by no fault of my own, seen much more penis in Morocco than I ever counted on. My cultural education is all thanks to this lot, which I like to call “Piss Alley.” The man that was making his way through the rubble was by no means one of the usual suspects. For one thing, he was wearing nice, shiny black shoes. In fact, he was a very well-dressed individual wearing a pressed button-down shirt and slacks. And he was on foot, which is rare but not unheard of for this lot, where cab drivers usually pull over to relieve themselves while on the job. He also seemed a little more self-conscious about peeing there, unlike the regulars who treat it like hold hat.

I have to say that I deduced his insecurity by actually watching this man pee. Usually, I look away or hide, thinking myself to a gracious and dignified person.

On this day I felt like neither.

I was still reeling from the news of the death, to say nothing of the abrupt and permanent nature of Jon’s departure—all of which happened in barely more than twelve hours—although part of me thought I should have been used to it, given the year I’ve had. Grand exits seem to be par for the course in Morocco. Regardless, he had left and I couldn’t help but feel a bit bereft, myself. So I lit a sinful cigarette and watched this stranger’s unsteady stream.

Then I bent my head, and with tears in my eyes, I laughed quietly to myself.

Cinematic

2009-08-04T19:50:00.000-04:00

on the day you left
to find your brother's
body

hot, oppressive
august clouds
sighed
forth their supple
warm
drops

damp dirt
and the smell
of warm, wet
concrete.

-j

I shall name my son Vonnegut.

2009-07-28T15:13:00.001-04:00

"There was a time when I was at one with my Father in feeling that to become a reverent, brave, trustworthy, and courteous Eagle Scout was to lay the foundations for a bountiful life. But I have since had occasion to reflect more realistically upon twig-bending, and am wondering now if Hell's Kitchen isn't a more sound preparation for living than was the Beaver Patrol."

--Kurt Vonnegut, Armageddon in Retrospect

Infestation Manifestation

2009-07-13T13:40:00.000-04:00

A friend once asked me if I was a “timid salad eater” upon discovering that I don’t eat meat. I laughed openly in his face. We had not, at this point, known each other long enough for him to realize what a silly question he had asked me. Although I do not generally enjoy the taste of animal flesh, I don’t think that anyone would make the mistake of calling me a timid anything. My empathy for living things only extends so far, with bugs and people who act like baboons testing my capacity for compassion.

Today we are talking about bugs.

Summer is now in full swing in Morocco, and it’s bringing with it sun, sand, and evil creepy-crawlies from hell. I do not enjoy bugs. I respect the food chain and every now and then will indulge in a “Circle of Life” moment in the privacy of my own room, but at the end of the day I will kill a bug faster than you can say “Raid.” And although I like to try and keep things natural and simple, I just don’t believe that organic bug killers work. The cockroaches I’ve seen here in Morocco would use that crap to wax their shells and then ask where they could buy some.

As much as I hate bugs, I am not a terribly squeamish person. The other day I asked for Jon’s help catching a gecko in his room. He walked over in mock irritation, making some comment about squeamish girls, but stopped poking fun at me when I explained that if I caught it on my own, I’d probably have to grab its tail which it would then shed from its body. It seemed to me to be a waste of a perfectly good tail. I let myself rack up cool girl points without voicing the rest of what I was thinking: “plus it would leave me holding a disembodied tail which is just icky.”

Another thing that contributes to my disdain for all crawly kind is that I tend to get an excessive number of bug bites. After riding a small sailboat called a falouka down the Nile one evening at sunset, I returned to my hostel to find myself basically polka-dotted with mosquito bites. The next time I road on one, I thought I’d outsmart the little blood suckers and cover my face and arms with a scarf (which fittingly made me look like a mummy because it was all white) and still mosquitoes got me. They flew up the wide legs of my linen trousers and even bit me on the butt. I’m also pretty allergic to spiders, so if I get bitten by one I end up with a big, hot, angry looking welt. I once got bitten just below my knee and ended up with a welt bigger than my knee cap. So I consider it fair play to strike back. Plus, spiders are icky and they eat butterflies. What did butterflies ever do to anyone?

So I don’t freak out at the sight of bugs but I don’t feel the need to live in perfect symbiosis with them, either. Cockroaches look like turds with legs, and so have no business being in my kitchen or bathroom. The bathroom, especially, gets to me, because it’s supposed to be where I go to get clean. Seeing a dead cockroach floating in the mixture of water and spit that has accumulated at the bottom of my toothbrush cup is just not my idea of hygienic. I just bought a toothbrush cup with a lid and plan on emptying the spit mixture more frequently.

Speaking of orthodontia, I—like many very cool, very sexy people—wear a retainer. I get extra sexy-cool points for the fact that my retainer is also a mouth guard that keeps me from grinding my teeth to a pulp while I sleep. In all honesty, it’s not so bad. It’s almost completely invisible, but it’s how it makes me feel like a super model on the inside that really counts. Usually, when I take it off in the morning I brush it and toss it into a drawer where I keep my makeup. I didn’t always bother to brush it when I popped it back in, in the evenings. This was the case, anyway, until I opened the drawer once and found a couple of cockroaches crawling around on it in there. I had to fight extra hard no to gag. Now I brush it every night, and I keep it in its super sexy-cool pink case.

During the winter and spring we had a problem with flies. We wanted to open the windows in an attempt to air out the death-bearing black mold that had slowly taken up residency in our apartment during the cold, wet, Sarah McLaughlin ridden winter months. The only problem was that without screened windows, I’d end up falling asleep to the sound of humming flies’ wings darting past my ears.

Before I invested in some flyswatters, I resorted to jumping off of the furniture in an attempt to kill the flies. I’d clutch a spiral-bound notebook and hurl myself from a chair or bed and attack the flies from what I’d hoped was their peripheral vision. This rarely worked. I don’t think that flies even have peripheral vision. They just have super vision thanks to all of those eyes. I do, however, have a big purple stain on my wall from one of the few times this method actually worked. I was triumphant over one of the biggest horseflies I’ve ever seen, but he left me a souvenir.

Jon tried to help by suggesting that we made homemade flytraps like the ones he’d made growing up in South Africa. To create you will need: one water bottle, ½ cup of milk, sugar, and a suppressed gag reflex. To assemble: cut the bottle in half and fill the bottom with milk and sugar. Invert the top and place inside of the bottom, creating a funnel, tape in place. This is supposed to lure flies in and trap them in the bottle, where they eventually drown in a pool of their own gluttony.

Unfortunately this only works, as we found out much later, once the milk has gone rancid. We weren’t sure for a while what the trick was. Initially we thought it was the amount of sugar we used. It was around Easter at the time, so we thought that maybe some of the Marshmallow Peeps that Rachel’s family sent us would give our traps the extra kick that they needed. This was only half-true. We found lots of flies in the traps, but as the Peeps slowly disintegrated in the milk they turned it into foul colored, putrid sludge. It was the putrid sludge part that was especially effective, but it had the unfortunate side effect of really grossing out our guests. This was made more inconvenient by the fact that we kept one of the biggest, nastiest traps by the balcony, where people tended to congregate.

When our housekeeper arrived in the middle of our month-long experiment with the milk traps, she looked at the bottles of rancid milk with confusion and disgust. I tried to explain the concept behind our bio-hazardous decorations, telling her not to throw them out because we’d have to start growing the putrid sludge from scratch. She raised her eyes to the heavens, but found herself gazing up at the mold-stained ceilings and seemed to be counting the points she was scoring in the afterlife for helping these stupid American girls.

I appealed to her again, saying that bugs are icky, and that the bottles of sludge helped get rid of them. When this didn’t seem to work I shrugged and over-shared, “well, at least now I brush my retainer at night.”

Waking Limb

2009-06-14T07:52:00.000-04:00

The emails about graduation, honors convocation and Phi Beta Kappa started to pour in with greater speed and urgency, but I was finding it difficult to pay them any mind. I felt as though they were intended for someone else. Someone with whom I am intimately familiar, and whose email I seem to have hacked inadvertently.

She’s someone that I look back on with a sort of pained fondness, a sore nostalgia that gives me pause now and then when I remember who I was, and how she was not quite suited to who I was always trying to become. This is true down to the frantic finish of my undergraduate career. I didn’t know I was moving abroad until about two months before my date of departure. I had to take my final exams two weeks early in order to come to Morocco, so I left campus rather unceremoniously in the early hours of the California dawn, unable to bring myself to look back. Thanks to finishing my coursework in last August, I technically straddle two graduating classes, seeming evidence of my indecision about my life at the time. I hadn’t bothered to walk with my class last June, thinking it would be anti-climactic to throw my cap in the air and head back to class, and it would definitely seem a bit lackluster to rush back to walk in a ceremony without my peers and after having been gone for so long.

It's not that I'm feigning nonchalance or disinterest. I am proud of everything that this confused and fuzzy-bordered girl accomplished, happy to receive the letters of praise, but in the end I dodged them, hiding behind the alibis of international travel and lack of internet. Ultimately, the inundation of letters became rather dogged reminders of where I was a year ago. This time last year I would have been feverishly completing my honors thesis, chronically behind deadline, with a maniacal thirst for perfection and the stubborn desire for recognition; for the award that I would later win and wonder why it had seemed so unbelievably important at the time.

This time last year I didn’t know that I was coming to Morocco. I was deep in the midst of an existential crisis like none I had ever experienced, one that lasted until a few months ago. I am prone to introspection that is wont to slip into melancholy uncertainty from time to time, so I’m used to the occasional doubts about my work, about my future, my goals. But last Spring the doubts deepened in their opacity, casting darker shadows across my consciousness. The nightmares, the horror fantasies and flashing images of a future that I wasn’t sure if I wanted became increasingly recurrent, and I hadn’t yet connected the anxiety, the cold night sweats, and the insomnia with the need to reevaluate my direction. Chalk it up to the work, bury it in the work, don’t make a fuss.

But sooner or later even the work is finished and your highly structured, goal-oriented “leisure time” loses it’s urgency, and you find yourself preparing to enter a world about which you have serious reservations, to move to a city you hate—a city that plunges you into depression and chokes with toxic fumes your urge for optimism—and you prepare to do all of this with people who look increasingly alien, and who you begin to suspect might not know you so well, after all.

Or at least this was the case for me.

Truly, I made it intentionally impossible for anyone to know me at my core, because I had so completely estranged even myself from it. This became most obvious to me in the past months as I’ve finally cast open the shutters to air out my musty self, my own desires, my own goals. I had very cleverly packed them away like so many relics of the past, anecdotal memorabilia paying lip service to my independence in order to better self-efface, to couch myself in another person’s frame of reference.

It became second nature, and it wasn’t until recently that I realized that for years I had no idea what I looked like. I had no sense of recognition when I looked at pictures of this slightly manic person, and so had no control study, no red flag to fly when I finally lost myself. I’m not even sure when it happened. it was like twilight; I could never tell exactly when the dusk gave way to the creeping darkness, at last.

So imagine my surprise when I looked in the mirror one day and found a friendly face smiling back at me. Where had this girl been all along? There were some slight differences, time had stretched features and worn stories into the eyes, but it was definitely me. I had to come halfway around the world to find her, but there she was. It was like waking a sleeping limb—uncomfortable, at times quite painful, but as I stretched and shifted, I found myself able to use this part of myself again, as though it had always been there.

And so, a year later, I find myself resembling more and more that little girl frozen in time with her feet kicked in the air, curls flying, eyes squinting shut in a smile of wonder and excitement at the world she seemed to be flying into. It’s as though she will break free from the hands thrusting her upwards and fly from the frame to anywhere and everywhere, all at once. I feel, for the first time, more than a merely tenuous connection to her; feel for the first time as though I really did take flight to anywhere and everywhere, all at once.

I walk down new streets, even different from those where I have carved a home for myself on the edge of the Farthest West, and almost seem to skip, feet kicked in the air, curls flying, eyes squinted shut in a smile, disbelieving of the life I am living, at last. I know now that’s what I look like: smiling.

-j

Fancy Footwork

2009-06-02T13:58:00.000-04:00

I am not a medical professional. I have very little idea of what goes on under the skin, and it is my general belief that just about any ailment can be cured with a few liters of water and long nap. One thing I do know, however, is that I would be hard pressed to think of any injury or illness that needs to be cured with open flame from a Bic lighter, let alone the smoldering butt of a cigarette.

But, like I said, I am not a medical professional.

On the second day of my dad’s second trip to Morocco, we caught the 7:45 a.m. train to Marrakesh, then a bus to Agadir in the south of Morocco, then we caught a ride a few kilometers north to the tiny town of Taghazout, where we spent the majority of his trip. It was to be a week of father-daughter bonding, surfing, sun, and general decompression. Rachel came with us for a couple of days, determined, as she put it, to have some time with “GrandPaul” as she has taken to calling my dad since she decided that he will be surrogate grandfather to her as-yet-hypothetical children. Not only would she log some GrandPaul time, she would also unwind and try her hand at learning to surf. So, as we set off for the south, spirits were high and eyes were bright, unless they were mine in which case they were bloodshot and impossibly sleepy.

On the train I was once again struck by the similarities between the Moroccan countryside and some of the scenery in California. The brown, dry grass and dark green shrubs and trees make me feel at home whenever I look out the window and, time and time again, imagine that I am on the long trek from one end of California to the other. Something about traveling long distances by land plunges me into a deep state of introspection, and the striking resemblance between the landscapes of my two homes always leads me down well-trodden trails in my mind, inevitably prompting me to shake my head as though awaking from a dream and remind myself of who and where I am. And just like that, everything looks different, not fenced in but free, rambling and infinite. Even I am not the same, awake as though for the first time, free, rambling and infinite. Suddenly the girl I used to be, wandering through fields and running my fingers along the tall grasses that seemed to swallow me, seems thousands of miles away. And I inevitably realize that she is indeed thousands of miles behind me as I move farther and farther away from all that used to define me, swallowing me like so many blades of tall grass.

With a shake of my head I found myself back in space and time, restored to self and body as we piled into the sandy car belonging to Younes, and energetic and goofy-smiled surfer from Taghazout. As we wound our way up the coast from Agadir to Taghazout we looked at the port, which could have been Long Beach or Oakland, and I tried once again to wrap my mind around the fact that I was on the edge of the African continent, watching the sun set over the Atlantic—a strange idea for a native Californian.

Being with my dad was conspicuously ordinary despite the utterly extraordinary circumstances of his visit. It is true that my presence in Africa is entirely due to stories that he and my grandmum told me growing up as I sat at their feet and let the images wash over me. I have always known that I had to come for myself, but never could I have imagined myself as I am now, living and working and thriving in Morocco. His being here made everything real in a way that was almost too visceral to process, it made my current life and the widening scope of my future possible and necessary in a way that I could never have felt on my own.

