you have to live with people

This post is another one of those rehashing of lunch time conversations. Yesterday while having lunch at a friends house, we somehow came upon the topic of loaning out houses to other people. I still can't remember how we got to this topic, but one way or the other both of the people I was eating with agreed that insdie they didnt like loaning out their houses, but whenever they are asked they always do, because as one of them put it, " you have to live with people," meaning you have to do the I- scratch-your- back-then-you-scratch-mine-thing.

This may seem like a strange conversation topic for some of you- perhaps i should explain that a lot of times in Morocco big important parties are held at home. Only within the last couple of years have people been renting out halls and party rooms and the such, and for some people that is still not financially possible. SO- in order to stretch the space for say a wedding, or a baby naming ceremony, etc , you ask a neighbor if you can borrow their place, and then you use both places for the party. Generally a simple split is done of female guests in one location and male guests at another location.

One of the people at the table told us that a French man married a Moroccan woman here in Fes and the woman's family asked the neighbors for their house for the night, and that the French guy was in shock and said that in France it would never even occur to you to ask your neighbors to borrow thier place. My lunch companion said the French guy was touched, but at the same time said that the neighbors were "idiots" for having given up their place.

So then following up on that conversation, I was having tea with some other friends later in the evening and I told them that I had friends visiting from America soon and so I had better go and get some nice moroccan couches made. My friend pointed to her living room and said "just borrow our furniture, take our couches for 5 to 10 days however long they are staying; we"ll just rent a moving truck and move them to your house." I told her that I would be nervous the whole time that something might happen to the couches while they were at my house. She jokingly asked if i thought my guest would urinate on the couches, because thats the only thing she could forsee being a problem. I told her no, I would hope they would not do that, they are adults afterall.

Back from another border town just in time for the Mawlid

I wish I could do real-time blogging, but there is seldom enough time.
Last Sunday I boarded a train and rode for 6 hours until we got to one of the cities of the North-east border between Morocco and Algeria, it is called Oujda (pronouced wujda). I had wanted to go to Oujda for several months because I heard that there was a place there really important to my research. Yet something in me refused to go there the touristy way. I kept telling my one of my friends that I wanted to be "sent there" by someone I would meet who knew someone there, i.e., I wanted to be plugged into a network of contacts.

SO..a few weeks ago, I was at a bus stop leaving a conference at one of the universities. Two women were discussing the topic of the conference and being critical of how the presenters addressed the topic. I excused myself and then added my two cents into the conversation. As it turned out, me and those two women ended up spending the whole afternoon together and one of them has a very close friend in Oujda! She literally said to me, " I will send you to one of my friends there, she will take good care of you."

So, a six hour train ride and then 3 and a half days with a really cool, pious family in Oujda, and making great contacts for my research. Their neighborhood was just at the edge of town, my new Oujda friend told me that the mountains just beyond her neighborhood were Algeria. I asked her if she had ever been to Algeria, and she laughed saying, "no." The border has been closed since the 1990s because of the myriad of social conflicts/war/ and bombings that have been going on in Algeria.
Her mother told me that only the people who run contraband go into Algeria. Mostly they bring back gasoline which is cheaper there and then sell it in Morocco.

Which explains the people I saw standing on the street with a pinkish,red liquid in empty vegetable oil and juice bottles. At first I thought they were selling some kind of refreshment. But no - they were actually working at make-shift gas stations. They even had a little siphon-cup thingy to pour the gas from the plastic bottles into the gas tank.


So, three days later and I did not want to leave Oujda, but the Mawlid, a day remembering the birth of the Prophet Muhammad ( peace and blessings be upon him) was coming and I had promised some people that I would spend the day with them in Fes. So another six hour train trip back to Fes.

