The Streets of Meknes

The city of Meknès is sometimes indistinguishable from an obstacle course. Merely crossing the street is a feat in itself. If there are even traffic laws I really don’t know, but even if there are there is no one here to enforce them. Danial told me one day that it was easy to drive in Morocco, where you have only to pay attention to what is in front of you. And what is more, there are no rules. What could be easier? However, this attitude makes it tricky for pedestrians. As for rode bikers, it surprises me to see any still living. Anyway, walking the three or so miles to school must be done with great caution. Dodging cars and gauging their speed has become a part of everyday life.

 As if this was not enough, cars are not the only thing that must be dodged. There are also packs of leering and catcalling men, donkeys, and motorcycle drawn orange carts. Another problem is that quite frequently, one can find rode signs set in the middle of the narrow, deteriorating sidewalks. This poses a problem when there is a pack of men on one side of the strategically placed sign, and cars zooming by on the other. The only choice is to duck under, all the while looking determinedly at your feet so as to avoid making eye contact with strangers. Once, however, I did not do so well maneuvering this obstacle.  I was walking with my head turned around laughing at Jennifer, who had just fallen off the raised walkway and onto fresh cement, when I actually ran into a big metal rode sign. With my face.  Since then I have gotten better at evasive walking, but there have still been some close calls. At any rate, I urge all new comers to stroll with caution. 

P.S. Sorry I don't have any pictures. If there had been a cameraman there as I ran face first into an iron post, I surely would have included his documentation.

A Village in the Atlas

Last Sunday we loaded up the ISA bus with sugar, tea, oil, couscous, and clothes to bring to a small Amazigh (Berber) village in the mountains outside of Ifrane. This was a joint effort between a group of American ISA students and facilitators, and some of the Moroccan students in the English department. Early in the morning all thirty of us piled into our rickety old bus and headed off. When it is just us Americans traveling together, the bus rides are relatively quiet and peaceful. However, that is not the case when about fifteen rowdy Moroccan girls are thrown into the mix. Soon, our old bus was swaying and bumping to the music as one girl after the other left their seats to join the dancers in the center aisle. The driver cranked up the volume, and soon we may as well have been in a dance hall. Nearly all of the girls knew traditional Moroccan dance, which is quite different from classic belly dance although it uses many of the same shimmying and shaking hip and booty movements. Even the driver, sick of being left out of the dance party, stopped the bus so as to get down with the girls, and proceeded to shake it like Shakira.

       After a while Fatima Zara grabbed the mic and started rambling away in a mix of Darija and English, explaining that if she stopped talking she would have a headache. Apparently this preventative method was not limited only to talking however, for she soon began singing her own rendition of Fergie’s My Hump. I never thought I would witness a proper (looking, at least) hijab wearing woman singing about her lovely lady lumps, but Fatima Zara is another brand of crazy and would proceed to break many stereotypes before the day was over.

       Eventually we turned off of the highway and onto a narrow dirt track which led to the village. Several times when the bus lurched and rocked over creek beds and ditches I thought the end had come, and that the last thing I would see would be the bus’s dirty green shag carpeted floor. Eventually, however, we reached the village alive and injury free. 

       The village was merely a series of tents and cement huts scattered about the wide open and rocky foothills, and was home to only thirty families, although we saw maybe half that. I am not sure exactly what I had hoped to find there. I think part of me expected to encounter the generosity and kindness that I have witnessed and read about in impoverished Native American communities. The stories my dad read to me as a child were often about starving Indian families who would share any scrap of food so that no one would eat less than another. Naturally I was shocked and let down when the villagers started bickering and fighting over who should receive the biggest bag of goods. These were people who had nothing and were now being presented with food that could be the next meal for their children. Naturally greed took over as each mother tried fiercely to win the most for her family. Yet still this attitude disappointed me.

