Expeditions/Plans

Plan I: leave in the early morning, when the Moroccan mothers and grandmothers are still too sleepy to push and push in line.

But our south of Chefchaoen search for the field of dreams lasted longer than anticipated, because of the covert February harvest, unexpected.
“Not even one plant I can show you,” he said- the boy we stopped en route to interrogate on the status of kif plentitude on the rif. I bet any waiter in Tangier could have told me if I had asked them.
“Not even any one small tree-like thing of kif down below” is actually what he said, in keeping with the Moroccan tradition of answering me using the vocabulary of the question, a few extra prepositions, and mockery.
All we found was a little graveyard, as Maura put it, of “unimportant people.” The graves were like scattered rock piles but in enough order to distinguish between nature and handiwork.
By mid-afternoon I was en route to my passport stamp (Ceuta). As usual, I was interrogated about my heritage and guided to special windows, forced to muster up “playful shifa” for the bolice. Shamelessly batting my eyelashes doesn’t work as well as it did pre-budagaz incident.

Plan II: “Stamp - Polaroid film – Salmon Sandwich”

The trek from customs to “ceuta” is a healthy thirty-minute walk in the African sun (Spain is in Africa too!) Regretting my boots and too exhausted to investigate the public bus I settled for the road to town, asking about sandwiches, making friends and even found a flea market resembling those plentiful on Hertel Avenue, Buffalo, NY. A witch-like Moroccan woman stared right through me as I tried on boots and coats and leafed through stacked frames. The highlight was a few peaceful minutes spent in the sun on a tiny wall of rocks about thirty feet from the customs officials, trying to chat with the lone fisherman avoiding eye contact with me. I offered him snacks through subtlety and gesture, but the fish out-did me. As his fish-sack grew plump we sat silently side by side across the wall, eating chocolate and waiting for the sun to fall, fishing and listening to the same song on repeat, pretending we were individually alone and then feeling alone and appreciating the watery marriage of continents.

Sleepy from the sun, I hitched a ride back to the border with a man I had passed an hour before, after spotting him approaching a car-like object with a key in hand. He happily agreed to escort me, and started the car by connecting two open wires between us. A few minutes later he disconnected the wires and the car stopped.
"I am sorry, I have to hide some things," he apologized and reached into the back seat, full with bottles of Disfruita apple juice. He then easily removed the inside of each door and nestled the bottles of juice in the spaces between, then reassembled his car.
We passed through customs without a hitch, and I realized I was back in Morocco without a stamp. I tried to pay him and he refused, so I gave him tickets to the cinema. I ran back to Spain, begged for a stamp, got the stamp, and returned home to Morocco in three minutes time, and in heels to boot.

NOW OPEN.

A LIFE FULL OF HOLES :
A LIFE FULL OF HOLES FILLED:
A LIFE FULL OF HOLES FILLED BY USELESS THINGS.


Like those games your mother buys for you on the way into the grocery store for half a dollar, with the little silver balls.

Those of us that crave the empty spaces feel it violently, a stealthy penetration of space, filling up with objects mostly foreign and whites whiter than the rest of the street. But when I ask the locals about it they use the same vocabulary of progress and hope as those who put those things there in the first place. Something like: maybe this will be of use to me some day, or someone like me will use it. Something so fancy can’t possibly be useless.

Those of us that don’t belong here help fill up the holes. Sometimes they make holes for us to fit in, like the road through the old cemetery past the iron welders and animal hospital. It is already full of tourists, 'encouraging a circus-like atmosphere,' and we are getting back to the headlining balancing-act –foreign and familiar, the constant bumping heads of insiders and outsiders.
We agree to disagree and form one smooth flat surface:

Fatima insisted I do my laundry in their washing machine, after I explained my misadventure with some buckets and the bathtub. While I was there chatting with her daughter a handful of the extended family arrived for Sunday Leisure time and I sat awkwardly watching Rachel Ray and laughing at the jokes that couldn’t translate. Rachel gave some actress the gift of a framed burger king uniform with her name on it, because she had worked there when she was fifteen. A man from Burger King came out on stage to apologize to Kate for firing her, years before. I tried to explain to Hamid what was going on and how eerie it was, and everyone nodded and smiled and the little kids ran around and grabbed my skirt and I pretended not to notice. They also changed all the knobs on the washing machine, forcing Hamid to announce the purpose for my visit and bring me in to the kitchen to fix the damage done. I adjusted the knobs to a shorter cycle and soon fled.

