First Weekend in Morocco.

Apologies for the missed few days! Here are the entries for two days ago, yesterday, and the day before. It's a doozy.

McDonald's Fries: Better in Morocco -- Day 3

I'm starting to think that there's no such thing as a "short day" here in Morocco, at least within the context of this trip. I say this because I was about to star this entry with "It's been a long day," but upon further reflection, realized that it's been no longer than yesterday or the day before, though packed full like both. We began the day with class at the CCCL. The walk there is about 20-25 minutes from the hotel; I think tomorrow I'll be able to do it without directions, no small feat once we get into the narrow, twisting alleys of the Medina.

Our first lecture today was "Costumes of Morocco." When Farah, the lecturer, walked in, I was struck by how elegant she was. She wasn't arrogant or aloof when she spoke, far from it, but she seemed to me extremely dignified, while managing to be friendly, warm, and welcoming at the same time. She talked for a while about Moroccan clothing customs, especially about the amount of covering that women wear. I learned that, until recently (and currently, in certain more conservative neighborhoods), social class and covering were directly correlated; the richest, highest-class woman would almost never leave the house, and if she were by some extenuating circumstances forced to, she would cover everything but one eye in a loose, shapeless robe. Demonstrations of some of the different flavors of Moroccan clothes were, of course, in order. At some point, I'll be posting pictures, so look for one of me dressed as an Amazighi (Berber) tribesman if you feel like laughing at your computer for ten minutes. Other Jonathan (there are three Jo(h)ns on this trip: your humble narrator, John "Spac" Spacapan, and Jonathan Williams, and we room together) got wrapped in this Saharan tribal outfit, complete with veil. He looked like he had just stepped out of Prince of Egypt or Lawrence of Arabia. All he was missing was a scimitar, and he looked like he really wanted one around the fifth time that some of the girls told him to hold still so that they could take a picture.

After lunch, we walked around the souk (marketplace) in the Medina. I picked up a few gifts for people back home; you're probably not getting one. Jerk. I bought a nifty curved Arab knife, called a janbiya, which should look cool hanging on my wall. And really, why else do we even have weapons?

After the souk, we took the tram to Agdal, a neighborhood more Westernized and with more teenagers, college kids, and twenty-somethings than we've seen in the rest of Rabat so far. The contrast with, for example, the Medina was astounding. Fewer hijabs by far, a much higher frequency of mixed-gender friend groups, couples holding hands... if it weren't for the fact that everyone was Moroccan and speaking Arabic, we could have been in downtown Sandy Springs, GA. We stopped at a McDonald's, for God's sake. As the title notes, the food was better; moreover, the exterior was way nicer than any McDonald's has a right to be.

The reason that we were in Agdal was to visit some students at AMIDEAST, a study center that, as I understand it, focuses on helping Moroccan students who want to study abroad (usually in the US) to do so. We had a discussion with them about college in America, which started off a bit slowly but warmed up. When kids spoke up, it was obvious that they were, to a one, brilliant. Each had three or four languages under their belts, all taking the hardest classes... and they were impressed by me, seeking my advice? I don't mean to short-change myself, and I know that I've worked hard to get into my school and to get the grades that I have, but these kids were way more impressive than I. It boggles the mind sometimes just how much I have versus what they have, based entirely on the country in which I had the good fortune to be born. One girl, Najwa, told me that we had a few mutual acquaintances, Middle Eastern students at studying abroad at Vanderbilt. She's going to Vassar in the fall, but she might come visit Vandy, which would be pretty cool.

After dinner and another walk around the souk, a few of us went out clubbing. Maybe we were out too early (I heard from another American student here that the club scene doesn't really get going until 2am or so) or maybe it was just a lemon of a club, but the experience ended up consisting of a cab ride there, paying 10dh for a godawful margarita, hanging out in a booth because no one in the club was dancing, and another cab ride back. So, better luck next time, us. I hear Marrakesh is supposed to be bumpin'. It wasn't a total bust, though; John, LP, Gabrielle ("Gabby") and I sat around talking outside the hotel around 10:30am. Who says summer is for sleeping?

Arabic Word of the Day: فقير, Fakeer -- Poor. Very useful in the marketplace!

Hebrews, Shebrews, Webrews -- Day 4

The first part of this post was written halfway through the day, and the second, after the ***, was written late that night.

Languages fascinate me. I say this without a trace of irony or, I hope, faux-sophisticate pretense. I'm working on my fourth currently (although it's been entirely too long since I've spoken Hebrew or Spanish with any regularity -- I guess I'll see in a few weeks, at any rate). My dad once encouraged me to pick up as many languages as I could; he knew that I was considering the military at the time, and he put it in a military context. A good soldier, he told me, learns as many skills as he can. Each skill is another tool, another doorway, another opportunity. If you're trained as a paratrooper or a machine gunner or a medic, you're more valuable an asset to your unit, and this can be extremely useful. Similarly, languages open channels of communication with people who could as easily be complete strangers, and build goodwill with very little effort. It's amazing to me how, from the high school students yesterday to the wait staff in our hotel to the shopkeepers in the souk, Moroccans seem to instantly open up when I ask in halting, accented Arabic how they're doing, how many dirham something is, or if I could please have some tea, Moroccan-style.