So, the next morning full of expansive wonder at the abundance of my life, I set off for the beach with Rachel and Dad for our surf lesson. I’d spent a little time surfing during college, but had allowed myself to be discouraged by my own lack of mastery and the disparaging comments of a possibly well-intentioned, leathery skinned Newport Beach resident as he drank whisky from his “Class Of” mug. He hadn’t even been all that harsh, he was more of a busy-body than anything, but for that incarnation of myself the criticism was enough to make me want to give up, sell my board and hang up my wetsuit forever. At the time I was comfortable with this reaction, but I am now beginning to realize that my life is rarely this open-and-shut.

As I waded into the underwhelming surf at Panorama’s I knew that there had been a reason that my dad had held onto my wetsuit, a reason that he had insisted on holding on to his conviction that I would be moving to Morocco, even thought I didn’t know it at the time. I used to find his capacity for unwavering faith in me a little exhausting at times, especially when I found it difficult to believe in myself. It represented to me a steadiness, a kind of peace amidst disorder that only highlighted my capacity for participation in the chaos that frequently engulfed my life before Morocco.

Before my dad’s trip, I had begun to suspect that I had lost my will to believe in much. But then I decided that he would come to visit me and, sitting on the butt-numbing chair in my salon, I informed him in a clear and steady voice that he was already here, he just didn’t know it yet. The same words he had said to me over nine months ago. Then I heard the familiar tones of near disbelief from the other end of the phone. And then he was in Morocco. And then I was in the water, standing up and riding into shore on crumbly white wash. I was still grinning from my ride as I tromped thought the shore break to join Rachel and my dad, where my dad was offering his expertise and positivity in spite of the fact that he had traveled halfway around the world for a week of flat surf.

I’ve never been squeamish about the ocean, never been afraid of what lived beneath the surface of the water. I grew up running into the icy waters of Northern California as a matter of principle, simply refused to not get in the water if I was near it. My Nonna took to calling me her little duck because this aquatic urge applied not only when I was in close proximity to the ocean, but also lakes, rivers, public water fountains and pools of standing water. Needless to say that after all of this time I do not pay much attention to my footwork when wading through water, which is why I was only mildly surprised when I stepped on something that caused a shooting pain in my foot. I figured that I had stepped on a broken bottle that I’d failed to spot in my euphoria as I scampered down the lamentably littered beach.

I tried to literally walk it off, but whatever it was seemed to still be lodged in my foot and the sharp pain had turned into a less familiar but infinitely more disconcerting burning sensation that swept over my foot. I did my best impression of nonchalance as I hopped on one foot next to my board and grasped the wounded foot to see what was in it. When I saw only blood, I proceeded to hobble back to shore until I could sit in the surf with my foot to my face like a baby who has just discovered that it has toes. Again, only blood, and each time a wave came and washed it away more would seep out of the ball of my foot without revealing the source.

As I have said before, I tend to be reluctant to admit when something is amiss because I have a complex about seeming like an alarmist hypochondriac. By the time my dad had convince me to let him help me back to the car, my foot was swelling up considerably, and turning purple. I felt preposterous leaning on him and Rachel for support as we made our way up the beach, and my sense of being a spectacle wasn’t diminished when several middle aged beach bums came hurrying towards me. Amidst my protests and assurances that I was fine, I found myself lifted off the ground and unceremoniously dumped on my back in the sand, foot held over my head in the hands of the Chief Beach Bum who was scrutinizing it.

He was holding a clear Bic lighter as he inspected my wound, nodding his head and making a sucking sound in his teeth. When he seemed satisfied, he turned to his friends and announced that I had stepped on a poisonous fish whose name they all repeated amongst themselves. The term “poisonous” gave me pause and evoked images of an emergency room in the tiny village, and I decided that Goal #1 was to stay away from the hospital. That was until I saw Chief Beach Bum’s friend approach me with a burning cigarette and brandished it at my foot, at which point Goal #1 became keeping crazy smoker dude from attempting to cauterize my foot with the butt of his cigarette. This became increasingly difficult when Chief Beach Bum tried to help hold me down to prevent me from wriggling away. When it became clear that I was starting to panic, Chief said, “Ok, ok, no cigarette,” which led me to relax long enough for him to renew his grip on my foot and stoke his lighter which he brought down against my foot.

I don’t like to be an hysterical person, but at this point I found it necessary to scream like a woman possessed until Chief Beach Bum gave me back my swollen purple foot. He didn’t give up, however, and more than once grabbed my foot, pointed over my shoulder to the ocean and said, “What is that??” to distract me. I fell for it twice, not expecting to hear someone use this tactic, especially not in Darija. I thought about just letting him light my foot on fire, thinking that he was awfully persistent about it and seemed to know what was going on with my foot. It was then that I ran through the list of scenarios that might require fire to heal a wound, and none of them seemed to involve a cigarette or Bic lighter. I also thought about trying to explain how I came to have a second degree burn on the ball of my foot, especially to Jon, a medic. I’ve decided that if Jon would smack his forehead and say his trademark line, “Jesus, Jess. Don’t make me have to work today,” then I’m probably doing something medically unsound.

So instead I buried my foot in the sand and refused to let anyone look at it. Chief Beach Bum raised his hands in resignation, advising me to move it to a new hot spot every few seconds. This worked, and soon my foot became a little more normal colored. It turns out I stepped on a Weaver Fish, which is bigger than i expected and lurks in the shallows with poisonous spines sticking up, waiting to sting happy girls frolicking through the surf. After a few minutes I was back in the water, refusing to let the spiky fish ruin my day. I stepped with a bit more caution, but it was an exercise in will not to let myself become hesitant about the water.

Later that night after a few more waves and more than a few wipeouts, I sat on the couch in the apartment with my foot bent towards my face, admiring the damage. While the swelling had gone down considerably, there was a little purple mark from the fish’s spine, possibly ink of some kind. I considered it another tattoo, another scar, another landmark on my journey. Besides, getting inked by a fish seems a bit more legitimate than trying to explain why I let Chief Beach Bum brand me, but that might just be my own hangup.

The Dangers of Caffeine Addiction

2009-04-19T09:48:00.000-04:00

Some days are double espresso days. These, in my experience, are pretty obvious from the moment you awake—you know you’re going to have to call in reinforcements to help you enter the world of the living, no two ways about it. Slightly less easy to spot coming are the burn-your-apartment-to-the-ground-while-trying-to-make-said-double-espresso days.

Let me explain.

You “wake up” and proceed to engage in a battle of wills with your alarm. In my case, this is my phone. My phone blasts a song that I firmly believe will be playing on constant loop for all of eternity in whatever level of Dante’s Inferno I will surely find myself in the hereafter. Each morning, it’s all I can do not to throw my phone against the wall and fall back to sleep while it shatters into a thousand pieces. Instead, I bury it under my pillow where I usually leave it for the rest of the day because I’ve forgotten it’s there. My friends love this habit of mine, trust me.

Maybe the night before, despite your mild allergy, you enjoyed a delicious avocado sandwich. Perhaps, because you were heading to bed anyway, you took a (few) Benadryl to stop the imminent allergic reaction. If this is the case then you, like me, may have awoken to a Benadryl hangover so thick that the only thought that could penetrate this deep fog was “Coffee. Immediately.” So, without attempting to tame your sleep-mangled afro, you pull the hood of your tattered sweatshirt over your head and lumber into the kitchen. By this time you may have realized that it is a much warmer morning than you had originally anticipated, and you’ve already started to sweat under your sweatshirt. You leave it on because you don’t want to subject your roommate and her friend to your unsightly morning hair—plus it occurs to you that you’re not wearing a shirt underneath and flashing is just tacky before noon.

Clammy sweat aside, the number one objective at this point is coffee, and God help anyone who gets in your way. You prepare your coffee with an inordinate amount of pleasure because you’ve just bought a beautiful (shiny) espresso percolator and taught yourself to use it.

Mostly.

You put the percolator on the stove which you turn on with no small measure of zeal. A huge, beautiful flame wraps its fingers up and around the sides of the percolator, almost engulfing it. There may not be a lot you can do about this if you, like me, are working with a Butagaz stove for which there are generally two settings: on and off. Any subtlety you may achieve with the level of heat is one part sheer determination one part wishful thinking. Today you pick your battles and let the flame win because you need that coffee done in a hurry.

You retire to the salon where your roommate and houseguest are sitting enjoying the morning in progress. They will later tell you that you were a truly terrifying sight to behold. Judging from your bruised legs, torn shorts and disheveled demeanor as you languished on the couch, they would not have been entirely off base to assume that the Boogie Man had dragged you under your bed and had his way with you before releasing you to make coffee. For all intents and purposes this is exactly what happened.

As you wait for the sound of your bubbling coffee on the stove you chat and maybe enjoy some of the Craigslist “Best Of” entries, in which people rant about the nature of human existence, bemoan a recent trauma that has befallen them, post personal adds, or generally ramble. Between giggles you hear what sounds like a thud in the kitchen. You all exchange glances but choose to ignore it. Strange noises are commonplace in your apartment, from the sound of the spastic kitchen faucet releasing a barrage of water into the metal basin, the fighting cats in the alley, to the shrieks of the baby that lives in the apartment below you and who, from the sound of things, has just acquired a keyboard. Lucky you.

So you ignore the nondescript thud because you’re tired of chasing strange and ultimately unimportant sounds. You in fact forget all about the thud because your roommate has navigated to the “casual encounters” section of Craigslist, and has set the search filter to show only postings with pictures. Wee! You spend a few minutes getting what can only be described as an eyeful and an education of the most extreme kind, and are so engrossed by the sociology lesson provided by the postings of m4w, w4m, m4m, w4w and several other combinations you can’t quite decipher that you almost forget about your coffee. It’s a miracle of no small kind that you were able to tear yourself away from the posting by a “hot little Latina” looking for a “beautiful pregnant mama” to hear that your coffee was boiling over.

Upon your arrival in the kitchen only one things registers in your mind: FIRE. It seems that the plastic handle on your otherwise entirely metal percolator has melted and fallen into the flame of the stove. Hence, the mystery of the nondescript thud is solved. The fire in your kitchen is, however, still begging its own hasty solution. You take a quick inventory of the situation—or as quick as you can since you still haven’t had your coffee.

First order of business: turn off the gas. You, like me, may have recalled that at your orientation you were warned more than once that all of the most recent deaths of Americans in Morocco (or wherever you may happen to be) were direct results of idiotic Butagaz usage. So you turn it off. You remove the percolator from the stove, making sure to spill boiling coffee on your hands for good measure. The black plastic is still on fire and releases noxious fumes into your tired face as it bubbles. Here, you might release an exasperated sigh. Maybe, you think to yourself, the fire will put itself out once it burns through all of the plastic. And you’d be partially right. Eventually the fire would burn through all of the plastic and extinguish itself. But that’s only if it doesn’t spread and find something else to burn.

This last caveat doesn’t occur to you until the black plastic drips through the burner and onto the table below. You’re still hoping things will resolve themselves, so you watch for a moment as the fire on this little black glob goes out. You are satisfied. Then it re-ignites. You are displeased. You try blowing it out a few times only to have the flame pop back up. In the meantime, more plastic has been dripping onto the table, and it’s just occurred to you that the stovetop no longer lives on the marble counter because you recently bought an efficient if not a little rickety table for it in an effort to free up counter space. The table, you realize, is made of pressed wood. In a show of stunning mental agility and mathematical prowess you form the following equation:

wood= flammable
table= wood
∴table=flammable

(by the power of one of those properties you failed to learn in Intro to Logic).

You hastily move the stovetop to the tile floor which, as far as you can guess, is not flammable. It is, however, getting covered in black pools of fire and is starting to look a like a scale model of burning oil fields, so you move the stove onto the balcony where you finally douse it with water. Being a little rusty on the fire safety training you got in kindergarten on a visit to meet the Marin County Fire Department, you couldn’t remember if there was special protocol for flaming plastic on an oven that was attached to a tank of gas. The plastic had both chemicals and oil in it, so were you supposed to treat it like a chemical fire or what? Or are there only chemical burns that need special care and that you must not pour water on? Here, your fire safety and first aid training get a little confused. Were you going to ruin the stove and the automatic lighting mechanism by dumping water on it? All of these concerns gave you pause and prevented you from reaching for a cup of water sooner.

But it doesn’t matter. The fire is out and you’ve made a mess. Squatting on the balcony you finally notice that the sun is shining on you on what is becoming a very warm day, and you are drenched in sweat. You think about trying to clean up the plastic, now more like magma than anything, but decide to let it congeal so you can scrape it off the floor later. For now you’re going to have your damn coffee even if it kills you (which at this point seems somewhat likely) and find out if that little Latina ever found the hot mama she was looking for.

Habitual

2009-04-13T18:16:00.000-04:00

It's something small
soft
like a habit
absentminded
grazing my knee
like it belonged there.
It gives me
pause
and I consider it
momentarily
I am unsure
shifting
I give in
to the sunlight
on my pondering
face.
Something small
like a habit.

Hi Mom!

2009-04-06T15:39:00.000-04:00

Stuart: There's juice all over my hand!
Me: That's because your mouth isn't doing it's job!

...that's what she said.

Doin' Mama proud.

Semper Paratus

2009-03-24T17:52:00.000-04:00

Few people who hadn’t seen me at the recent “Buy One Get Two Free” sale at the Steve Madden store in Rabat would suppose me to be a frivolous person. Spastic, yes, even flighty at times, but not generally frivolous. I can be pretty preposterous when mixed with endorphins, but my daily life is pretty much business as usual with running sarcastic commentary.

Which fails to explain why I can be such an airhead sometimes.

A very select number of individuals in my life have been privy to the kind to hair-brained decision making and lack of big-picture foresight of which I am capable. Usually, my friends and acquaintances are fairly compartmentalized—either you see me in a professional/academic capacity (in which case my cup of foresight and planning runneth over), or one that is strictly social—and I like it that way, generally speaking. In any case, the logical reasoning switch in my brain seems to be either totally on or totally off, and for one reason or another this generally works for me. When I get myself into trouble, however, is when the lever is somewhere between the two extremes (rational human being or complete space cadet); that’s when things get interesting.

Put another way, magical thinking can sometimes play a sizeable role in my planning process.

