Marruecos (المغرب): Parte 1

This is by far my longest blog post ever, and since Microsoft Word tells me it’s eighteen single-spaced pages, I’m going to divide it into two blog posts to make it easier on your eyes and scrolling. Deep breath—and yella! (Let’s go!)

We left on Thursday morning, before eight, via bus. It was a leisurely three-hour drive to Tarifa, the southernmost point of Europe, a Spanish city just fourteen kilometers (about 8 ½ miles) from Africa across the Strait of Gibraltar. And we could see that other continent from shore, too: there were the mountains, just across the water.

The ferry ride took just an hour. We got into Tangiers, Morocco a little after two. We had about a ten- or fifteen-minute walk to our hotel from the dock. It was surprisingly very quiet and still, with not many people out. (I remembered Dad's stories about being overrun by swarms of obnoxious hawkers in Tangiers. Not my experience, thankfully.)

Our hotel was called something like the Hotel Continental, and it was respectable (clean, but with the trappings that even ‘nice’ hotels are beholden to: doors that don’t close all the way, shower parts that have been lost, leaky faucets, etc.). I got a chance to explore it at one point and there were so many unexpected nooks and crannies: beautiful sitting rooms and courtyards, and even a place that was called “The Bazaar”—a kind of wood atelier, it looked like. 

The staff all spoke English, Spanish, French, and Arabic (and maybe Tamarzigh, the "Berber" language, as well—who knows?). The head of the hotel—maybe we’d call his position the manager?—was quite a character. He would ask everyone what city they were from in the U.S., and then would tell you instantly what zip code and phone area code you had—unbelievable! (Yep, that’s me with the 98502/360…) He had also been featured on the cover of Forbes magazine, and had hosted Hillary Clinton, the President of Spain, John Malkovitch, and scores of other celebrities (he had all their pictures and signatures in a photo album he proudly showed off to us).

We had an hour’s break, and then we headed out to the city. To start, we went to the American Legation of Tangiers. Fun fact, which we were treated to many, many times: Morocco was the first country in the world to recognize the United States’ independence from Great Britain after the Revolutionary War. The American Legation building itself, now just a museum, is nothing to talk about; I think our visit there was rather pointless, and certainly much too long, looking at some paintings that had been gifted to the building and hearing about famous American expatriates in Tangiers (Paul Bowles foremost—who?).

Then we went for a walk around the “medina” (it means ‘city’ in Arabic, but I guess it’s also used to refer to the ‘old town’), aka the Qasbah, for a few hours. I was struck by how similar the network of streets in Tangiers was to the maze of Stone Town in Zanzibar. Although Morocco in general has a very strong, distinct smell (exactly what you might imagine Morocco to smell like—like exotic, musty spices and leather), there were also many smells on the street familiar to me from Egypt and  Tanzania, especially the unmistakable smells of the fish market and the chicken market. 

Unlike Zanzibar, Tangiers didn’t seem to have the same level of tourism, and subsequently seemed more catered to the locals but also dingier. The port was tiny and unremarkable, just a spit of concrete pylons. In general, I enjoyed taking in the feeling of being in another country, but as for Tangiers itself, it didn't feel like a destination.

After several hours around the medina we came back to the hotel for a talk from Juanma, someone who was a friend of one of the IES higher-ups, a young Granadan man who had been in Tangiers for several months working with street children. He talked about African immigrants trying to cross from Tangiers into Spain, particularly the children who attempted the crossing by hiding away on ferries and other boats. He also talked a little about Moroccan culture in general and his life there, which was very interesting. One thing that he mentioned which was surprising to me is he said a flat in Tangiers was more expensive than one in Granada. The reason is because of the desirability of the city’s proximity to Europe. That makes sense, but still, wow, that must be expensive! 

We had dinner in the hotel, the main course of which was chicken tajine. Tajine is a style of cooking where you throw various things in a big clay pot and then let it slow-cook for many hours—exactly like a crock pot, and just as easy, apparently (accordingly deemed a "man's dish" for men to cook). It was absolutely delicious, with lemon rind and various spices, the meat so soft I easily pulled it off the bone with just my fork. Moroccan dessert is usually fruit, and yes, we had fruit salad.

