More Rockin'

More-Rockin’ Notes

Casablanca:

-Convinced mom to eat brains, but I’m not that nefarious because they were legitimately delicious

-Awesome hotel! Bed like a cloud, bathrobes, rose petals, English movie channel… ahhhh!

-Cindy asked when the pool would be functioning again as it was CLEARLY empty. She kept being told it was fine and she could go swim in it!

-Hassan II Mosque: roof opens like a car’s, heated tile floor, washing fountains are multiplied as if between facing mirrors. Kept thinking about bringing baaba and how he’d just implode if he saw it. But perhaps it’s easier to take the stick mosque seriously without seeing this amazing one

-Very much like Europe. Again am only one in flip-flops, and worst-dressed

Marrakesh:

-My mom and Cindy rode camels in the park of Jardin Menara. The trick was to not give my mom time to think about protesting. Camel-ride?-Yes,-she’s-interested-go-mom-get-on! SO FUNNY! My mom wrapped her legs oddly around the saddle because she was convinced Cindy’s camel wanted to bite her. And when I took her camel’s reigns and said things like, “Mush!” and “Canter!” she did Not find it amusing. I want to make a calendar out of these hysterical photos.

-Epicerie/pharmacy: Mum, Cindy, and Matt all got massages. Once I saw them all take off their shirts in the same public space, I declined and just laughed at them. Awkward and hilarious.

-In a car from Marrakesh to Casablanca with my mom and Cindy, M and I discovered we both had giardia. For those of you unfamiliar, the characteristics of this parasite are for the most part audible and smell-able. So we exhibited those disgusting signs, sulfer burping along the road, and shrugged sheepishly at each other. “Dating is very different these days!” was a line we heard a few times throughout the trip.

-SHINY THINGS! I found myself consumed with the desire for all of them. They sparkled and hypnotized the sense out of me. Personally, I think it’s caused by some unfortunate biological imbalance because I swear I’m usually a rational being. Getting out with just four things I think shows my stoic resolve.

-People dress well. I had a tear at my knee on some Senegalese-print capris and it caused quite the scandel. As we walked around, people everywhere were literally pointing and laughing at me. School girls retraced their steps just to get another peak. Haha!

-Delicious street food, rows of dates and fresh squeezed orange juice stalls, carnies charming snakes and strumming strange instruments… awesome!

Fes:

-Mesmerizing maze of souk streets. The food lanes made me want to immediately move there.

-Got henna from Fatima after arguing forever over the price. She whipped out the, “But I’m so poor!” bit too early by Senegalese bargaining standards, so I was sort of annoyed to get to her nice house and see her DVD player and fat daughter. But the henna was pretty!

-Dar Batha Museum: pretty, but I felt like all its ancient contents could be viewed just as easily out on the streets. The jewelry was the same that I haggled over; the tools were being used still right next door…

-Merenid Tombs: we just wanted to climb up this random hill and get a view and we fell on these cool ruins. Great view that seemed through a time-portal window. Creepy caves (with torn dresses, a doll’s head, and a large bone). We went down the Wrong Way and I was glad my mom and Cindy were not still with us for this part of the trip.

Merzouga:

-Secured room through sketchiest dealings ever. A guy at the bus station with a wrinkled brochure and texts from alleged tourists who “loved it!” spent an hour arguing about the price and camel-riding itinerary. He finally scribbled a “reservation” on a paper and asked for money upfront. We decided it was a scam and didn’t give him anything. But when we got there, shock of all shocks, the ride we agreed on was waiting for us! Humanity beats cynicism for the day! Hoorah!

-DUNES! The Mummy was shot here…

-Camel trek! I headed up the convoy, followed by M and 6 Italian potheads (I’ve never seen anyone smoke up this much. In the dunes under the stars, I get it, but at every public bus stop in a devout Muslim country?). The gypsyish tents were cool, and COLD. I wrapped myself in all the garments I had. Dunes + full moon= quite romantic. Running up the snow-like sand to touch the stars, and it felt like we had our own planet. In the daylight too, the sands glow red like Martian terrain in windswept shapes under the setting sun. When the moon rose HUGE over a dune, it was just begging for a biker silhouette ET-reenactment photo. Next time!

