Happy New Year!

Today marks the beginning of a new year in the Islamic calendar.

Unlike the Gregorian calendar, the Islamic calendar is lunar. In pre-Koranic times, the Arabic calendar had extra days at the end of every lunar year to make the its new year coincide with the solar year. However, the Koran forbid that practice. So now, the Islamic months do not match up with our calendar. As a result, Ramadan, Eid al Kabir, and the New Year shift slightly every year in relation to our calendar.

The big question for Daniel and me was whether or not anything would be open today. Almost everything was open when I bopped out to get a few things in the morning. But then when we headed into the medina this afternoon, we encountered nothing but closed shops.

We asked one of the few men selling cigarettes on the street, "Will everything open up after lunch or is it closed for the holiday?"

He replied, "Everything's closed today." We figured as much. But then he continued, "Everyone went to pray." And he made the bowing and praying motion to further signify what he meant.

Then Daniel and I realized: it's Friday. Many places close in the afternoon for the important afternoon prayers and then most Moroccan families have couscous and spend the rest of the day together. It's a normal day here; it just so happens that it's a normal Friday.

So we had a coffee in an empty cafe and headed back home.

The Face of French History

Sometimes it feels as though the past is irretrievably lost. You can't interrogate documents and recordings as you can human beings, and even then, human memory is notoriously fallible.

As a result, I pessimistically assume the only access I will ever have to fascinating past events will be through the pages of history books. But then occasionally, once in a blue moon, I have an experience that reminds me of the living connection between the seemingly distant past and the present.

I attend mass at the local Catholic church on Saturday nights. On Sunday mornings, they say the service is packed with sub-Saharan students at the local university. But on Saturday night, the nuns and the priests are joined by only a smattering of others, mostly older French types, partisans of that strange French Catholicism that is so foreign to me. After a few months now, I've spoken with most of them, but one stands out among the bunch. His name is Roger, and he is 87.

Unlike some of the other elderly French ex-pats, Roger has not lost a step. He enthusiastically rambles up to you and warmly greets you. He inquires about you and invites you to join him for dinner at his house or perhaps his weekly picnic in the mountains outside of Meknes.

Or at least that's he does with me every week. Of course, until this last Sunday, I had never taken him up on his offers, mainly because of scheduling conflicts. But this time, he insisted that I come by the house just to see where it was. So I rode with him back to the house and went in.

At first I thought he was just going to show me the house and drive me home (he had opined that it was too cold and too dangerous outside for me to walk home). He offered me a drink from his well-stocked liquor cabinet. And then I really knew I wasn't headed home anytime soon when he asked me to sit down. He brought out yogurt (unsweetened, unlike the "awful stuff" the Moroccans eat), bread, ham (ham!), and French cheese. Then he pulled out a bottle of hand-labeled Sauvignon Blanc. When you live in an area long enough and you are French, you become friends with the winery owners and are privy to the best of the cellar.

As we started eating, he regaled me with stories from his past. I was impressed with the fact that he has been in Morocco since before colonialism ended; that's over half a century. For me colonialism is one of those inaccessible aspects of history. And not only was he a French colonist back when European countries were still doing that sort of thing, but he also fought in World War II. He wanted to let me know how far he had come to make it on his own. So he explained how difficult it was living out in the French countryside for four years as part of the French resistance to the Nazi occupation.

The most interesting thing for me was how, 53 years later, he still bears the colonial mentality. He knows only a few words of Arabic, and he insists on keeping a good distance from Moroccans, preferring the company of Westerners. I certainly couldn't agree with everything he said about Morocco and Moroccans, but just to be able to talk to someone like that gave me a lot of insight into colonialism and the French mindset.

As he drove me back home, I revealed my love for the French language. He didn't blink. "Well, of course. The French language knows no bounds. Its expressive power is limitless."

The American Culture Club

Today I taught the last section of the American Culture Club.

With just a few minutes to spare, I finished covering Barack Obama's Democratic National Speech on the American Promise. The students seemed to have enjoyed the club. Now they know a lot more about the African-American experience and the American Dream.

My goal was to nuance certain stereotypes I've encountered here in Morocco about racism in America and about the American Dream. At the very end, I asked my students if they had learned anything surprising or if any of their past assumptions about America were changed.