Along with the warm seasons come more library patrons. The ordinarily stale, deathlike atmosphere was more like a circus today. The ex-librarian was visiting from Rabat and confessed that she had once been accused of “encouraging a circus-like atmosphere.” Each new patron to enter the crowded room was overwhelmed by the chaos and seemingly on the verge of a heart attack. But the Brits are often like that. I’m still trying to figure out how they survived in Tangier this long.

After my shift I was invited to lunch with an American woman married to a Moroccan man, and we talked about Oprah and cats and then Oprah again. Her husband speaks fluent English, having lived in the US for a few years when he was younger. It is strange to think that is was actually easier for people of his generation to go abroad than for people my age. Even those that remained in Tangier had the opportunity to hear and learn English, whereas now they are hard to come by. And among my waiter-friends, only the oldest ones speak any French- the Al Hoceima crowd probably taught me a quarter of my Arabic repertoire, and through song, added some very key nouns and phrases to my Hindi vocabulary, filling in the holes that faulty-subtitles make.

Eid Al-Nabi

I was told there would be cows in the street today, I have yet to see anything of the sort. But that kind of thing is child’s play to a Kashmiri woman, which is how I introduce myself to people, and so that must be what I am.

I have developed a financial relationship with the woman that sits outside of my morning café. How could I not? I am usually the only woman inside and she is the homeless mother outside. If I pass without stopping she calls out “America America” until I turn back. She always tells me what is going on in her life, and sometimes I can’t understand how it relates to money and interpret it as casual conversation. The day before the holiday I wished her Eid Mubarak and she tried to explain to me that her son was being circumcised the next day. I understood that something was being done to her son and I knew the verb “to cut,” but couldn’t get further than that. She tried to point and still I drew a blank. To any passer by, our conversation consisted of a homeless woman yelling “Penis penis penis penis!” to me in the street, and me squinting my eyes in confusion, “shnoo?”

In honor of “Eid Al-Nabi” I spent an hour in a taxi last night trying to find a mosque open late, and even the cab-driver was astounded that we couldn’t find even a one. Since I am currently working through a complex that God is trying to keep me out of His house, this was not the best situation, especially because mosques after hours tend to be where the creepiest people hang out. Not necessarily dangerous, just decidedly creepy. Without entering any of the four mosques we stopped at, I was kissed and hugged and followed and made to recite obscure short surahs to prove that I was not just playing dress up, with my bangs escaping my hijab every chance they got. We ended up finding one light at the end of the tunnel near Mohamed Al-Khamis that was decorated with flashing red and green lights, and half of the women entering were not wearing hijab, and dressed in their fanciest Qaftans and spiky heels. I spotted several obnoxious children roaming free and sulked at their not-being-cows. I declined entry, retreating home to my non-family. This is what holidays tend to be. And anyway, I was taught that we are not supposed to party on the Prophet’s birthday.

The idea of a day off work seems like a distant memory, but with everything closed I am forced to abide. I spent most of the afternoon mopping the flood from my bedroom, and will continue to do so into the night and late hours of the morning.

AFTER LATER

Buffalo is buried in snow / my heart is buried in snow.
We are oscillating between hot and cold, all of us.
Some days the city is so soft you can push into it with your finger like this and other times like a frozen coconut. Exactly like that.
I start with the weather because it tends to sets an order to the day.

I’m back to my old habits and places, a reversion in reaction to my relocation. The new house is basically just like the old one except bigger and colder and with a more constant level of fear settling like a film over my blankets and jaffef- I still can’t figure out how to clean them. Today a centipede crawled out of one of them. I can skip the arm circles now, because of those damn jaffef and my new hobby-by-necessity, bucket-laundry.
The fear is more anxiety, partially because of all the butagaz sprinkled around our kitchen (and when someone takes up a shower it fires up like a small hell) and partially because everyone in the Kasbah has access to our home through the balcony connected to my bedroom. But that also means that I have access to all of them.

(Beautiful Laundry is progressing nicely)

Overworked and Underpaid,
when will it be over?
I fully realize I wouldn’t have this problem if I were better at selling myself.
Interesting that this is the case, considering how often I get mistaken for a prostitute (no I’m still not over it).

LOVE LETTERS

“I need support and a woman to give me what I need to make us both happy.”