We had been told not to go out on our own after to dinner, but to stay in instead for safety. They had warned us ahead of time that especially due to its status as a “border town” Tangiers could be unsafe. During the day it felt quite safe to me, at least the parts we were in, but of course night is always a different story.

The next morning, after a delicious breakfast that was almost entirely carbohydrates (every pastry you could imagine, with flatbread and crepes), we went to Darna. Darna (Arabic: “our house”/”our place”) is a community center that helps women become financially independent by teaching them skills like sewing and weaving, while also offering literacy classes in Arabic and optional French. Literacy is a big issue in Morocco, with about 50% of the adult population illiterate, the vast majority of that percentage women. Education is free from primary school all the way through one’s doctorate, but of course there are many factors that prevent people from completing their education. Foremost in rural areas is the lack of access to schools, which may be many miles away from one’s village, and what is a long trek for boys (one man we spoke to had had a round-trip commute of over six miles a day, all up and down steep hills, to elementary school) is impossible for young girls. I’m sure there are plenty of other cultural factors at work as well (girls getting married earlier, perhaps girls getting educated not being seen as important in the family, etc.).

(A side note: there are three official languages in Morocco. One is Arabic, which includes Moroccan Arabic [I forget what it’s called], which is the specific spoken dialect, and is a blend of Arabic, French, Spanish, and other things; and the written form of Arabic, which is Modern Standard Arabic. [All across the Arabic-speaking world, the written form of Arabic is the same, and is MSA; the spoken dialectical form of Arabic in each particular country is often completely different from MSA, practically a different language, and often not very mutually intelligible between different countries.] French is also an official language and nearly universally spoken, at least among people in urban areas [I can’t speak to rural people], due to Morocco having been a French colony; and finally, Tamazight is also an official language, as of only a few years ago. Tamazight is the language of the Amazigh people, aka the Berbers [since the word ‘Berber’ is derived from ‘barbarian’, the term is not preferable], who make up about half the Moroccan population, the other half being Arab, with lots of mixing in between. 

Tamazight is a principally oral language, and its written version was only contrived pretty recently. They came up with a kind of symbolic cipher for that purpose, which you can see on some governmental signs. I guess the move to make Tamazight an official language was also a bit controversial because there are at least two main dialects of it, which are pretty different, and there was the question of which of the dialects to use, or if the two should be combined in what would certainly be an awkward, unnatural way, etc…  I’m not sure of how many Tamazight speakers there are; I only met one person personally whom I knew was a speaker, but who knows.)

For the Morocco trip we’d been put into groups of fifteen, including one IES leader (most of them IES professors) and a guide (most of them Americans, many of whom had been in the Peace Corps, now living in Africa). In our group we sat in a room in Darna with one girl about our age, Hafsa, whom we’d met before for the tour around the Qabah, and a man and a woman who helped at Darna, and asked them questions about Moroccan culture in general. It was fascinating. There was also an interesting range of perspectives represented between Hafsa, who does not wear the hijab (head scarf) and the other woman, who does; and the man. We talked about such things as official languages, literacy and schooling, foreign policy, and even a little bit about the king…

Which is a very delicate subject. Morocco’s official name is “The Kingdom of Morocco,” and the king is both the head of the government and the leader of the faithful—the head of religion in the country (Sunni Islam). He’s also the fourth richest king in the world. He has palaces upon palaces, exotic zoos, you name it, and owns various industries (the country’s whole dairy industry, for instance)… And he’s a dictator, and speaking ill of him, even in private (there are spies everywhere), can land you a heavy prison sentence. As is common with dictators, his framed portrait graces the halls of government offices, hotels, and even gas stations. We had been warned by IES before the trip not to ask Moroccans about the king and not to talk about him ourselves; I was surprised, then, when Hafsa herself launched into a list of all his ridiculous extravagances, clearly incensed, her two compatriots nodding along in agreement, and then closing with—“and I wish him all the best, of course,” with a big, sarcastic wink. “Careful,” the man advised her, mostly—but not entirely—jokingly, “you know he’s here in the city right now.” It was true. Every Friday (the holy day) the king emerges publicly to lead the midday prayer at a mosque (as Hafsa noted, it’s probably the only time he prays all week), and that Friday he had come to the main mosque of Tangiers, only a few blocks from where we were. Later, when we were driving down the street, we passed the mosque in question, flanked by security and scores of curious Moroccans hoping to get a glimpse of the king.