Only one student seemed willing to answer. He said, "It's good to learn about the history of another country, to see how it got to be where it is."

That wasn't quite what I was hoping for, but I guess it's a good start. My club will continue next term with a new theme.

Christmas Music

When something important in the United States is happening, I try to mention it to my students, for both my sake and theirs. For their sake: because I want them to get a fuller view of American culture. For my sake: because sometimes I feel disconnected.

The past week or so, I have been trying to get in the Christmas mood by listening to Christmas carols. Usually about this time in the season, I'm annoyed to death with the incessant Christmas carols, but this year Christmas is anything but all around.

On Wednesday, I mentioned Christmas carols to my class of 11 and 12-year olds. One of them asked me to play a song or two for them. I readily obliged.

These kids hear a heavy dose of American rock and R&B, along with smatterings of French music, Arabic pop music, and more traditional Arabic music. It never occurred to me how different Christmas carols sound compared to American pop music, but one of my 11-year olds complained right away.

"This is terrible!"

I responded, "It's not suppose to be pop music. Do you like Eid al Kabir music and listen to it all the time?"

He lowered his head, "Uh...no."

Now, I feel a little bit deceptive. The entire week I have done nothing but listen to Christmas carols...

Are you feeling better?

The day after the Eid, Daniel told me, "I feel ten times better than I did yesterday, but I still feel absolutely awful."

When his symptoms continued through the weekend, he decided to visit a doctor. He was given five separate medications, and they sent a snot sample of his off to Rabat. When he returned home he laid out all five of the medications and sat down to take them. It must have taken him nearly 20 minutes to get through the entire batch, a process that repeated itself a few times a day thereafter. It seemed to have worked, though. After a few days of the ritual, he started to feel a little better.

But then on Thursday, his results came in: Daniel was positive for H1N1. The Delegation of Health called on Thursday night and asked him to report the next day. On Friday morning before Daniel made his official appearance, I left the house to go to my Darija lesson at work. About 20 minutes in, my lesson was abruptly interrupted by the secretary. She pulled me out of the class into the hallway.

"You know that Daniel has H1N1?"
"Yes. He told me."
"You need to go to the doctor right now."
"But I feel fine."
"You need to go to the doctor right now. Daniel isn't to come to work for one week. You won't be working either."
"But I feel fine..."

One of the other administrators walked me over to the doctor's office. After watching me sign in, he left me to wait along with the dozen or so coughing, wheezing patients, bundled up in coats, hats, and scarves (The building, like almost all Moroccan buildings, had no heat.) There were some ancient Moroccan travel magazines on the coffee table in the middle, so I took a look at them. After thirty minutes I had flipped through all of the German, French, and Arabic versions. I then proceeded to play Snake on my phone for another half hour.

After an hour and forty minutes, I was finally ushered in to see the doctor. He took my weight, listened to my breathing, and took a snot test. He then concluded, "I don't see why you can't work." In any case, he wrote me a prescription for a couple of medications and sent me away.

I returned to work and reported what the doctor had told me. However, they said they would prefer to wait until the test returned.

Frustrated, I returned home to find Daniel a bit befuddled. After reporting to the Delegation of Health, he had been given a certificate that forbid him from working for a week. This, despite the fact that it had been almost a week since his fever broke and it had been over four days since he started taking medication.

On forced medical leave and yet not sick, the two of us decided to do some shopping. We checked out some furniture we've been meaning to buy. We had lunch at a nice pizza place. We walked around town. The sun was shining. Birds were tweeting. It was a great weekend.

On Monday my results came in: negative. At last, I was allowed to return to work.

This entire week I have been running into co-workers in the hallway. They all say, "You look great. Are you feeling better?"

Eid al Kabir, part 2

During the preparation of the boulfef meal, cousins and uncles dropped by to say hello, sometimes multiple times. Afterwards, it was time for my friend Anass to do the same. He invited me to join him as he participated in this masculine visiting ritual, and I readily agreed.