This I think gets closer to the heart of why I sometimes find myself in slightly idiotic situations. It’s not that I’m chronically unprepared, I just tend to find certain kinds of preparation superfluous, even borderline pedantic. Transportation details, for example, are things that I believe can be worked out en route (which explains the copious amount of time I’ve spent sitting at airports, train stations and bus terminals, just waiting for the “working out” to begin). Food and shelter, too, are things that I rely on the universe to provide. I charge off without snacks to find hotels in cities where I don’t live and I’ve yet to starve to death in a gutter. My ability to wing it where these macro issues are concerned allows me to clear space in my brain for micro ones like ipods, extra headphones, Bandaids and a roll of toilet paper that I stuff into my purse in case I have to wing it on the side of the road or behind a house somewhere. It also means that when the big picture goes all wonky and flights are canceled, trains are late, and hotels are closed, I don’t freak out. I’ve become kind of a cool customer after wasting too much energy stressing out about things that are out of my control particularly when it comes to travel. If things go wrong, I can shrug my shoulders and cue up a playlist because I hadn’t planned ahead anyway, but I did bring my ipod.

Which is not to say that I’m some kind of magnificently loosey-goosey mountain gal, either. I say with what I believe to be the appropriate amount of shame that I brought eyeliner to the Sahara but forgot a contact lens case, brought two times the amount of underwear I needed but only one long sleeved shirt for cold nights, brought extra headphones but no Tylenol, Bandaids but no sunscreen, and—most embarrassingly of all—brought a hair straightener but no passport.

The thing is, I can justify all of these decisions. The eyeliner I used when Rach and I spent a night in Marrakesh and met up with our girlfriends to go to a club, one of whom always looks effortlessly put together and I tend to feel like something someone pulled out of a drain when she shows up perfectly accessorized as I’m farting around in Chucks and the same jeans I’ve been wearing all week. I brought the hair straightener for the same reason knowing that we’d be in a hotel with access to power outlets, but I didn’t use it because—get this—I didn’t want to be high maintenance. Instead, I hid it in my bag inside of a t-shirt praying to God that Rachel wouldn't find it and disown or abandon me somewhere along the road to the desert. Again, I believe that my highly tuned senses of humor and abashedness in this arena help me walk the line between hopelessly unprepared and charmingly misguided.

Continuing in my defense: I managed to improvise a contact lens case out of water bottle caps and a retainer case (yes) and I had remembered the cleaning solution, so not only were my intentions good but I was also no worse off than if I’d remembered the real case. I wore every single pair of underwear I brought and rocked out in my ever-ripening long sleeved shirt each day. Rachel ended up with broken headphones and the prospect of an extremely onerous 15+ hour trip back from the desert, so I was able to play hero on that score with my trusty extra headphones. I didn’t get a headache so I didn’t need the Tylenol but I’d brought my migraine medication in a classical display of choosing the bazooka over the fly-swatter. The Bandaids were useful for cuts and burns but not as functional in the sand as sunscreen would have been, but Rachel brought sunscreen and I hung out in the shade as much as possible.

The passport, though, proved to be a rather fateful oversight. While I was packing my things before we left our apartment for El Jadida, a beach town south of Casablanca which was to be our first stop on our week long journey, I saw my passport and considered bringing it, even wondered if I’d need it but decided against it because I didn’t want to be the dummy who brought her passport to the desert, of all places. Images of myself frantically digging in the dunes, looking for the magic blue booklet flashed before my eyes and I chuckled to myself thinking, “ha, not this girl.” I didn’t bother voicing my thoughts to Rachel because I didn’t want to seem completely incapable of making my own decisions. I’m so used to being told not to bring my passport places that I sometimes forget it exists; forget that it’s technically my only form of legal identification while I’m living abroad.

That’s the other thing: for as often as I feel like I’m the only one on the outside of an inside joke here in Morocco, I really have come to feel at home here. While I frequently curse my ovaries in the face of street harassment, and I don’t always know whether people are being nice or just looking to take advantage of the white girl, I sometimes forget I’m a foreigner. Except for the fact that I’m constantly reminded of it everywhere I go. It’s a weird paradox to feel both completely estranged from and intimately familiar with a culture from which I am set apart. While some of my friends and visitors have jumped out of their skin at the sight of things unfamiliar, I have come to realize that the man in the white, pointy-hooded robe is not a member of the Klan, but rather a man in his Friday whites coming from the mosque. I have become so accustomed to seeing veiled women with such different styles and senses of fashion that I don’t consciously process the hijab anymore.

Which brings me to a funny story: On our way to El Jadida we had to stop at the Casa Voyageurs train station to transfer lines. As per usual I had to pee, so I went into the bathroom armed with my one dirham to tip the cleaning lady. After successfully avoiding peeing on the leg of my pants, I exited the squat toilet and washed my hands, lingering in front of the mirror. There was a woman standing next to me, and I wouldn’t have given her a second thought if it hadn’t been for our striking juxtaposition. There I stood, bobby pins held in my teeth as I attempted to tame my mane of travel-frizzed curls, and there she stood next to me, straight pins pursed in her lips as she adjusted and re-pinned her veil to cover her hair. We both stood studying the effects of our efforts for a moment. Our eyes met and I smiled at her and left the bathroom, tipping the woman sitting at the door as I left, perhaps more in love with this country than ever.

I joined Rachel on a bench on the platform and relayed my story to her, asking if I could borrow a pen to jot it down. As she rifled through her bag I saw her passport. I thought of commending her for her bravery in bringing it, but decided not to. I would come to find out that at that same moment it had crossed her mind to check if I had brought mine, but she also decided not to say anything. It wasn’t until a few hours later when we were pulling into El Jadida that she mentioned it. I had neglected to factor into my calculations that regardless of my propensity for misplacing things, I needed my passport in order to spend the night in a hotel. This realization brought me back to my usual whine, “but I live here for Christ’s sake!”

After a short break, we were back on the train from whence we came, laughing at our predicament. My wallet was laughing harder, though, after I had paid for both of our tickets home, which I of course did because it was my fault Rachel was along for a classically Jessy flavored (scattered) wild ride. We spent that night in Rabat, much to our surprise, and left for Marrakesh the next morning after I had double checked to make sure that I had my passport. Never mind that somewhere between Rabat and Marrakesh I “misplaced” over 1,000 dirhams, the point was that I could stay in a hotel! We stayed in said hotel right on Jamâa al Fna square with Rachel Rubin who decided to join us and who also didn’t have her passport. As a resident of Marrakesh, however, she had a decidedly better excuse for not carting it around with her everywhere. It ended up being fine because “Ruby” possesses the singular ability to project authority and entitlement, both of which she invoked with stunning mastery while explaining to the clerk at the desk that the number at the bottom of her two-years-expired student ID card was just as valid as her passport number. She was so compelling and charming that by the end of the night she had several of the hotel employees volunteering to help her with her ongoing apartment hunt.

After our trip to the desert, my friend Jon, hearing about my passport mishap, shook his head and rooted around in one of his closets until he produced a tiny can. “Survival Kit in a Sardin Can!” it said, and it came stocked with everything from a razor to a compass and a safety pin. “So you’ll be prepared from now on,” he said, with only the slightest trace of condescension as he handed it over.

I was thrilled. I have a penchant for might-be-useful-someday clutter (read: utter rubbish) that eventually crowds the horizontal surfaces of my room. Later that day I showed it to Rachel who had appropriate respect for its compact kitsch, but raised an excellent point: “what happens if you only need one thing out of it, like the ‘energy nugget’ Tootsie Roll? Then you can’t close it again.”

It was an excellent point, and it shook my faith in the can’s utility and ultimate ability to redeem my travel habits. Maybe for now I’ll settle for a comprehensive packing list on novelty post-its. Not as many bells and whistles but definitely practical in a pinch.

Keening

2009-02-28T12:45:00.000-05:00

One midnight
in the middle of January when
a South swell pounded
the cliffs
of my dilapidated
world clinging to the coast of
the Farthest West
and
the tropical wind made the air
warm
and the wind
sweet
as oranges,
I watched the clouds rush by
like rivers,
low and thin— mist
or smoke.
I leaned back and let my eyes,
unfocused,
give me vertigo— and
world reeling,
I watched airborne currents rush
over my
heavy
clouded
head.

-j

Critical Corner: A Brief Intermission

2009-02-26T18:33:00.000-05:00

It occurs to me that I have a very “distinct” way of putting things that sometimes can come across as a bit harsh or crass. I like to think that it’s one of my many feminine charms that I say what I think, no matter how outlandish or off-color, but I also want to take the opportunity to clarify where I’m coming from on the Moroccan-street-men issue. It’s one that has defined (too) much of my time here, is emotionally charged, and also provides many opportunities for my intent and opinions to be misconstrued because I’ve tried to avoid getting too academic or jargon-y/technical/long winded/boring in my blog. It is not my intention to make this space one in which I debate theory or rhetoric (after all, isn’t that what Facebook is for?), and I don’t plan to do it in the future unless necessary, but I thought it might be a good idea to define my terms this once before proceeding with any future installments of the Man Wars series.

And now, a message from our sponsors The Brain and The College Education (thanks for those, parents!):

As a wee feminist scholar in training, I’ve studied scads of theories about the interplay between culture and gender, and the intersectional nature of our identities. What I've studied are essential parts of any kind of Feminist, Critical, or Post-Colonial Theory 101, and by now I think it’s fairly safe to say that my identity as a white, middle class, Western woman means that I have experienced the world in a way that is different from a man, especially one from another culture (although not strictly because I am those things). This is something that some friends, in discussing my experiences with me have brought up, perhaps thinking that I hadn’t taken this into consideration before moving to Africa. Cross-cultural exchange aside, I think it’s safe to say that I won’t necessarily see eye to eye with everyone I meet here in Morocco, but I also appreciate that there’s definitely something to be said for being challenged and taken out of my normal context.

What I reject, however, is the kind of culturally relativist argument that says anything from another culture is A.O.K. just because it's unfamiliar and it makes us uncomfortable, or one that posits other cultures as necessarily degrading to women by virtue of their “Otherness.” While I have had some intense and occasionally threatening experiences here, I think that it is equally problematic to assume that everyone I meet should know about Women’s Lib and Simone de Beauvoir as it is to chalk the problems I encounter up to the vague category of “cultural difference.” One response comes from a place of blatant Western ethnocentrism while the other is inherently Orientalist and reductionist in its failure to consider the complexities of Other(ed) cultures and people. After doing more research than I'd like to remember on my honors thesis, class work and now my Fulbright Fellowship, I have come up against this second perspective far more often than I would like. It’s enough to make me go cross-eyed when I hear people talking about men as though they are somehow unable to control themselves or don’t know that what they are doing is wrong, simply because they haven’t grown up in the oh-so-civilized, Anglo-Saxon US-of-A. Not only does it imply a whole sub-set of colonial, racist undertones, it simply sells people short. The men who yell obscenities at me in the street or pace me for blocks in their cars aren’t doing it "because of their culture” (and what really is culture, anyway?) or because they don’t understand that it’s inappropriate. On the contrary, I have seen Moroccan women AND Moroccan men intercede in no uncertain terms on my or another girl’s behalf, so we can go ahead and cross “socialization” and “universal complicity” off the list.

It is precisely because you can’t reduce these interactions to "cultural difference" that they are so problematic and fascinating. It’s one of the whole reasons I’ve done the kind of research I’ve done, and why I’m doing it now. You can’t create an image of some kind of primordial, savage masculinity and use it as the sole explanation for rape (as was the case with many of the arguments about the recent Jacob Zuma case in South Africa that I studied for my thesis), for harassment (as I’ve heard a number of people do since moving here), or for anything if you really want to understand what’s going on. While those kinds of arguments contribute to the rhetorical landscape surrounding the issues, they are fundamentally flawed and simplistic—which is also not to say that cultural and gender norms have no part in these phenomena, either.

It’s a complicated issue, as multifaceted as our identities and as diverse as our experiences and it’s had academics scratching their heads and arguing about it for decades. I certainly don’t pretend to be the authority on the subject (hell no), but I’d like to think that I know something about what I’m talking about on occasion--or at least that I've considered all of the options. And one thing that I do know is that when people tell me that Moroccan men don’t know that their behavior is wrong or that they can’t help themselves, I feel insulted and angry for the many kind, respectful, and good-hearted Moroccan men whom I am blessed enough to be able to call "khoya."

I would hate for people to walk away thinking that my stories about my experiences are anything more than my flippant retelling of the frequently crazy situations I get into. I like to keep things a bit irreverent, as free as possible from the laden rhetorical and theoretical maneuvering that saturates the rest of my academic and professional life, but I felt that it was necessary to clarify things somewhat summarily, lest anyone think that I was coming from a place other than one of love, gratitude, and more importantly, amusement. Things aren’t as cut and dried as they may seem when I’m relating a story, but that’s the beautiful part about my time here—there is so much to consider, so much happening and changing me at any given moment that my mind is constantly in motion, hopefully making me a better, more compassionate, and street-smart sassy gal than before.

And now back to our regularly scheduled insanity.

Man Wars Episode IV: A New Dope (Each Day)

2009-02-25T11:41:00.000-05:00

About a year ago I was walking through a big crowd of people in Seattle’s Pike Place Market to meet my best friend Mandy when the man accosted me, shouting, “it wouldn’t kill you to smile, you know!” There were lots of men shouting things, the price of fish or candies, for instance, or their utter desperation for attention in the form of cat calls. I passed through the chaos generally unperturbed, but I felt this particular gentleman warranted a response.

“And that, my friend, is just the way to get a big toothy grin out of me.”

He muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “bitch” as he shuffled away from me, carrying with him a worn bag full of what I assumed were his worldly possessions. I stopped and watched as the bearded man with matted shoulder-length hair the color of ash was swallowed by the bustling market. Normally I don’t give much thought to men who talk to me on the street, but my self-appointed etiquette coach had given me pause.

I wouldn’t say that I’m a cold person, but I definitely walk with purpose and a determined look on my face, particularly when I’m alone in an unfamiliar city. My usual game plan is to look as in-control as possible, especially when I have no idea where I am. It had never occurred to me to walk around with a vacant and idiotic smile on my face. While this would make me seem less like an ice queen, it would also make me seem more approachable and thus more likely to be engaged in conversation by random strangers on the street. It was ironic to me that my usual froideur had so offended this perfect stranger that he felt the need to call it to my attention, thus engaging me in the very kind of exchange I wished to avoid.

On this particular day it was freezing, and I had come completely unprepared for the weather. Having lived in Southern California for the last four years, “Spring Break” meant something different to me than it does in the northwest, and in my usual attempt to try something different, I went north for the break rather than south. The result was me, standing in a pair of ballet flats and a flimsy cardigan, watching as the weather changed from bad to worse. It had been raining earlier and had since started to hail and snow. As I made my way through the crowd of well-prepared Seattle residents, I don’t doubt that my scowl was staggering indeed. My goal was simply to make it from my hostel to the restaurant without becoming an ice sculpture. I thought of trying to explain this to my mild-mannered friend, but I decided this was a useless endeavor and continued walking.

