The Family... And Ryan, Sheesha and Sex Tourism

Warning: This is a long one.... :/

I'm back in Marrakech, the place where it all started. It was two months ago today (the 10th) that I landed here, my first point of entry into Morocco. There's something about this place that keeps bringing me back. I know that it's not the weather (the summer temperature is usually around or above 47C/116F) or the ocean breeze (the closest beach is a good two hour drive). There's a craziness of Marrkech that I'm beginning to love and the hospitality is so welcoming, it's almost too much (more about that later... either this blog or the next). A first visit Marrakech might throw some people into an uncomfortable spin. On the taxi ride from the airport into town, one might encounter several near-death collisions with motorbikes, other taxis, trucks, or classy SUVs that are being driven by wealthy vacationers from Europe. But despite the chaos, there seems to be some functioning way of life. There is beauty in the midst of chaos. You see families of 4 riding together on one motorcycle, without any helmets-- the husband is usually driving, the youngest one in front of him on the handlebars, and the 7 year-old sandwiched between him and his wife on the back. My favorite is when there is a helmet strapped onto the handlebars. Really? How hard is it just to put the darn thing on? However dangerous it is, it has become one of my favorite snapshots of Morocco. Coming from a country where a family of 4 often has 5 cars, it's nice to see a change (not to mention the amount of resources saved and emissions not destroying our beautiful planet). I'm thinking of adopting the 4-person-to-1-motorcycle-rule when I return to the States and have a family some day. Don't worry though, the helmets will be worn on our heads instead of the handlebars.

Well, it's been a few weeks since I've written anything, and so you are probably wondering a few things... Why am I in Marrakech? What happened to that cool family I lived with in Fes? Am I still studying Arabic? and Have I been to any more weddings lately? Let me back up a bit. The last week in July was also my last week in Fes at ALIF (Arabic Language Institute of Fes). It was a great week. I spent quite a bit of time with my classmates. We called ourselves "The Family". After six weeks of being together for several hours every day, we were like a family. However, the class consisted of 6 girls and myself, so it turned into "The Family.... and Ryan" (what a downer). I'm always the odd one out. Our last "hoorah" was a trip into the desert where we road dromedaries into the dunes at sunset. It was postcard material. We all wore these scarves and looked like Lawrence of Arabia and spent the night under a moonless night in the Sahara. Without the moon, there were billions and billions of stars. I laid on top of a sand dune, the same one I laid on just over one year before on my trip to the same place, and was overwhelmed by the infiniteness of the universe. Or shall I say, the finiteness of the universe and the infiniteness of God, the creator of this crazy big universe. It was one of the moments that was just myself and my creator, not a worry or care in the world, and completely flooded with awe and praise to the One and Only. So you're either thinking one of two things, A.) That my night in desert involved the use of some drug or hallucinogenic Moroccan substance OR B.) You know exactly what I'm talking about because you too have been in a similar setting, overwhelmed by the infiniteness of God, and you know I'm not too out there. Believe what you'd like, but I'm hoping that you go for choice B. The desert, without a doubt, makes the short list on the top things to do in Morocco. It was the highlight of my trip last year and I think no trip to Morocco is complete without watching a sunrise or a sunset from the Saharan Dunes. After taking the camels back and grabbing a quick breakfast, we hit the road for our 10 hour journey back to Fes. Along the way, however, we stopped at a lake (well, it was a river until they built a dam, and now it's a huge lake) to take a dip. We were the only ones at the lake and we weren't quite sure if it was even legal to be swimming. The setting was spectacular- a (dam-made) lake in the middle of the desert at the base of the Middle Atlas Mountains... not a single soul around.

The trip to the desert came at perfect timing. It was a bonding experience for "The Family... and Ryan". Our whole class went on the trip except for the crazy lady in our class. I still barely know her name because every time someone asked, she said "AyeKatarina bla bla bla". All I know is that she is a forty-something year-old lady born in Turkey, now lives in Greece, and is over-the-top defensive and rude. The last week in class when we were exchanging emails and contact information, she refused to write anything down and said, "You didn't miss me in the desert, so you won't miss me in the future". (By the way, I kindly asked if she wanted to join us on our trip out to the desert, but she refused). I could go on and on with stories about AyeKatarina, but I will spare both you and myself.

