ONE WOMAN SHOW

Now that my two years of moroccan-husband-searching are finally up (out of necessity, not success), I finally discovered the cruel secret they were keeping from me, betrayed in the end by Shayla, my friendly Arabic Podcast host. An early September "Festival of Brides" in Imilchil, south of Casa, involving mass-husband choosing by the girls that had come of age in the year preceding. When I googled it I found a photo of a group of men all peering over each other, presumably at the women, like boys at a high school snow-ball. Only some of them were toothless. I keep wishing I was there.

Shayla's incessant talk of Moroccan culture is not helping the situation either. Her subtly firm grasp of English idiomatic parlance does not convince me that she is also doomed to a life away from $.50 bowls of baysar and loosies for a dirham. I suspect she records from a flourescently lit internet cafe in Casablanca. Oh Shayla. If only you weren't my teacher.

Sometimes I talk nervously to myself out loud in coffeeshops in Arabic to warm up my vocal chords before I delve into learning and creeping out my neighbors on the sinky couch cushions totally non-condusive to serious academic work. I recently realized the first thing that comes out of my mouth without thinking is "N3am, walikin m3andish asdiqa' hanaya." It's sort of sad and makes me wonder why I miss Tangier, but then I convince myself I learned it from Maha. Hiya f3eallan wahida.

Old Times

I’ve been trying to keep up my Tangier lifestyle while spending my days dragging 30 lb groceries through the streets of Brooklyn because I can’t figure out the subway and when I do it is undergoing maintenance.

I visited Atlantic Ave. first chance I got, hoping to be swaddled by a warm blanket of Arab sights and sounds. There were more hipsters than hijabis and hardly anything halal. I managed to peek my head into a Yemeni restaurant full of only men, and was comforted by the awkward and misplaced-ness of my presence under the fluorescent lights. I will go there later with a notebook and it will be just like old times.

I found a few butchers that will come in handy for next month’s Ramadan, one Pakistani, one Lebanese, and one Egyptian. I decided to make it a competition of signage, and since the Pakistani had his price list titled “HALAL MEAT” all in that ghoulish font typically used only on Halloween (with the blood dripping down the letters), he definitely wins.

I tried to befriend the Lebanese Goods cashier in my old way, explaining that the name on my “SHIFA HONEY HEALING HONEY IT WILL AMAZE YOU” honey bottle, was in fact my own name! He ignored me. I guess it only works in Arabic. And not in America. I’m starting to feel that way about my personality in general.

At the end of the street is a perpendicular highway and beyond that highway is the river. I could see boats on it and as the sun set the whole street was orange. It made me want to buy school supplies. Instead I hung my head low and began the hour-long walk back home, when out of nowhere the Adan (call to prayer) started to blast from the loud speakers of Al-Farooq Mosque and out onto the streets of Cobble Hill for everyone to hear. I didn’t even think that was legal. But there it was. And all the shops closed, and re-opened fifteen minutes later. And I was late for prayer.

THIS THING IS JUST A MEMORY BOX

The kids on the street set up a lemonade stand.
It vaguely reminded me of Safia and the fresh squeezed orange juice, mostly just the spirit of it, so I went over. As I approached, the sight of cell phones and bottled juice set up on a foldout table forced me to pretend I had walked to the end of the driveway to get the mail.
Things just aren’t the way they used to be.
There’s even a black kid on the street now. We haven’t had one of those in years.
Twenty years now we’ve been the most non-white family on the block. Ironically the only time my neighbors see me is when I take the day to tan in the backyard.

I can’t tell what I’m writing about anymore. All I have here is my family, (almost the exact opposite of Tangier) which I was banned from writing about years ago when my Baji made me promise never to mention her by name when I become a famous journalist.
I am starting to become fascinated by the daily living practice of everything around me, I think it’s more of a bad habit than creative inspiration, seeing everything like a specimen. In any case I’ve been busy with a project of preservation.
The project we started at the Cinematheque right before I left was Memory Box / Boite a Enregistrer les Souvenirs / Snduq Al-Dikrayat, to preserve the memories and family stories of our neighborhood. The whole family album.
It spawned out of wanting to record every word my mother said. So I got home. She was still talking. The family albums were still there. My sister had begun to censor them, removing and possibly destroying the ones that included my other sister, when she was young and adorable, where you can see her true hair color, and the same of my mother before she went to Hajj. These are the gems.
As someone who has an almost manic obsession with recording everything through pictures and sound, I have been trying to build on our family album for years. It’s like cutting my legs off.
So I have launched a preservation project to digitize all family memories before they are screened by the “black cloud.” In a way I understand what she is doing but in a plumper, more supple way, a way that takes up most of the chair, I think the whole thing is ridiculous and as much as I miss Tangier, I’m glad I am home to save these things.
Even my mother, when she opened one of the 1999 Kashmir albums exclaimed, “This thing is just -like a -memory -box!” with all the usual hesitations and accent.

