aren't you a girl from this region?

So...
The Museum finally opens about half an hour late and my friend and I are the only patrons. The man in charge aplogizes for being late and gives us some brochures, one in English and the other in French. We look at pieces of pottery and coins that have been exavated from the Sijilmassa site. It takes us no more than about 10-15 mintues to be "done." We try to figure out what to do to fill the time before the bus leaves for Zagora. Our time is spent mostly walking around looking, taking an excursion through the souq and then going to buy our bus tickets for Zagora. It is a long bus ride, about 6 hours. We pay our 70 dirhams each ( about 9 US dollars ) and get on the bus a bit early.

The bus takes off reasonably early and we drive through the dramatic desert landscape. I am just amazed that people find the courage to live in such a place, but then i remind myself that people live in the oasis, not the heart of the dry rocky desert.

The bus attendant takes an interest in me. He is just trying to figure out what my story is, I look so much like them, butI am abviously somehow "different." On one of his repeated trips down the aisle, he manages to start a conversation with me , beginning in Tashilhet (a berber language). It is a test to see if i am from the area. He goes on for a few sentences with me staring at him blankly. Then he switches to Arabic. "Aren't you a girl from this region?" he asks. I reply in the negative. " But your origins are from this area, right?" he continues. " I dont know,possibly, God knows" I reply. He almost laughs at this. "you dont know, well, i feel sorry for someone who does not know their origins." Then walks away up the aisle.

After a long dusty road, with people getting on an off the bus in places so remote that you wouldnt think that there were even people living there we finally arrive in Zagora. In those final moments on the bus I make a decision to scratch the cheap hotel and atleast go for mid-range, simply because after a long dusty trip of more than 15 hours I need the guarantee of a warm shower. I talk my travel partner into the luxurious idea and within an half hour we are in a little town adjoining Zagora called Azmour sitting inside the most comfortable quaint bed and breakfast I have ever been in. It is a tradtional Southern Moroccan riad, all the walls are made of clay and hay. It had been rehabbed by a French couple and is in an assuming residential neighborhood. All of the neighbors are Moroccans just living their lives.

It is the "low season" for tourism, we are the only patrons at the bed and breakfast which gives us an advantage in bargaining a price for the room. But because we have arrived late in the afternoon, we have caught the owner off guard with regards to meals. We will have to fend for ourselves for dinner. No worries, we head to a little grocer buy some German brand corn flakes and some milk, a bag of almonds, go back to the beautiful bed an breakfast and enjoy the first bowl of cereal i have had in more than five months (with bananas on top just like at home!).

And then a warm shower and sleep to get ready for the adventures that await us the next day......

My return from "unbeneficial Morocco"

It will take a while for me to explain the title of this post. It was a phrase used to describe the South of Morocco in a converstation I had on the 3rd day of my trip to the desert area of Morocco.

It will take me more than one post to go over everything that happened and everything my eyes and heart and ears took in. So lets start from the beginning, right?

Day 1:

A friend and I go to the bus station in Fes for a 9pm bus to a town called ar-Rissani. As i go to show my ticket to the security guard who admits people into the waiting area, he says to me " you're going to ar-Rissani, right?" I reply in the affirmative and he says " you dont even need a ticket, you're so obvious." I don't respond because I dont know how to respond. He is referring to my skin color and physical charactersitics, obviously, he assumes I am from some place south, like ar-Rissani.

My friend and I sleep cross ways over the bus seats, she mostly sleeps while i look out the window at the amazing scenery. Although we are headed towards the Desert, we first pass through an area of snowcapped mountains, that seemed illusionary. My friend said that when she woke up to see them on both sides of us, she felt like she was in the middle of a poem.

There was enough moon light for me to witness the change of scenery, and when we approached the desert climate, it was obvious in both the ground, the architecture, and the people (yes most people were my complexion). Suddenly I felt like I was in a new country all over again and would have to learn its ways.

We pull up at something like 6 am into ar-Rissani. It is known as the birthplace of the Alawi dynasty that now rules Morocco, and was created besides the ruins of an ancient city called Sijilmassa that was destroyed in the 14th century. As a history buff, I was intoxicated by the ruins, and how people lived side by side with them.

Ar-Rissani was not our final destination, we were headed for Zagora. A taxi driver tried to convince us that there was no bus to Zagora, and that we would have to pay him 600 dirhams to drive us to Zagora with his taxi. Luckily, I have been shiested enough to know not to take the word of every Abdullah, Hisham and Harun. We go to the bus station where they say, that yes there is a bus to Zagora and it leaves at 11am. That leaves us a few hours to roam around ar-Rissani.

