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.