Travel Flashback #1: Visiting the imperial cities with Dad

Today, I resolved to update this blog. I am perpetually shamed by friends who write way more diligently than I do, and by family and friends who request updates. I have no real excuse, except that the more time passes, the more overwhelmed I become. I am falling into the black hole of blog back-entries.

In an attempt to pull myself out of the black hole (please picture me clawing my way out of a vortex, shouting, "I will not let you win, Blogspot!"), I will take you back several months to March 19th, when I boarded the train from Rabat to Casablanca to pick up my dad from the airport. Dad had visited me in Egypt. He survived there and, as I often tell people, Egypt is about a million times more crazy than Morocco, but I was still nervous for several reasons: I'd planned our trip so we'd be traveling mainly but the notoriously insane Moroccan trains; debilitating stomach issues aren't uncommon for first-time travelers to Morocco; and Morocco can be incredibly overwhelming for travelers who don't speak French or Arabic.

Despite the worries floating around in the back of my head, I was excited to host my first Moroccan visitor. I often tell people that an unofficial part of my grant is being a tour guide. Fulbright emphasizes cross-cultural understanding, and I'm always excited to show around guests who would never visit Morocco if I didn't live here.

And so I greeted my dad at the airport. We made our way to the train, which would take us to Fes, our destination for that day. Our plan was to visit each of Morocco's four imperial cities: Fes, Meknes, Rabat, and Marrakesh. All are accessible by train, and, since we didn't want to rent a car, this was imperative. While we waited for our transfer, my dad made an upsetting discovery: He had left his camera on the plane. Not his plane from Paris to Casablanca, but from Boston to Paris. Yikes. I handed my camera over to him and told him that it was his for the next 10 days.


To my delight, it wasn't difficult to find seats in our second-class car, and Dad was able to experience firsthand Moroccan train culture, where it is almost impossible not to engage in conversation with your fellow travelers. By the time we arrived to Fes, we had some new friends and several couscous offers.

Once in Fes, we made our way to the Hotel Batha, located right outside the medina and close to my old house. After getting settled, we walked up to one of the cheap restaurants near Bab Boujloud that overlook the city, where my dad enjoyed the hustle and bustle of the crowded market.

The next day was Friday, and so we opted to avoid the deserted Fes medina and take a day trip to Volubilis, ancient Roman ruins located near Meknes, another imperial city about an hour from Fes. We arranged for a grande taxi to take us to the ruins, and enjoyed the scenery and dodged the European tour groups that filled the site.




After we visited the ruins, our taxi driver took us to Moulay Idriss, a small but beautiful shrine town (dedicated to Moulay Idriss I, one of Morocco's most powerful rulers) with one of the only circular minarets in Morocco. We were guided up a winding series of stairs to a lookout point where we could see the whole city.


After spending a few minutes in the deserted Meknes medina (it was Friday, after all), we returned to Fes, ready to conquer the city the following day.

The next morning, we embarked upon my standard medina tour, armed with the fabulous Fes guidebook "From Bab to Bab." Shooing away faux guides and real guides alike (this was not my first time at the rodeo), we started at Bab Boujloud and made our way down Talaa Kabeera (the big slope), through the meat market...


... into Medrasa Bou Inania, which my guide book dubs the must-see building of Morocco. I don't know enough about architecture to make this assertion, but it sure it pretty. Also of interest, particularly to my Jewish readers: Directly across from the Medrasa is the former home of Maimonides, the superlative Torah scholar, who fled his birthplace during the Spanish inquisition and settled in Fes, where he studied at the university.


We made our way further down Talaa Kabira, stopping to see the honey and henna souks, until we reached al-Kairaouine, the oldest university in the world. At this point, Dad was getting hungry, so we stopped at and got some street food, then continued on our way to the Andalusian quarter, where we saw Medersa al-Sharija, one of my favorite sites in Fes.

Then we looped back up Talaa Kabira, stopped in to see the Medersa es Seffarine and making a stop at the famous tanneries on the way.