Still, it bothered me to think that maybe I am too closed off to people—to chance encounters on the street where I might discuss the weather or the price of gas with a person whose motives are a complete mystery to me. The man in Pike Place forced himself into my consciousness in the spring, and as autumn kicked into to high gear this year I was still thinking about him. Talk about making an impression. I thought that maybe I had sold the world short, that all of my dad’s lectures about men and safety had gone too much to my head, and that all that the junkies I’d shunned on Haight-Ashbury or Telegraph Avenue had wanted was the joy of my smile.

The greater part of me remained skeptical as I considered this possibility.

Almost a year to the day before my Pike Place pondering, I was walking away from the Royal Palace in Prague with Mandy, by now my established travel companion. We were walking down a smaller street when we passed two men who began making sloppy kissing noises and calling after us.

I groaned, “God, it’s the same wherever you go. The men are just disgusting.”
She thought for a moment before responding. “Yeah, I guess. But there were times in California that I think that if it weren’t for the Mexican guys standing on the corner calling me ‘Mamacita’ that I’d have the worst self-esteem ever.”
I tripped over my own feet. “Well, yeah, I guess that’s definitely one way to look on the bright side.”

After this conversation, I challenged myself to reframe my perception of public sexual harassment, but generally failed in this attempt. I couldn’t get passed the feeling of shame and indignation burning in my cheeks. I’d feel myself bristle and quicken my step to leave my “admirer” behind. Call me old fashioned, but I just don’t think that adoration should be shouted in the streets in language that manages to make construction workers blush.

My struggle with street harassment hasn’t become any easier since my arrival in Morocco. Before I left I tried to do my homework and read up on the culture and the history of the country. I was filled with a sense of trepidation when one source advised, “if a man follows you for longer than the normal period of time, try to find a policeman or another woman for help. Usually, though, they will stop following you on their own. Just ignore them, and never respond.”

Follow me? The normal period of time? There were standards for these things? I began to wonder what I had gotten myself into.

It was probably good that I read this rather alarmist and outdated source before my arrival in country, because it prepared me for the worst-case scenario. I usually don’t get more than a “ça va?” or “labess?” These are generally innocuous enough, and I can convince myself that people really care about how my day is going so that I don’t lose it and start screaming. There is, however, one salutation that I may never completely understand, and it seems to only happen when Rachel and I are together. We’ll be walking down the street and a man will come up to us and say, “Spice Girls!” Sometimes it’s an excited, breathless shout, as though the man in question has confused us with members of the British pop sensation. This would make more sense to me if I were wearing knee-high, pleather platform boots. I only own these in my wildest dreams, however, so I remain mystified. Other times the man will whisper it at us, like some kind of dirty secret.

“Mmmm Spice Girls.”

Rachel and I get such a kick out of it that we were thinking of dressing as members of the Spice Girls for Halloween. That way, the comments would seem more like recognition than ill-conceived attempts at pick-up lines. “Oh they must have seen us dressed up on Halloween!”

Rachel and I were asking a Moroccan friend for his perspective on street harassment after a particularly rough day about town. “It’s because you’re so pretty,” he said, shrugging his shoulders and giving us a sheepish smile. “If a Moroccan girl went out and no one talked to her in the street, she would think she wasn’t looking good.”

I found the logic astounding. I would give anything to feel invisible walking around the city, and according to this guy, they think they’re doing me a favor? Boosting my self-esteem? My mind whirred. I couldn’t bring myself to think of the men who accosted me as my own personal cheerleaders, working for my benefit to make me feel worthwhile. What disturbed me more than this was that he wasn’t the first person to offer me this explanation. I had thought that the other boys were just teasing me, trying to make light of the situation and get me to laugh. But hearing it again and seeing that this man truly believed it concerned me.

While I usually don’t let the attention bother me too much, there are times when it all just seems like too much. One weekend Rachel and I went out with some friends. Later on in the evening we found ourselves arguing with a bouncer of a club. Rachel turned on all of her charm in her attempts to cajole the bouncer, but eventually he brushed her aside and said, “I’m sorry, woman,” effectively ending the discussion.

As we were pestering the loquacious bouncer, one Moroccan man, apparently an exception to the bouncer’s entry requirements, breezed past him and grabbed Rachel’s hand, trying to get her to come in the club with him. It was so non-threatening and borderline playful that she hardly noticed and just shrugged him off. The men in our group, however, certainly noticed. As it was explained to me later, apparently this guy’s actions were meant as an affront to our friends. One of the guys took the bait and started a fight with the man, eventually retreating into the medina to find reinforcements.

Beyond the fact that we couldn’t see why the man’s actions warranted a street brawl, I was irritated by the idea that we, as women, could be used as pawns in disputes among men. It all seemed so possessive and territorial. Since that night I have learned to distinguish between male-protector-friends who are looking out for me and my personal safety, and those that are looking out for themselves and their reputations. The majority of my experiences have involved the latter and never fail to get me up on my little feminist soapbox while everyone else rolls their eyes.

Still feeling robbed of my sense of self-determination, we walked home from the club with our friends. My neighborhood is generally safe, although I have been advised by several people not to walk around alone at night. This seems like common sense, especially because there are groups of man-boys who congregate on corners and call or whistle after girls. Regardless, I figured that with three well-built Moroccan men escorting us home, we were in pretty good shape. We passed the usual hangout corner, which was deserted. I thought we were home free until I heard a drunk man down a side street shout at us. At first I didn’t totally catch what he said, but thankfully he repeated it no less than five times, so I was in no doubt of what he said: “I want to f**k you, bitch!” His call echoed down the wet alley.

He shouted it several times before the guys in our group stopped walking and looked down the street in the direction of the stranger. As the man staggered towards them I stiffened, preparing myself to witness a true throw down worthy of West Side Story, dancing and snapping optional. When they met in the street rather than punching the jerk’s lights out, our friends took turns kissing him on both cheeks.

My jaw dropped as I gaped at the scene. I turned to share my shock with Rachel, whose mouth was also hanging open. I was convinced that this had to be a late-night hallucination, induced by too much dancing and too little water. Surely, our wonderful, sensitive men-friends were not actually kissing a person who just shouted obscenities at us in our own neighborhood. As they stood exchanging pleasantries in the street, I began to work myself up into a big of a fit, marching towards the group and running my mouth as I went.

“Oh kiss kiss bis bis! You say you like my friends? Which one do you prefer?”

Luckily Rachel intercepted me and convinced me to keep walking home, but I did not go quietly. I began shouting down the street after the drunk man-boy as I went, going on about how much I love to be degraded in my own neighborhood. I then began repeating his original call, hoping that maybe I could mock him into being legitimately ashamed of himself. We stomped home, our heels clacking on the wet pavement, marveling at the code of ethics that we were failing miserably to understand. I was still ranting as we entered our apartment, and when I stopped to take a breath Rachel patted me on the shoulder and said, “I’m sorry woman.”

[Stay tuned for Episode V: Jessie Strikes Back]

Back to Basics

2009-02-18T18:53:00.000-05:00

“Everything I need to know I learned in kindgergarten.” I’ve seen this bumper sticker around in the US, usually attached to the rear bumpers of Ford Explorers or Suburbans driven by would-be youthful soccer moms trying coyly to shrug off the weight of their decisions that landed them in such domestic bliss. Still, I’m intrigued by the idea that we were equipped with life’s necessary truths before we’d even lost all of our baby teeth. It’s a tempting thought that would allow us to take all of our “character building” experiences as extras; bonus knowledge that we earn like gold stars next to our names.

In some ways, it’s true that we get our foundational logic at about the same time that we get enough muscle control to avoid falling on our diapered butts every other step. It’s actually the shedding of the diapers that’s been occupying my thoughts lately. We hear a lot about “potty training” from people with babies or new pets. One of the biggest concerns that people in this position have is when and where the newest additions to their families “do their business.” To be sure, it’s an important question. It’s one of life’s necessary and exciting milestones when we finally get this right. I’m sure I’m not the only one who remembers all of the children’s books and little trainer seats all aimed at helping the wee(ing) ones master their bodily functions. Once we get it right, we forget about it completely. It becomes like breathing; second nature. Surely, proper bathroom technique is a lesson we learn only once in our lives, requiring no further study.

And then you move abroad.

Suddenly, everything you thought you knew about this most fundamental building block of your socialization is called into question. Simple things like the shape and color of the toilet are enough to send you into minor fits of confusion and panic. “How do I flush this thing? Do I flush this thing?” “Do I push or pull on this lever?” “Why is there a hose in here?” “What’s that bucket for?” and of course: “You what me to do what, there?”

I had my first crash course in cross cultural bathroom behavior in China. I was a sophomore in college traveling with my Model United Nations team, and it was my and my team’s first foray into the world à l’étranger. Like anyone experiencing their first-ever dose of culture shock, I was frequently unsure of whether I wanted to laugh or cry as I attempted to process all of the new sights, smells (oh the smells) and sounds. During my first call home to my dad, however, I settled decisively on “cry.”

“The toilets, Dad! Most of them are just holes in the ground!”

My dad, ever the sage confidant, advised me that I could either sit in a phone booth hating my life or I could go our there and make the best of it, squat toilets and all. I frequently think of this moment as an almost imperceptible yet vital shift in my world outlook. It was the moment that I decided that I would never again let the frequent unpleasantness of travel stop me from loving it, or from going to as many new places as possible.

Let me explain why this particular issue had initially caused me so much distress, and why my subsequent victory over the Turkish toilet opened up a whole new chapter of my life. Simply put, I have a teenie-weenie, itsy-bitsy, tinsy-tiny bladder. It’s probably the size of a raisin and inflates to the size of a grape. I’ve watched those commercials about overactive bladder disorders with an uneasy sense of recognition, but I’m too proud (and young, I hope) to consider this the source of my trouble. No, I definitely have a raisin bladder. I also, as luck would have it, require copious amounts of water in order to function as a semi-productive human. One of my common refrains is “where is my water bottle?” I always have a bottle of water on me and if I don’t, I get a little twitchy wondering when my next gulp of life-giving elixir is coming. I recently invested in a Sigg water bottle despite my initial rebellion against designer beverage gear. I thought it was silly buying something nice like that when I could refill a plain old bottle until it virtually disintegrated. And I was constantly losing water bottles so if I lost one that I actually spent a significant chunk of change on I’d be pretty ticked off.

A number of factors eventually prevailed upon me, most important of which being a series of studies warning that plastic bottles equal certain death. Re-using water bottles was apparently going to kill me and everyone I loved because the plastic leaches deadly chemicals into the water after it’s been used enough times, or exposed to heat and kryptonite. I have a habit of forgetting my water bottles in hot places like the front seat of my car in the middle of summer, and always attributed the funny taste and slight burning sensation I experienced when drinking from them on to my epic thirst.

But no. I was most certainly going to have goat babies. Or I was going to hell for destroying Mother Earth through my consumption of plastic products, take your pick. So, along with the hoards of entitled and fashionably green Southern Californians driving hybrid SUVs, I went to my local over-priced health food store to get me my Sigg. I fell in love when I saw one that said, “make love not landfill” and was decorated with a bunch of groovy psychedelic flower-power designs. The other thing I loved about it was that it would take a beating. The first thing I did with my Sigg was drop it on the concrete sidewalk after filling it up. Now my Sigg is chipped and dented, a little dirty and probably in need of disinfectant, but I still haven’t lost it. Of course now I’ve jinxed it and will probably drop it down an open manhole or something.

The point is that I have a tiny bladder and I drink a lot of water which means my two principal concerns when traveling abroad (or at any given moment for that matter) involve ascertaining the location of the nearest source of potable water, and a bathroom. My standards for each have become increasingly flexible over the years. Whereas in China I was scandalized when I saw a maid stick a mop in a squat toilet and use the toilet water to scrub the floor, now I’d be excited that she was doing something to earn the tip that the sign on the door tells me I’m obliged to give her. By the end of my time in China I’d developed a pretty good system for dealing with non-Western toilets, and I started a game with my friends where we tried to find participants in the conference who had been to the bathroom based on whether or not their Western business attire was wet around the ankles.

Now I look back on even the most daunting truck stop along the I-5 freeway with a wistful sigh as I remember the good old days of such luxury. I’ll “go” just about anywhere now, including in an alley in the old medina in the middle of the night with Rachel acting as a lookout. I figure that if it’s good enough for the men, women and children I see doing it on a regular basis, then it’s good enough for me at two o’clock in the morning when I can’t find a cab and I gotta go.

As with many things, I’ve become much more relaxed in this arena and I go with what I’ve got. This means that on occasion I forget some of the lessons I learned in kindergarten, like the necessity of removing my undies before completing my usual balancing act over my host family’s hole in the floor. I was in a hurry—in “critical zone” as I like to call it—and they make everything so light and frilly these days that when in a pinch it was easy not to notice that I’d missed that minor yet crucial step of the process. I was just excited to be able to use a bathroom after holding it so long. And then I wasn’t. I don’t think I’ve ever looked more sheepish than I did upon exiting our combination shower/toilet that day.

Further evidence of my newfound loosey-goosey attitude is that almost nothing surprises me anymore. This has its pitfalls, however, because it means that some of the alarms that would normally go off in my head and keep me out of trouble have been disabled, and I don’t ask for necessary clarification or directions. This is how I recently made a fool of myself at a salon. Rachel and I had arrived at a salon in centre ville after going to a café, and so in my usual fashion my first question was “where is the bathroom?” It is no coincidence that this is the first sentence I learn whenever studying a new language. The woman working motioned to another room where they do some of their beauty services. I walked in, a bit perplexed by the room full of massage tables and hot wax. Then, in the corner, I spotted some bathroomy-looking tile. It looked like another shower/toilet combo, with a little basin and a drain. The only thing that bothered me was that there was no door or curtain separating it from the rest of the room. I cast a wary eye around the room and, reminding myself not to be a prissy Westerner, took a deep breath and started unbuttoning my pants.

Not a moment too soon Rachel and the woman entered the room and stared at me. The woman looked shocked and the started laughing at me as she pointed to a door in the opposite corner that opened into a proper bathroom, complete with Western toilet and toilet paper. She continued to laugh as I made my way across the room, shaking her head and talking to herself in disbelieving tones, no doubt saying something about the crazy white girl who was surely raised by wolves.