The Mawlid is not a religious holiday persay, it is not mandated by Islam, but a way for Muslims to just remember and be happy about the birth of their Prophet. In Morocco (and other countries too) this means a lot of singing. Little kids are given small drums as toys and they go through the streets banging them. I saw one little boy in the old city of Fes banging on a oil olive oil container. In Oujda, people were buying fireworks for the occasion. Everybody was getting together songs praising the Prophet and trying to find singing groups to come to their events. The mosques have put up banners with either a saying of the Prophet or a verse from the Quran about the Prophet. No school for the kids, no work for people with government jobs, its a nice relaxing couple of days of being grateful.

On another note, I have come back to a Fes that is swarming with tourist who put their video cameras in your face. It is a bit annoying. Oh well, when you are a poor country I guess you have to be nice to the tourists.

Peace

Melilla, Morocco- same thing

When I last wrote about the Melilla trip and spoke about operating in Euros as opposed to Dirhams, I forgot to mention how we actually got Euros. We went to two banks who both refused to exchange our Moroccan dirhams, they dont exchange dirhams they told us. Well where are we supposed to exchange them? we asked. "On the street" the teller responded. So we walk outside looking for a moneychanger, which goes againt all of the travel advice you have ever received in your life. At that point I made some comment about how ridiculous politics is. Standing a little in front of the bank was a man dressed in a suit, but not like a going to work suit, more like a going to Las Vegas suit, he said ever so lightly under his breath, "sarf" which means change in Arabic. So I say to him, "do you change dirhams to Euros?" And yes he does, and so there on the street we hand him hundreds of dirhams and he hands us tens of Euros. The man handled himself in such a profesional way , counting the money to us twice to make sure everything was correct,that I almost expected him to give us a receipt.

So anyway, moving forward a bit, that first evening we met my Spanish friend at Plaza de Espana, which is a circular open area with a statue to someone or other, a fountain, and park benches to sit on. She had just come from work at an organization that helps immigrant women, the overwhelming majority of which are Moroccans. They try to help them learn Spanish, get jobs, take care of documentation issues, health issues, etc. It was really stretching my college Spanish to keep up a conversation with her about it all, but for the most part we managed to keep the conversation going for hours while we ate exquisite seafood at a restaurant right near the Mediterranean.

The next day my friend and travel-bud had to take an early plane to " the peninsula" which is what people in Melilla call mainland Spain. I meet my Spanish friend,( who is actually a native of Madrid but married to a Spanish native of Melilla, who is also a convert to Islam. ) We go to have breakfast at a restaurant where we have Churros and Moroccan mint tea, but the Churros seem totally like another Moroccan fried bread breakfasty dish i have had and not like the Churros I am used to in the States. When I mention this to my friend and her husband, they say, "Melilla, Morocco, same thing."

Then they take me on a tour around Melilla, we walk through old Melilla, the original fort the Spanish built when they colonized, we drive around the coast, whihc is just breathtaking, and not developed or touristy, and I ask them if they get a lot of tourists. They say, no almost none, people who would come this far, would rather just go a little farther and be in Morocco.

Then they took me to see the huge state of the art border fence the Spanish built to keep out illegal immigrants. I would say it was "impressive," but i wouldnt want you to get the wrong idea. I was not impressed by it in a good way, but in the extent to which people will protect their little plots of land from others. The fence has three or four layers and in between the layers are pieces of metal in a criss-cross fashion that make sure if a person were to get over one level and fell in between the others their legs would get caught. Oh the Humanity!

My friend's husband, who is also a member of the Spanish military in charge of "protecting" Melilla, said that in the past there was no fence and Moroccans freely came into Melilla and Spanish people from Melilla would just walk over into Morocco , but when there started to be a big influx of Sub-Saharan Africans seeking asylum and entrance into Europe through Melilla, the Spanish got scared all of Sub Saharan Africa would come into Melilla. ( people still cross over a lot mostly to shop, people from Melilla go into Morocco for food stuffs like fruit and vegetables, and Moroccans come over for packaged goods, products from Europe, etc - but now they have topass through border guard points set up along the fence).
My friend husband says the American government is modeling the fence they are building on the Mexican-American border on the fence in Melilla, well that's something to look forward to.