The next day, we took off to explore the Mellah, the old Jewish quarter of Fes. Following a walking tour in our guide book, we explored the synagogue and the Jewish cemetery, then made our way back to the hotel for a relaxing last night in Fes.


The following morning, we took the fast train to Rabat, where we spent 2 nights in my apartment and visited Rabat's two major tourist sites: Chellah and the Mousoleum. We also took advantage of Rabat's low-key shopping atmosphere and my dad was introduced to the joys of dirt cheap street food.

And then we were off to Marrakesh, a city I have a love/hate relationship with. The massive tourism industry is, to be quite honest, a little bit too much for this introvert. But my dad wanted to see it, and see it we did.

I would be lying if I said I remembered everything we did. I am no expert on Marrakesh, and, at a certain point, museums and tombs and souks start to run together in my head. But we had a great few days. (Except that my dad was finally hit with the inevitable stomach bug. It didn't seem to bring him down.) And I left the city with a more positive opinion of it, which is always heartening.


And then we made our way to Casablanca, on a train that was completely full in Marrakesh, it's starting location. And the three hours to Casa passed, the train became more and more full. When it came time to exit the train, we almost couldn't make our way past the pushy Moroccans who blocked the way and tried to enter the train before we had made our way off. I couldn't have been prouder of my dad as he used all his body weight to push through the sea of people with his luggage. After 10 days of being passive in the Moroccan crowds, he was finally bhal maghribii (like a Moroccan).

After checking into our hotel, we made our way to Hassan II mosque, the third largest mosque in the world behind the mosques in Mecca and Medina. Completed in 1993, it cost an estimated 800 million dollars. Think about that for a minute.
My favorite part of the mosque's tour was seeing the beautiful hammam (public bath) that was completed but yet to be opened, for administrative reasons. Whatever that means.

We returned to our hotel and embarked on an Art Deco walking tour of the city center, enjoyed some crepes, and people-watched a bit.

Our night ended fairly early, since Dad had to be up at 4:00 am to make it to the airport.

All in all, it was a really wonderful trip. Being a tour guide in a place that was recently foreign to me was incredibly gratifying; I proved to myself how much I'd grown in terms of language ability and understanding of Morocco.

I'm glad I was able to show my dad a good time; he's been calling it his "best vacation ever." And really, I'm not exaggerating when I say that this is a huge part of the Fulbright experience. Every co-worker, family member, and friend that he tells about his trip will have a better understanding of Morocco. And that, gentle readers, is the definition of cross-cultural exchange.

No complaints, okay? At least I wrote something.

B'salaamah, Senoir Qibsh.

Perhaps my most memorable in Morocco thus far (and trust me, gentle readers, there have been many), was my experience during Eid Al-Kabir (Eid Al-Adha). This holiday, which marks Abraham’s sacrifice of his son Isaac to the Lord, is celebrated by Muslims around the world. (As you may recall, the story ended on a happy note when the Lord replaced Isaac with a ram at the last minute, rewarding Abraham for his willingness to make an immense sacrifice for his faith.)

This year, Eid Al-Kabir took place in early December, and so this entry is both cursed and blessed with the gift of time to reflect and ruminate on my experience. While I doubt I can add anything that hasn't been said before, I wanted to share this unique experience with my family and friends that read this blog.

So, the facts. Moroccans celebrate Eid Al-Kabir with the sacrifice of a sheep (qibsh), which is followed by eating nearly all of the animal.

In the weeks leading up to the Eid, subtle changes occur in the medina. Knives, barbeque sets, salt, and cumin, the accoutrements of Eid, are on display on every street corner. Moroccans drag reluctant sheep through the streets to their homes, where the sheep will live until they meet their maker. The sheep often live on the roofs, and so the bleats of sheep that seem to know what awaits them adds to the usual cacophony of roosters and stray cats in heat that make up our daily medina soundtrack.

Here is a photo of my friend Susannah's sheep, who we nicknamed Senoir Qibsh.