I left the salon feeling ridiculous—as I frequently do here in Morocco—and made a mental note that while it’s possible that I learned everything I need to know in kindergarten, there’s something to be said for reviewing the basics.

The Revolving Door

2009-02-09T13:43:00.000-05:00

So much about my life here in Morocco feels like one revolving door of entrances and exits. I suppose that’s really just life in general. People get jobs, move away and get married and start families which may also have their own sets of entrances and exits. People come and go from our lives, and this seems all the more pronounced when living abroad. Obviously, the first and most time consuming piece of this logistical choreography has been my own arrival in and adaptation to Morocco. For awhile everything is new and overwhelming (“Oh! What a charming medina!”) but now I’ve been here long enough to have real life find me, catch up with me, whatever. New friends and exciting new arrivals in my life have become departures, and for the first time in a long time I remember what it feels like to be the one left behind.

The morning after the most dramatic and painful exit of my life thus far, I lay in my dark room staring at the ceiling. I heard a soft knock on the door and Rachel poked her head in, gently informing me that she was going to our friend Anna’s house to rummage through her belongings. Anna is another Fulbrighter, but she is a year ahead of us and was just finishing up her time in Morocco when we arrived. She was in the process of packing up her life to move it back to the States and was eager to shed some miscellaneous possessions in the process. She would be leaving the next day, so we needed to go over to her house that day.

“I just wanted to make sure you’d still have a pulse when I get back,” Rachel said in that darkly funny way only a close friend can pull off.

I decided to peel myself off of the sheets, reasoning that it would have to happen sooner or later and I might as well train myself to at least go through the motions lest I should come to resemble the sin “Sloth” from the thriller “Seven” starring Brad Pitt. So, on an appropriately rainy day in December I put on an oversized sweater, ran my fingers through my tangled hair and mentally flipped the universe the bird as Rachel and I made our way across town. This turned out to be one of the best choices I could have made because, aside from the much needed girl time, I got to sit on the floor of Anna’s apartment and rifle through clothes, classic girl therapy. By far the best item I came across was a shirt from an Egyptian brewery that said, “that which does not kill us makes us stronger.” This t-shirt became my secret talisman, bringing me a sense of strength and irony whenever I wore it, which would be often over the next two months.

Rachel and I accepted pretty much everything while trying not to seem too frenzied at the thought of free stuff. We carted the bags of clothes and school supplies home to have a divide-and-conquer party. We decided to dump everything on the floor of our living room and separate them into “yours,” “mine,” and “ours” piles after we each took turns trying things on. We made this into our own personal Christmas, because we were already anticipating a potentially depressing holiday season spent away from our families in a Muslim country. This little party was also one in a long line of bizarre things we’d done in front of the study abroad kids we were housing. We had become Mama and Papa Bear to two young college girls on a study abroad program that unleashes the students on the country for their last three weeks to live and research on their own. Because we were hard up for cash we agreed to put the girls up in our living room with the understanding that we would overcharge them and subject them to our strange antics. We kept our end of the deal.

One of the girls, Suzie, we'll call her, came home to find us sitting on the floor in the middle of a pile of clothes, Rachel wearing only a sports bra and soccer shorts with knee-high socks, and me with a sundress pulled over my chunky sweater. She quickly settled in to watch us go through the clothes which included dresses, t-shirts, frilly tops and—inexplicably—men’s underwear. I was finally starting to really enjoy myself as we stripped down to divvy up the men’s undies. Rach was still in her knee-high athletic socks and putting on a pair of Hawaiian themed boxers and I was putting on a pair of briefs with one arm through the sleeve of a t-shirt when the other girl, Stacie, let's say, came bursting through the front door and then collapsed into tears. For a minute no one moved. Then Suzie went and knelt next to her, trying to coax full sentences out of her. Stacie sobbed that her grandmother had died.

Rachel and I stood, in some man’s underwear, staring at the floor. I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to offer condolences without a shirt on, so I tried to pull a t-shirt over my head and in my haste I ended up getting stuck. As I wriggled free I realized that I was only wearing one sock. Then I noticed that Rachel’s boxers said “Mermaid Island.” Stacie was having a hugely emotional experience and there we were, standing half naked in the living room. I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh. Not a joyous chuckle but a mirthless, soul-cracking cackle. The realization of my own seemingly infinite sadness broke over me in waves as I became nearly hysterical with laughter.

Suddenly, it occurred to me that now everyone was staring at me, and that I was still in the middle of the living room in someone else’s underwear. “Stacie, I’m so sorry. That’s awful, it’s just—“ and I motioned to Rachel and myself and sat on the floor with a thud. Stacie looked at us for a minute before smiling. She then shrugged her shoulders and said carelessly, “yeah, I mean, I knew this would happen while I was gone. Whatever.”

She turned away from us and Rachel and I exchanged dumbfounded looks. “WHAT??” Rachel mouthed at me.
“If she ‘knew it was gonna happen’ then what’s with the swooning and making me feel bad for being naked during her frenzy of grief?” I hissed.

Stacie, it’s fair to say, has a flair for the dramatic. After the grand display she calmed down and began packing her things. The girls were supposed to leave in two days but she thought she might leave early, even though there were no plans for a funeral yet. I kept a wary eye on Stacie as I changed, poised to grab more clothes so that I wouldn’t be caught unawares if she started to cry again.

I’ve spoken to a couple of people who are expecting their grandparents to die while they are abroad. I had a hard time empathizing with Stacie because her grief seemed like disingenuous theater on the one hand, and on the other her nonchalant explanation that she’d seen it coming confused me. I know that death is one of life’s grand exits, but it is also one of the insurmountable impossibilities in my life that my own grandmothers will one day pass away. I know intellectually that this will happen, but they are such a vital part of me that I secretly believe that they’ve worked out a loophole with the big guy.

And yet, in spite of this delusion, time goes on and brings with it many comings and goings. I’m trying to have as much to do with the revolving door as possible, because when I’m sedentary for too long, especially these days, I tend to over-think myself into paralysis. So, to cap off a particularly tortuous and rainy holiday season, Rachel and I decided to go to Spain for New Year’s. The trip was partially motivated by a shared desire to go somewhere where we could drink in public, and by my own need to escape my apartment and reclaim my life here on this side of the globe. It doesn’t hurt that I’m required to leave the country every three months to renew my visa because I’ve decided not to go through the bureaucratic headache of getting a residence card. I use the tourist visa as my impetus to travel like I promised myself I would when I moved here. So far I’ve been to Granada twice in a very short span of time, but my life had changed so much between visits that there might as well have been decades separating them. But that’s all part of the roundabout, I suppose, passing familiar landmarks to show you just how far you’ve come since the last time around.

When we got into Spain we arrived in the port city of Tarifa, which I instantly fell in love with. It was tiny and adorable and, more importantly, it had Christmas decorations up around town. As we passed a nativity scene made of twinkle lights featuring something that looked like a unicorn, I clapped my hands and squealed, “Eeee! Catholicism! Catholicism and the holidays season!”

Rachel and I found a little hotel that had bright pink bedrooms and blood red bathrooms and working toilets with consistent hot water. I clapped my hands and squealed again, “Eee! Catholicism, holidays, and European hotels!” After getting settled we decided to walk around the town which took about .5 seconds. Tarifa is truly a tiny port city. But we were able to walk around at night without getting cat-called, which made it my favorite place in that moment. There was something about it, though, that made me a little sad. During the off-peak winter season, it seems as though Tarifa sinks into itself a bit. Postcards showed beautiful sunny beaches and tourism while sparkling “Felice Navidad” banners twisted above empty streets in the howling wind. Signs for “AFRICAN ADVENTURES” and cruises to Merruecos seemed to half-heartedly mumble their promises as people hurried through the streets to get out of the cold. The town’s economy essentially thrives on the coming and goings of tourists so the winter seems conspicuously silent.

Back in the hotel room that night, I lay awake staring at the fuchsia walls and listening to Rachel’s deep, slow breath as she slept. I wished I could just pause life for a little bit and forget about all of the people who seemed to be exiting my life all at once, en masse. The purple curtains rustled as the bitter wind ripped down our tiny cobblestone street and whistled through the cracks in the window pane, letting in a cold draft. Just when I had resigned myself to a sleepless night of listening to the wind, I heard the bells of a nearby church toll three o’clock. With each stern, determined stroke of time I felt myself shiver, at once spooked and comforted by the somber tones. I curled into a ball underneath the covers and rubbed my icy nose, promising myself that I’d come back to this little city once in a while during my comings and goings, if only for the pink walls and long, hot showers. I closed my eyes and sighed to myself, “Whoopie. Catholicism, hot water, and church bells.”

Meet Your Meat

2009-01-15T13:40:00.001-05:00

“Just wait until Eid al-kbir! It’s crazy! So much blood!”

My friend Saad’s eyes widened as he began telling me about the Muslim holiday “Eid el-Adha,” or the “Festival of Sacrifice,” commonly referred to as Eid al-kbir, or the big holiday. We were sitting in my living room on Thanksgiving, which Rachel and I decided we should celebrate even though we were in Morocco. We each have deeply engrained family traditions for the holiday, and we felt the distance between ourselves and our homes more than ever as we imagined the gluttony-induced lethargy we were sure to miss out on this year.

As a vegan, I’m less attached to the turkey part of the whole thing than I am to the ritual of “doing” Thanksgiving in my family. It begins a day or two before Thanksgiving itself, when my mother gets sick. She gets sick enough that she cannot come visit my dad’s mother with us. It’s not an exact science, but for at least the last ten years of my life my brother, dad and I have made the pilgrimage to see my Grandmum as a trio. At first it bothered me that my family so blatantly strayed from the norm of forced family togetherness at the holidays, but eventually I got tired of making up excuses and would just tell people that the three of us left in the middle of the night and let the air out of the tires on my mother’s car to prevent a chase. This at least made my family seem interesting, to me anyway.

Grandmum lives in a little Victorian village in Northern California, in Humboldt County, the unofficial dope capital of the state. It takes about four hours to get to her place, although over the years we’ve whittled it down to something closer to three. My brother and I bicker over who gets to sit in the front seat or control the music, and then we’re off. The drive itself has a cleansing effect on me. The freeway narrows to a one lane road that curves through towering redwoods and traces the path that the river cuts deep into the mountains. As we’d get father away from home, I’d become intoxicated with clean air and greenery. This became even more pronounced after I started college in Southern California where I complained constantly about sprawling suburbia, crawling freeways, and air the color and texture of mud.

I can trace my life by these visits to Grandmum’s. Looking back, I remember the feeling of escaping my daily life, fleeing the scene of whatever melodrama was unfolding in my young life. I especially remember the crushes that I brooded over while everyone relaxed and talked in the living room. Even when I was young, each year I had a new fantasy boy without whom I would surely die. I took no notice of the fact that the faces changed every year, I was simply convinced that this year it was for real, whatever that means. This also marked the beginning of a bad pattern in which I believed that I was nothing if not loved by someone, failing to notice that the love I needed the most was my own.

Another reason that I can so accurately chart my growth by these visits is that every year at the end of our trip we all posed for a picture on the front steps of Grandmum’s house. This collection of photographs is like an unforgiving flipbook of my development, each frame showing the dramatic growth from year to year. After a few flips of the page my Granddad disappears from the photos and my brother and I start towering over Grandmum’s graying head. This means that somewhere in the world there are pictures documenting the most awkward phases in my life, from my slightly spherical pre-pubescent years to my emaciated, sullen teens, and now something more mature but hardly less neurotic.

Thanksgiving in Morocco made me desperately miss my usual hiatus from reality, but I was determined to make the best of it. I refused to buy and kill a living Turkey from the medina, using the fact that I don’t have an oven as an excuse to make stuffing and mashed potatoes the main courses. Rachel’s mother sent her the ingredients to make pumpkin pie, so on the morning of Thanksgiving we went over to our friend Anna’s house to drink wine and bake. The first challenge was the oven, or more accurately, the cupboard hooked up to a tank of propane. I’m a bit squirrely when it comes to the Butagaz method of cooking here, but after a few glasses of wine my fear turned into blind terror as I reached into the oven with a Bic lighter. A small, anti-climactic row of blue flame shot across the top of the oven, and even after preheating it the cupboard was still barely warm.

We decided to proceed with the pie in spite of our suspicions that we could more effectively bake a cake by setting it out in the sun on the roof. If it hadn’t been raining, I might have suggested it. The next problem was that we had no pie tin, only big rectangular cake pans. We also had no ginger, because what we thought was ginger turned out to be a potato-like root. We laughed off the setbacks, vowing to make the best ginger-free pumpkin pie-cake ever. Yes, our “pake” would be epic. The only thing legendary about the pake, however, turned out to be that it took over five hours to cook. Cook might be too strong a term, since it seemed to congeal more than bake. Anna kept calling from her kitchen with updates after we had been forced to return home to start entertaining guests, each call sounding more incredulous than the last.

“No I’m serious. I swear to God it’s still completely liquid!”

Still, we were going to have Thanksgiving, dammit. We ate our pake in the company of our closest friends here in Morocco, struggling to make a case for the validity of the holiday. Our Moroccan friends seemed inexplicably unconvinced of the likelihood that a group of wide-eyed and innocent Injuns would willingly hand over an entire continent to a bunch of benevolent and pious white men bearing food, religion, and Manifest Destiny. I don’t think my own cynicism about the holiday’s dubious origins helped things, and before long I was muttering to myself about genocide and charred Turkey carcass.

It was then that Saad started talking about Eid al-kbir. The holiday celebrates a story shared by Islam, Judaism and Christianity, in which God tells Ibrahim to sacrifice his son Ishmael as a sign of his devotion. Ibrahim is about to kill his son when God provides a sheep to him instead as a reward for his good faith. This story always scared me when I was young, and after hearing it in Sunday school I vowed to sleep with one eye open in the event that either of my parents seemed especially devout. I know this means that I missed the point of the story, but I also wasn’t too keen on getting sacrificed for religion before my first kiss.

During Eid al-kbir, families buy sheep to slaughter as the main even of the holiday. As early as the week before Eid we could hear the bleating of sheep in people’s homes. We saw men wheeling sheep through the medina in little carts, and others fighting with obstinate sheep who refused to take another step down the street towards their death. These stubborn sheep convinced me that they knew the fate that awaited them. At a friend’s house in Fes I heard stories about suicidal sheep jumping off of roofs or out of windows, sometimes killing people in the street below. As Eid grew closer our apartment began smelling more and more like a petting zoo, and I became increasingly queasy. The nausea turned into panic after I had a multimedia presentation from my Arabic teacher, who showed me pictures of the slaughter, skinning, and eviscerating of a ram. Rachel and I took it upon ourselves to warn the sheep we came across, telling them in Arabic, “prepare to die, Mr. Sheep.” It’s typical that I wouldn’t be able to remember basic prepositions and verb conjugations, but I could warn a sheep of its impending doom.