One plus two makes three (Mohamed keeps trying to convince me it makes twelve. I argue twenty-one). So I have three jobs now. And third time’s a charm except that since everything is backwards in Arabic it’s like I’m starting all over again as an odd-job-girl out-of-context.
Love assistant is a bit vague, so I prefer Scribe.
I am teaching English to a woman who speaks French and Arabic (if forced to and of course I force her to), learning English for her American love-interest. I started last week and have already written three love letters and translated seven (this is his average per day).

The catch is that he writes to her in English, then emails her through some sort of automatic translator into French, so she receives the letters in French but they don’t make any grammatical sense, and I have to try to slip the word back through the seam-hole and decipher what the original English word was, then respond to him in English based on what she is narrating to me in French, and then to make sure it’s correct I translate it back to my student in Arabic, who then translates it back to herself in French.

Catch #2 is that these are not so much love letters as love games. He uses all kinds of muddy language to avoid saying the wrong thing. He does not so much say things as roll around in a pile of words like a dog and hope that some of them stick. I usually spend the whole lesson with my face scrunched up because his English pains me, miming things like “indirect” and “cloudy.” Yesterday I drew a “ladder of feelings” to explain how “I have feelings” ranks in comparison to “I like” and “I love.” Today’s batch forced me to add “I would like to love,” “I have feelings of love,” and “I think I could love.” When I don’t know how to translate something, I launch into extensive metaphors in Arabic and Mime, and she looks at me in that old familiar way that I used to look at my Derija teacher before I left her for an old textbook, because at least the old textbook didn’t lie to me, or judge me for my taste in pet names (relatedly, Gimpy fled home, Kosovo is not as independent as I initially observed, while Katya- is healing nicely after maiming her leg, possibly in an attempt to imitate her big brother. And Bisoux is too pregnant to care about them anymore.)

I think my student has mostly given up on learning to speak English, and we will just translate and compose love letters all day. Which is basically the best job ever. And comes with free cake, and coffee in zebra-print teacups, but only if I ask.

Hiya Fowda Fiya Dokha

A few things relevant to today:
1. When I was young my mother taught me in all sincerity that hope is presumptuous and with negative connotations attached and they can’t be detached. I was nervous about what it would mean to agree with her.
2. Shifa is not an Arabic name it is an Arabic nothing (that is not something my mother taught me it is just something people in Morocco say)
3. To clarify #1, this may partially be because of a subtle language barrier, but is mostly based on her conviction that devotion involves believing in things that don’t make sense, because they are better than worse.
4. There is nothing worse than the presumptuous rajl-f’-zanqa.
5. Is this perverse presumptuousness just a perversion of hope?

I have a friend who works on the corner. His DVD selection is not any better than the next guy but he is young and open late and corrects my Arabic and lets me watch his TV when I’m bored. I visited him to see if he had found the old Egyptian film I requested by means of acting out the first scene, which I had watched at another man’s stall. The boy never actually finds the films I request, but his assurances allow me to continue hoping and I do.
I thought about asking him to accompany me to the Egyptian film at the Cinema Paris later that day. I didn’t ask him in the end, and later found that I had dodged a vaguely bullet shaped almost-bullet when he started telling me what he thought about the Jewish population of Casablanca, or the Jewish population anywhere. I am prone to taking things personally, and despite being Muslim inside and out, (in a cartoonish coloring book sort of way) I did take it personally. How did I manage? It mostly has to do with the presumption he made- the look on his face, waiting for me to agree with him. Like the men on the street that try to hit me with their car, and then ask me to get in the car. I’m sure I have my days when I look as though I can’t do any better, but certainly not often enough to warrant my friendly acquaintances pursuing me with such zeal.

Relatedly, the mentally unstable DVD vendor is at it again. He handed me a letter on Valentines Day and I was too nervous to have it translated until yesterday, but it turned out to be a non-love letter. On the contrary, it was a stay-away-from-me letter. I gladly accepted and felt comfortable passing him by sans-Salam until last night, when he stopped me in the street and caused a scene in front of the egg-shop.
Doesn’t my phone number work? Are you sure you have the right number?
He had written his number at the bottom of a Quranic wood carving and dropped it off at the cinema.
I didn’t call you.
You didn’t call me?
He sort of looked like he was about to punch me and I actually braced myself for an attack. But the bracing only made me more angry. Because why would I call him.
Why would I call you? I see you every day. You are horrible with me. I am not ever going to call you. Understand?