The first house we visited was only a few blocks away, which explained why the uncle and cousin had stopped by multiple times during the morning. The family was watching a Moroccan movie called "The Sheep" (think Eid al Kabir kitsch on the order of "It's a Wonderful Life" for Christmas) and eating their meal of boulfef. Apparently some of the family members dislike sheep innards (I can't imagine why...), and so they had cooked an entire chicken for the sheep guts-haters in the family. They invited me to eat, and so I bellied up to the table and ate along with them, my second boulfef meal of the day. They all chatted in Arabic, paying special attention to me, asking where I was from and if I liked Morocco. (In contrast to some European countries where the polite thing to do is to totally ignore the guest.)

The second house was a little further away. They had a gigantic parlor with Moroccan couches lining every wall, enough to seat dozens of guests. They had finished the boulfef meal but had some sweets and tea to offer the 10 or so guests who were currently there. And they were also watching the Eid movie "The Sheep".

The third set of Anass's relatives lived in the medina. So for safety reasons, Anass' brother stayed with the car while we entered. After winding through narrow covered alley ways, we entered a small room maybe a tenth of the size of the previous parlor filled with the same number of people. Two or three people had to stand once we arrived and were given seats.

Never one to let sweets pass me by even after huge meals, I inquired about some cookies sitting on the table. They told me the name of the cookies and encouraged me to eat some. So, of course, I did.

Anass didn't seem to want to stay long. After just a few minutes of chitchat in the crowded room, he stood up to leave. He said his goodbyes, and I began to follow suit. However, before I could get far, the grandmother figure who was sitting nearest the cookies, the object of my curiosity, asked if I wanted to take some with me. I knew it was impolite to refuse food, so I agreed to take some. She went into the kitchen and rummaged around until she found a large plastic bag. Then she came back to the table and started stuffing the cookies into the bag like nobody's business. I said, "That's good. Thanks." She just shook her head at me as if I didn't know what I really wanted. She kept stuffing cookies in the bag. I reached out for the bag and repeated, "Thanks. That's good." She didn't stop. I tried to wrest control of the bag from her as she continued to stuff cookies into it. After a mini-tussle between the cookie-packing grandmother and me, I emerged with a bag filled with a few dozen Eid al Kabir cookies.

As we left the small room, Anass led me in the opposite direction from which we had entered and into a gigantic open space. I realized then that his family were not poor medina-dwellers. They owned one of the ancient riadhs, beautiful homes built into the walls of the old city complete with courtyards, baths and tiled walls close to 30 feet tall. We took some photos of everyone and then got back into the car to leave.

After the family visits, I parted ways with Anass. I thanked him for the food and the opportunity to accompany him on the family visits, and then I came back to the house and checked on Daniel. He had come down with serious flu-like symptoms and ended up spending the entire day in bed. As I closed my curtains to head to bed, I noticed the sheep carcasses strung outside, ready for a week's worth of cooking.

I sat down to read. But I was so stuffed that I couldn't concentrate. I could feel the blood engorging my stomach. Soon I had fallen asleep on the couch.

An hour or two later, my phone rang. It was Anass: "We're waiting for you to eat dinner." I jumped up, got ready, and headed out the door.

As soon as I got in the door, his family immediately inquired about Daniel. "He's still not feeling very well," I said. They insisted that I take some medicine that they had on hand over to Daniel. So Anass and I headed right back over to our house and we gave him the medicine.

When we returned, Anass' father was working on a used bike with training wheels, preparing it as a gift to give to some cousins. Anass' mother sat next to me and we started talking a little bit about the holiday Eid al Kabir. She asked if I knew the story.

"Yes, I know the story. It's actually very similar to one found in the Bible."
"Oh, ok."
"Except in the Bible, it's Isaac and not Ishmael."
"Oh no, it's Ishmael."
"Yes, Muslims believe it was Ishmael. Christians and Jews believe it was Isaac."
"Well, that's wrong."

A little later, I was called to the table to eat Dawara, the sheep's cooked intestines. I was so stuffed; I didn't want to eat any more. But I knew it wasn't polite to refuse the meal. It was slow-going, but I started making a dent in my section of the gigantic serving bowl. Anass' mother reproached me, "You're not eating anything."

I responded, "I am. I'm eating. Look."
"That's nothing. You're not eating anything."