And I miss the elastic way of practicing Islam that seemed to come from all directions back west, generally behind a façade that presented itself in a caricature almost like a joke, like talking and winking at the same time.



This is the only picture I have with no people in it. Maybe I will start coloring the faces of people in black like my mother does when animate objects sneak onto the patterns of the fabric of our furniture. In her defense, sometimes it does take a month or two to recognize that squiggly shapes spell out a body. Head and hair and everything.

MAPS II

MAPS

LAST WORDS

When Morocco wants you out, she kicks you out. With the heel of the boot.
Somehow I got tricked into spending my five hour layover entirely within airport walls, instead of wandering the streets for some last minute kicks.

She finally gave me most of my voice back, but kept my luggage in exchange.

But it feels appropriate. This is how I pictured my last moments in the Maghreb.
This is basically the way I arrived, eating the lettuce out of a frozen sandwich from the airport.

CHRISTMAS CARD FROM THE MED.

The wheat shimmers in the bread. Long pieces of it.
Consider the view from behind my glasses compared with the view outside the lens. Juxtaposed, two confused versions of the same thing.

I started announcing my departure- my favorite response is when someone hangs their head and sighs.
The manager at Cafe Paris is going to give me his sister-in-america's address so I can go visit.

Mohamed’s baby was born and is named Hamza. I wonder about the family name. If it can be linked to drug-lords from Al Hoceima, like everyone says is probably the case.

Absalom got married. I wasn’t invited.
He came into the cinema with his new bride. I asked why he didn't tell me earlier, and he looked at me and responded in a mix of Arabic and English, something along the lines of “I was completely enamored with my new wife that I forgot to invite you.” Of all the things he could have said, this was probably the least disappointing response. Still, I would have loved a chance to redeem myself from the Bir Shifa incident.

In the spirit of having my fill of the Mediterranean before I am banished to the Atlantic, I went to Greece.
Everyone thought I was Greek.
Everyone looked like my mother.
One of these women was at the seminar I was flown in for. She was wearing a hot pink shoulderless t-shirt under a black spandex dress. She suggested instead of “dialogue” or “unity” as the theme for next year’s call for proposals, we use “bread.”
“Because everyone love bread,” she said.
That also reminded me of something my mother might do.

All over were posters of a man who was an exact 50/50 cross between my mother and father. My Greek brother? His name written in Greek looked like mountains colliding into parts of a wheelbarrow.

We drove to the Temple of Poseidon for sunset. The sea was moving in jerky slow motion like the leathery skin under the fin of a dolphin. The open mouth of the temple made everything around it more possible. Aesthetically, vaguely closer to perfection than any other given thing, sitting up on a hill with arms crossed above a full belly like it was pleased with itself.
We watched the sunset there then ate fish, the same fish we have over here and I wondered how the cultures of the coast affects their personalities. They tasted like they maybe had less of a backbone than moroccan fish. More willingness to cooperate.

My last night I spent at Hotel Zorbas and was greeted by some Spaniards in the shared dormintory in the thick of the night. I had fallen asleep to a Spanish music station looping Jennifer Lopez, George Michael and Britney Spears, which, I found upon waking, had at some point transformed into hardcore porn (or softcore at a climax). The girl was very polite in asking if she could turn off the television, or if I was still watching.
I snuck out like a thief in the night at 4am to catch my free ride to the airport from a different hotel, hiking through the streets of Athens, hoping it was as crime-free as the website insisted. It’s amazing what a girl will do for a free taxi. Legitimately, it would have cost one fourth of my monthly Moroccan salary to order my own. But getting away reminded me how lucky I am to have access to fresh bread and chicken and fish and figs for $1 a kilo this week. And how I have exactly two weeks left to enjoy these things.

Days: Numbered

Two stray cats are copulating on the sidewalk of Rue de la Liberte, I laughed out of embarrassment and they both looked at me for a minute then kept at it. No one watched them or tried to move them, only moved around them.

The death of the discman has brought me to a strange place, post IPOD death and IPOD II disappearance, this most recent blow has relegated me to punishment of silence, and the discovery that I understand 70% of conversations going on around me. Luckily,
the best way to learn Arabic is to listen to old people. Half the conversation is comprised of noises and they often repeat themselves, or repeat what the other person said, to confirm they heard right.

Eating a cold pancake out of a plastic bag, watching the fountain and the gardener of the traffic circle: the old man to my left is desperately trying to suck something out of his teeth, or maybe that is how he tastes food. The blind man arrives a few minutes later with someone resembling him, maybe only because they both have white hair. They cozy up between a man sleeping peacefully in his booth, and a heartwarmingly plump Spanish woman with a coffee and a cigarette and her head resting on the hand with the cigarette, like she is sitting at her kitchen table waiting for the mail.