Saad invited us over to his house for Eid, which would start early in the morning so we could be there for the slaughter and then set about eating various parts of the sheep. As an herbivore, I was less than thrilled with this prospect, but I was really touched that he wanted to share such an important holiday with us so I agreed to go. Unsurprisingly, however, I had a migraine the morning of Eid, and stayed in bed for a few extra hours. Some time later I awoke to the sound of women’s voices singing and ululating which I figured signaled that the slaughter was over, at least in my apartment building. I thought this meant that it was safe to leave the house.

I don’t generally think of myself as a faint or frail person. When people around me get injured I’ve been told that I become a bit of a drill sergeant, ordering the wounded to elevate and apply pressure. I also used to work with children and accident-prone college freshmen, and after handling innumerable bloody noses and lips after a game of dodge ball, or nights spent helping the under aged and drunk into bed, the sight of blood in these situations ceased to phase me. As I left my apartment on the third floor, however, I saw blood in a completely new context: trickling down my stairs. As I followed the trail down three flights of stairs, I became increasingly convinced that I was going to vomit, and so I started running until I reached the foyer of my building. Once I was outside I tried to take a deep breath but choked on the smoke coming from three fires blazing in my alley. People had dragged wood down the street and made piles that they set alight. On top of each fire were several ram’s heads, at least three per pile, some of them blackened and singed while some of them looked like they had just been added. All of them still had their eyes, which seemed to stare directly at me. A little boy not more than seven hacked at a sheep’s head with an axe while his younger sister ran around waving a knife.

As I hurried towards the medina I passed at least two fires on each street. The most interesting was at the end of my block where there is a building under construction. I’m not actually sure if it’s under construction. All I know is that the skeleton of the building is still intact, although it’s surrounded by rubble. I never actually see anyone working on it, but I do see people coming and going, and I know that they have made little shacks in the corners of the structure. This building, combined with the street full of fires and people walking around with axes and knives and sawing the horns off of ram’s heads made me feel like I was in the middle of a street war.

It didn’t help my vertigo when a man in what was once a white smock with a belt of knives walked past me covered in blood. He had obviously just performed a slaughter and was on his way to another. I recognized him from my teacher’s slide show as a butcher. The slaughter is traditionally performed by a religious man who has studied to do it, but often now butchers and heads of households do it. It’s a big deal to be the one who slaughters the sheep, but as he walked past me I couldn’t help but think of Daniel Day Lewis in Gangs of New York walking through blood-stained snow holding a hatchet.

When I thought I couldn’t take the sight of any more heads or organs, I arrived at Saad’s house. He met me on the street looking giddy.

“What did I tell you? It’s crazy!”

He led me up the stairs to his home where, upon opening the door, I almost ran into the hanging carcass of the sheep that his family had slaughtered. Saad knows I’m a vegetarian and when he saw my face turn the color of ash and my body freeze up he steered me down the hall into the living room and offered me a cookie. In keeping with his reputation as the nicest and most thoughtful person on the planet, Saad had already warned his mother that I didn’t eat meat so I wouldn’t have to explain why I didn’t want any boulfaf, kebabs of liver and lung wrapped in fat. All things considered, the meal itself wasn’t the unending parade of meat dishes that I had expected. I knew I was truly in the company of angels when Saad’s mother gave me a little tagine of cauliflower and some bread so I didn’t have to pick veggies out of plates of meat.

As Rachel and I walked home from Saad’s later that afternoon we jumped over puddles of rainwater and blood while tiptoeing around piles of sinew surrounding the dumpsters that line our way home. We steered clear of the gutters full of blood while Rachel told me about the slaughter and how she had really wanted to be the one to pull out the organs but that she hadn’t been allowed.

She saw the blood drain from my face once again, and hurried to apologize. “I’m sorry! I forgot. I mean, part of me is really concerned that I’m not more disturbed by all of this.”
“Yeah.” I said.

When we got back to our alley, the fires had died down and there were only a few stray horns lying in the street. It still smelled like a petting zoo, except now everything was quiet and had the metallic smell of blood. The next day there were piles of sheep skins next to every dumpster, a bloodier version of the Christmas trees waiting to be collected by garbage trucks back home in the States. Seeing the trees lying there on the side of the road always fills me with a sense of profound sadness, but after seeing the skins in the street I’m not sure that I will ever mourn for a Christmas tree the same way. On our way to the store Rachel and I rounded a corner and tripped over a skin, stepping on the soft fleshy coat.

“Sick, dude!” cried Rachel.
“There it is,” I said, “meet your meat!”

As I picked my way through the street, I couldn’t help but think of what the holidays would be like if Ibrahim hadn’t scored that sheep at the last minute, or if Europeans hadn’t brought weapons and disease to America along with all of their good intentions. There would probably be fewer arguments about who gets to pull out the intestines of a sheep or who got the bigger half of the turkey’s wishbone. But then what would be have to talk about?

The Active Ingredient

2008-11-20T04:08:00.000-05:00

During my first two months in Morocco, I got sick more than I tend to in an entire year in the US. Some of this is obviously related to new food and living conditions, but gastronomic adventures completely aside, I’ve experienced legitimate cold symptoms. I have spent a lot of my life around hypochondriacs, and this cultivated in me a tendency to not seek medical treatment until I was nearing the point of hospitalization. Even when I did go to hospitals, I didn’t always get the kind of decisive, satisfactory experience that shows like E.R. or Grey’s Anatomy promise. Once, I couldn’t sleep because I was having really intense stomach pain. I tried to cope with it for a few hours, but when it became so excruciating that I thought I might bite through my lip, I decided that it was time to get some help. I awakened Andrew, by now well into his REM cycle. As he sleepily asked me what was wrong, I rehearsed what I would tell the doctors. I like to have it all planned out so they won’t think I’m faking it or being alarmist.

“I have a sharp pain that comes in waves and feels like someone is stabbing me with a steak knife. I’m not sure, but I think my appendix or gall bladder may have exploded. Either way, it’s definitely not gas.”

I’m a little fuzzy when it comes to human anatomy, but I thought that maybe if I indicated a general familiarity with my body parts, that they wouldn’t think I was a complete wacko. When I arrived at the hospital I was nearly hysterical. After prodding me repeatedly with what might as well have been a knitting needle, the nurse successfully hooked me up to an IV and began grilling me about my diet. Different people in mold colored scrubs then took turns wheeling me around the hospital, running different tests and having me pee on things.

I knew I was in trouble when they took me to a room with a big machine in it capable of swallowing a human body. They led Andrew behind a glass window that separated what I assumed was the spectator’s section from the real medicine section. They informed me that they had to fill me with iodine or some other polysyllabic fluid in order to get a proper image of my insides. I agreed before they told me how they’d be getting that wonder solution inside of me. So, with a tube in a place that I had never had a tube before and have never had one since, they inflated me until I had a bona fide Santa belly. A woman with long, fake purple nails then told me that they would be injecting something into the IV or fluid or whatever that was essential to the whole operation. The problem, the nurse informed me, was that it would make me feel like I was wetting my pants. She assured me that I would not, in fact, be wetting my pants, so it was important that I resist the urge to relax too much and accidentally wet my pants, anyway. I felt that this was too many sensations to be having in such a small area, but given the position I was in I agreed.

Once it was all over they rolled me on my side and had me hug my knees to “expel” the fluid in my abdomen, and Andrew tried not to laugh loud enough for me to hear him. I’m pretty sure I heard a snort come from behind the window, but he swore the technician was sneezing. After enduring such abject humiliation, my stomach was no longer my biggest concern. As I waddled down the sterile linoleum hallway, I nursed one hell of a bruised ego. They sent me home shrugging their shoulders and trying not to giggle, telling me they didn’t know what was wrong with me and that it was probably just gas. I don’t enjoy doctors.

On another occasion I crashed while riding my skateboard on the way to class. Luckily, I broke my fall with my laptop and tangled limbs. My elbow really hurt afterwards, but I insisted that I was fine and went to my classes, still riding my skateboard. That afternoon I was relating my magnificent spill to a friend, who observed that my left arm was twice the size of my right, and becoming very discolored.

“That’s weird, I feel a little light-headed, too.”

Later, as the doctor set my cast in the ER, he informed me that I had made things harder on myself and him by waiting until my arm was so swollen that they could hardly tell if I had broken my elbow. This hardly seemed logical to me, but I apologized for having been such a burden and throwing out his schedule like that. I vowed never to go back, even if I had to cut off the cast myself with an electric meat carver.

I recently had a similar idea about removing my own stitches in Morocco after having surgery on my finger. I underwent surgery only a two weeks before I was set to leave the country, and the doctor wouldn't be able to take out my stitches before I left. He charged me with the task of finding a doctor in Morocco to take them out for me, and while I promised him I would, I decided that my own scissors would work just fine. I think the doctor saw the DIY gleam in my eye and decided to take the stitches out a week early, probably saving me from countless infections once I was here, but also depriving me of a great story.

My impatience with illness goes beyond the frustration with the symptoms themselves. I become irritated by my lack of control over my own body. I expect to snap out of it just because I decide to. Once I’ve had a day in bed watching TV I’m ready to rejoin the world, but my sinuses frequently have other plans. Rather than admitting defeat, I tend to tough it out, going about my daily business convinced that I will heal out of sheer will. Without my parents or friends to physically take me to the doctor, this habit has gone unquestioned in Morocco. I have the added bonus of pleading language barrier when thinking of excuses to avoid the doctor.

A month or so ago I was walking home from class one day in Fes when I passed a man leaning against his motorbike. He had been working up a sensational logy, and as I walked closer to him be blocked one nostril with his finger and proceeded to blow. Rather than sending a snot rocket flying into the dusty road, he produced an anti-climactic string of mucus that dangled from his nose. I passed him before I could see if shaking his head around had adequately handled the his predicament. Overall, I was pretty grossed out and thought that if he could afford gas for his motor, he could certainly buy a pack of tissues from a street kid for one dirham.

Once I got to Rabat I promptly succumbed to a cold as a sign of general surrender to stress and fatigue, the usual suspects when it comes to my relationship with illness. I stayed in bed with Rachel also sick in the next room. Our apartment echoed with hacking an sneezing and slowly accumulated a carpet of Kleenex before I put on every article of warm clothing I had and shuffled down to the pharmacy. I thought that at the sight of me the pharmacists would instinctively know what I needed and let the healing begin, but this was not the case. Because my medical vocabulary is limited in English, it’s basically non-existent in French, let alone Darija. I made a mental note to ask my teacher for a lesson about bodily functions once I was feeling better. The general advice I’ve received about pharmacies here is to just write down the active ingredient and hand it to the pharmacist. I tried this in Fes with somewhat sketchy results.

My research here in Morocco has to do with family planning and contraception, so when I ran out of birth control I considered it only natural that I investigate the situation at the pharmacy for myself. I wrote down the ingredients in my pill and gave the paper to the pharmacist who looked from the paper to the shelf of medicine and back at the paper. This continued for a couple of minutes as I waited, trying to distract my 13-year-old host brother and his friend, whom my host mother had insisted on sending with me as body guards. The pharmacist informed me that they didn’t have anything with my exact ingredients in it, but that they had something with one ingredient in it that was spelled similarly to one of the ingredients in my usual pill. Because I was anxious to herd the boys out of the pharmacy, I agreed, thinking that I would sort out the details later.

Chris was rolling with laughter as I related the story to him back at home, especially enjoying the fact that Driss had been with me. Mid-guffaw he suddenly stopped laughing and became very serious.

“You can’t take that, though. You don’t know if it’s right, and besides, you’re in Morocco.”

“Well, it’s definitely a contraceptive with similarly shaped words to ones that I understand, and besides, it’s made in Germany.”

Chris’s face relaxed. “Oh, well, ok then. The Germans are really good at that kind of stuff.”

German prowess at population control aside, nothing terrible came of this confusing and slightly disconcerting experience, so I wasn’t too worried when I went to pharmacy in my neighborhood in Rabat. Instead of writing down ingredients, I pantomimed and demonstrated my symptoms. Runny nose and cough were easy, but congestion was harder. How do you pantomime pressure in your face and head that feels like you have a pillow stuffed in your skull? In the end, I just repeated the word that I knew in both English and French, and that I knew they would give me over-the-counter.

“Codeine. Codeine.”

That night Rachel and I toasted each other with glasses of bitter cough syrup with codeine, hoping to earn ourselves a symptom-free night’s sleep. While my cold has definitely gotten better, I’m still phlegmy and congested, with pressure in my ears that threatens infection. Rachel dug through her closet and produced a tiny, travel-sized bottle of Mucinex, now our only hope at shaking the last remains of congestion. I looked at the active ingredient and wondered how to say “guaifinecine” in French while I got ready to wash my face. As I rinsed the soap from my face, the hot water made my nose run and I thought of the man in Fes, feeling a special bond with him. Despite our differences, at the end of the day we were both just blowing snot into our hands.

Charades

2008-10-28T15:07:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago Mama Fatima opened the door when Chris and I came home from school and whispered, “Salaam Alekum,” gesturing towards one of my host uncles asleep on the couch in a post-lunch coma. It wasn’t until I had tiptoed all the way to the bedroom that I realized that the uncle in question was the one who is both deaf and mute.

Both the uncle and my host father are hearing impaired. The uncle is completely deaf and doesn’t speak, while the father is probably 90% deaf but can still speak, so he tends to bellow because he can’t hear how loud he is. To communicate with the rest of the family, the uncle has created his own special sign language which each family member interprets as they please and to which they respond with their own similarly interpretive hand signals. It’s not far fetched to communicate this way, or at least I don’t think so because I’ve seen many of my own relatives communicate in a similar fashion. In Mediterranean families like my own in America, and I’m beginning to suspect here in Morocco as well, gestures are just as important as the words, if not more so.

“How do you get Italians to shut up? Tie their hands.”

I used to think this was an exaggeration coined to make me feel ridiculous for flapping my arms like a crazed chicken whenever I have important news. I reluctantly accepted the truth of the matter after observing my mother. As an Italian and Greek Mama, there are a number of stereotypes that one could try to apply to her, but this one is particularly accurate. I once watched as my mother spoke on the phone to my Nonna, another Sicilian woman. Now, I would think that it’s somehow in our blood to be able to detect motion even across great distances like the T-Rex from Jurassic Park, but apparently this is not so. My mother was trying to explain some relatively complicated and abstract concept to my Nonna, and she began gesturing wildly in the empty living room, hoping that somehow the visual aids would translate over the phone lines. The elaborate show was wasted on anyone except my mother an myself.

