Yesterday when I arrived home from work, for the first time in my four months here both of the front doors to our building were open.
There were five or six people waiting for the elevator, whereas normally there is only one...or two maximum. Most of the time I ascend alone.
When they all got off at the fourth floor, I could hear the bustle of many people in the far apartment. From a distance, I could hear the sound of muffled weeping.
I didn't think it was any of my business so I went on home and went to bed.
This morning, Daniel told me that a woman had died in our building.
I said, "I could have guessed as much from what I saw last night, but how did you find out?"
Apparently, he had seen a woman carrying a pillow in the elevator. He tried to make a joke about it, but the joke didn't go over very well. The carrier of the pillow explained what had happened, that the woman had died.
I don't know anything about the woman or even about proper ways to express condolences here. It's strange to think about. I have no real connection with the woman or her family except that I shared the same building, electricity, water, and sewage.
I assume I had seen her at least once or twice, but I wouldn't know if I had.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Scenes From Morocco: A Meknes Street
A January afternoon on a street in Hamriya, the new city of Meknes
The American Culture Club Resumes
Yesterday I taught the first session of this term's American Culture Club.
Last term, we read Langston Hughes' "A Dream Deferred" and read parts of speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Barack Obama. My goal was to help my Moroccan students better understand the American Dream and how the African-American experience related to it. I had four or five regular students, and by the end, I think they had a pretty decent idea of American history with a more nuanced view of American racism.
This semester, I hope to develop the same theme but move it in a different direction. We're going to watch "Remember the Titans" and learn about American football and school integration.
Most Moroccans don't have a clue just how much American culture revolves around football. Three of the questions on my pre-test I gave to the class yesterday queried them about which days of the week high school, college, and NFL games take place. When they realize that football starts on Friday night, continues Saturday, and doesn't end until Sunday night (or Monday night as the case may be), they start to come to grips with how much football the American fall weekend contains.
After the pre-test, I introduced my students to American football by showing them the highlights from the 2007 Fiesta Bowl when my beloved Oklahoma Sooners lost in startling fashion to the upstart Boise State Broncos. It was a good opportunity to show how a game works, explaining the key positions and rules along the way. By the end, I was asking them to predict what the teams were going to do. Impressively, all four of my students (three veiled girls and one boy) correctly predicted that Boise State would go for the two-point conversion in overtime.
The hour and a half allotted to the club flew by. At the end of the period, I had to smile.
I thought to myself, "I just got paid to talk about football for over an hour."
Last term, we read Langston Hughes' "A Dream Deferred" and read parts of speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Barack Obama. My goal was to help my Moroccan students better understand the American Dream and how the African-American experience related to it. I had four or five regular students, and by the end, I think they had a pretty decent idea of American history with a more nuanced view of American racism.
This semester, I hope to develop the same theme but move it in a different direction. We're going to watch "Remember the Titans" and learn about American football and school integration.
Most Moroccans don't have a clue just how much American culture revolves around football. Three of the questions on my pre-test I gave to the class yesterday queried them about which days of the week high school, college, and NFL games take place. When they realize that football starts on Friday night, continues Saturday, and doesn't end until Sunday night (or Monday night as the case may be), they start to come to grips with how much football the American fall weekend contains.
After the pre-test, I introduced my students to American football by showing them the highlights from the 2007 Fiesta Bowl when my beloved Oklahoma Sooners lost in startling fashion to the upstart Boise State Broncos. It was a good opportunity to show how a game works, explaining the key positions and rules along the way. By the end, I was asking them to predict what the teams were going to do. Impressively, all four of my students (three veiled girls and one boy) correctly predicted that Boise State would go for the two-point conversion in overtime.
The hour and a half allotted to the club flew by. At the end of the period, I had to smile.
I thought to myself, "I just got paid to talk about football for over an hour."
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
A New Bar
After our adventure on Sunday, we decided to check out another local one.
There is one that is just a block away. It's near the intersection of the two main thoroughfares in our part of town. The streets are wide. It's well-lit. It's a nice part of town.
So we ducked under the smaller than door-size piece of cloth hanging in the doorway.
Daniel and I stopped dead in our tracks.
We had entered, hands-down, the seediest place I have ever been in. The garish lighting illuminated rows of dirty tables and chairs all of them filled with prostitutes, their cleavage bursting out, and lower class Moroccan men, stubble-chinned and ruffle-haired. They were almost all facing the one small television in the corner, which happened to be directly above the entrance.