-We ate a kingly pile of meat and vegetable tajine, which was far too much for us to tackle, followed by apples and pomegranates. Among gypsy tents, moonlit dunes, and desert stars, it was beautiful, delicious, but with tinges of absurd unfairness and arrogant extravagance. We were in the DESERT, for god’s sake! Eating better than my village family in the entire past year. I just hoped the camels got spoiled too as they did all the work.

-There were several things in the desert that lead me to conclude that it is both a more hospitable and more industrious environment than Pellel. Such as:

-House cats. Even among dunes in the middle of nowhere. NOT starving, and in fact doing magnitudes better than the one my family tried to raise on lachiri and hut mice (who I believe is now deceased)

-Working wells and forages. *$@*%#*&@@%#$!

-Coldness. The sand dunes felt like snow

-No malaria or snakes. Humph.

Bus ride to Ouarzazate:

-Had to pee unbelievably badly. I held it for as long as possible and M asked the driver to stop. When they did briefly to let someone off, I leapt off too, yelling, “Btlma?!!” When people pointed to a second story while the bus guys shouted at me to get back on, I said, “I’ll just go here!” I thought a slightly shadowy corner of a building would suffice and began to unzip. But I looked up to meet the stares of at least five guys. “Uhh… don’t look? Stop looking! Can you just… I’m just gonna… No, but stop looking!” They did not stop looking, and a few even stepped closer thinking I was asking something. I was going to explode. The bus driver was about to bust his honking apparatus. I looked around wildly, praying I wouldn’t wet myself. I spotted a bush over a wall, jumped it, and peed for a good 100 seconds. I heard kids giggling and suspected the dumbstruck men could still make me out pretty well, but cultural sensitivity and exploding bladders don’t exactly correspond. I ran back to the franticly honking bus amidst laughter and some applause. I embraced it, and jogged through victoriously, waving even, like an Olympic runner. The bus lurched off before I was completely in, only to stop one minute later for an official 10-minute pee-break. Oops! It ended up even being double that when the engine wouldn’t catch… Oh well!

Bus to Marrakesh through High Atlas Mountains:

-Ribbony roads wrapped all around the mountains, sometimes corkscrewing, always with breathtaking views on the open side. Sometimes the views showed terrifying plummets that the bus careened carelessly past… but quite picturesque! Canal systems, beautiful gardens, olive trees everywhere, geod sellers at the most random and uninhabited turns, school girls skipping in headscarves, the very picture of purity, farmers, sheep… I just wanted to hop off and talk to/help/ photograph everyone and maybe live there for a year. Or, indefinitely. The soft boxy towns seemed to be carved out of the mointains themselves. With such fertile gardens and freakin’ unbelievable views in their doorways, I fantasized about a Peace Corps service in one of these pastorally perfect, simple mountain villages. Then I noticed that every single house had a satellite dish on top. Whaaaaat?! Now I’m even more envious—what do they Not have? (Along this vein, the boutiques also have waaaaay better selections, often including things like snickers or Limited-Edition-Dark-Chocolate-TWIX (WHY WOULD THIS BE LIMITED?! OH WHAT A CRUELLY BRIEF GODLY GIFT!), lots of chocolate and chip things… HUMPH, again!)

When I got off the plane in Morocco and faced more hijabs and veiled women than I’d ever seen, I was a little suspect about how I’d feel about the place. The impersonal bustle of Casablanca, and the Disney-like theatrics of Marrakesh (we kept deciding certain scenes had to be staged. See previous poem), also didn’t move me. But the frequent cafes and sidewalks and all the girls with school bags impressed me. Ahh, development! That, and the tastes and beauty, the pride in agriculture and mosaic architecture, the culture of art and literature and haunting arabic melodies—this is what I was looking for. Rockin.