Our landlord Mustafa and his mother Fatima invited my roommate Roz and I to their home for the holiday. Not wanting to 1) Offend our wonderful landlords by refusing their invitation, and 2) Miss out on this singular experience, we accepted. We'll only stay for the sacrifice, we told each other. Whatever happens, we will not eat innards.

When we arrived to our landlord's apartment, the sheep was already up on the roof. The families in the building must have staggered themselves, because our group was the only one there. Our small group was composed of Roz, Mustafa, Fatima, a family friend, a butcher, and me. (Similar to Jewish dietary law, the sheep must be butchered in a specific way, and trained butchers are in hot demand during the Eid.)

The butcher and the friend held down the sheep, said B'ismilah (in the name of Allah) and slit it's throat. After the sheep stopped convulsing, the family decapitated the animal, drained the blood into the roof’s drain, and skinned it, the last of which involved poking a hole in the skin and blowing into the hole, effectively loosening the skin from the body. Then they went to work on the innards, cutting everything out and placing them in a large bowl.








Afterwards, we made our way downstairs, where Roz and I drank tea and watched Men in Black while Fatima prepared lunch. This is when Roz and I started to panic and doubt our resolution to avoid eating innards. We knew that brains take a day to prepare, and so they wouldn’t be on the menu. But what other organs would be presented to us? As we watched Fatima bring bread, cumin, salt, and soda out to the table one by one, I felt like we were in some insane parody of “The Tell Tale Heart,” in which every passing minute compounded our fear. It didn’t help that the decapitated carcass sat just feet from us on a spare table, slowly dripping its remaining blood into bucket.

Finally, lunch was served. Roz and I eyed the meat kabobs (neither of us had any idea what type of meat it was), made eye contact, silently weighed our options, and dug in.

The meat was chewy. And smoky. And wrapped in fat. I tried to keep my bread-to-meat ratio high, and followed every bite with a large gulp of soda. Fatima’s eyes were on us as we made our way through the kabobs, and so I tried my best to fight my gag reflex, keep a smile on my face, and not think about what I was eating. Roz did the same.

When we left, we thanked Fatima and Mustafa profusely. And, despite the greasy, charred taste that wouldn’t leave our mouths, we meant it. They opened their home up to us, not because they had to, but because they wanted to share the holiday with us. And I’m truly grateful for their hospitality.

Roz has a motorcycle, and, as we made our way back to our house, the streets were smoky with makeshift barbeque pits, where young men cooked sheep's heads. As we entered the gate of the medina, the streets literally ran red with blood. The slight rain only added to how surreal the experience was; it looked like the apocalypse.

I left the day with a mixed perception of the Eid. In many ways, the holiday has become less about the sacrifice's religious origins and more about the expensive rituals (and associated status). A nice sheep will set a family back more than 100 dollars, and families that can't afford a sheep sacrifice a smaller animal, like a goat or a chicken. Shortly before the Eid, a girl in the hammam asked me for money so that her family could buy an animal. This is not uncommon. And it seems to me that such a spiritual event taking on such a capitalistic dimension is the antithesis of the holiday.

And yet it is difficult to deny the impact of an entire nation (not just Morocco, but the larger Islamic ummah) celebrating the holiday together. It's about more than eating a sheep's brains; it's about faith. Not just individual faith, but collective faith. It's something Americans, raised in a nation of "secularism" and religious plurality, may have a difficult time fathoming. Even though I am not Muslim, there's immense power in the though that the King of Morocco and families in the slums of Fes, and everyone in between, celebrate a moment of faith, of belief, together.

And so the contradictions, and the beauty that lies within them, continue.

PS- I finally found out what sort of meat I consumed several weeks later, when my Arabic teacher asked us about our Eid experiences. "What did you eat?," she asked me. "Bouchra, I don't know." "You don't understand the question?" "No, I have idea what I ate."