After spending 6 weeks with a Fassi (a person or thing from Fes) family, I was just getting into the Fassi groove. When driving Mounia around in her new (but old) Renault, I knew all the pot holes to avoid and traffic circles that were yield (about half of the traffic circles are yield and the other half, you have the right-away unless it's a red light), I was getting used to Fassi Darija accent, it was normal for me to eat all three meals without ever touching a fork, knife or spoon, I could shoe away obnoxious Fassis that wanted me to eat at their restaurant or take their tour of the medina, and 105 degree heat (40C) was mild and cool enough to play soccer in. So for my final night in Fes, I figured that it would be best spent at a wedding. Let me tell you, Fassis know how to throw a wedding! This topped the other two weddings I went. The venue was a huge flashy villa a few kilometers outside centre ville. The bride and groom arrived around 9pm, which kicked off the celebration, accompanied by a live band that played Moroccan (wedding) hits. *NOTE: I know this is really culturally insensitive of me, but honestly, all the songs roughly sound the same. Of course the melody and the beats differ from song to song, but I can't tell if they are speaking Darija, Berber (a language spoken by the people from Morocco before the Arabs came), Arabic FusHa, Lebanese Arabic, or Egyptian Arabic. Shoot, maybe there were a few sung in English that I didn't even realize. One song plays and Mounia tells me that it's a song from a genre specific to the region of Fes, but I think to myself, "This sounds just like the song they played at the wedding in Tangier". The bad news is, I can't tell the difference between Fassi songs, songs from Tangier, or songs from Lebanon or Egypt (although you'd think it would be more obvious... maybe just for the native Arabic-speaker). The good news is, I got so many of these songs stuck in my head that a week after, I found myself humming the melodies, not knowing any words, and my Moroccan friends making fun of me.

Anyway, I sat a table with Mounia and her niece Oumeima. We sat and watched everyone dance in the main room of the villa until it looked like they were having too much fun, then we'd join. Let me just say that these guys (well, mostly girls) know how to dance and have a blast. The first half of the night, I found myself to be the only guy on the dance floor, which is every man's dream (dont worry, it's not dream, Diandra). Unlike America, people here don't really dance with each other in pairs, they just dance. Occasionally you get a group of sweaty bodies that lock arms and start jumping up and down screaming in Arabic. If you didn't know any better, you would think that these people had a few too many cocktails at the bar before hitting the dance floor, but the reality is there is not a drip of alcohol to be found. Weddings here, just like most Moroccan's lives, are alcohol-free thanks to the Qur'an.

It's worth mentioning that throughout this wedding, the bride wore a total of 6 different dresses! Yes, 6! And they weren't just any dresses... they were colorful, extravagant, and expensive! I think I got a picture of all of them, so I'll have to share them with you when I get back. The dancing stopped with the food came out. Weddings in Morocco go in reverse order from the wedding receptions in America. In Morocco, it begins with dancing and music, and ends quietly with a huge meal and lots of picture taken. I am still in awe about how they prepared so much food for so many people. The first meal was seafood pastilla. This looks like an enormous chicken pot pie, but instead stuffed with a wide variety of sea food. It's a very elegant and savory dish, and one Fassi told me "Pastilla is for rich people." Each table (there were probably 20-30, 8-10 per table) got one of these huge pastillas, enough to feed 15 people. I was stuffed. Then, they brought a whole roasted lamb on a huge silver platter to each table. The lamb dish is one of the most famous in Morocco and has been served at all three weddings I went to so far. The lamb sits in this rich sauce, or juice, and garnished with savory prunes. It's no wonder the whole wedding goes silent when the food comes. After you can't stuff anything more down your throat, the fruit assortment comes, followed by mint tea. At this point it's 2:30am and some people take off, as if it's too late and they have work in the morning or something. But not us. Mounia gets to sleep in and I have a final at 8am. We stay until about 3:30am or 4am, banging on tables and making up witty chants in Darija. This one guy at our table, Kareem, was hilarious. Type-A personality, over-the-top nice and made sure everyone was having a good time. His mom was also at our table and was like an older, funnier, woman version of him. I guess it's custom to make fun of the quiet tables, as if they are not having a good time. This soon turned into a "who can bang on their tables the most and get the most stares"-sort of challenge. We definitely had the most exciting table and it was the most I've laughed in a long time. If this is making no sense to you, I'm sorry, you just had to be there. :(

