The Best Person to Sit with You

Forgive me for having fallen into the habit of beginning my posts with proverbs, I guess I have truly become acculturated to Moroccan social interactions, where there seems to be a an appropriate proverb or saying for every situation and you get cool points for throwing one in the conversation at the right time.

So, the one in my head for today is not necessarily Moroccan, i think it just a general Arabic saying and it goes الكتاب خير جليس (( The best person to sit with you is a book ))
One of my Arabic professors told it to me months ago, and i must admit that i perked up in my seat when he said it. Finally, I thought , someone understands.

The saying is in my head now because I spent the day making the rounds of my favorite Fes bookstores. They are my favorites simply because they exist, although they are not as homey and comfortable as ones in the US where I can stay for hours. Here in Fes I always feel the need to find the book quickly and make my purchase and leave. Also, like most social spaces in Morocco, the people at the bookstore generally want to have a conversation with you about something. But I don't go to bookstores to talk with people, I go to bookstores to talk with books.

Because I am scheduled to leave Fes God-willing in less than two months now, I have suddenly gotten the "need to get" fever and it is mostly need to get books in Arabic that I will either not be able to find in the US or would have to sell a major organ to afford. So I went off today in search of books about Moroccan religious history, and to buy a book as a present for a friend.

The conversation at the first bookstore was about where I was from, Sudan? Was I a graduate student? Was I thinking of going on to get a PhD? I gave them a down- payment for a set of books they say will be there on Saturday God-willing.

The next bookstore is a place where I rarely get to leave without a recieving some kind of "lesson" from the owner. Today he could not remember my name, but he tried, he went through almost every Arabic Muslim female name he could before I just jumped in and said my name to him. "oh all these different names,"he said, as if it was just to much to keep them all straight. I bought some books from him and in a typical Moroccan fashion , I asked him to "fix"the price for me before I payed. Meaning I wanted him to take some dirhams off. He said, "Oh you have really become a Fessia,"(a woman from Fes) and took off a few symbolic dirhams for good measure.

Then he asked me if i wanted to be a Fessia. It was kind of like in grammar school when some of your classmates formed a secret club and they asked you if you wanted to join. I stood there, relatively dispassionate about the whole thing, and said "okay," to which he began my lesson. "you do not say 'okay' when asked if you want to be a Fessia. " He then went on to explain that just saying okay would make him want to revoke the offer, no , a more appropriate response would have been something like, "May God reward you with goodness". I thanked him for the lesson.
Later as I was leaving, he asked me again, "Do you want to be a Fessia?" to which i responded, "With complete Happiness." He almost bounced out of his seat with contentment.

Off to the third bookstore, it is a new one and I got so excited that upon entering it, I almost wanted to start a conversation with the people working there. I looked through its shelves and found book after book that I would have bought had i not just emptied my pockets at the previous two bookstores.

And so then into a cab with my bag of books. The other passenger in the taxi is an old man who walks with the assistant of braces. The cab driver tells me that this man was one of the first four people to ever own and drive a car in Fes. This must have been during the time of the French occupation of Morocco he comments, back when land could be bought for ten dirhams a meter. Then the driver goes on to tell me about how as a child he almost had to have his own legs amputated, but ended up doing a year-long treatment in the hospital and was able to keep his legs, Alhamdulilah.

You see, these are the kinds of conversations you can get into anywhere in Morocco, so how beautiful it is to sit down with a book and talk about something you're really interested in.

Peace