After much discussion, she decided that I ate the sheep's pancreas. Bi Sahah. And B'Salaamah, Mr. Qibsh.

In which I went skiing in Morocco.

Perhaps the biggest misconception about life in Morocco is that the weather is perpetually warm. True, spring is balmy, summers are brutally hot, and fall is temperate, but, at least in Fes, from approximately mid-October until mid-March the climate is horribly, horribly cold. The absence of central heating and insulated walls makes the temperature all the more awful. At the moment, I can see my breath in the house. My roommates and I have developed several coping mechanisms for dealing with the weather: We sleep with many, many blankets, constantly wear spandex and long-sleeved shirts under our clothes, and use a Butagaz, essentially a gas tank with a metal grate on top that acts as an archaic space heater.

In Fes, the temperature hovers just above freezing, and so rain, sometimes sleet, pounds down on our house, the sound amplified by the plastic roof that covers our open courtyard. Further up in the mountains, the rain turns into snow, creating the perfect conditions for a Moroccan ski adventure.

That's right. My first ski trip since high school took place in North Africa.

Our ragtag group of skiers gathered at 7:00 am last Saturday morning. 14 in total, we piled into our rented van while the rest of Fes still slept. Most of us dozed on the bus as we climbed further and further up into the mountains. Along the way, we passed through the town of Ifrane. I'd driven through Ifrane a few times before, but it never ceases to make me smile. France developed the town, which is situated about 45 minutes from Fes, as a resort village in the 1920s. The architecture is firmly European, the trees are neatly groomed, and joggers and recreational bikers abound. The drive through Ifrane is like passing through the Swiss Alps for ten minutes, only to be plopped back into Morocco again once you reach town limits.

We reached the Mischliffen resort an hour or so after we left Fes. Several inches of powdery snow were on the ground, and we took the opportunity to throw some snowballs and marvel at the fact that we were several inches deep in snow. In Morocco.


After some scrambling to find "suitable" boots, skis, and poles for all of us (Suitable is a relative term. My skis were a good foot taller than me and appeared to be about 20 years old. I did only pay around 5 dollars for all of my equipment, though.), we hobbled over the basin, where people were skiing, snowboarding, sledding, and generally taking in the scene. There were about 4 trails in total, but when we first arrived none of rope tows were running, and so we skiied around in the basin for awhile until one rope tow started up (50 cents per run).

After a truely meskeenah fall off of the rope tow, I began my first run. I quickly realized that super long, un-curved skis are extremely difficult to control, and so my hopes of parallel turning were replaced by a strong desire not to wipe out completely. I failed at even this modest goal when I took a spectacular wipeout on an icy patch.

The top of the run was pretty beautiful, though.



After a few trips down the open trail, a bunch of us decided to hike over to an unopened trail. This was perhaps my worst idea ever. Hiking in ski boots while knee-deep in snow and carrying skis on your shoulder is extremely difficult. Making our way down the ungroomed trail was even more difficult. Out of fear for our lives, Stephanie and I opted to take off our skis and walk down the mountain/slide down on our butts. The final straw proved to be getting my boots back into my binding at the bottom of the run. In case you're wondering, it took 2 friends 15 minutes to shove my boots back into my skis. Yikes.

We finally made our way back to the lodge, where we enjoyed some hot chocolate before heading to Azrou, a beautiful little town in the mountains, for lunch.


On the way to Azrou, we stopped briefly at a cedar forest which is famous for its Barbary apes. Apes were chilling in the road, climbing in the trees, and aggressively begging for food. As Stephanie posed for a photo, one of the apes attacked her leg. Barbary apes do not mess around.


After lunch, we made our way to our driver's family's house for tea. The house is located in a Berber village, and the landscape was incredibly beautiful. More importantly, I got to play with the family dogs a little bit.