I left as quick as I came, and made my way uphill to the Cinema Paris, thrilled at the prospect of English subtitles and snacks allowed (snacks-allowed is a state of being that can erase any bad memory). As I watched the story unfold, I asked myself (because I had no one to ask in Arabic) if the film was perhaps a sign from God.
The protagonist was a mildly crazed old man, working hard for a living on the streets of Cairo. His only distraction was a beautiful young soda-pop vendor. She ran through and between the trains at the station with a bucket and a dress that was always falling off. She was nice to the poor guy long enough, until he asked her to marry him and she indignantly explained that she was much too good for him, and was already engaged to someone else. Then she laughed at him for a few consecutive minutes while her dress continued to fall off.
I never directly laughed at my crazed admirer but I couldn’t help reexamining my frank reply to his presumptuous inquiry.
In the film, the man ends up trying to kill the girl and accidentally kills her best friend. Then he tries to kill her again but gets caught and arrested, driven completely insane, whereas he started out a 3, on a scale from 1 to 5. A wise old member of the community explains, as though it was the moral of the story, that for the crazy old guy, even very small things were very meaningful, and he simply couldn’t control himself.

I know my life is not an old Egyptian film although sometimes I wish that it was, with all that beautifully contrasting black and white. In this case I pass, and have faith that life is not all that dramatic, really, and there aren’t ever that many occasions on which to say
“Abadan!” Not really.

I finished off my Sunday with a chwarma, not with murder, and found myself at the egg shop once again. There was a man there delivering bread, singing a Spanish song with full vibrato. I was told he is the best singer on the streets of the Socco. He stacked the bread into a pyramid one by one until his cardboard box was empty, and kept singing until the song was over. I told the mool’l hanout that I wish I could record him. He told me the man will come the same time tomorrow and if I come back I can do as I please. I told him I was doing a project. He asked if I would send it to America. I told him no, I would bring it with me, in a few months, when I go home.

Eid l Hub

I found a new café today, set up in a vaguely Japanese sort of way, with eight benchlike chairs set up in squares. It seemed to emphasize when someone was sitting alone, suggesting that there should be seven other people sitting there with you. Presumptuous. A man in a maroon djellaba was sitting by the door watching the girls. They were all wearing headscarves and smoking. I drank half of my juice and finished my book and watched the Al Jazeera report on the bombing in Lebanon. The only fus’ha words I could understand were “walikin” (but) and “aydun” (also). They said those words enough times that I felt like I was catching on.

Back at Café Paris the crowds have already started to gather, mostly Spanish. There are usually a few elderly women sitting with young men, perhaps their sons, and a few young wives with their husbands, or maybe brothers. I learned from a library regular that Café Paris used to be known for its fine breakfast menu, and perfect martinis. She used to sit in the wicker chairs outside and watch the crowds and have a martini. The same goes for cafés all around town. I can’t even imagine this.

I’ve been listening to people more, trying to understand the peripheral conversations. Dean’s is good for this because the men are usually talking too loud, and I accept the risk of using their slurred speech as a substitute for an Arabic tutor. And in any case, I have to start speaking Fus’ha. It feels like moving backwards. And unnatural, because it is not really spoken anywhere.

My old neighbors miss me. I heard it through the grapevine. It’s just as I’d planned. And I miss them too. I went to the Fnduq today to peruse the rug selection and rekindle a small relationship from last spring, with Mohamed the custom-scarf maker. I found him after passing through several shops asking men “Do you remember me? Do I know you?” They all answered yes, but a few minutes conversation would prove that I did not know these men at all. When I found Mohamed he was younger than I remembered him, but I recognized the bright blue countertop of his display case. We discussed possibilities and eventually got to designing a rug that fits my financial limitations, inching down on levels of comfort and beauty gradually until we reached my lowly dwelling place. It was like measuring my worth in rug-form: not exactly what you would expect of a rug, but makes do.

I am allergic to the flowers I bought myself, so my eyes match my shoes and I look awfully sad. Maybe I'll score a free pack of tissues or something equally as good.

AN EXERCISE IN LADY FITNESS

I’ve given up bitter for bitter sweet, taking sugar in my coffee and all that.