***

I started thinking about this because we had our Darija (Moroccan) Arabic crash course this morning. I was a bit ahead of the curve (as I would have hoped, given my year of Arabic), but some of it was very, very different than the Fusha (formal) Arabic that I've learned. It's so interesting to me how you can track a civilization, and the bonds that the different groups together and keep others apart, by their languages. Arabic is different all over the Middle East and the Arab world.  Egyptian and Iraqi and Moroccan are almost different languages. Moroccan, for example, draws on French a fair amount, and possible Amazighi as well, in accordance with Morocco's status as a cultural mishmosh (technical term). Universally across the Arab world, however, everyone understands Fusha, because it's the language of the Qur'an. The faith that binds Muslim Arabs across continents and oceans enables them to communicate with each other, and vice versa.

Interestingly enough, later in the day, I had the opportunity to converse in Hebrew with a Moroccan professor of Hebrew at the University of Rabat who accompanied one of our lecturers. I actually started in my seat when I heard her address me in fluent Hebrew. I suddenly felt an acute pang, a truly intense mix of homesickness, nostalgia, and loss. I should qualify "homesickness": it wasn't that missed my country, my friends, my family, my girl, although of course I did and do. Rather, it was as if I'd been missing a finger for a while, or a favorite tool from my toolbelt, and had finally noticed. I'm not sure how much of this stemmed from the way that Hebrew, specifically, is regarded by me as a Jew, and how much came solely from my shame at having let lapse my grasp of a language, any language, that I had once been all but fluent in. When I said goodbye to the professor (whose name I still don't know; I should ask Sherif or Nabil if they know), I think she was a bit startled, hopefully pleasantly, by how fervently I thanked her for the chance to speak Hebrew, and even just to hear it, once more. This lapse, something that I consider an unforgivable affront not only to my parents, who spent way too much money for me to waste by going around forgetting stuff, but to the unspoken obligation of all Jews to perpetuate ourselves and our culture, isn't something that I'll allow myself to do again. I have a friend or two back at Vandy who took Hebrew, and of course back home. After the wholly unexpected intensity of my reaction to hearing Hebrew again, I think some sort of arrangement to practice every once in a while would improve my quality of life beyond considerably. Inshal'lah.

Arabic Word of the Day: ممتاز, Mumtaaz -- Excellent

Hebrew Word of the Day: לדבר, Ledaber -- To speak

Tiddes -- Day 5

I'm sitting on the bus, bound for Fez, and there's a lot running through my mind. We're rolling out of Nabil's childhood home village, Tiddes, in the Middle Atlas Mountains. We saw a fair amount of it, including Nabil's parents' home (his mother cooked us a fantastic lunch: roasted chicken, vegetables, and couscous!), but the most vivid part of my memory by far was the souk. It wasn't like the ones in Rabat; I wouldn't call those marketplaces touristy per se, but the Tiddes souk was definitely more survival-oriented. Plastic tubs, kitchenware, and simple clothes predominated over the shining teapots, wicked knives, and glitzy knockoffs that I'd grown accustomed to seeing. Rather than the shops of Rabat, merchants sold out of rough tents and awnings. The people were the most different. The men no longer wore tight jeans and Western t-shirts and smiled widely when they realized that we were Americans, but instead wore dirty robes or loose work clothes. The women, despite Nabil's claim (not that I doubt him, but this was interesting to note) that the countryside is generally less religious than the city, were hijabi to a one; one girl actually seemed almost frightened of us. I suppose a good part of that was the sheer rarity of white people in the Tiddes area. Tourists are a significant part of the economy in a city like Rabat, and it's probably seen as not only being a good sport but being good for business to humor them when they walk into your shop and start spouting the Arabic phrases that everyone learns before going shopping: "Besh-hal?" How much?, "Ana taalib fakeer!" I'm a poor student!, etc. In contrast, if I'm sitting in the dirt in front of my wares, hoping that someone comes by and buys something so I can, y'know, eat (with my four teeth), and some wide-eyed American kid comes up to me and, obviously proud of himself, asks in accented formal Arabic how I'm doing, I'm not sure how charitable I'm inclined to be.

I'm probably reading too much into this, projecting class guilt and such. After all, we also played with some kids, who seemed just as excited to play with Americans as kids in Rabat. But it seems like a common theme of this trip, at least for me, is how the only thing that put me on one side of this lens, as the visitor, rather than the other side, as the native, was the twist of fate that resulted in me being born to an upper-middle-class family in the greatest country on God's green Earth, rather than in a slum in Fez or Shanghai.

I realize I'm not saying anything particularly revolutionary, here. Every college kid with a sheltered worldview has their perspective shifted a bit the first time they witness real poverty. It's simply very strange to think about, from a philosophical point of view. You can work as hard as you can for your whole life, day in and day out, but if you were born the wrong color, the wrong place, the wrong time, then you're screwed from the get-go.

That being said, I don't think it's possible to change that on a wide scale. Basic economic theory (from what I gathered during my brief and incredibly boring foray into economics in high school) requires that any stable society has different socioeconomic strata, and yes, some poverty. It will be more difficult now, though, to consider "poverty" as an abstract concept, rather than as a powerful series of sights, smells, sounds, etc. What I can do here, I believe, is remember this, and use it to strengthen my resolve to help heal the world in any way I can. Tikun olam.

Arabic Word of the Day: هل طفة الكيل, Hal tofha alkayil -- The straw that broke the camel's back (idiomatic)