We boarded the van once more to make our way back to Fes. 12 hours after we departed, we arrived to our city once again, and once again the city was dark. While my shins ached for the next few days and my socks took nearly a week to dry, I can now proudly say that I went skiing in Morocco, and lived to tell the tale.

eid a-shukr

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

This is my second Thanksgiving spent abroad, but my first time really celebrating the holiday outside of the country. (2 years ago, I spent my Thanksgiving in an off-season beach town in Egypt; there was lots of felafel, but no turkey.) This year, I'll be eating my Thanksgiving dinner at my school's residence hall, then heading back to the medina for dessert and drinks with Fulbrighters. I'm excited to spend tonight with all of the new people in my life, especially after all of the hard work that’s gone into preparing the meal.

For most Americans, myself included, Thanksgiving is all about the ritual. It just isn't Thanksgiving without turkey, cranberry, corn casserole, and pumpkin pie. It's been a challenge trying to recreate these dishes in Morocco, where many of the basic ingredients Americans take for granted (brown sugar, sour cream, cranberry sauce) are nowhere to be found. Don't even get me started on American desserts.

But, if any group is able to overcome these hurdles, it's my extended social circle. As many of you may know, a staple of my Thanksgiving is corn casserole, a delicious combination of corn, creamed corn, corn muffin mix, butter, and sour cream. It looks vaguely like vomit before it’s cooked, but, once it comes out of the oven, it’s warm, artery-clogging perfection. Amazingly enough, this dish also happens to be a staple of my roommate Roz’s Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, there is no sour cream, corn muffin mix, or creamed corn to be found in Fes. But wait! Roz’s mother is visiting from the States for Thanksgiving, and threw some corn muffin mix (and cranberry sauce) in her suitcase. One missing ingredient down, two to go.

Roz, a master chef, was confident she could make sour cream by combining yogurt, oil, and salt and letting it sit overnight. I remained skeptical, but, as I tried a spoonful of her concoction this morning, I had to admit that it tasted like the real deal.

Finally, the elusive creamed corn. Roz once again came to the rescue, combining regular corn, tumeric, flour, powdered cream, and sugar to create something that was remarkably similar to creamed corn. With all the ingredients available, we proceeded to make the dish, which came out just as we’d both remembered. And, lest you worry that I’m not getting my fair share of pumpkin pie, we’re lucky enough to be friends with a trained pastry chef who will be attending our dinner and supplying some dessert. In addition to corn casserole, our house is making sweet potatoes, green beans almondine, and sangria to bring to the communal dinner. All in all, it should be a great meal.

While I've always had some qualms about celebrating a holiday that essentially marks the beginning of genocide, I do think that Thanksgiving is an excellent opportunity to reflect on your life: what you're grateful for, what you wish was different, and where you're going in life.

I have a lot to be thankful for this year: I have wonderful, supportive family and friends; I was lucky enough to receive an amazing grant; and I’ve developed a pretty great life here in Morocco. I started a new chapter of my life this year, and, while I haven't always been sure-footed, I think I'm on the right path.

But of course there are some things that I want to change in the following year. I want to make more Moroccan friends, especially women my own age. I know I’d learn a lot from them, and (hopefully) the other way around as well. I want to improve my Darija and work on my Fusha and maybe learn a little French; I’m lucky enough to have quite a bit of language money at my disposal, and I want to get as much out of it as possible. I don’t want to squander this amazing opportunity.

It’s easy to think of my Fulbright grant as an excuse to ignore reality for 14 months, but I have some big decisions to make this year. Do I want to go to law school? Graduate school? In what? Should I work for awhile, or dive right back into school? I’m thankful that I have the time to make these decisions, and hopefully a year from now I’ll be a little closer to figuring it all out.

I hope everyone’s holiday is filled with good food and good company!

Where do I fit in?

I’ll be honest: I think of myself as superior to the throngs of tourists that constantly crowd the Fes medina. I have a house, a lease, a landlord. I grocery shop. I study Arabic. My decision to live here was well-planned, a product of months of research and writing. My experience (I tell myself) is completely different from those of tourists who come here for a week on a package tour.

The reality of the situation is more complicated.