I explored Lady Fitness just for kicks. It was a horrifying scene of feigned decadence and desperation. They built all of the rooms too big for the amount of equipment they actually have- the women were all scantily clad and unusually skeletal. One of them stuck to me for the duration of my visit. I wanted to feed her a sandwich. I insisted I couldn’t afford the club and tried to flee but was forced to take a detailed tour of the creepy premises. The praying mantis took my phone number. She showed me her favorite room in the back. If she calls I will hang up on her.

I have been frequenting Café de Paris daily now, like an irresistibly comfy sweater. Although today, sitting there in my ICS I surveyed the man to my left and his beautiful blue and white striped djelleba and it made me want to put on my djelleba- maybe become all striped and serious and baby-blue pure like that. A certain peace arises from this man like an uncanny odor- he is there every morning. He is a blind man, and the other men in the café always lead him to his special spot. My stomach turns when I am accidentally sitting in his special spot and I sit there and chew my lip and hope he doesn’t bump into anything on the detour. On those days they lead him to the seat to my left.

Cold showers lately leave me scouring the city for ways to warm my heart. Today my efforts led to a wasted hour of a beautifully crisp February morning, flirting with the mool-l violin to no avail. I refuse to buy it, even if it costs $70, and have been trying to rent. I didn’t go intending to flirt my way through it but sometimes the spirit catches you and there is nothing around to stop it. Men tend to steer the conversation without my noticing, to their liking until it covers the neglected sore spot aching for an inappropriate oral exchange, and I am concentrating too hard on my conjugations to pull out early. I even played the cancan for the man! He spent the hour pretending he was going to let me rent, and in the end, walu.

Repairs on the house are racking up into a pile of no-Arabic lessons, so I keep saying the same words over and over, asking people what shtta means so I can watch them wiggle, saying what I like and don’t like, and trying to learn the difference between things that look the same, and learning the difference, except when it comes to nuts and eggs and all that.

HARD TIMES ON RUE IMAM LAITI

I keep calling it “Imam Rue Laiti” by accident.

The man on the corner confronted me today. I was standing with Safia, chatting about the weather and drinking the juice she made for me. He came in like a wave of bad fever, jittery and missing pieces. Disjointed like his extremities were dangling from little strings. I felt sorry for him and then he started talking and I felt sorry for the situation we were in. Safia buried her head in her face and they muttered awkwardly placed niceties to each other, to allay the hostility, or to place it more directly where it belonged. I caught some phrases- “talk to the woman,” “across the street,” and some more- the bits but not the guts.

Yesterday he warned me that if I continue to dine at H&M&M&M, I am dead to him. So I’m dead to him. But he has since proved that though I may be dead, he will continue to poke and prod with interest and disgust and resentment and anger and mild obsession.
Safia reluctantly advised me to start taking the alternate route home. I looked back and forth between my usual route and the Socco with a pout. “Not today, not today,” she insisted. “But later.”

There are two alleyways and one set of steps leading from "ex-fish street" to Rue Imam Laiti. Of course I could start taking the alternate route, but it would mean missing Safia, the perfectly hardboiled egg shop, H&M&M&M, the shady glue sniffer and his daily wranglings, and the cat gang, when I stop home, every couple of hours. But I am an American girl at heart, whatever that means, and I won’t be stepped on. Whatever that means.

It is horrible to know that someone hates you. It is worse to know that the person that hates you has stopped taking his medication.
He has so many stories to tell and I still want to hear them.

THAT FILM OVER THE MILK

We finished our second day of filming. We went looking for Iris fields and as it turns out, all of Tangier is an Iris field this month.
I was deathly ill and grossing everyone out, with the exception of the men working the chicken shack on the route to Tetouan, probably because they spend most of their days staring at recently butchered cow meat hanging from hooks and bleeding on the floor.
The disjointed progression of artistic process ran like the jagged edge of quilting scissors, just as painful but not nearly as playful, moving up and down the small mountains, between high and low spaces as the opinions of two stubborn Europeans collided and exploded and set things on fire then put out the fire.

I found some floral gems and some non-floral gems. The herdsmen knew Zohra from the cinema, finally convincing me to go ahead with my long delayed pursuit- an audio project revolving entirely around men that “know Zohra.” I meet them all the time. They always look alike.

On the last Iris field a small child gang performed their kung fu moves on the Iris heads, then later gave Yto a bouquet of all the heads. I have a pot of them in my room. The stems are too short to properly “vase” them. It looks more like purple stew than anything else. It attracts flies.