Half way home at 4am, Mounia decided she wanted her last driving lesson (it's a perfect time because there's no one on the roads). She bought her car several weeks ago, but doesn't know how to drive a manual car, so relied on me to be her driving instructor. This presented some very frustration, but mostly scary, situations. I can't remember how many times she stalled in the middle of a big intersection and couldn't get the car to move. I think I ran out of fingers counting the times of near-death experiences (and this car was made a few decades before the airbag era). As much as I wanted to get home by 4:30am and get a few hours of shut-eye before my final exam, I stopped the car, switched places, and played it cool. "Patience, Patience, Patience" I keep reminding myself.

Of course, I set my alarm only to have turned it off and fallen back asleep. I dont remember doing that, but it's the only thing that could have happened. I woke up frantically at 7:45 (I dont know why... but lhumdullah) quickly put on a shirt grabbed a pen, and jetted out the door. It takes 15 minutes (well, 13min to be exact) to get to school in the morning so I sacrificed the breakfast, the brushing teeth, and the milk and coffee to get to my exam on time. The exam wasn't so bad after all. With language (unlike studying over a list of organic-chemistry terms or something like), you either know it or you don't. It doesn't really matter how much sleep I got or didn't get. I missed a few questions on the test, not because of the sleep that I didn't get the night before, but because of the my competence-level in Arabic. Also on the bright side, the wedding was a much richer experience and more memorable than if I would have stayed at home studying.

Friday was a sad day of goodbyes. Goodbyes to my two professors. Goodbyes to my classmates/"The Family" (all except for AyeKatrina who said something like "have a good life, happy travels" and then walked out the door). And then there was my family, Ahilatee Margrabeeya. I've said plenty of goodbyes in my life, but there are a handful of really meaningful goodbyes that make my hands shake and my heart race as if I were on a caffeine high or about to play a rock concert or something. This one was one of those heart-racing caffeine buzz ones. I'm sure I will see them soon, maybe in a few weeks if I come back to Fes, but this family has taken me in as one of their own. I felt like a son to Mounia, a grandson to grandma, an "older brother" to Oumeima (those were her words), a cousin of Faisal and Medi and Zakariah and Issam, and a nephew of Sana and Sameera. I will miss the laughs, the amazing meals cooked by mama every day, the cockroaches in my bathroom (OK, maybe not), the frustrating yet scary driving lessons with Mounia, the temper tantrums of Medi, the horseplay with Faisal, the Spanish practice and lessons with Oumeima, the Turkish soap operas (Mierna wa Halil), and the smile and high-fives of grandma. The thing with goodbyes is that there is so much anticipation leading up to it, and then... boom. It's over, just like that. This was one of those. Out of the door, I was instantly preoccupied with finding a taxi to get to the train station ASAP. I was about to miss my train.

The next week took me to several cities in Morocco, mostly in the southern part of the country. I took the train to Casablanca where I met up with Laila. She helped me find a store where I took my camera to get fixed. The following day, I met up with some friends from Tangier, Taha and Haitam, as well as Meagan and Brooke (they studied on the The Scholar Ship with Taha and I and are traveling in Morocco for a couple weeks), AJ (traveling with Meagan and Brooke) and Mohssine and Marie (Americans living in Tangier... Mohssine is a Fullbright Scholar and professional drummer/musician doing a project with street children here in Morocco). It was a road trip that has been in the works for a couple months now. Unfortunately, something happened last minute and two other friends from Tangier (Karima and Imane) weren't able to make it on trip. So, it was mostly Americans, and one fellow Canadian (Brooke) who was the butt of all the jokes. With Taha driving one car and Haitam the other, they picked Laila and I up in Casablanca and we headed to Marrakech, where we stayed for two nights. Laila's family had us over for lunch the following day, where I think I ate the biggest lunch in my entire life (I'm not exaggerating). Let's just say that I didn't eat anything until the following afternoon!!! Remember the seafood pastilla at the wedding? Yup, her grandmother made one of those! This was after the assortment of salad and vegetables and tea. I stuffed myself full of pastilla, just as everyone else did. You could tell we were full. We slowed down, unable to eat anymore. That's when I turned to Brooke and said, "Yeah, this is only the first entree." I was half-joking (more like 90%). Then, another entree came... this time, bigger! Even I was surprised! It was the lamb and prunes dish!!!! I don't know how, but I just kept eating. It was so good! It is one of the nicest, most elegant meals that can be made for a guest (remember the hospitality I mentioned in paragraph one... this is a bit of what I'm talking about... Marrakech hospitality). There's no way you can turn that down! I really think I ate 5 pounds of food that day for lunch! I could barely breath! Of course, the meal was followed by a huge plate of fruit and Moroccan sweets and tea.