After a day of "seeing" Melilla and just before I need to head back over the border to take a bus from Nador to Fes, we go to have a meal at a Turkish chain restaurant called Doner King. All the meat is halal. It was quite interesting- burgers, pizza, flan, etc.

Then my friends drive me to the border, apoligizing for not actually taking me over the border in their car, but they dont have the documentation they would need to get it over the border and back. So I say goodbye to them at the border and walk in a crowd of Moroccans past the Spanish border guards and back into Morocco. While all the other Moroccans just keep going, I am the sole person who actually goes up to the Moroccan officials because I have to get my passport stamped to be officially entering the country. Within minutes, I am squeezed inside of a big taxi with 6 other people and am being driven to the bus station.

Once inside of Morocco proper, I feel like my breathing becomes easier, I take deep breathes of Moroccan air. I look around at Nador, a town i don't even know, as if I am returning home. Just another 6 hour bus ride and I will be back in Fes.

Whats Your Name?

I'm not going to finish the Melilla journey story now, just thought I would rehash an interesting conversation I had today over lunch with some Moroccan friends of mine.
One woman was laughing as she told the group that she had met an American woman, and the first thing the woman said to her was " what's your name?"

Another woman at the table frowned when she heard this. I knew exactly why she frowned and so I jumped into the conversation and said " you see, to us [ i.e. Americans] its rude to meet someone and not exchange names, but for you guys its rude to ask someones name."
I continued to tell them that it has take some time for me to accept the Moroccan ability to meet someone, speak for hours ( not an exaggeration) and never have the person introduce themselves or ask you what your name is. Sometimes ( but it is very rare) someone might say, " you haven't honored us with your name." At those times I am generally so in shock that I am tripping over myself to to get my name out of my mouth.

I told my friends that I compromise by just introducing myself even if the Moroccan friend I am talking to is not interested. My friend laughed and said something along the line of " Oh well okay, so now they have your name, what are they going to do with it?"

Going to Melilla - a kinder friendlier border crossing

Of course I never get time to actually post anything when I am traveling. But this last trip to Melilla was definetly something worth remembering. It was one of those time traveling, world traveling, and language traveling adventures.

We arrived into Nador, the Moroccan city that shares a land border with Melilla at exactly sunrise. Now please remember that the Spanish colonized Melilla about 500 years ago, just at the time of the Inquisition when they were busy kicking the Muslims and Jews out of Spain. Taking Melilla was a good way to cut off supplies to Muslims still in Spain (because it is right on the coast of Mediterranean) so that they could not properly defend themselves.

Anyway, away from history and back to the trip. We get off at the bus station in Nador and take a big taxi to the border with Melilla which is actually another little town called Beni Anzar. At Beni Anzar we opt for going across the border on foot. It is early morning and so there are many Moroccans going into Melilla for work. Moroccans who live in the immediate area of Melilla are allowed entrance in Melilla during the day provided they show their national i.d. cards and it gives their residence as being in Nador.

There are hundreds of Moroccans at the border with us, but we have to get our passports stamped by the Moroccan authorities to leave and then walk a few meters through the space that separates the Morocco exit station from the Spanish entrance. I commented to my friend as we were walking that I wondered what country were were in at that point.
I must admit that I was filled with a little sense of dread, every time I have gone into Spain from Morocco, it has been with dreadful consequences. But this Melilla was different, and while the Moroccans were piled almost on top of each as they waited at the gate to be let into Spain, us with our American passports walked casually through the gate for us ("us" meaning "1st world people" who dont need visas or anything to get into Spain).

The Spanish border guards were actually pleasant. We walked into Melilla, meaning now according to Spain and the European Union, we were in Europe; while just a few feet back we were in Morocco, and all the while we were STILL IN AFRICA. Isnt it wild? I looked back over the border station to the buildings on the Moroccan side, I could still read the signs in Arabic, it was surreal.