Because, as I may or may not have made clear before, absolutely nothing is simple in Morocco, and the tourism industry is no exception. And one of the most interesting (and convoluted) facets of tourism in Morocco is the riad phenomenon. In fact, my roommate Roz’s Fulbright project will look at the impact of riad restoration on medina culture.

Riads are restored medina houses, and they are everywhere. It seems that every other Moroccan I meet is converting his house into a one. Restored riads are either rented out as upscale guesthouses or bought by Westerners as a first or second (or third, or fourth) home. The restoration process usually involves replacing or repairing the house’s internal doors and zillij (tile). Many medina houses are stripped of their original decorations, since selling these doors, tile, fountains, etc., is an easy way for families to make some money. Western-style bathrooms and kitchens are usually added to the houses as well. All of these factors combined have created a huge demand for artisans such as tilemakers, blacksmiths, and carpenters (these professions were on the wane before the riad resurgence), as well as for plumbers, electricians, Moroccan contractors, etc., etc. It’s undeniable that housing restoration has created an influx of industry in the medina, and has revived a lot of artisan work as well.

But the long-term effects are less clear. In my mind, the medina will soon reach a saturation point; there are only so many houses, and there are only so many tourists and ex-pats to fill these houses. In addition, what impact does this influx of Westerners have on the medina? Is this centuries-old medina structurally able to handle a rapid increase in Western toilets and showers? And, more complicated still, will Westerners still be drawn to the medina when many of the original Moroccans have left? What’s the point of buying or renting a house in Morocco if you’re not surrounded by Moroccans?

Maybe I’m giving tourists too much credit; the rapidly changing medina may not affect tourism at all. Because riads-as-guesthouses, for all their restored Moroccan glory, are essentially safe havens for Western tourists in the midst of the overwhelming medina. You feel like you’re getting an “authentic” Moroccan experience while experiencing as little of Morocco as possible. It’s hard for me not to condemn riads as a mild form of Orientalism; people see what they want to see of a country without truly opening their eyes to the amazing, complex world around them, filled with flaws but also with incredible beauty. In this way, it seems like riads will continue to thrive well into the future, since their guests (by and large) aren’t seeking out a particular character of the medina but instead are looking for an experience that can be created with or without the actual medina intact.

Westerns who make their home in the medina are also creating an interesting dynamic here. A Fulbrighter from last year (a graduate student in film) bought a house in the medina; she plans to turn it into a film school for Moroccans. She’s developed a symbiotic relationship with the medina, and it’s a really cool thing to see. But I also witness some less than positive attitudes from ex-pats; one homeowner memorably responded, after I asked him if he planned to stay in Morocco indefinitely, “Of course not. But it will be so great to tell my grandchildren that my first house was in Morocco.” I was blown away by the selfishness of this statement, and I think about it a lot as I examine my own place in the Fes medina and in Morocco.

As much as I like to pat myself on the back for avoiding some of the common tourist/ex-pat pitfalls, I’m definitely not above criticism. As a clearly non-Moroccan woman, it’s nice to sometimes go places where I don’t feel like I’m constantly on display, and I find myself frequenting cafes and restaurants geared towards Westerners. I'm renting a house that belonged to a Moroccan family just a few years ago. And, of course, I travel, fueling the tourism industry that I'm so quick to criticize. It’s easy to get bogged down with guilt about my role in the larger changes in the medina.

But I’ve come to realize in the past six weeks that massive amounts of guilt does absolutely nothing- It’s crippling, not constructive. I’m only one person, and I can only take responsibility for so much. I’m reading a really wonderful novel right now: The Map of Love, by Ahdaf Soueif. The story revolves around a British woman’s journey to Egypt in the early 20th century. She reflects in her journal that, “It must be so hard to come to a country so different, a people so different, to take control and insist that everything be done your way. To believe that everything can only be done your way.” (70) I try really hard not to embody this idea, and I find myself succeeding, shuyyah bi shuyyah (little by little). While Marjane and Asima, Moroccan superstores, once held a comforting allure, I now look forward to grocery shopping in the medina, and only head to Asima for the few things I can’t find in the street markets (peanut butter, sliced turkey, skim milk).

