First Class ticket back to Fes

It is a fiercely windy day here in Fes and it seems as if all day it was just about to rain, but it hasn't. I, notetaker am finally "at home" after a week in Jordan followed by ten days of playing tour guide to friends visiting Morocco from America.

Yesterday after saying goodbye to my friends, I gathered myself and with half excitement, half reluctance i gathered my things and headed towards the downtown Rabat train station to buy a first class train ticket to Fes. Yes - when it comes to riding the train I insist on first class it is only 40 dirhams more than 2nd class, but it generally means a quiet enclosed car with only 6 people and less worrying about theft.

But you never know who the other people you are going to get in the car with you will be. I always pray for one or two other really quite women. Sometimes i get this. Yesterday hoever i got : one Moroccan woman, one Moroccan man - asleep when i entered the train car with his laptop on his lap. One man from SubSaharan Africa who seemed to have just arrived to Morocco and was doing his best to figure things out quickly; to men from Bahrain- the Arab country in the Persian Gulf. One had lived in Morocco for some time, for the other it seemed to have been his first visit.

The two men from Bahrain were the talkers of the trip and i found their conversation to have been the perfect conclusion to my tour guide days. I must admit that i was a bit annoyed by their talking, partly because i wanted a quiet ride, and partly because theirs was a running conversation filled with comments about Morocco that I found a bit misinformed and over simplified.

The one man who had been in Morocco for some time pointed out things for his friend, like the name of the towns the train stopped at; although this was generally written on the sign outside the stop. He also pointed out the different fruit trees and crops growing in the field. His friend was really impressed by the bountiful agricultural fields of Morocco.

At one point the man from Sub-Saharan Africa began to ask another man on the train if we were close to Fes, he asked this in French and the Moroccan man responded in French because presumably the man form Sub-Saharan Africa did not know Arabic. This interaction brought some immediate comments from the two men from Bahrain. "Oh how they have been overwhelmed by French" they commented in their Gulfi Arabic dialect. I wondered if they thought the other people on the train did not understand them or if it just didn't matter to them if the Moroccans on the train found the things they said offensive. I wondered if they had realized that the Sub Saharan African man did not know Arabic....

Then there was a comment about how many Moroccans are members of Sufi brotherhoods, tariqas. This was also said with a tinge of condescending judgement. As we near the town of Meknes one of the Bahraini men gets on his cell phone and trying to speak in the Moroccan Arabic dialect calls a woman and tells her that he will be home soon and that he is hungry. oh how perfect for this man to have a Moroccan wife!

God forgive me is this all useless talking about people? I think i began retelling this story because I am just so tired of the tired generalizations made by tourists, academics, and Arabs from the Eastern Muslim lands about Morocco - there is such spiritual and material bounty here - and kindness!

I hope i get a chance to share some pictures and a few notes from all the traveling i have been doing both outside of and within Morocco in the next few posts.

Peace