A Visit to the Bar

Last night, Daniel and I went to a bar a few blocks from our house for the very first time.

Early on, we had decided not to bother with local bars. There are no young people who go, and there even fewer women. For the most part, they are either hangouts for old dudes or semi-brothels. Those catering to old dudes are usually rather claustrophobic, smoke-filled dens playing some soccer game. The hotels which cater to foreigners and Moroccan johns are much nicer and more open, but the blatant prostitution that occurs creates an unpleasant atmosphere for our female friends who might join us.

When we arrived, we walked up to an open area of the bar. In Darija, I asked the man in one of the stools at the counter if anyone was sitting in the two open stools next to him. He turned, his head a bit cock-eyed, and started speaking in Dutch, which I didn't understand. He then switched to Spanish, which I did understand, "I speak Dutch, Spanish, French, and Arabic." Then he repeated himself in French and Arabic.

So we sat down, assuming he would protest if his friends were there.

I tried talking to him in Arabic, but he switched to Spanish. Daniel tried speaking Dutch to him because he knows a little Dutch. We then had about a five minute conversation that was completely incoherent. I would attempt to reproduce it for you if I could, but it changed languages so many times and there were so many misunderstandings and non sequitors that it would be virtually impossible. Suffice it to say, he didn't think that anyone should speak in a language that he hadn't mastered to a sufficient degree (I think this was a reproach of both of us for our feeble attempts to communicate). He simultaneously thought this could be best communicated by repeating it in many different languages, not all of which he had mastered completely.

Eventually he paid, got up, and stumbled his way to the door.


The next seat over was filled by a man in his 50's who had had too much to drink before we even arrived. Shortly after we arrived, his head dropped onto his chest as he sat at the bar. And it stayed there for the larger part of the next two hours. At one point the bartender roused him to pour him some more Vodka. After another long nap, they shook him awake again to swipe his credit card. The bartender asked if he wanted a taxi. He mumbled something and went off to the bathroom. Ten minutes later he came back, sat down in his stool, laid his chin on his chest, and went back to sleep.


Our bartender was an unveiled woman who chatted with us in Darija. We asked her what various things were called, and she asked about America:

"Is America beautiful?"

We debated the wisdom of responding with "Yes, but not as beautiful as you." But after concluding that we didn't even know how to make the construction in Darija, we eventually settled for the much less flirtatious (and perhaps more honest) "yes".

"Are all American girls fat?"

We smiled and then explained, "Many are, but not all of them."


We would watch the soccer games on either side of the bar and when the prostitutes would come through the door and walk through the room to go downstairs, we would glance at them: the lighter skinned ones seemed to enter and exit more frequently. Mostly we just chatted between ourselves.

After the second hour, the other men at the bar decided en masse to start talking to us. The drunk nearest us, whom I had affectionately named "Sleepy", tried to speak only English to us. It took minutes for him to finish his sentences, so in between his forays into the language of Hemingway, we responded to the others' questions about where we were from and what we were doing. We questioned them in kind.

It turned out that two of the men were cafe owners in our neighborhood. And not only were they cafe owners, they were also cafe owners on our block, one on either side of our house. One had spent a long time in Spain, so he had named his recently-opened cafe "Toro", filling it with images of Spanish bulls. However, he detested bull-fighting, he assured us: the only image of an actual bullfight was a small picture of a torero's hand in a small corner downstairs.

I asked Sleepy if he spoke French. He responded in French, "Of course I speak French. I lived in France many years."

"Where exactly?"

He started naming of a list of French cities so long that I doubted if he had ever been to all of them.

"I speak French better than the French," he slurred in all seriousness.

The man next to him scowled and said, "Lived...not visited, stupid."

"No...no. I...lived...there."

He eventually decided to go home. Like a blind man making his way down a bustling street, he made his way through the open room to the exit.

Shortly thereafter, the owner of the Toro asked us if we were going to stop by soon. We responded, "Inshallah" and headed home.

It was not at all the typical American bar experience we were looking for, but it was fascinating all the same.