Back to Darna. As the midday call to prayer wafted in through the open windows, we sipped tea and passed around the tray of cookies a dozen times. Moroccan tea is ultra sweet; too sweet, in fact, for my taste (and I thought such a thing was impossible!), and comes with anywhere between a few mint leaves to practically a whole mint plant stuffed in the little glass. Moroccan sweets, which are bite-sized and often involve honey, almonds, or powdered sugar, are similarly guaranteed to make your blood sugar spike. (In fact, not coincidentally Morocco has a high incidence of diabetes.)

A little later some of the women who work at the center brought in our lunch. The plate was huge, piled a good five inches high, with a big piece of chicken on a thick bed of couscous, surrounded by various cooked vegetables (squashes and sweet potatoes) and garnished with caramelized raisins. It was out of this world; one of the best meals I’ve ever had. Apparently that’s the traditional Moroccan midday Friday dish. Mash’allah, it was delicious.

We were at Darna for several hours, but then it was time to move on from Tangiers. We got in our van and hit the road, driving along the Atlantic coast.

After a few hours we pulled over on a sandy beach. It wasn’t the ocean, exactly—maybe a quiet little inlet? And there, kneeling in the sand, were seven camels. Three were saddled and connected by ropes to one another, and another three, which were a little smaller, had their ankles tied, so they could only take tiny, halting steps. There was also a baby, all wooly and long-legged, fearfully staying as close as possible to his mother, who had a blue saddle on. He wasn’t tied up, but although he could run fast there was no need: he wouldn’t leave his mother’s side for a second.

The scene was beautiful, because the water was beautiful and camels are beautiful creatures (I think they’re so incredible), but it quickly became very ugly as well. The camels were on their knees in the sand, with their back legs down as well, so that the rider could mount; then they were whipped with a belt or rope until they got to their feet, with a terrible creaking of their knees and heart-wrenching groans of pain. They were led a little distance down the beach (the baby desperately running alongside his mother, kicked aside now and then by the handlers who walked nearby, whipping the camels intermittently), turned around and walked back, and then to get them to drop down onto their knees again they were kicked in the knees and whipped repeatedly until, with more terrible groans of abuse, they knelt. It was agonizing to watch. And since there were about thirty of us there on the beach (at that time—more groups came later), each camel went through this ten times without stop, every time groaning louder, looking more and more wretchedly miserable. Everyone was smiling and happy, and I get it—camels are really cool. But I just felt so sick inside. I couldn’t enjoy the spectacle—we were there watching beautiful animals enslaved and tortured.

For all that their pain pained me, however, I did ride one of the camels. The distinct, rhythmic motion they have was extremely relaxing, and the saddle was very comfortable. I could have ridden off into the dunes for days… The last time I rode a camel I was a small-for-my-age nine year-old and I remember a very bumpy ride, worried I was going to fall off. Size, and acquired balance skills I definitely lacked back then, helped a lot this time around, and I was very much at ease. I just hated everything else about that experience, though. I’m definitely going to note in my evaluation of the trip that I think it’s unconscionable that IES supports these people twice a year. Sure, animal abuse is the norm in many places, in fact most of the world; but that doesn’t mean you should put money into such a system if you don't have to.

After we left the camels we drove into the town of Asilah. It was raining. Asilah is on the sea, and it was beautiful to look out from the city walls across the stormy ocean. Asilah on the whole was pretty unremarkable, though. The best thing about it was that every year they have a graffiti contest where they bring in artists from around the world to paint designs on many walls, and then after a certain period of time they paint them over once more. Not all of them, though—my favorite I saw was by El Niño de las Pinturas, who is actually Granadan. His work is everywhere in Granada, especially in the Realejo district, and I always enjoy it (very distinctive, flowy lettering, lots of shading and real talent in the drawings), but this picture was by far his best. It was a vast, sparkling collage scene of Moroccan people and birds and cities and oceans that was just beautiful. May they never paint it over! Another cool painting was a monochromatic scale of a stormy gray-blue that was formed by hundreds of individual Arabic letters overlaid one on top of the other to form a texture. From a distance you couldn’t tell what it was; you had to be close to it to see its secret. Very neat.

