Volubilis

Yesterday I visited the Roman ruins of Volubilis for the first time. Since it's February, the Moroccan landscape looks like Ireland instead of say, well...Morocco.

Volubilis is remarkable for a number of reasons. For one, it's fairly well-preserved given the lack of European-style attention to archaeological sites. The patterns of mosaics are still visible. Walls two millenia old are decayed but visible. The outline of streets that children used to play in centuries ago are clear as day.

But it's also amazing that the Roman Empire penetrated this far inland in this part of the world. This isn't Tangiers, Ceuta or Melilla, let alone Marseilles or Genoa. Volubilis is a very long march from the Mediterranean Sea, and yet the ruins are quite large. I went with a German obsessed with the Roman Empire, and I couldn't help but point out to her that this remote African location was in the Roman Empire while her birthplace was not.

What's more, Volubilis is a reminder of the connection between the Roman Empire and the Islamic kingdoms and caliphates that filled in the southern half of its domain. A few centuries after the Romans withdrew from the southern half of the Mediterranean basin, the Muslim Arabs filled it right back in, bringing a new religion, language, and culture but also maintaining many aspects of Roman civilization.

The public baths, for instance. The Romans loved their baths. The Arabs were required to use them regularly for religious reasons. Medieval Christians, in contrast, detested bathing. In this area at least, the Arabs were much better holders of Roman heritage than Christian Europe.

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."