The Dates of Muhammed

“These are the dates of Muhammed” my house keeper says to me, eyes beaming, and points at a paper bowl filled with silky brown dates.  The skins are smooth and wrinkled.

“And this is water from the Zam Zam fountain.  In Mecca, I prayed to Allah that you would have a baby” she continues, cradling her stomach.  “Each morning, for seven days you should eat two dates and drink the Zam Zam water and ask Allah for a baby.”  She finishes, shyly motioning for me to eat my first date.

I offer a short Bismillah before popping a date into my mouth and smile as I chew the delicious caramel center and then spit out the seed.

We’ve been gone from Morocco now for almost a month.  Leaving the people we have come to love was much harder than I realized it would be.  We’ll see our American colleagues again somewhere in the world, but will I ever see Hassan, our toothless door man who once avenged us in a knife fight outside our apartment?  Will I ever learn if our housekeeper Rashida’s daughter graduates from her Architecture program and gets to design large buildings?  Will I know if my colleague and friend Abdellah ever lets his little Rayan get a dog?  What about Bader, Mohamed, Smiley Jihad, The Professor, and Samedi from my book club?  Will I ever hear if they continue to study English and visit America someday?    

Maybe.

Probably not.   

I know that loosing  after working so hard to find is part of our life, but it has been good to grieve.  To love our time in Morocco for what it was, to mourn its end, and to look forward to our next post with enthusiasm.  I’m sure keeping that level of excitement for what’s next in balance with sadness for what’s gone is a constant struggle in the Foreign Service.   

Back in my Casablanca kitchen I washed Muhammed’s date down with a few swigs of water from the Zam Zam well.  It is said the well miraculously formed after Abraham’s infant son Ishmael cried in the wilderness for water.  After being expelled, his mother Hagar wondered the deserts of Arabia until she discovered the spring, a gift from Allah that has never run dry.    

Despite my strict adherence to the date diet, we are not pregnant.  But maybe Rashida’s blessing is more about the consistency of Hagar’s hope than Sarah’s biblical miracle.  Since being home we have selected and met with an adoption agency to start the adoption process in Ethiopia.  We’ve faced the time and financial realities of International adoption, felt duly and tremendously discouraged, but then, somehow, felt that cloud retreat as we move forward.     

We have one more week at home in Utah before heading to DC for a few months of training where the cycle of pack, move, unpack, start job, make friends, make home, make life starts over again.  Right now, our hopes are high.

On our last day in Morocco my housekeeper
Rashida helped get my hands hennaed.  

      

The Sahara in Pictures

On the Road Again

The thing about Fez is that it's built kind of like a bowl.  Staying on the lip of the bowl provides fantastic views of the city and the surrounding mountains....and pretty sore calves the next day from all that uppy a down.  But it's a small price to pay for one of the world's most remarkably preserved medieval cities.

After loading our trunk with woven fabrics and ceramic plates we headed south, back to Casablanca and then further south the next day to Marrakesh.  Marrakesh was its dirty, loud, crazy self and we spent waaaayy to much time in the carpet shop haggling with our friend Mbarek.  There really is nothing in the world like a good haggle.  There is a feeling not unlike "seeing what you can get away with".

He said 400?  Well, I'll see if I can offer 275 and keep everyone smiling....  do I dare offer 200?

There is  a delicate balance between playing the game (which is fun and necessary) and insulting someone.  I never want to leave a shop (again) with bad feelings.  Do I pay a bit more than locals because I'm a westerner?  I sure do.  And you know what?  That is fine with me.  I want to pay a fair price, but that's not the most important thing in the world.  We have returned to the same carpet guy in Marrakesh 4 or 5 times now and are always greeted with warmth and offered fair prices.  Over the long run, it made much more sense not to burn our bridges with shop keepers for an extra 10 bucks.  I might have learned that lesson the hard way...

Our next stop was Essaouira, perhaps our favorite city in Morocco.  We stayed in apartments by the sea and spent a great weekend just wandering before heading back to Casablanca. 

