food: body, heart, mind, and soul

i'm back in my room once again after a weekend of travelling, staring at this little blinking cursor - starkly black against the bright white screen - wondering what exactly to say.

it's not writer's block, per se...it's just that there are so many little facets to this past weekend that i'm not exactly sure where to start.

this past weekend i travelled with shadea (an exchange student from last semester) to chefchaouen, a picturesque town of blue and white nestled in the hillside of the rif mountains and more generally known the world over for its excellent hash and weed. it also happens to be the hometown of one of my good friends here, sarrah. it also happens to be shadea's favorite town in morocco, so when i heard that she was going there and that she was staying with the elmomoudis (or something like that), i tagged along.

to put it simply - this weekend was food. for every part of me, really.

the (many) amazing meals put together by sarrah's mom and their nanny/friend/household help/older sister, khalisa were incredible. from the fresh strawberries just coming into season to the addictive jben, a sort of fresh country cheese, to the perfectly cooked fish served with lentils and newly baked bread - it was all so wonderful, and a delightful escape from the tastebud-tiring fare of the on-campus restaurant.

sarrah's three younger sisters, hagar, marawa, and rema, were food for my heart. i didn't even realize how much i miss my little cousins until i entered the apartment and heard the girlish banter so typical of two little girls, aged eight and nine. hagar, a distant fifteen and extremely studious, provided a sort of calm in the middle of the storming younger ones who incessantly demanded shadea and i come up with all sorts of new gymnastic games which we could play in the family salon. that is, when we didn't have the television tuned to the music stations and were all dancing to the latest tunes out of egypt and lebanon.

needless to say, the non-stop arabic that flew around me, mixed with a heavy helping of french and spanish was definitely food for my mind. my little notebook is slowly expanding as pages and pages are filled with my new arabic words. like: jlbana (peas), aHsan (better), guli (eat!), and tawezzan (balance).

my travel time with shadea, from the long bus ride from fez to chaouen (pronounced shaowin) to the final taxi ride back to ifrane from fez today, was a series of twisting conversations. some of those beautifully deep ones where mind and mind, heart and heart meet and just are, laid bare before each other. a common practice with my friends and college community back home, i had been sorely lacking that same level of engagement here at al akhawayn where i find, more often than not, a crowd of young people too concerned with how best to make it from day to day by doing the smallest amount of work rather than a body of students hungering after truth and ready to embrace the tough questions that are blatantly staring them in the face amidst the poverty and dejection of the very neighborhoods of ifrane if only they would open their eyes. our conversations and that fundamental connection between two people which only serves to underscore your shared humanity was food for my soul - one i didn't even realize i was hungry for.

not to mention the beauty of chefchaouen itself, which is definitely beyond description. something about how the light of the setting sun is captured in the blue-washed walls of the buildings which crowd the old medina...

well, let's just say i'm already dreaming of going back.

there and back again, a nomad's story

a quick once-over my life would lead one to think that a rootless life - living in place after place consistently finding new homes and recycling the concept of community - is in my blood. a review of the past few weeks since i last wrote here would only confirm it.

here is a list of the places i have been since last writing: ifrane, meknes, casablanca, boston, charlotte, dallas, new york, midelt, rich, amellago, goulmima, ourzazate, marrakesh, safi, rabat, and back to ifrane. in fact, so much has happened that i hardly know where to start...

i travelled in a sort of whirling-dervish manner to the united states now just over two weeks ago. after a few days spent in boston, prepping for my truman interview and soaking up the glory of reconnecting with friends and eating such wonderful things as spinach and hummus, i jetted down to dallas. less than forty-eight hours later, i was jetting back to morocco. there are many tales to tell of my journey - stories of the people i met along the way and the craziness that is just so typical of travel. suffice it to say that my over-all feeling from the trip was that it was just too easy. too easy to cross so many lines of culture, language, development... a brief seven hour trans-atlantic flight brought be across the huge gap between the world i live in know and the world to which i will soon return. the world is so small...

coming back was definitely a crash landing of sorts, battling jet-lag and a nasty chest cold i dove back into an aui campus gearing up for the spring break holiday and cramming for midterms to get there. i jumped back into the middle of it, and three midterms later got to breathe the communal sigh of relief that was whistling through the campus, like the warm southern winds that had brought sunshine and warmth just in time for my return.

and then suddenly there was spring break and the loosely set itenerary of trekking and travel set up with ally and camille before i had left. again, many, many stories to tell, but i'll just put the highlights here - one per day:

saturday: arriving in the little town of amellago at the head of the tode'ghrost gorge and a sunset tour of the community agricultural co-op led by our gracious gite owner, moha 'ousri (or maybe it was his younger brother, hamed...)

sunday: our grand 17 km trek through the gorge itself, and then our surprise encounter with the amazigh (berber) poet, taos 'umar which led to an impromptu private concert of his politically charged and incredibly moving poetry (berber poetry is traditionally sung with or without accompaniment)

monday: morning bike ride through the goulmima palmerie and ksbah with our gite proprietor who i took to calling jedd (grandpa) hassan because of his incredibly generous and warm nature

tuesday: the epitome of flexibilty. travelled most of the day (after tactfully avoiding an offer of four thousand camels in exchange for camille's hand in marriage) intending to spend the night in another mountain town of taddert only to end up in marrakesh instead (there was some confusion when we wanted to get off, and then it was too late to make it back to the little sleepy town we had hoped for)

wednesday: waking up on a rooftop terrace in marrakesh to the bustling sounds of the medina below, spending the day hopping from garden to cafe to garden to cafe in various parts of the city, and topping it off with a delicious italian meal with an adorable elderly waiter who was more than happy to let us practice our arabic

thursday: awoken by rain and the creeping damp of rooftop exposure, it ended up beautifully sunny with the pleasant surprise of meeting up with eva and her boyfriend (visiting from holland) for lunch and an afternoon stroll through the souk (market). follow that up with a cup o tea in a terrace cafe and then a late night train to safi during which our compartment-mates offered us to stay with them in mohammedia with the promise of finding us good husbands...