But first we just wait for the sun to come up. We eat a few snacks we brought along, venture into a scary public restroom, that I will spare you the details of that. As we are sitting there , snacking on muffins and cheese a woman comes up to me to ask me something. I say something because she is speaking to me in Tashelhit, a language of the Berber people, the indigenous people of Morocco. For most people in this Tashelhit is their first language, or they are true bilinguals. Learning Arabic and Tashelhit together. The puzzled look on my face was enough of a cue for the woman to realize that she needed to switch to Arabic. Oh!, she was just asking where the bathroom was.

The sun comes up and we head out of the bus station to explore ar-Rissani. We are met by teams and teams of boys and girls ( all wearing headscarves) on bicycles riding their way to school. There is a museum we want to see that is not open yet so we roam around some of the ruins of Sijilmassa and slowy get acquainted with the new landcape. The buildings are in desert colors, the women cover themselves in one big black cloth, many with their faces covered. This is not Fes. We both remark on how relaxing and peaceful the place seems to be. We go on gratefully about how glad we are we took this trip.

and more on the trip later God-willing

On my way to the Desert...

People in Fes are always asking me if I am from Southern Morocco, where people have brown skin like me. Sometimes they just assume I am from the South,the region Moroccans call the "Sahara," which means desert in Arabic. They also claim that I speak Arabic "just like" the people of the desert. What a coincidence.

So brown-skin me is going to take a trip, God willing to the South-East, to an oasis town called Zagora and other stops along the way. I am excited because of the amazing history the area contains and because although it is still Morocco, the regional culture is so different from where I am now.

The bus leaves at 9 o'clock tonight.Maybe there will be time for some blogging along the way. God willing there will be cool experiences, some pictures, and fresh dates to bring back.

traveling between worlds

Yesterday was one of those days where I moved in and out of my different lives here in Morocco - at one moment being a Muslim American with my Moroccan friends, and at the next moment being an American Muslim with my American friends.

I think this movement in and out of different cultural spaces really hit me when I left a friends house who is a Fez native after having a Qur'an memorization lesson with her. I walked only about 7 minutes from her house in the old city to an internet cafe to meet an American friend, a writer and fellow researcher. The internet cafe(which i will call it, although there is no coffee or food served) was full of American tourists, checking their email and arranging travel plans.

After a half hour my American friend and I walked a little deeper into the old city, to go sit and chat at a new ex-pat cafe that had just opened. I must admit, i was pleasantly surprised. Cafes in Morocco are generally places for a certain type of man to go drink tea, black coffee, chain smoke, and stare at women as they walk by. It is not a respectable place for even respectable men, better yet a woman.
But this new ex-patriot cafe nestled deep in an old house in the medina, was immaculately restored and had the vibe of a nice American poets cafe. My friend and I went up to the roof where we had a view of the old city with its rooftops and minarets, and the mountains in the background . We sat there sharing a pot of tea and being grateful for this space.

Then as the sun down prayer approached, I washed for prayer, left the cafe and crossed the old city's bricked path to go and pray at the bouInania mosque/madrasa. It is an amazing centuries old structure that is open for tourists during the day, but still holds all five prayers for Muslims. It is the madrasa( religious school) where Ibn Khaldoun taught so many centuries ago. I felt like I was literally traveling between worlds.

After the prayer my friend and I went our separate ways in the old city, I took a cab home. The cab driver wearing his red Fez cap ( named after Fez of course ) assumed I was Moroccan and began commenting about the current state of affairs. He said " when you see the way people act and dress nowadays...[you think well] Fes is gone,lost. There was a time when we didn't even know moral corruption"

I said to the cab driver , "May God Protect us all," a general phrase Moroccans say in the face of a displeasing situation.

This daily move in and out of cultural spaces is almost overwhelming, and is mentally exhausting, making sure that one is being "true" to oneself at all times. I enjoyed the ex-pat cafe. I loved the BouInania mosque, and i definitely get where the cab driver is coming from.

Oh what a wonderful world!

Intelligent discussion about politics in Morocco

I have been in Morocco long enough to know that you only whisper the word "politics" in polite company. There are "ears" and "eyes" everywhere that could get you in some trouble. Be that as it may, I have come across this refreshingly intelligent impartial talk about the state of affairs in Morocco :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sui0Dn9eBIs&eurl=http://www.martinkramer.org/Frame-899529-sandstormpage899529.html?refresh=1197959217471
Keep Hope Alive