I’m back to my daily routine now that my days are officially numbered, cakes for breakfast, H&M&M&M for lunch (even though Mohamed keeps telling me I got fat and inflating his cheeks to demonstrate), and the continued mission to try every fish in the market. Except the ones that are sold only half-dead, squirming around in the bag as you carry them home to their impending fate / doom, then erode their spirits into the walls of the qasbah.

Feels Like Patanka

Through the window at Café de Paris I get to see everyone on their way to work, scarves and belts and pot bellies still in place where they were strategically placed earlier that morning.
Most of us are still waking up, sneaking in yawns, and others are already knee deep in dealings by 8am.
Café Paris celebrates shady passport exchange, what seem like divorce proceedings, and -God help me- small children and their obnoxious noise pollution, as of late.

I have begun to mentally prepare for my departure, designing small handmade invitations for my Mughal-e-Azam going away bash. I will invite all of them, and only Absalom will come.

I’m not usually up this early. Tight times are forcing me to “take-jobs” that have nothing to do with me or mine including menial photography assignments- the latest having to do with the Tangier Renaissance- forces me to think about what that could actually mean.

Will these upscale elitist spaces eventually overtake the low-life gems that continue to differentiate Tangier from Marrakech despite the waterfront, despite the geraniums?
Are the Dar Noors and Serenity Spas of the city really the next wave of urban development for sleepy Tangier?

Sometimes the whole city is like one big yawn. The noise is transparently placed in efforts to wake us up. I can see through it and conveniently, also sleep through it.

From the café window I get to see all of my Souk Barra friends out of uniform and a lot of times I don’t recognize them, only that I know that I know them.

The waiters at Café de Paris wouldn’t let me take pictures this morning- some mumbling about the patron and pleading eyes convinced me to drop the subject and sheepishly tuck my camera back into its hiding place.

A man with a box tied to his neck with a bird sitting on it is in the window, I want to ask what he is selling but I’m losing my vocabulary and can’t pronounce verbs ending in ein. I usually say something like, what’s that you've got there? or Can I buy that from you?

I have become all around very strategic. Being a strategic person involves trusting yourself. Your ability to affect people. General faith in cause and effect.

In general, I don’t trust the words that end with an open mouth. F’gaa, qaraa, shifa’e.

I have two months to get through the 3 kilo textbook that has been making eyes at me from across the room all year. You know you want me come get me, he says. But I resist each time. When will this flirtation evolve into something real? Why can’t you commit? Was it something I did, something I said?

While pleading with my Arabic I lost track of the conversation in real-time. Apparently I had stained my banana-coat in some mysterious place between my waist and collarbone and right shoulder. I thanked the man for pointing it out and chased it like a dog for a minute before deciding it was a strand of my hair that he mistook for a streak of dirt.
I received a free treat from the Qawee on my way out, also like a dog.

What to do when no on takes you seriously? Opt out of the banana coat, perhaps? But Faddal makes brush strokes in the air each time he sees me in it, calls it my artist coat.

I know it’s not the coat-
it seems I’ve all around made myself too familiar.
Too available.

Is that the name of the game? I plead once more with my Arabic, it takes him a few seconds to mentally translate, then he slithers away as if to say, you’ll never learn.
In dialect. In idiom.
Something about my being fit for a pocket.
At least I understood the part about the pocket.

HOCEIMA

After finally exploring the gloomy remnants of cafes and low-budget sea-side resorts at Robinson Plage (empty pools, etc) I was especially eager to make the trek to Hoceima. A long time coming, I admittedly let myself build it up in anticipation, the long imagined home of Mohamed and Mohamed (and Mohamed and Mohamed).

The six hour approach managed to include a stack of misadventures including the creepily determined, possibly high, car-chasing hash-dealers they warn you about in guidebooks. They put on an impressive performance, luckily shy of running us off the road. The eventual disappearance of each obstacle was only an introduction to a new one on the one lane mountain road to Hoceima. At points we ventured off-course only to be met by potholes and gloom. The first glimpse of the Rif cuddling up to the sea coaxed some gasps, mostly on my part, a pretty constant gasper on the whole. But as we approached the city in our tiny white fiat, still pure and genuinely curious, there came an overwhelming sinking feeling, felt by all parties.
We spent two hours in Al Hoceima, inspecting the gloomy premises, before we decided to flee- or more appropriately- to escape-
no Talla Youssef, a taste of Cala Iris, a taste of the public beach.

Upon my return Uthman interrogated me on what I’d seen and why didn’t I tell him. Come with me next week, he pleaded. I casually blocked his hand from touching my knee and explained that I would never return to Hoceima.