On another occasion, my family and I were driving to San Francisco for dinner. Prolonged family togetherness, especially in a confined space like a car, can tend to seem less like an outing and more like a control study of the human reaction to stress hormones. On this particular evening, my dad was driving and my mother was running blow-by-blow commentary of the city and landscape flying past the window. Each musing and exclamation was accompanied by its own expressive hand motion. My dad, as an Irishman, is not a member of our special Club Med, and can’t handle quite this much input for an extended period of time. Although I’m used to the flurry of motion and words coming from the passenger seat when I drive my mother places, my dad, for all of his 30 years of earnest effort, still shuts down like an overheated computer in situations like this. This time he was especially overwhelmed, and he asked, half exasperated and half suppliant, “could you please just stop waving your hands around so much? I can’t focus on the road.”

It was as if he had sewn her mouth shut. Initially, my mother made an effort to keep up conversation with her hands clasped tightly together in her lap, but the result was a halting mish-mash of sentence fragments. Eventually she lapsed into distressed silence, looking like one of the hostages you see in documentaries who are bound and gagged, trying to communicate with their eyes of blink Morse Code at the camera. The reigning silence in the car was deafening and unnatural, and after a few minutes I shifted in my seat and said, “sooo….what do people think they’ll order for dinner?”

I have a feeling that if I restrained the hands of my host family in Fes, the effect would be about the same. In my host uncle’s case, the reason is obvious. Take away the speech of the rest of the family, however, and I still think they could debate politics, religion, and discuss the mental soundness of the neighbors without a hitch. The only difference is that the usual din would be replaced by the swishing sound of limbs cutting through the air. This would be a welcome respite from the usual cacophony of the kitchen, the living room, the neighbors in the hallway and the screaming kids in the street under my window.

When I first arrived at the house, I thought that Chris and I were perpetually making heinous faux pas. What else could all of that yelling possibly be about? The other day, I got my answer. I was having tea with some members of the family after school, and after we cycled through the usual pleasantries and all of the insults that the boys were teaching me, we lapsed into silence. Occasionally the aunt would gesture towards the food and the uncle would flutter his hands around, pointing at me, giving me a thumbs up, and then pantomiming something that looked suspiciously like the two of us going to coffee together. I decided that my best bet to avoid an eighth helping of pastry or accidentally becoming engaged was to contemplate my kneecaps while the rest of the family stared blankly at the muted TV. At this point, Driss ran into the room flushed and breathless, and began gesturing wildly in the direction of the Palais Moqri down the street. He talked with such force and constancy that I expected him to fall to the floor, at which point I would have to pretend to know CPR and save his young life. To my great relief, he finished his speech without incident, and stood panting in front of us.

Before the sonic boom there was a moment of silence as everyone’s brains whirred and clicked to process the news. Mine remained a complete blank, however, because the only bits I had understood were “I went,” “there were,” and “crazy,” so for all I know Driss could have been telling a story about wizards in drag. Oddly enough, the deaf-mute uncle started the chaos by waving his hands to get Driss’s attention and then shrugging his shoulders as if to say, “what gives?” At this point my host father waved in the uncle’s face and began gesturing while shouting at the top of his lungs. He shouted not because he was angry, but because he had no idea how loud he was. So he shouted an explanation to the deaf uncle in the same way that he bellows the hearty “BONJOUR!!” that he offers me every morning before I’ve had my coffee. Not that it particularly mattered how loud he was, because the uncle is completely deaf, no matter how loud we shout.

So Host Dad is shouting and waving at Host Uncle, who is waving at Driss, who has now started his trademark whine that only dogs can hear because Host Mama has started to scold him. Driss’s whining pisses off host Grandmammy, who abandons her usual reclining position in the corner and begins berating Driss in a surprisingly high-pitched voice, all the while waving her green glass prayer beads in his face. The older brother, Lotfi, doesn’t seem to like it when Grandmammy screeches, so he starts yelling at Grandmammy. The aunt then starts yelling at Lotfi for yelling at Grandmammy, and Lotfi turns to appeal to Host Mama Fatima. Fatima dismisses Lotfi with a wave of her hand and a brusque grunt, and then turns back to Driss and hands him the phone to make a call.

Then Mama Fatima did something truly weird. She handed Driss the phone and then turned up the volume on the muted TV, which partially drowned out the rest of the family. Driss, who by this time was clutching the receiver to his ear, started whining even louder at Mama Fatima, who by this time had begun mediating between Lotfi and Grandmammy, so she completely ignored him. Driss then started hollering at Host Dad, who has started watching the blaring TV. Host Uncle sees this and gets Host Dad’s attention for Driss. Host Dad bellows “SHNOO??” (WHAT??) and, misinterpreting Driss’s gestures, turns the volume on the TV up to a near deafening level. At this point Driss, who is nearly in hysterics, throws up his hands and leaves the phone dangling by the cord, with still another person squawking on the other end of the line. In the midst of the madness, I’m still sitting with my hands between my knees, looking from person to person like a spectator of some kind of full-contact tennis match.

I found the spectacle, in many ways, comforting. I couldn’t help but become nostalgic, remembering the times that a similar situation has devolved between myself, my mother, my Nonna, and a cousin or aunt. Usually it starts with something that my Nonna says regarding politics or health insurance. I know conditions are perfect when she starts talking about crack babies and her tax dollars. I let out a groan and lean back into the couch cushions as my mother stiffens in her seat, preparing for the kill.

I love it when my Nonna gets really up in arms about something. Both she and my mother have the habit of sitting at attention and pursing their lips when they’re really winding up for something. Sometimes my Nonna turns her head and looks at you from the corner of her eye and crinkles her nose while touching the tips of her fingers to her thumb and waving it around at you in the archetypal Italian signal for verity. This is usually accompanied by a low, growling “eeeehhhhh…” If you’re really gotten her upset, she turns the back of her hand to you and drags the tops of her fingers under her chin, flipping them out at you. This is one of the charming ways that Italians have invented to flip people off. Another is biting or flicking your thumb from your front teeth, Shakespeare style.

If you were to walk past an open window of my Nonna’s house on such an occasion, it would seem that she was sitting there continuously flipping us off, although we who are in the know understand the difference between running out of English vocabulary with which she can express disgust at an idea or institution, and actually being the object of such disgust, ourselves. We sit there serenely until she’s become tired of flipping off “the man” or whoever.

I mention this for two reasons. The first being that I grew up around and became familiar with a specific set of air traffic control signals, which I use on a daily basis. As a result, I completely misinterpreted some that I saw when I first moved to Fes. One day Driss was yelling/signaling to his father to explain something, and then he appeared to flip him off the way my Nonna does. I kept waiting for Host Dad to react and backhand Driss, but he remained totally calm, propped up with couch cushions. As it turns out, Driss had only dragged and flicked his thumb under his chin, which expresses “Bzzef” or “a lot/ many.” Subtleties like this matter.

The other reason is that although I was able to adapt to the group shouting sessions, I find the gestures sadly foreign. It is here that I more viscerally experience my inability to fully express myself to those around me. My hands fly around my face and eventually fall useless by my side. It was even worse when Mama Fatima entered the room. My mother and I could have an involved conversation using only our hands and eyes, usually ending with someone storming out or my mother wrapping me in a big hug. But between Mama Fatima the language barrier was almost tangible. It’s not that I didn’t understand her words—my comprehension is actually pretty good although I can’t always respond in kind—it’s the essence of her words that I missed. Without a complete grasp of the meaning behind her motions, it felt like we were expressionless, speaking in monotone.

One day, she walked into the bedroom holding two of Chris’s socks which were identical except that one looked like it had been washed with a Smurf. She held them side by side, and even though we told her in Darija, French, and with hand signals that they went together, she continued to stand there, looking neither confused nor irritated. At my parent’s home in the states, this interaction would have taken half of the time that it took in Fes, and I would have known beyond a doubt that I was supposed to feel like an idiot. But in Fes, the bewilderment merely faded into vague confusion with no resolution. I suppose I take comfort in the fact that laundry and our failure to sort clothes according to our mothers’ stipulations are talking points across language and cultural barriers. On the other hand, the interaction left me longing for a clear sign of exasperation and body language that I could read. Without these important non-verbal cues, my only recourse was to sit and smile like an idiot.

So on this particular day, I came home and tiptoed around the house so as not to disturb my deaf host uncle with the sound of my footsteps. I whispered to Mama Fatima and spoke in hushed tones to Chris, all the while thinking that if I just waved my arms emphatically enough, the uncle would be jolted awake as if I had screamed at the top of my lungs.

The restricted verbal communication made us all the more reliant on gestures which only deepened my sense of silence. I know eventually I’ll get a hang of the non-verbal communication here, but I still feel a pang of longing for my mother’s violent and staccato motions that could overturn every cup on a dinner table. I am never in doubt as to whether I am supposed to feel cherished or stupid, and I always know the appropriate response. In my family, the response is usually the one gesture I’ve missed the most: the hug. No matter whether we’re furious with each other, or we think the other person is a raging lunatic, we hold them close to us, even if only to shut them up. Here, the lack of hugs and my inability to decipher the intent behind the hug has left me feeling deaf in my own way. I know words and meanings are flying around me, but I miss the nuances. I find myself hugging my friends with such intensity that I’m afraid I might break them. The other day my friend Meher told me that she hadn’t realized how much she missed being hugged until I gave her a good hard squeeze at the bus stop the other day. There are just some things that words can’t communicate, not even to ourselves.

Flipping someone off, though, that always translates.

Entendu Au Maroc

2008-10-16T19:09:00.000-04:00

My time here in Fes is coming to a close, and this realization brings with it the usual nostalgia as I consider my experiences so far. Rather than some grand sweeping retrospective, I’ve included here some amazing quotes and excerpts of conversations I’ve had or overheard so far in Morocco. Enjoy.

Moroccan man gesturing towards a car-clogged street with clouds of exhaust floating in the air: “respirez ça! C’est le parfum!” (Breath that! It’s perfume!)
Me: “the diesel?”
Him: “oui!”

Me: “So where’s this patisserie?”
Stephanie: “I don’t know. Roz said to follow our noses.”
Me: “Well that’s completely unhelpful—we’re standing next to a sewer!!”

Thanks to a really embarrassing language barrier in class Rachel asked me: “Are you hard or easy?”

When discussing the logistics of me moving in with Chris and the host family:
Me: “I don’t know what I’ll wear to sleep though, because I didn’t bring sweatpants and I don’t want to be parading around in my underwear at night. I think that’s wildly inappropriate with three men in the house.”
Chris: “that’s ok, the dad’s deaf.”
Me: “Yeah but he can still see, Chris.”

Me: “So today this guy put his prayer mat directly outside of and facing my window.”
Rachel: “Are you in the direction of Mecca?”

Me: “I think we should call that little shop Australia because the owner is Australian.”
Ryan: “She owns the café next door, too. What do you call that?”
Me: “New Zealand?”

Me and a Marine I met in Rabat:
Marine: “I got a 1.75 in high school. I slept a lot.”
Me: “ummm, you must have slept a LOT!”
Marine: “yep, 135 people in my graduating class. I was 134th.”
Me: “who was the other guy, dead?”
Marine: “yeah, so I got rejected from every college I applied to.”
Me: “REALLY.”
Marine: “yeah so I joined the Marines. I just wanted to blow shit up but they told me I was too smart for that.”
Me: “well maybe you just never applied yourself.”
Marine: "yeah, that's probably it."

Man on the street in Rabat who followed and called after calling after Marko and I:
“In Ramadan I don’t eat. I don’t eat all day in Ramadan. I don’t eat in the day. At night, I only eat you!”

Rachel while ducking behind a seat to take a drink of water in public during Ramadan: “this is SO inappropriate but it feels SO good.”

Rachel, inquiring about the time of our train:
“Our train is retarded*, right?”
*In French, to be late is to be "en retard," which is why this is funny.

Simo after making a dirty joke: ::Shrugs:: “Things happen!”
Marko: “No. Earthquakes happen. People make decisions.”

A good quote I had forgotten from the movie Closer that I think I may use to explain vegetarianism:
“I don’t eat fish.”
“why?”
“Fish piss in the sea.”
“So do children.”
“I don’t eat children, either.”

Chis: “I’d be more like an implement, or tool.”
Me: “Yes Chris, you are definitely a tool.”

Until next time, same bat time, same bat channel.

Not-so-buoyant bovines and other adventures.

2008-10-13T18:53:00.000-04:00

Rainy days in Fes are days best spent in bed. The warm, tropical rains of September that left me frizzy and sticky have given way to the clear, cold torrents of October. It seems futile to even dress for the weather because the minute I set foot outside it’s as though someone in my building leans out of a window and dumps a bucket of cold water on my head. It reminds me of those game shows where contestants are punished for their stupidity with baths of green ooze or some other goopy and generally unfortunate substance.

“She’s trying to make it from the medina qdeema to the ville nouvelle without drowning! Let’s watch and see if she gets slimed!”

In an effort to simplify while packing I removed all of the warm clothes from my suitcase before I left the United States. Packing for cold weather in the August heat of Southern California while your hair is sticking to your neck and your clothes are stained dark with sweat must be one of the more irritating jokes associated with long-term travel. I had also been closely following the rise and fall of the triple digit heat in Fes on my computer. I assumed, with the help of some deductive reasoning, that Fessi fall would be somewhat similar to California’s: non-existant. The heat seems to intensify through September and October, creating the dreaded Indian Summer that bears with it the cringe-worthy predicament of bare legs suctioned to plastic seats. I’m always fooled by this, and just as I’ve grabbed my scissors and am ready to turn every pair of pants I own into Daisy Dukes, someone flips the switch and soon I’m attempting to make rings out of the breath appearing in clouds in front of my face.

I thought that I would at least have until Halloween, and it seemed for awhile that I was correct in this assumption. Now, not so much. Of the two sweaters I brought, only one even pretends to provide warmth. It’s about one size too big and is technically a men’s sweater. This kind of works in my favor since I seem to be adopting the garb of a cross dressing mad scientist, known as “researcher chic” by those who are really au courant. Unfortunately it is currently soaked through from my last venture outside and so is of little use to me. The other, wafer thin sweater that I brought was hanging on the roof to dry when the downpour started, so again I am out of luck.