And NOW I'm headed off to the Sahara for the first time - just days before we pack everything we own, not to be seen again for 10 months.  Hopefully I make it back safe and sound and can keep my pack out brain in tact... 

Veer to the Right, There’s a Big Donkey

That seemed like a perfectly normal thing for me to whisper in my mother-in-law’s ear our first night in Fez.  Calm as a cucumber so as not to startle her or said donkey. We’d driven the three and a half hours from Casablanca to Fez in alternating rain and post/pre rain splendor.  The north is already greener than the south, but after gushes of rainfall the fields became a patchwork of sweating, growing, green of every shade expanding all along the highway. 

The four of us, Max, his parents, and myself pulled into a glorified alley slash parking lot outside the medieval city of Fez and plunked our luggage down on the wet stones separating us from the sludge below.  Max and I sometimes forget how things in Morocco look the first time you encounter them.  We wheeled our suitcases under a decrepit arch leading into the labyrinthine city, dark, smelling of leather and donkey droppings, a steady drizzle coming down on us and only a few lamps lit to expose scores of gnarly street cats and thought  “Ah.  Fez.  We are here!”  without really considering the trust his parents displayed by following us into the darkness.   Donkeys probably seemed like the least of our worries at that point. 

In true Max fashion, he weaved us in and out of alleys and tunnels until we arrived at the door of our Dar.

“I memorized the Google maps aerial image of this section of the city”  He shrugged.

Of course he did.  One of the many reasons I keep him around :)

Off season is a beautiful thing and we were ushered in from the cold and into a palace of tile and carpets as the only guests.  A fire welcomed us to the salon where we nibbled coconut biscuits and sipped mint tea.  After chatting a bit and releasing some donkey related tension, we were shown to our room.  Room is a terrible understatement for the beautifully wrought enormity they had rolled two extra single beds into for me and Max.  Moroccans, Fassi’s in particular, are very proud of their traditional hand crafted skills – tile making and zellij, carpet weaving, ornate stucco and wood carving, stained glass, luxurious fabrics – the stuff of Orientalist’s dreams – and this room was the perfect exhibition of all of them.

We somehow drifted to sleep in our fortress after a lovely meal and arose the next morning to blue skies instead of the dripping grey ones we’d expected.  A local friend of ours walked us through the medina explaining and exploring the oldest degree giving University in the world, the local Madrasa brimming with 5 year olds, the leather tanneries with 1,000 year old practices, the crickety looms that churn out beautiful woven fabrics, a pottery co-op producing the iconic blue and white dishes of Fez and best of all, the 9,000 plus streets of the ancient medina bustling with people, animals and the smell of roasting meats.

Farewell Tour

We visited three of our favorite cities for the last time this week*.

Boo for that.

I don't know if this is cowardly, or kind or something else, but we didn't tell most of our Moroccan friends that we wouldn't be seeing them again.  Mubarak, our carpet guy in Marrakesh, made us swear to call him for couscous at the family home on a future visit that probably won't happen and Habiba doesn't know we won't be making the pilgrimage to Essaouira to talk henna and fudgy cubes of Amber anymore.  Our friend Farida, in Fez, sent me home with a beautiful rust colored Djelaba when we told her this would be our last time stomping through the Medina in search of Chicken Pastilla and Fassi embroidery.  

Goodbyes are the worst.  And so, in what I think will be our fashion, we might not say very many.  We've been very blessed to meet so many wonderful people and learn so many new things, and, and...well, I just can't bring myself to write a goodbye post when there are so many in our future.  So, what I'll say is this:  We have LOVED Morocco.  We've lived here longer than anywhere in our married life.  We...Oh, there I go again, goodbye posting.  When I can work up the steam, I'll post all about our "lasts" in favorite cities instead, but in the mean time I leave you in the hands (or face) of our amazing traveling dog who experienced them with us.