       Because of this squabble we were forced to leave the village early. We delivered the last of the supplies to some families along the way and headed home. Although my first encounter with an Amazigh village was not as fantastic as I was hoping, it was still an eye opening experience for us as well as the Moroccan girls, and allowed us to spend time with each other and to bond over the shared experience.

Rain in Casablanca

The reality of Casablanca did not fit with the romanticized image I had had in mind. It was really just…Big. The streets were wide and open, and even the medina was spacious and clean. If I had been dropped there from a helicopter, I would not have known that I was in Morocco, or even Africa. Casa is a comparatively new city, and has been under the influence of Portugal and Spain since the 1500s, giving it a distinctly European feel. Being the fifth largest city in Africa, as well as home to over fifty percent of Morocco’s cars, it succeeded in making Meknes look like a friendly country village. Despite the warnings we had received concerning the safety of Casa’s streets, we did have some adventures that led us to some absolutely wonderful Casablanchins.

After eating a scrumptious meal of fresh caught fish at the Dauphin restaurant and spending a good half hour trying to decipher our bill and understand why we were short three hundred dirhams, a small group of us decided to find the ocean. This proved harder than one might think, simply because Moroccan streets are made especially so westerners have no idea where they are and will be forced to pay a Moroccan to show them. By this time night had fallen, and a torrential rain storm had picked up. Finally, after a good while spent under the awning of a carpet shop, we decided to ask an elderly djellaba wearing woman for directions. This in itself was a task, because she spoke little French and could not comprehend why we would choose to walk there at night, in the rain when it was perfectly simple to take a taxi.  But eventually we prevailed, and the kindhearted woman walked us all the way to Hasan II mosque, which we had visited earlier that day, and which stands beside the Atlantic.  Here the kind lady kissed us warmly on both cheeks and turned us over to a young couple who happened to be walking past.  The couple changed their course and walked with us to the mosque’s large courtyard like terrace, where we stayed for some time simply enjoying the lights on the zellij and the sounds of crashing waves. 

Hasan II Mosque was built by Hasan II, the father of Morocco’s current monarch.  The plan for the mosque sprang from a Qur’anic verse that states “the throne of Allah was built on water.” So Hasan declared, "I want to build this mosque on the water, because God's throne is on the water. Therefore, the faithful who go there to pray, to praise the Creator on firm soil, can contemplate God's sky and ocean,” and thus the fifth largest mosque, with the world’s tallest minaret was built in Casablanca.

At night the crowds of tourists and worshipers had dispersed, and the around the gigantic tiled and embossed walls hung a peaceful silence. Bismah, the young woman who had taken us on as her responsibility, told me in very excited and rapid French (which she maintained for the hour that we spent with her) that this was the place where young lovers come to be alone and whisper sweet nothings under the eye of Allah. 

When at last it was time for us to head back to our hotel, Bismah and her husband gave me their phone numbers and told me that if ever I should find myself back in Casa, I was welcome in their family’s home for couscous and tea. It was yet another reminder of the generosity and warmth found in the hearts of Moroccan people.

Tchaikovsky meets Mohamed

The first thing I did when I arrived in al Maghreb was to start asking everyone I met if they knew any traditional violinists. I was determined to find the musicians I had come searching for, although I was not sure what the plan would be when I found them. I began asking every Moroccan that chanced my way, “do you know a violin player?” Reminding myself of the children's book, “are you my mommy?” I almost always received a variation of the same answer, “I have a friend who plays, but I haven’t seen him for about a year…” But I held on to my glimmer of hope, because even if violinists were only vaguely known of, at least they existed; and it was all up to me to find them. And then, just several days ago, luck joined my forces (or perhaps it was perseverance and nagging finally pulling through.)

I went to join a group of friends for coffee at the Prestige cafe one night where I was met by my good friend Younes, who introduced me to a young man whom I had never seen before. “This is Idriss,” he said, “my violinist friend I told you about.” My brain did a little break dance there on the spot while my head threatened to split in half due to the idiotic grin stretched full across my face. It turns out Idriss studies Arab classical violin at the music conservatory here in Meknes, while his father is a professional (!!!) violinist and all around musician. And yes, they can both play the violin on their laps.