For a while it was hard to see what was so different about Melilla, everyone around me was Moroccan, almost every woman who walked past me had on a headscarf.
We walked to a cafe and got coffee, I turn down the idea of getting a pastry because I fear the Spanish inclination to put pork or pork fat in everything and so I feel like coffee is safe. Safe it is, and extremely strong. It is obvious that the cafe we are in is a Spanish cafe, meaning Spanish people go there, not Moroccan people. I am unsure about how to describe people here, is the dichotomy here Spanish versus Moroccan or Christian versus Muslim, or even Spanish versus Berber, because most of the people of Moroccan orgin here are Riffi Berbers and speak the Riffi Berber dialect as their mother tongue. I can tell that me and my friend are in the "wrong "cafe by the looks we get from the other customers and the fact that everyone there is Spanish ( or pretending to be). I comment to my friend that I feel like we are in a restaurant on the South side of Chicago, but the white part of the South Side of Chicago.

Quick coffee and then across the street to get a cab to a hotel. We are looking for cheap, especially because we are operating in Euros now and not Moroccan dirhams.
After depositing our stuff in our room, we decide to go and take a look around. I notice the Mediterranean Sea almost immediately, it is stunning to my heart. The town is a real hybrid and at first I find that off putting. Lots of Moroccans in traditional Moroccan clothes, many stores selling all the same products you could get in Morocco, and then Spanish people, Spanish high fashion stores, Churches, a large Mosque, there are also orthodox Jews of Riffi Berber origin, a large Hindu Indian community - in essence a bunch of people who are not suppossed to be chilling with each other, right?

At the central market most of the fruit and vegetable sellers are Moroccans, up stairs , where they sell meat, the Muslims have their own halal butchers and the Spanish theirs. We are hungry and so get a light meal at the first place that looks appealing and like Muslims eat there because of my anti-pork "preoccupation".

It is Friday and I am excited to see what the Friday prayer looks like here, because although the people here are of Moroccan background, they do not have the same stringent authoritarian dictation of how to run the mosque that people inside Morocco proper have to deal with from the Moroccan government.

I get to the Friday prayer service early because I am not sure what time it starts because Melilla is on Spanish time, which is one hour ahead of Morocco proper. I am immediatly struck at how much the mosque reminds me of mosques in America, and not Morocco, which kind of makes me laugh inside. Mosques in non-Muslim countries have to be so much more than just places of worship, and the feeling of it being a sanctuary is so much stronger than in a Muslim country where they are plentiful and taken for granted.

As the mosque starts to fill up, i am a bit shocked by the amount of women dressed in all white or all cream. In the middle region of Morocco, women only wear all white immediately after the death of their husbands and the 4 months following his death. It is just mathematically impossible that these many widows could be gathered here i think. As more and more women enter I just accept that it must be a Riffi custom to wear these colors to the mosque. ( later i ask a native and he says yes, this is Riffi custom)

When the imam gets up on the minbar to give the khutbah, he begins with the traditional Arabic phrases with which the sermons are begun, and then swithches to Riffi Berber and proceeds to give the sermon entirely in Berber with the occassional quoting of a verse from the Quran in Arabic, a few Moroccan Arabic phrases and an occasional Spanish word for effect, like "porque?"

Just when I thought I could follow him based on the verses he was saying and from his body language, he would launch into a whole Berber paragraph or so and I would be lost again. But it was good for my humility I told myself. At the end of his sermon, we prayed as a congregation and I walked back to my hotel room to catch up on some sleep before an evening meeting with a Spanish friend of mine who lives in Melilla and works at an organization that helps Moroccan women.

to be continued God willing .....

on the midnight bus to Melilla

It is 9:43 at night here, and instead of getting to bed like i would normally be at this time , I am trying to get ready for a late-night bus ride.
A bus ride to Nador in the very north of Morocco and then.... another short bus trip to Melilla, an enclave city at the very tip of North Africa. Moroccans and the Moroccan government call it a colonized piece of Morocco, Spain calls it Spain. I want to see this last bastion of colonization with my eyes.