After Asilah we continued along the Atlantic Coast to Rabat, and got in just as the sun was setting. We said goodbye to our driver for the night and then went into a building where representatives from the host families were waiting to collect us. We had divided ourselves into groups of three, and each group went with one of the families. What an incredible opportunity that we got to live in host families there in Rabat for two nights.

The three of us went with Hefna (Hesna? Now I’m not sure), a woman who looked to be in her early thirties who didn’t wear the hijab. One of the provisions for the host families was that there had to be at least one person around in the house able to speak enough English. (Some families satisfied this by inviting over a neighbor or a cousin who knew some English just for the weekend.) Hefna was our contact in this regard; she had studied English for three years, she told us.

The house/apartment (I’m not sure what it was) actually shared the building with a mosque. You unlocked the door, and directly in front of you was another door, behind which was the mosque (an amazing moment: once we came in and the door was open, revealing the prayer hall itself, and there was the mu’adhin yelling out the call to prayer—he was just standing there in the middle of the room, bellowing, rocking back and forth with his whole body, projecting his voice); to the right was another door, which led up to the family’s living space. An extremely narrow, steep set of uneven stairs which twisted around led up first to a landing where the toilet was (a squat toilet with a faucet and a bucket of water for “flushing” and a minuscule alcove with another faucet and soap); continuing upwards one came to the rooms.

There were at least five rooms, three of which we saw. There was a kitchen, whose entrance was just slightly low enough that you had to duck to get in (once, in a hurry to brush my teeth in the morning, I plowed through and nearly knocked myself unconscious—ouch!), a room with two couches on either side that functioned as the family/TV-watching room, but which was also kind of a hallway connecting sides of the house; our room, which was quite spacious and made up of couches on all four sides (“couches”—very firm, no backs, patterned in a luxurious silk-like material with an Oriental design and piled up with huge, extremely heavy, similarly-stiff and identically-patterned pillows) and a table in the middle, a bejeweled chandelier above. (The room, like most rooms in traditional Islamic design, was multifunctional: sheets were brought in and the couches served as our beds. Similarly, people would sleep on the couches in the TV-watching room, and who slept where varied from night to night.) There were also at least two other sleeping rooms, which from the sounds of it several people shared, and a roof terrace off of the kitchen for hanging up laundry, etc.

There were a lot of people in this house. There was a mother, maybe in her fifties or so, and a father, more grizzled, probably in his sixties; three daughters (Hefna, Maryam, and Esma) and a son (Hussain), who all looked around the same age, maybe ranging from early to late thirties; and Esma’s baby girl Sīham, whom my friend who knows early childhood development guessed was about 18 months old. (I don’t usually ‘get’ children very well, but I loved Sīham. Talk about a beautiful baby with an endlessly sunny disposition.)

We weren’t hungry just then when we got in, around 8 PM, so Hefna proposed we go for a walk on the town and come back for dinner after. It was dark by then, the kind of indigo-skied time just after twilight. The street the house was on was a main drag of sorts: a pedestrian area closely lined on both sides by vendors selling anything from street food to household cleaning supplies, rows of dishwashing soap carefully lined up on the ground. Everything was abuzz with life, seeming all the more vibrant because it was nighttime and all the lights stood out brightly. Also, it seemed that just like in Spain, the night makes the city come awake: everyone getting home from work was out and ready to walk the town. We passed a bright mosque with open doors, whose minaret in the solid, square style typical of North Africa and Andalucía was the best landmark in a sea of low stalls.

Then we emerged onto the real main drag, big paved streets teeming with cars. A surprise to see: all the crosswalks were regulated with walk/don’t walk red/green lights, and the pedestrians by and large heeded them, even where, had this been Spain, no one would have. (There was some essential jaywalking elsewhere, weaving between cars backed up at traffic lights, which was more in line with what I expected.)

The streets were broad and lined by restaurants, clothing stores, and things like bed and bath supplies—we went into the latter, and I enjoyed the song playing on the radio, whose bilingual chorus went “Alhamdullilah, all praises to Allah.” Hefna popped into a clothing store briefly to exchange a pair of jeans. As she was on her way out, she stopped in front of one of the shirts on display and asked the man who’d been helping her, “and this one—do you have it in a large?” I would have never known I knew how to say that in Arabic, but apparently I do. That was fun.

