compartment 1

I missed my train by a few seconds. Fatimah was upset and I told her that Allah just didn't want me on that train. I was already remembering that I forgot to buy a notebook or a pen for the five hour train ride, when a man with a bag came into the station cafe and put little notebooks with pens attached on everyone's table, then came back around to see who wanted to buy one. Ten dirhams. And a three color pen! Allah clearly wants me to use this time to reflect on things and to use my red pen to edit out the bad stuff.

In the Casa Voyageurs Cafe, everyone is only paying attention to the news on TV, even those of us that only understand the pictures.

TRAIN 1, Compartment 1: the mission begins. One crying baby, her parents and a young couple. I smiled at the baby which turned out to be a deadly mistake. She was more of a cookie monster than a baby. They all immediately started talking about the crisis in Egypt- I understood the vocabulary but not the content. They were arguing politely and finally agreed to disagree. Eventually we all caught on that the younger guy didn't really speak derija, and the conversation switched to English. I tried to audio record and also accidentally filmed my hand making a cheese sandwich and then holding it for a long time. I didn't talk much because I didn't know enough about the situation to comment because I only understood the pictures.
The cookie monster was inappropriately caressing us all and the only thing that kept her quiet was scribbling in this notebook. She eventually resorted to singing everyone to sleep and I gave the "I-did-my-part" look and wouldn't look up.

I'm realizing that even after a year and a half my writing style hasn't changed at all. Maybe Tanja hasn't either.