I ran into Idriss again on campus a few days ago, and we made plans to go to see a symphony orchestra concert that evening at the cultural center in La Ville Nouvelle. I could not tell you what I expected to find there as I have ceased trying to imagine how anything will be in Morocco, after realizing that the reality rarely matches the image, for better or for worse.  However, stepping into the concert hall was like stepping out of the third world and into the first. It was as though Africa was on one side of those glass doors, and Europe or America on the other. I was, admittedly, a bit shocked at first. The high ceiling with dozens of lights forming a symmetrical star shown down upon the backs of plush strawberry red and royal blue seats, while the walls were paneled with tastefully modern wooden trim. There was one thing, however, that was added as if to ensure that no one quite succeeded in forgetting where they were. On either side of the stage sat a gold framed 5’ by 3’ foot picture of King Mohamed VI. Oh yes, and there was another hanging front and center above the orchestra.

The concert itself was entirely lovely, although I did find the whole thing a bit ironic. I have always said that I believed Russians were the most artistically and musically talented people in the world, with some exceptions of course (China has some awfully good child violinists). So here I am in Morocco, the country and culture I have longed to know for so any years, listing to a Moroccan orchestra play Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto No.6, with a young Russian violin soloist. It was just too much. And in case that was not enough, the piece played after intermission was Tchaikovsky’s symphony “Pathetique,” which I played with the Marquette Symphony Orchestra in December, the last concert I was in before leaving the states.

I told myself there was no way I would ever get a blog. I can’t even keep up with my old fashioned journal, for god’s sake. Although honestly, that may have something to do with telling myself that I would only write if I wrote in French. So naturally I just don’t write. Anyway, blogging just seems to be “the thing to do” these days. So we’ll give it a try, and see where it takes us. Yes, in English this time.

I’m afraid this story is a bit late in coming, and so all readers will have to be contented with starting somewhere not quite in the beginning. It was already more than a month ago that I landed in Granada, the Pomegranate, and sailed across the Straits of Gibraltar, where mighty Hurcules once separated Africa from Europe. Although I am not sure what I expected to find when I stepped off of that boat and felt Africa beneath me for the first time in my life, I am sure that whatever it was, the port certainly was not it. We may as well have still been in Spain. Where was the desert? Where were the camels? Instead, I saw before me rolling green hills and steep rocky cliffs falling into the waves bellow. That was only the first of many surprises that awaited me in al Maghreb.  Now, after having lived here for nearly a month, I have come to expect the unexpected and to love and accept Morocco for all that it is, and isn’t. The little things have ceased to surprise me so much, and what I once thought undeniably strange is now simply normal. I no longer take any notice when small, mule drawn carts full of oranges the size of melons turn into four lanes of traffic, and squatting over a little hole in the bathroom floor is nothing out of the ordinary. The cries of “you’re beautiful, I love you!” or “I am Ben Laden!” fail in catching even my slightest attention.

Some call Morocco a melting pot, while others give it the more appealing term ‘bouquet.’ Whatever you wish to call it, Morocco really is a place where everything and everyone mingles and flows together in a truly magical ‘bouquet’ of coexistence. It is not uncommon to see a mother wearing a traditional jallebah and hijab, escorting her tight jeaned and heal toting daughter down the street. On campus, young women in full burkas will be seen giggling in the corner with friends wearing western clothes and nothing covering their hair. Being situated precisely at the junction between Europe and Africa, Morocco is a land where the cultures of the Amazigh people, Arabs, French, Spanish, and southern Africa all fall gracefully into step along side each other, and where echoes of the past can be heard singing in time with the rhythms of the present.

In time, one comes to understand that all is possible in al Maghreb, Moroco.