We walked down the big, broad boulevard up to the historic train station. The flag of Morocco, by the way, is an eye-aching combination of a green five-pointed star, pentagram-style, on a bright red background; and the five-pointed star featured solo on lots of public buildings like the train station, contextually disarming me, as if it were a Wiccan sign, or something (just like in the Indian district in Dar es-Salaam this summer where the “swastika” sign was on lots of temples as a Hindu symbol).

It was about a half-hour walk all-told, and then we came back for dinner, which was served at the table in the kitchen. It was a middle-class home, with all the amenities one could wish for in a comfortable apartment, but my friend told me in hushed tones, “I’ve never seen a kitchen like that before.” I’m not entirely sure what she meant by that, which particular elements she was referring to; and to be honest I wouldn’t have taken note of it except because my two friends were so shocked… Personally, my impression was “no frills, but serviceable.”

(It was something I wondered about the whole time: for most people in the program, Morocco was their first time in a developing, non-Western country, and things awed/shocked them that didn’t have the same effect on me. I don’t want to become inured to these things and jaded. But it was also interesting to reflect and try to remember back to what had been my first moments of culture shock during trips along the years, what had made me comfortable or used to these things, etc. I think my process of becoming used to certain things might be different from other people’s because I went to Turkey and Egypt at such a young age. I remember everything, but from a child’s perspective, which I’m sure would be radically different were I to go back now. You don’t register certain elements of poverty and difference in the same way as a child, because you’re ignorant and oblivious to these things. For me at that age, everything was just so exciting and exotic. I still get excited about so-called exotic places, but I see other sides to it, now, too—although I’m still ignorant and oblivious about lots of things as well, of course.)

For our first course at dinner we were served delicious soup—I’m not really sure of the ingredients, except tomato for sure—which had the kind of viscous texture of miso. We were also given at least two rounds of khubz apiece, the thick, sturdy bread that is a staple of Moroccan life. The rounds, about personal-pizza size around and two inches thick, are stacked in the center of the table, and you rip off large pieces for yourself, or else whoever’s taking on the role of server passes you ripped-off halves.

(One morning, walking to our group’s meeting place, I saw a little boy helping an old man, who was a bread vendor, transport some rounds from the bakery to his cart on the back of his bicycle. The boy only looked to be about six, and although he was trying to carry the rounds carefully, the load of about five slipped out from his arms and landed in the street which was coated in mud and grit from the recent rain. I watched, and the old man told the boy “no problem” with a kindly wave of his hand and picked up the rounds and put them in his cart along with the rest…I wasn’t sure how I felt about this; I felt very ambivalent. Part of me thought I should be grossed out, part of me didn’t care, part of me thought anything else would have been a stupid waste.)

After the soup, which was quite filling enough (I was plied with food the whole trip, and the entire time was in a perpetual state of extreme fullness), our host mother brought out a big platter of the same dish we’d had for lunch the day before in Tangiers, of chicken on a bed of couscous with cooked vegetables. Well, that never gets old! I ate up. You’re supposed to eat with your hands (or, hand, that is—you can only bring your right hand to your mouth, and so you generally keep your left hand in your lap, but you’re allowed to use both for certain tasks that essentially require both, like ripping bread. Boy, on this trip, did I become aware of the range of my ambidexterity. There are certain things I really just prefer to use my left hand for/find difficult to do with my right hand, but so it goes…). Eating couscous with your hand is extremely difficult! Our host mother showed us how, grabbing a portion and then shaking it within her palm to roll it into a ball; and I tried this method, but I just couldn’t stand the sticky, messy texture of the couscous all over my hand and preferred to use my spoon instead.

The communal-platter style is how Moroccan family meals are eaten, and there are certain necessary, tacit cultural rules that accompany it. For instance: although it’s a communal platter, each person does have their own portion, that which is directly in front of them—to lean over and take from elsewhere on the plate would be very rude. That said, if you’re eating more than someone else, the hostess will note this and shift the food around a bit to give you more.

We also drank tea with our meal, which in such a short period of time I had grown to dread. Just too horribly sweet; essentially liquid sugar. The food was heavenly, though—and really, in the whole country I had food that ranks at the top of my list of my best meals ever. Dessert was a choice of apples or bananas. I was painfully full and had neither. Bedtime.