My first reaction was, "Cool. I've always wondered what one of these places really looked like."
My second reaction: "Ok, I've seen enough. Ready to go."
My third reaction: "Hmmm...might be interesting if we stick around for a while..."
Daniel and I looked around the room. There were no open seats anywhere. More than anything else, that settled it for us. We turned to each other and simultaneously nodded towards the doorway.
Even in no-auto-emissions-standard Meknes, the air smelled fresher on the street.
We walked around the corner and into a shisha bar we know well.
There is one that is just a block away. It's near the intersection of the two main thoroughfares in our part of town. The streets are wide. It's well-lit. It's a nice part of town.
So we ducked under the smaller than door-size piece of cloth hanging in the doorway.
Daniel and I stopped dead in our tracks.
We had entered, hands-down, the seediest place I have ever been in. The garish lighting illuminated rows of dirty tables and chairs all of them filled with prostitutes, their cleavage bursting out, and lower class Moroccan men, stubble-chinned and ruffle-haired. They were almost all facing the one small television in the corner, which happened to be directly above the entrance.
My first reaction was, "Cool. I've always wondered what one of these places really looked like."
My second reaction: "Ok, I've seen enough. Ready to go."
My third reaction: "Hmmm...might be interesting if we stick around for a while..."
Daniel and I looked around the room. There were no open seats anywhere. More than anything else, that settled it for us. We turned to each other and simultaneously nodded towards the doorway.
Even in no-auto-emissions-standard Meknes, the air smelled fresher on the street.
We walked around the corner and into a shisha bar we know well.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Customer Friendships
I grew up in a Walmart society.
That is to say, I never frequented mom-and-pop stores of any type. Every restaurant, grocery store, movie theater, and barber shop that I visited was part of a broader chain. I'm sure I benefited from lower prices and more consistent service and products than previous generations perhaps did, but I also tend to think that I missed out on a lot too.
In Philadelphia, I became friends with the owners of a few establishments in my area, but here in Morocco that experience has been taken to an entirely different level.
Today I went and picked up some produce at the outdoor market nearest my house. I always go to the same stall. I've become well acquainted with Lotfi and Said, the two friends who work there. They know me by now and they ask me about America and tell me about their friends and family abroad (almost every Moroccan has several friends or family members living in Europe or the United States).
It occurred to me this morning that I almost never know the people at any of the grocery stores or restaurants or cafes that I go to in the United States. Yet here, I am often on a first name basis with all of them.
And, I have to say, it's a very enjoyable experience.
I know this sort of thing still exists in the United States; I certainly got a taste of it in Philadelphia. But the better part of America grows up these days as I did, where familiar faces and personal relationships are not as important as familiar brands and primarily economic relationships.
And while they may be paying slightly lower prices, I tend to think they're missing out on something.
That is to say, I never frequented mom-and-pop stores of any type. Every restaurant, grocery store, movie theater, and barber shop that I visited was part of a broader chain. I'm sure I benefited from lower prices and more consistent service and products than previous generations perhaps did, but I also tend to think that I missed out on a lot too.
In Philadelphia, I became friends with the owners of a few establishments in my area, but here in Morocco that experience has been taken to an entirely different level.
Today I went and picked up some produce at the outdoor market nearest my house. I always go to the same stall. I've become well acquainted with Lotfi and Said, the two friends who work there. They know me by now and they ask me about America and tell me about their friends and family abroad (almost every Moroccan has several friends or family members living in Europe or the United States).
It occurred to me this morning that I almost never know the people at any of the grocery stores or restaurants or cafes that I go to in the United States. Yet here, I am often on a first name basis with all of them.
And, I have to say, it's a very enjoyable experience.
I know this sort of thing still exists in the United States; I certainly got a taste of it in Philadelphia. But the better part of America grows up these days as I did, where familiar faces and personal relationships are not as important as familiar brands and primarily economic relationships.
And while they may be paying slightly lower prices, I tend to think they're missing out on something.
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.
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.
Scenes From Morocco: My Room
Our house remains quite spartan, but my room is slowly becoming a more cozy and comforting place. Recently I bought a second comforter, and I added another blanket, a Christmas gift from my grandmother.
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