So tonight, we ( me and two friends, one of whom is leaving Morocco tomorrow) did a total ex-pat thing and had sushi delivered to their place, (something i've never even done in the States), in about an half hour we will head out to the bus station whether we like it or not, and then off to another (God willing) safe adventure. I have already pulled out my rusty college Spanish!

will keep you posted...

In Quantities as Great as the Drops of Rain

I'm still not there yet with finishing the final 15 hour ride up to Fes, I guess I could sum it up quickly- dazzling desert landscapes, interesting Berber villages that seem to be doing well off with the remittances of Berber merchants from the city, and then, the weather got steadily colder and colder and the bus window had a hole in it, and i ended up pulling out my cold weather jilleba and putting it over my other clothes, and then we knew we were back "home," up North. We pulled into Fes at about 5 in the morning, still pitch black dark, we catch a cab to my place and get there just minutes before the call for the dawn prayer wanting sleep and a shower in no particular order.

And now on to...
The Dala'il al Khayrat. Some of you already know what it is, but for those of you who are not familiar with it, it is a prayer, a poem, a text of invocation , celebrating the Prophethood of the Messenger Muhammad (peace be upon him)and his beauty. It was written about 600 hundred years ago by the Moroccan, Imam al-Jazuli, here in Fes and is recited all over the Muslim world till this day.

So I had been told about a gathering in the old city of Fes, where people get together and recite the Dala'il , after procrastinating for several months, I finally got to the point where I needed a spiritual "jolt," really I just wanted to be in the company of people with tender hearts and generally those are the kind of people attracted to gatherings of that sort . So I called the family that hosts the gathering and got directions to their home.

I got my self to the general vicicnity of their house ( i knew this because i got to the fountain they said was near their house) but i could not find the house number. A group of young boys were playing , I went up to one of them and asked him if he knew the family whose house I was looking for, " well yes," he told me, because it was his house. As he led me to the door, I could already hear and feel the strength of the voices inside reciting the Dala'il. I quickly introduced myself to the hostess and was shown a place to sit. I was all of a sudden submerged in the Dala'il. I pulled out my copy, but was unsure of where they were, a young girl, a daughter of the family saw my displacement, took my copy from me, opened her ears for a second and then turned to the page and pointed me to the line where they were at. I thanked her and plunged my voice into the that of the group.

We went on page after page, twenty pages, then thirty pages, with the pace not stopping nor the voices trailing off. About an hour and a half into it, we take a short break for tea, and then keep going. Then the call to prayer for the sunset prayer is called, we stop to pray,and then back to the Dala'il.

The power of the lyrics, with the chorus of voices and the atmosphere of being in a beautifully kept up house in the old city was simply beyond words. But here is a translation of some of the words we were reciting :
O Allah, bless our master Muhammad, the light of lights, the mystery of mysteries, the master of the righteous, the adornment of the best messengers, the noblest of whomever the night darkens and the day brightens, and in quantity as great as the drops of rain which descend from the first of this world to its end, and in quantity as great as the plants and trees which grow from the first of this world to its end, with a blessing which is constant, lasting as long as the Kingdom of Allah, the One, the Victorious.


I had to leave the gathering because I had made previous plans, having not realized how long it would go on. I said goodbye to my host, who was surprised to see me leave before they were finished. She made me take a piece of sweet bread with me and offered me milk. I say goodbye to her and then make my way at night through the old city, which is cautiously exciting. My host had drawn me a map of lefts and rights and then two lefts, directions away from her house and back into the heart of the old city where no one could hear the words of the Dala'il going around and around inside me.