Thursday, 18 June
In the shadowy light of a Moroccan riad, I wonder. Locked out of my room, I sit in the grandiose lobby of sorts, three floors of tiled walls and pillars towering above me. In old-style Moroccan homes, the rooms’ windows all face the center, looking over the inner courtyard. If they wanted to, every person in this house could be staring down at me right now.
I wonder what they’d see.
Monday, 15 June
A group of people and I wandered about the souq in Marrakech for a while yesterday. The outer limits are more touristy than the inside: snake charmers placing their snakes on people’s shoulders, telling their friends to take a photo of them, requesting money because harassing people with animals alone is just not enough; women with henna grabbing foreigners’ wrists and gracing their hands with designs before they have time to pull away, and that’ll be 250 dirhams, please; a monkey on a chain whose purpose I can’t discern. It’s all rather depressing, or at least I imagine it is for the animals involved.
Deeper in the souq, things are somewhat calmer. Vendors have set up booths to sell their wares: shoes, clothes, spices. Our group attracts attention, of course—no self-respecting lot of boisterous Americans wouldn’t (sigh)—but nobody is too pushy towards us. When it starts pouring, we stop inside the shop of a man who sells musical instruments, and speak to him in Arabic a little. Other people are better at this than I, so I leave them to most of the conversation, but he seems really nice and dispels some of my fears of talking to people in Modern Standard Arabic, which is a thing that nobody actually speaks other than TV reporters and the like, but nevertheless what I have been studying for the past four semesters. We have learned a few phrases in derija, the Moroccan dialect, but only the really simplistic ones, and I feel silly and impostorish using them. Oh well. I assume things will get easier in the weeks to come.
Mosque we saw on the way to the souq:
And then, the souq:
Standing on top of a playground, swings creaking in the background, I stare at the sunset. Clichéd? Yes. Gorgeous regardless? Also yes. The clouds form wisps of orange and purple behind the distant hills.
It begins with one mosque. Allahu akbar. God is greater. Others join in at their own pace until the call to prayer is audible in surround sound. Allahu akbar. There are more words, but I don’t know them, and as each mosque blends with the others these words become indistinguishable, become something greater than the sum of their parts. Slowly, various voices die off, until one lone muezzin remains. Then that too ends.
The silence that follows conveys an inarticulable sense of peace.
Sunday, 14 June
There is one mosque in Morocco that non-Muslims may freely enter, in Casablanca, where our flight landed this morning. (No, I haven’t seen the movie; no, I wouldn’t like it if all your comments to me referenced it.) It is the third largest mosque in the world, I think, and the largest in Africa, constructed between 1986 and 1993. There are tours available in the hours between regular prayer times (i.e., sunrise, noon, sunset, etc.). We went on one of these.
View out the bus window on the way to the mosque:
Outside:
Inside:
The upper level is for women to pray; the lower for men:
The mihrab, or direction of prayer—towards Mecca, which in the case of Morocco is more or lest east, I suppose.
The hammam (this one is for women; there is also an identical one for men). A public bath, with community-centered but not explicitly religious goals. This is actually not yet open to the public, but according to the guide, it will be soon.
There was also an ablution room (well, two: one for men, one for women), but I didn't get a picture. Wash your hands up to the wrists three times, mouth, nose, face, hands up to the elbows three times, hair, ears, right foot three times, left foot three times, and yay! Ritual purity. Maybe. I am probably remembering inaccurately. Ho-hum orthopraxy. I’d make a terrible Muslim.
Hey everyone, long time no see. Sorry about that … we’ve been traveling around the country for a week and WiFi (pronounced wee-fee) has been scarce. That said: I’m in Morocco! When I last updated you I was in the states, in the nation’s capital. Since then, I’ve flown D.C. to Paris, Paris to Casablanca. I’ve bused Casablanca to Marrakech, Marrakech to Fez, Fez to Tangier. I’ve been laughed at by a ten-year-old kid after suggesting I pay 80 dirhams for the Arabic-English Qur’an he was trying to sell me for 150. I’ve bought said Qur’an from said ten-year-old kid for 125 dirhams (exchange rate ~8:1). I’ve taken two placement tests and made a surprising group of friends. I’ve realized time and again how obnoxious Americans are. I’ve realized time and again how obnoxious groups of forty-five people traveling by bright turquoise omnibus are. I’ve realized that the state department takes really good care of the students it funds. I’ve realized that I never want to work for the state department. Etc., etc., etc., and then there’s Morocco.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this.
Maybe I was looking for India. Where else have I walked through open-air markets that sell spices, clothing, fruit? Where else have I observed the lingering effects of colonialism? Where else have I almost been trampled by mopeds and donkeys? Where else is Shahrukh Khan a cultural phenomenon? Where else have I made the wrenching decision to not use the bathroom rather than attempt the complicated maneuvers associated with squat toilets? The list goes on, but there are striking differences.
(1) Cleanliness. There are roads in Morocco. There are also sidewalks. These roads and sidewalks meet at 90-degree angles, creating gutters of sorts. The astonishing thing? These gutters are visible. They do not contain dust. They do not contain trash. They are simply there.
(2) Poverty. Where is it? Yes, there are a handful of beggars in the markets, but that seems to be about it. I have yet to see homes made of corrugated metal, yet to see sheets of blue plastic that serve as walls, yet to see any real destitution. I am not sure whether it is masked or located elsewhere or really not there. The last of those choices is more wishful thinking than anything, I guess, but regardless I’d like an answer.
(3) Overpopulation is apparently a nonissue here.
(4) Traffic. There are traffic lights. People use them. It’s utterly confusing.
(5) Government. Walking around, large square billboards line all the major streets. Plastered across them are various photographs of the king. Also on the money. Yep, it’s a monarchy all right…
So yeah, those are my impressions so far. I’ve taken lots of photos and written up some snippets about the past week or so traveling the country, but I’ll space them out a bit so as not to overwhelm you, my ever-faithful readers. We’re in Tangier now, at the American School in Tangier, and classes start Monday… soon things will become routine, I assume. We’ll see how that goes.