The only remotely waterproof thing that I brought with me is my umbrella. This happens to be my pride and joy because it is, in a word, preposterous. It’s tiny, smaller than my forearm when closed. It’s bright, canary yellow with a pink floral print and ruffles that line the edge. I maintain that these ruffles not only charm passersby but also add valued shelter from the elements. A few mornings ago my 13-year-old host brother presented me with a huge golf umbrella in somber shades of muddy plaid. It was probably half my height and seemed to guarantee some degree of dryness, so of course I turned it down. Instead, I brandished my little friend and interpreted Driss’s silence to be recognition of a superior solution.

I realize that I must look ridiculous walking through the medina, especially in comparison with my compatriots. Some of my friends are armed to the teeth against the elements, prepared to such an extent that I am convinced that they lived in the Appalachians back in the states, or were hopeful contestants on one of those “Survivor” shows. Chris is a case in point. On one of the hotter days at the beginning of our stay he seemed to be wearing bricks on his feet that made him walk like the Tin Man. As a Sicilian I am familiar with what lead boots tend to imply, so I became concerned. When I inquired about his choice of footwear, Chris informed me that he was wearing hiking boots, and he wanted to break them in just in case. Just in case? I wondered, just in case of what? I mocked him for this at the time, but after the first deluge I ate my words. The “case” that Chris seemed to be preparing for was the inevitable moment when he would need to ford the filthy rivers of the medina without getting his socks wet, meanwhile my little ballet flats and I were soaked through with a combination of mud, water, and poop.

His preparedness goes beyond the ridiculous mountain man shoes. We got caught in a downpour on a trip to the post office, and he produced a little white bundle that looked like a plastic bag. At first I thought he was producing a plastic table cloth and that we were going to have a soggy little picnic in Maroc Poste and I got excited while waiting for the plastic cutlery to materialize. It seemed, however, that this thing was something that I was supposed to wear.

“Oh no, that’s ok. I brought a scarf.”

I proudly produced a small silk handkerchief from my purse. This was my idea of disaster preparedness. It would not only keep my afro from going into full bloom, but it also perfectly matched my outfit. What more could a girl ask for? As I brandished my accessory Chris gave me one of those patronizing looks that one has when witnessing a spectacle that is simultaneously endearing and utterly moronic. He unfolded the white bag until it became a legitimate North Face rain jacket. He then produced a more full-fledged version which he put on. I must have looked like a near-sighted ghost walking home, swathed in all that white fabric, hood up, zipper zipped over my nose, bungee cords pulling the hood tight around my face so that the only my windshield glasses poked out of the hole for my face. I was absurdly dry when we reached home, and couldn’t help but grumble to myself that my little scarf probably would have done just fine.

This I believed until I unzipped my school bag and found my handkerchief at the bottom, completely soaked through and covered in bits of wet paper and lint. It seems that my bag had become a soup cauldron on the walk home. Chris, on the other hand, unzipped his bag and pulled out something that looked like an oversized fanny pack or a hot water bottle. After unrolling it, he reached inside and produced his pristine school supplies and electronics, unruffled and completely dry. I started to feel that life was a little screwy. Here’s a guy with multiple jackets, bags that go inside of other bags, “sea to summit” vacuum dry packs, and pouches to organize the bags within bags, and I’m the one with a problematic affinity for superfluous accoutrements?

On the other hand, we could all do with a little of Chris’s compulsive preparedness. The Fes medina, for example, for all it’s 1200 years, has still not exactly figured out water runoff. I realized that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore when I got a text message from Chris informing me that two dead cows were found in the water system and that the water to the old city would be shut off for a few days. As a resident of the old city this would normally bother me, but Chris likes to lie to me, so I figured that this had to be one of this more elaborate jokes. I was convinced of the falsity of his claim when Rach and I asked our cab driver about cows in the water and he said, “shnoo?” We told him what we knew and he dismissed it with a wave of his hand. I am convinced that cab drivers know everything, from directions to Fes’s city planning, so I took him at his word. He then began to make puns on the popular cheese brand “La Vache Qui Rit,” chortling about “la vache qui se finit” or the “la vache qui ne rit plus.” Rachel pitched in and said, “La vache qui mett [dead in Arabic]” and the cab driver stopped laughing, shook his head and said, “la.” I guess they know about comedy, as well.

In any case, the idea that there were dead animals in the water continued to bother me. It seemed that the rumor mill had been churning away, and depending on who you talked to we had anything from a rat to a whole menagerie dead somewhere in the water, which would either give us a bellyache or cause a global pandemic of scabies. I became still more concerned when I saw women and children running to the fountains in the medina that night, filling buckets of water in preparation for the impending shutoff. Even Ryan, who would light a cigarette and remain calm in the case of nuclear holocaust, had amassed several gallons and buckets of water. Since Ryan also rarely bathes, it seemed that he was preparing for an extended period of time without running water, assuming that at some point during the drought he might want to freshen up. I polished off the last of my bottled water and entertained the thought of replenishing my supply.

I kept waiting for the water from the faucet to run red or simply not run at all, but it never happened. In the shower I mused that I might be bathing in corpse contaminated water, or that I might here a ghostly moo ringing through the pipes, but still nothing. I started to feel cheated. I wanted to see pandemonium. I wanted to witness people lighting themselves and each other on fire like they do in apocalyptic Hollywood blockbusters only to be thwarted by the cosmic irony of not having any water with which to douse themselves. I still haven’t gotten a clear answer, but it seems that to the dismay of many, there actually were no dead animals in the water. Rather unglamorously, the runoff from the flooded streets has polluted the water to the extent that it is no longer potable, and it will be shut off when we run out of clean water. According to my teacher this happens every now and then.

Although the idea that there is enough filth in the streets to actually turn an entire water supply bad is gives me pause, I can’t help but feel a bit blasé about it, believing that Chris could McGyver some kind of water diverting or purifying system using his boots, shoelaces, an anorak, and of course his water-proof fanny pack and some floss. I would naturally be standing on the sidelines with my mini-umbrella and scarf, harassing him for his common sense and general ingenuity. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that he could do much about the cows. While I entertain dreams of bovine snorkel supplies, I’m sure that even the toughest trekking gear must have a weight limit of some kind.

Le weekend zwin.

2008-09-29T17:22:00.000-04:00

I have a Moroccan mommy. Which is to say that I now also have a Moroccan family. Or I guess it’s even more accurate to say that I poached one from Chris. Lotfi, the oldest son of the family, has been sharing some of his favorite jams with us, including the ever classic “I’m a Barbie Girl” by Acqua. And who hasn’t shed a tear or two to “My Hear Will Go On” by the enchanting Celine Dion? Just hearing it again makes me want to go up to the roof, pretend it’s the bow of the Titanic and serenade all of Fes while pounding my chest the way the Canadian chanteuse did. So epic. He forever won a place in my heart when he played “We Will Rock You” as covered by Beyoncé, Britney Spears, and Pink, all joined in song thanks to your friends at Pepsi. The younger brother, Driss, is adorable and speaks to me in French all the time, which makes him one of my favorite people to talk to.

It’s not my fault that Chris’s family simply adores me and wishes they didn’t have to live with him, but part of it is his own doing. He invited me over to f’tour the other night, and I fell instantly in love with his adorable host mother, who just barely reaches my shoulder and has the softest cheeks in the world when she kisses you hello. We sat through f’tour and I allowed her to feed me copious amounts of food, a tactic that I have learned in the kitchens of the women in my own family. She struggled to communicate with me in Arabic, asking me about my family and if I was here in Fes all alone. I allowed Chris to interject a few words here and there, figuring that he has more Arabic than I do and it would be simpler. He kept repeating “kanbuya,” which I didn’t understand, but figured it made sense to her because she nodded and looked at me affectionately, almost pityingly, and then asked me to move in with the family. As she poured me another bowl of harira, I allowed myself to be persuaded.

Moving in with the family has been the culmination of a very long weekend spent dealing with my living situation here in Morocco. Rachel Rubin and I went down to Rabat to visit Rachel Markowitz in Rabat so I could see about an apartment she had been considering for us. Rachel M (referred to in this post henceforth Marko) has devoted the vast majority of her time in Rabat to hunting down a place, with the help or hampering of some of her Moroccan friends. By the time I arrived, she was pretty much at her wits’ end. But it was worth it.

We are now the proud renters of a two-bedroom apartment in the Océan neighborhood of Rabat, with a view of the ocean (!!!) from both of the bedroom windows and the balcony. It has a room for the toilet, one for the shower and sink, a full-fledged salon, another area probably for a dining table, a kitchen and a balcony. For this resplendent palace we pay a whopping $200 each, which works out to 3,000 MAD each. When I think back to having paid $550 to share a bedroom in a cramped little place in Irvine, I want to cry. Southern Californians would pay a significant chunk of their preposterous salaries to for this view, and would possibly even consider trading in their Hummer for a Lamborghini in an effort to save money on gas in order to pay for their modest McMansions that are in the process of sliding into the water from their perches in the sides of the dry cliffs.

My apartment is at the end of an alley, or as Marko and I like to euphemize, a cul-de-sac that runs into the main road going along the water. This little highway is exactly like Pacific Coast Highway in California except the drivers are crazier and way more fun to watch. We stood gawking at a group of Moroccan pre-teens who ran out onto the cliffs and jumped over 30 feet into the water below, into coves that the waves had hollowed out over time. After recovering from the shock of hitting the water, they’d surface and then flail in the water until the next swell deposited them safely on a group of rocks. I wanted to run over and introduce myself as the new kid on the block and then wow them all with some kind of Olympic grade dive, but I figured it was better not to come on too strong.

I soon understood why Marko was fit to be tied over the whole apartment business by the time I arrived. A couple of guys that she met when she was here on a program a couple of years ago offered to help her in the apartment hunt, and so a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend got in contact with a simsar who got in contact with a landlord who got in contact with another one of her friends who got in contact with her to say that maybe possibly they would meet at some time to discuss the apartment. I accompanied her to the meeting this weekend, in which the group of men including the owner, the concierge, two of her friends and one of the other friend-of-friends all stood in a huddle discussing our residential and financial future. They rarely asked us what we wanted, looking over only to comment on the fact that we looked confused or upset, and then returned to chit-chatting. By this point in the process Rachel had gotten better about asking what they were saying, especially because one of her friends Saad, aka the Angel of Mercy, agreed to come with us as a translator.

Once we had handed over a huge wad of cash, the guys took us over to a market to bargain for some furniture. Yassine was the driver and the comedic relief. A wirey man with a huge goofy grin, Yassine led the parade down the narrow street of the market and argued loudly with the vendors, frequently throwing up his hands and storming off, yelling for us to follow him. Never in this process did Marko and I know precisely what he was arguing about, but we knew it had something to do with our money and our beds, so we were keen to know the details. We continued to feel left in the dark when Yassine and Saad drove us away from the market and stopped outside of a shop and got out of the car. Marko and I looked at each other, and when we directed our puzzled stares at Saad who said, “just wait here.” It turns out they were buying us a brand new lock for our door, which I appreciated not only because it was bright and shiny but also because it looks like it would take a battering ram to break.

As Rachel and I waited at the train station to return to Fes, I felt peaceful and accomplished. I wasn’t even phased by the announcement telling us that our train was delayed twenty-five minutes. It seemed that things we perfect. Our train actually wasn’t that late, and it was brand new with frosty air conditioning. As we entered the Kenitra gare, the sun went down and we assumed it was time for f’tour and the call to prayer. Because it’s Ramadan, we figured that it was only natural that they stop the train so the conductors and staff could break the fast, so we weren’t concerned when we didn’t immediately start moving again.

We were able to delude ourselves for awhile because not a single announcement came over the intercom at any point in the ride to tell us what was going on. We continued to sit there for several minutes as the electricity in the train went on and off, thinking that there was still a perfectly logical explanation. We also explained away the fact that we were the only ones in our car, by pointing out that we had also been the only non-Moroccans in our car, so people had probably arranged their travel around f’tour so they wouldn’t be stuck on a train. We started to strain credulity when we tried to make sense of the fact that we couldn’t open any of the doors to get out.

“Well, the electricity is turned off, so we can’t open the doors…but in like fifteen minutes I bet we’ll be able to get out.”

This is the problem with being a relaxed traveler. Because we don’t freak out the minute it seems something might not be going our way, we end up ignoring problems in favor or remaining calm. Once the train started moving in the wrong direction, we couldn’t keep up our willful ignorance any longer. Instead of taking us back to the next gare, the train went to the train yard and stopped among the empty cargo trains. Each one read “fret” and as we passed them the message became clear: fret fret fret. By this time it was completely dark and we couldn’t see the gare, and we still couldn’t open the doors. I resorted to banging on the door of the train like a lunatic, and thank god someone walked by.

He stood on the other side of the glass gaping at me and asked in French, “what are you doing in there??”
“I don’t know!!” I whined, trying to don my best lost and confused face.

He showed Rachel and I how to pull the emergency latch on the train, and began trying to figure out what these two girls were doing on a deserted train. He told us that while we had boarded the wrong train, that our train had been late in Rabat and that while we had been waiting inside the correct one had come and gone. We would have to wait for two hours. Two hours became three, became three and a half, and when we finally boarded the train my serenity was a distant memory. By the time we got on I was so drained that I didn’t even care that there were shrieking boys in the next car over that were banging on the wall right where my head was resting. The men sharing a car with me, however, were not so relaxed. On a number of occasions they went next door to regulate. At one point one of the men jumped up and stripped of his jacket on his way out, and I thought I was going to witness some physical blows, but everyone calmed down and tried to talk things out rationally. I was just glad there was someone there who was more impatient with other people’s kids than I am.

After getting home at 1am and going to class, I packed up a bunch of my stuff from the villa and moved in with Chris’s fantastic family. His host mother informed me in Arabic that now she was my mommy, so now I have a Moroccan mommy, two younger brothers, a grandmother and a Chris. The grandmother is an adorable little lady with Berber tattoos on her chin, and I wish I could talk to her and find out about them. My friend said that the tattoos tell what Berber tribe she’s from. She was completely silent until Chris started talking about “kanbuya,” at which point she started giggling at me. I started to suspect something when the mommy was saying goodbye to me and she kept saying over and over that I was not “kanbuya,” and patted me on the cheek. I asked Lotfi what she was saying, and he said, “she says you’re not a loser like Chris says.” Turns out Chris had been telling them that I was all alone and a big loser. That may be true, but if being a loser scores me a sweet ocean view apartment and a Moroccan family, I don’t mind at all.

-jess (Aka Saida as my Moroccan Mommy named me)

Disclaimer

2008-09-29T09:40:00.000-04:00

This blog is not associated with the US State Department or the Fulbright grant or program, and the content of this blog is not reflective of the Fulbright program's opinions. The content is mine, and is meant as a way to share my personal experiences informally.