Next stop was Essaouira, one of my favorite places in Morocco. It's a beautiful white-washed medieval-esque (probably older) beach town. It was where I spent my last night in Morocco last year when I was here. It has this melancholy vibe to it or maybe it's just me being too sentimental. Jimi Hendrix spent a significant amount of time in this area, and it is thought that the ancient castle ruins on the beach a few miles south of the town inspired him to write "Castles Made of Sand". Despite the thousands of tourists packed in the tiny alleys of the medina, Essaouira has this laid-back feel to it and is unlike anywhere else in Morocco. Definitely a gem worth visiting in the summer!

From Essaouira, we traveled south to Agadir. Agadir is a city that I haven't been in Morocco, so I was really excited to go. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a let down. I don't know what my expectations where, but they weren't met. I'm sure with more time spend there, it would have been nicer, but at first glance, it's a bit of a gritty city. There wasn't too much character besides a string of beach resorts. We met one of Taha's friends from his University that lives in Agadir. He was really nice, a great host (not a surprise for Morocco), and showed us around for the two days we were there. He mentioned that Agadir was once best-known for its sex tourism. This got brought up as we were at a table sitting behind two guys from Saudi Arabia, whom he implied that they were here for reasons other than the beach. It didn't make much sense, as Dubai is much closer to Saudi Arabia and its reputation for sex tourism is booming. He told me that it's cheeper here in Morocco than places other places in the gulf like Dubai, so they often come here. A few hours later when we were walking down the boardwalk, I asked him if there were any sheesha cafes. Smoking sheesha (or hookah) is common throughout much of North Africa and the Middle East. He told me that the state (or province) of Agadir has banned sheesha and made smoking sheesha illegal, unlike other regions in Morocco where it's common. I am still mesmerized at the fact that sex tourism thrives in Agadir, but it is illegal to smoke sheesha in a cafe. Get me out of here!!!

We drove 5 hours through the night to Ouarzazate, a town on the east side of the High Atlas Mountains, just opposite from Marrakech. Ouarzazate is well-known for its studios. Big-name Hollywood movies like Gladiator, Alexander, The Mummy, Babel, and many others have been filmed here in Ouarzazate. Other than that, it's not too exciting. After an afternoon spent reading and hanging out, I said my goodbyes to the road trippin' group before bed. Taha took me early the next morning to the bus station so I could catch the morning bus back to Marrakech, while the group continued up to the desert, Ifrane, and back to Tangier. We split because my camera is fixed and waiting for me in Casablanca. I'm taking a few days here in Marrakech to work on my studies for APU and then in a few days, I'll head up to Casablanca, rescue my camera, maybe hit up another wedding and Fes, and then back to Tangier, where I'll be for the majority of the next 4 months. I'm excited for Ramadan, which starts in two weeks, or less, and a chance to finally settle in, for good. No more road trippin' or weekend trips (OK, maybe one or two here and there). It's Tangier for several months. Ramadan, internship, research project, and hopefully some improvement on my Arabic.

If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading my LOOOONG blog entry. It really means a lot that you'd take some time out of your busy day to read this. In an era like today, when almost everything is visual or made into a movie, it makes reading that more uncommon, but much more special. I wish I could reward you with a treat or prize of some sort, like a Moroccan cookie and mint tea, or at least some profound proverb or enlightening epiphany that I've had recently. But I think we're both out of luck. There's a saying in Darija that says, "Your portion is in Paradise". It's said when someone is fasting and you are eating in front of them.... So, I guess I leave by saying that to you... "your gift for reading my very long blog is in Paradise". I don't know what it is, but it's there in Paradise. :) Now go in peace. Ma' Salaama