I kept plugging away, but it was so difficult. The sauce on the Dawara was actually quite good. The problem wasn't the sheep's intestines; it was my intestines and how full they already were. Eventually I couldn't do anymore. So I said "Hamdullah", wiped my hands, and swore off sheep's guts for at least a year.

After the meal, Anass' father showed me the dual language French-Arabic Koran that the family uses. I was surprised to learn that a well-off, educated Arab speaker requires French help to understand the Koran. Theoretically, Modern Standard Arabic is the same as Koranic Arabic with just some slight vocabulary and grammar changes.

We sat around watching TV and then I went back home. Daniel still wasn't feeling very good. I tried to read again, but again failed to get far. I was asleep in no time at all.

Eid al Kabir, part 1

Eid al Kabir is one of the few truly global holidays. There are over a billion Muslims throughout the world and all of them celebrate it in some form or another, the most fortunate in Mecca, fulfilling one of the five pillars of Islam.

And yet despite the global nature of the holiday, I never really knew much about it before I moved to Morocco. I see some news coverage every year, but I don't generally pay a great deal of attention to it.

One year, I remember there was a controversy in Britain because the government was trying to keep neighborhoods hygienic as Muslims brought sheep into their homes. Then two years ago, I ran into a Ghanaian immigrant in the alley behind my Philadelphia house, and he explained why his son and all the other Muslim boys were playing football there in the middle of a school day. He had plenty of experience discussing the holidays with Christians, so his explanation drew on my knowledge of the Bible but deftly pointed out the differences. Even with those few encounters with the holiday, I found myself remarkably ignorant as the week of the Eid began. (Of course, when I ask Muslims here about Christian holidays or even about the commercialized bastardizations of religious holidays we have in America, there is a similar ignorance.)

On Saturday morning, my friend Anass stopped by around 9 o'clock. Then we headed, not to his house, but across the street to another house. He explained, "The sheep is at my cousin's house." As we walked, a mass of men came down the street, emerging from the mosque after the important prayers the morning of the Eid.
I met the sheep on the back patio of the house. Like many other sheep, it was bought in the week or two preceding the Eid al Kabir and only moved to the house the day or two before. Unlike my apartment building, there were no telltale sheep droppings scattered throughout the entryway of the building. However, in the corner of the patio where the sheep was tied up, it was just as bad.

After saying hello to the sheep, we sat down in the family area and watched TV while we waited for Anass's dad and the butcher. There were concerts of traditional Eid music and some European soccer games, but nothing terribly interesting.

After only a short wait, the rest of the family and the butcher arrived. We all gathered on the patio. The butcher held the sheep down, and the dad slit the throat of the sheep. The mother recited a verse from the Koran. Blood gushed forth. The sheep's head slowly lowered as its life quickly flowed away.

Then in a sudden spurt of resistance to death, the sheep started moving its legs as if to gallop to safety. But, as the sheep was lying on its side, it went nowhere. It only spread blood all over the courtyard and onto all of us. The father bore the brunt of the blood spattering, and so he left to change clothing. I escaped with only a few drops on my shoes and jeans.


As the sheep slowed to a complete stop, the butcher began to dress it. For the next hour or so, we rotated between helping clean the patio and watching TV. The mother was given the intestines, the heart, and the liver to start the long meal preparations. The first meal of the day is called "boulfef". It consists of skewers ("qtaban") of sheep heart and liver, wrapped in fat and seasonings. The second meal of the day consists of the cleaned and cooked intestines of the sheep, served in a very tasty sauce.

While the mother and daughter prepared the meal, we men sat in the family room and watched TV. Occasionally, they would try to teach me Arabic words. At one point, the TV showed the prayers of the king and his top advisors followed by the killing of his sheep. The entire family entered the room to watch, but after that short pause, the women returned to the kitchen to finish cleaning and cooking the sheep's innards.

We changed houses to Anass' house to eat the boulfef meal. It was quite good. I was quite surprised. I figured I would sit around for a while and then head back home after a great cultural experience. But my day was far from over.

A Moroccan Thanksgiving

Last Tuesday I got a hankering for a good ole-fashioned Thanksgiving. So I sent out some text messages to my American friends inquiring about interest for the holiday. As it turned out, everyone wanted to celebrate it and was willing to help out. So we divided up the dishes amongst ourselves. Somehow I ended up with the turkey and the stuffing. We all had to work Thursday evening, so we decided to make it a lunch Thanksgiving. We also decided to try to share our culture, and so we invited five Moroccan friends.