friday: wandering through the potteries of safi, climbing the ramparts of the portuguese qsar, and generally enjoying the sea breezes as well as long conversations in arabic (with me only getting every other word) with a couple of the younger artisans over a cup of coffee in the ville nouvelle (that was after taking a picture with the giant tajine in the center of town...)

saturday: getting lost in various quartiers of rabat, wandering about all parts of the city new and old, and the easter vigil service at the cathedral downtown - a melange of cultures and languages including french (predominantly), spanish, english, and various sub-saharan african languages.

today: easter morning mass (in english), more travel, and then the joys of reconnecting with friends and hearing stories upon stories as everyone returns from their various adventures. when i saw the gates of al akhawayn, mixed emotions welled up inside: torn between the joys that being in this place brings and the tedium of this (at times) ridiculous bubble. as i sit at my computer and look at my bed next to me, i'm very happy and thankful. it's a definite upgrade from the over-stuffed mattresses, thin cots, and iron springs which have all graced my dreams this past week or so. but when i think about that vigor and life that sings in my blood at the thought of new places and new people and the limitless of adventure that travel can bring and how all of that is dulled here, like a colored photograph washed out by poor exposure, i sort of ache again for that open road.

but maybe it's true what they say. maybe you can't wander forever...

we'll always have paris...

so while i didn't see rick's cafe (which i hear is an overly-touristed place in any case), i did spend the weekend in casablanca, within the more-than-words-can-communicate gracious hospitality of karim and his parents.

here's a brief layout of our weekend:

friday:
leave ifrane and aui in the late afternoon
arrive in casablanca around 7:30 pm
meet karim's parents
drop off our bags
eat at a charming little italian restaurant named "luigi's" which just so happened to have a hummer with new york state plates on it - we're not in kansas any more :)

saturday:
sleep in a little
breakfast with the fam
tour of hassan II mosque (the only way non-muslims are allowed inside)
some sitting and reading in the sun on the seawall while karim ran errands and picked up eva
lunch with karim's family - really a feast consisting of a variety of salads, pastilla (a spanish-inspired dish of chicken and spices and nuts and honey in between layers of a special kind of pastry dough), and tagine
HENNA! - truly the highlight of the weekend - will definitely post some pictures of the beautiful artwork adorning my hands and forearms as soon as my camera battery recharges...
shopping (a football jersey of my favorite moroccan player and a pair of moroccan slippers)
coffee at a really chic japanese-inspired cafe that karim took us to
driving around the city at night
late night return to the house where we were greeted by a still-warm tureen of harira (a kind of soup), bread, cheese, and dates

today:
late morning departure from the house after some grocery shopping in the nearby marche
lunch out at a gorgeous restaurant called "la sqala" which is a renovated riad in the old medina which put us back late to ifrane, but definitely worth it
unpacking
gearing up for the crazy week ahead

casa is by far the largest city in morocco, and this weekend was different for me in that way to be sure. the past few trips have been to smaller citadels which can be easily navigated with one or two sights, a handful of recommended hostels, and a decent number of cheap eateries. casa, however, is really a teeming center of commerce and culture. many of the places that we drove through combined with the proliferation of french bilboards, shops, and signs made me think more often than not that we had travelled much further than the three and a half hours or so from our mountain perch of al akhawayn.

but this weekend was something else for me as well.

last week, in english conversation group, several of the students asked me how i had found morocco and moroccan people thus far. and it was kind of hard to say. i mean, i haven't had any really negative encounters, to be sure - but at the same time, i have met with more than a little of what could be called...resistence, or maybe distance - than i would have expected, and definitely more than would allow me to say that people have been outright friendly. there's always the feeling, compounded perhaps by french colonialism and religious tension and misunderstanding, that there exists a distinct and impermeable line between you (the foreigner) and the other (moroccan). this weekend, all of that disappeared.

i found myself carefully stitched into the fabric of life of a upper-middle class moroccan family. we sat on the couch together and watched television (albeit in french or arabic). karim's father practiced his english, while we in turn practiced our arabic, laughing the whole way through. we were introduced to extended family, shown pictures of weddings and cousins along with the standard baby pictures, welcomed with open arms, and sent away laden with gifts both material and immaterial. i left with henna on my arms and a jellaba in my bag, but with a heart full of a mother's love and a father's gentle teasing as well as promises for a swift return.

to put it another way: whenever i end up in a new place for any amount of time, i generally find myself mentally wandering down a checklist of sorts. one of the questions i ask myself is whether or not i could see myself living there in the future. before this weekend, i really would have said no. the cultural gap is large, and traversing the fields of language, custom, and religion on a daily basis has been exhausting, particularly when travelling away from the campus. but now, after seeing life from the other side, and experiencing the warmth and hospitality that can be found there, i have changed my mind.

at one point, after jason and i had finished our tour of the hassan II mosque, when we were sitting on the sea wall, i looked up from the book i was reading to find a young mom and her toddler son sitting just a meter or so away. she was pointing out different things, and he was watching the seagulls and the breaking waves with great joy, clapping wildly in response to the white foamy water below. i imagined their lives - pictured them emerging from a small but comfortable apartment similar to the one we had just spent the night in, and i realized that that life wasn't so terribly far away nor so incredibly difficult to imagine. not that i'm about to run off and have children just so that i can visit the ocean with them...but it made the country, the people, and that life somehow much closer and much more...real.