       
*We leave Morocco in April

A Moroccan Wedding

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The first thing you need to know is that the night officially began at 8 PM and lasted until 6 AM.  Our group made it from 10 PM to 4 AM which I still think is pretty impressive. 

Weddings are a big deal in the Middle East and North Africa.  I should say, the reception party is a big deal.  A “spend all your money and invite all your friends and give lots of gifts and serve lots of food and dance and sing and dance some more” kind of deal.  From what I understand the actual ceremony takes place with your immediate family before a Muslim judge.  It’s very modest and quiet.  The reception is anything but. 

One of Max’s co-workers got married and so a gaggle of us from the consulate spent the early evening together primping like we were all going to the prom.  At Moroccan weddings women wear something called a “Caftan” – they are extremely ornate.  I wore something a little East-Meets-West since I’m a cheapskate but still want to have a good time.  A good Caftan starts around $160 and goes up from there.  And up.  The bride’s first Caftan (Seven is the tradition) was this beautiful pink satin encrusted with diamonds.  Probably real. 

 Ok, so after we wobble through the hotel lobby on our much too tall special event heels, dates on arm, we are seated in a beautiful reception hall, all white, with purple and pink lights projected across the chandeliered ceiling.  Then we wait, we talk, we nibble on spicy puffed rice, we dance, we nibble, and then we dance more.  The dancing!  I, as you may well know, am no dancer.  It’s been a phobia since I was in Junior High.  I’ve tried to figure it out over the years and I think it has something to do with my inherent lack of dancing related skills (rhythm, agility, funk) and my puritan heritage.  Hips are bad, right?  Anyway, one of the lovely things about being overseas is that you are freed from cultural bondage AND any ideas you had about yourself as being something or not being something.  I’m not saying I got out there and cut a rug, but I did, in fact, stand in a circle, bouncing with everyone else and clapping to the beet.  My hips and my shoulders may have actually been moving at the same time.  This is a big step, people.   

There is something really beautiful about Moroccan dancing.  Not the moves or anything, but the spirit of it.  So we are sitting at this wedding, everyone has been waiting for hours already and their faces are growing grimmer by the minute. But when the band strikes up a certain chord one woman starts clapping and then another and then another and their faces are beaming.  As if drawn by a giant magnet they all leave their seats and shake it to the dance floor in front of the band.  The women dance with women and the men dance with men and at some point they mosh together in the middle and they all throw their heads back with joy.  With joy!  No one is trying to seduce anyone or prove to their friends they are better than each other, they just want to move to the beat to celebrate this occasion.  One particularly grim looking Berber woman with face tattoos from her bottom lip down past her chin sat in the corner for the first few hours of the night, scowling at something.  But when the drums came out and started into their frenzy of faster and faster drumming she was out of her seat and throwing her hips about like I’d never seen.  Her toothless grin was contagious and she circled the floor grabbing the hands of fellow dancers and lifting them in triumph. 

Moving on.  The bride and groom show up just before midnight and the bride is carried about in a large, wheel-less carriage.  Four dudes hoist her on their shoulders and dance around the room for a bit.  They repeat this hoisting process one more time in the night after she has changed into another dress, but women do the carrying and dancing.  At some point in the night she gets henna-ed and there is more dancing.  (Henna is the semi-permanent tattooing they do on the feet and hands in Morocco.  It’s a typical before or at weddings and other celebrations.)  At one point scads of presents are brought out in a procession and placed before the bride;  gold, jewelry, milk, water, honey, henna. 

THEN at 2:00 am we are served a four course meal.  That’s right, four courses ending in half of a whole roasted lamb.   Fish Pastilla, vegetables, cheeses, crab with avocado, roasted lamb mechui with pineapple and quail eggs followed by  ice cream cake and then fruit and cheese.  I don’t drink, but I certainly had what I’m sure a hangover feels the next day…when I awoke at 3 in the afternoon.  I don’t know if it was all the food, the tremendous noise, or the late hour, but it was certainly all worth it says my day later self who can sit up straight and bare the light of day once more.