On Wednesday night I went to the grocery store to look for turkey. The butcher told me if I wanted a whole turkey, I had to request it at least two or three days in advance.

The super market is only good for a few things here; it's better to go to the open air market for most things or even the "hanuts", smaller stores located on every block that sell all the staples. So after getting the turkey at the supermarket, I wandered down the street to the market and picked up some vegetables and spices.

I got up early on Thursday morning. After a quick breakfast, I cleaned up a bit and arranged the tables so we could all sit together. I wrote on our whiteboard: "Happy Thanksgiving! I am thankful for..." in both English and Arabic and left plenty of space for others to write as well.

Then I turned my attention to cooking. The preparation of the turkey and stuffing took a while, but eventually everything made its way into the oven. I have a better appreciation for what my mom does every year now...

I took a shower and waited around. Even though we had agreed upon noon, there were still no guests at 12:45. But then a Moroccan showed up. A little later an American. And then around 1, the last six guests showed up all at once.

We couldn't start just yet; we still had to make the gravy. The turkey had produced much more juice than I had thought it would since it wasn't the full thing. We poured it into a sauce pan, added a little flour, and in no time we had gravy. I gave a brief explanation of Thanksgiving and a blessing and we dug in.
After dinner, we cleaned up a bit and then had apple crumble (the logistics of pumpkin pie were too difficult). And then by popular demand, Daniel pulled out his guitar and gave us a mini-concert.



At various points, the Americans among us left to the other room to talk to relatives on Skype. After my turn, I emerged from my room to find all of the dishes miraculously done and the furniture re-arranged.

Not very long afterwards, people started filtering out. I took a short nap and then got ready for a work.

No football and no real day off, but Thanksgiving nonetheless.

The Visa Lottery

I met Anass while watching a soccer match. Daniel and I were sitting in a cafe just down the street, and we had grown a little bored with Barcelona's insuperable lead over Zaragoza when a Moroccan guy sitting behind us struck up a conversation with us. In typical Moroccan hospitality, he offered us help with whatever we needed and insisted that we get together to do something.

The weeks drifted by and we didn't do much more than exchange greetings in passing. But last Monday we finally got together and chatted in Arabic and English over coffee.

He asked for help with the United States visa lottery. Every year the United States gives work visas to tens of thousands of foreigners from countries that traditionally do not immigrate to the United States. All that is required is a photo and personal information to apply.

When I arrived, Anass led me into his parents' apartment in the building right next to my apartment. Unlike our apartment, theirs was extremely well furnished. Carpets covered the tile floor from wall to wall. A large screen TV hung in the family room and three sets of Moroccan couches covered the three main rooms, broken only by waist-high walls. On one wall was a picture of Mecca. A few bookshelves near the entrance to the kitchen were separated by a picture of a boy reading the Koran, in the same sort of light-intensive kitsch that Thomas Kinkade produces.

He introduced me to his mother, and she immediately started to speak to me in French. Anass reprimanded her, telling her that I spoke Darija. So I stuttered through the basic formalities and we sat down to do the visa application. Among other things, the photos are required to be 600x600 pixels. So while I tried to change the photo's size, his mother brought us Moroccan tea and pastries.

I finally got the picture to the right size and we entered the rest of his information without a problem. While we were working, his father came home from work and said hello. He then took out the prayer rug and started doing his prayers directly in front of us.

After I finished, I got up intending to go, but Annas' mother insisted, "No. Stay for dinner." Since it's rude to decline when a Moroccan extends hospitality, I quickly consented.

As in so many households the world over, the TV was left on during the meal. The coverage was of the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca for the Eid al Kabir. The two big items of news were that Obama's Kenyan grandmother was in Mecca this year and that heavy rains were causing problems.

Dinner was Moroccan country hare, shot by father cooked by mother, seasoned with teeth-breaking pellets. With the exception of the pellets, it was quite good.

At the end of the evening, the family invited me back for Eid al Kabir. And because it's rude to decline when a Moroccan extends hospitality, I quickly consented.