I’ll never be Moroccan, and, if I aspired to be, I'd be losing aspects of my identity that I'm proud of, that I've worked hard for. My job isn't to become Moroccan anyway, it's to explore, learn, and represent the United States as best as I can. And, most importantly, I don't want to be selfish with my experience. My roommate, the one who's studying riads, has been tossing around the idea of writing something about sustainable tourism and pitching it to guidebooks. I'd like to do something like that; it seems so silly to have this amazing opportunity and keep it all to myself. But I have no idea what form I want my final product to take. Oh, well. I have plenty of time to figure it out.

dar dyalii zween bizaaf (my house is very beautiful)

This is one of our two salons. Perfect for entertaining large groups of students who need a night away from their host families.


Traditional Moroccan homes have internal windows and courtyards. Even the most opulent Moroccan homes aren't very fancy on the outside; inside is where all the beauty is.



The is the view from our roof. One the left, you can see the Kairaouine mosque, a landmark of the Fes medina and part of the oldest university in the world, founded in 859 AD.

s
Our living room. See if you can find the cat in the photo.

My room. It looks out into the internal courtyard.

Anyway, this is our house. I'm still in love with it a month into my stay here; our landlord is amazing, the location is perfect, and, of course, the house is beautiful.

That's not a tattoo.

Everyone has a breaking point. Mine came when a friend asked me if I had a tattoo on my ankle.

I do not have a tattoo on my ankle.

What appeared to be a tattoo was actually a large circle of dirt and dust that refused to be scrubbed away in the shower, despite numerous, vigorous attempts on my part to make it disappear.

While I’m used to getting a little dirty in the United States, it’s easy to make myself as good as new with a hot shower. Here, the dirt permeates my entire being; it’s difficult to distinguish my feet from my tan sandals and a layer of dust covers exposed skin almost immediately after venturing outside. Attacking this level of filth with a regular shower is completely and utterly futile.

This is where hammams enter the picture. Hammams are communal saunas, and they are a staple of Moroccan life. While I didn’t go to the hammam when I studied abroad here two years ago, this time around it’s completely necessary. Maybe it’s because Fes’s climate is more arid, or maybe it’s because I’m doing more walking this time around, but I’m way dirtier here that I ever was in Rabat. Whatever the reason, it was more than necessary for me to hit the hammam.

The hammam is a social activity as well as a hygienic one, so I made my first trip with my friends Megan and Stephanie. Armed with our hammam gear (a large plastic bucket, small plastic bowl, loofah, shampoo, and a change of clothes), we walked down Talaa Kaber, one of the main arteries of the Fes medina, to our chosen hammam.

18th and 19th century European art is fascinated with the Middle East; more often than not, this art depicts life in the Muslim world as exotic and sensual. This exotic lens is especially noticeable when these artists show women-only settings, such as bath houses and harems. In the eyes of these artists, Middle Eastern women are sensual, passive, and sexually uninhibited.

Of course, I’d always assumed that this depiction was ridiculous, a product of Orientalism and patriarchal times. My theory was proved correct immediately after I entered the hammam, and, by the time I left the building more than an hour later, I couldn’t help but think of this art as completely disconnected from reality.

So, here’s how the hammam works: The first room is essentially a women-only locker room, where women of various shapes, sizes, and ages walk around in nothing but their underwear. My friends and I had opted to pay extra for a personal massage, so this was where we first met our masseuse, Chadija, a fifty-something woman with extremely hairy legs.

After we got undressed, Chadija lead us commandingly into the second room, a large, tiled steam room, where hammam-goers sat on the floor (on their mats) surrounded by buckets of water. We sat cross-legged on our mats. After a few minutes of chatting and sweating profusely, Chadija returned and sat on the floor next to me. At this point I should mention that, while this was my first time at the hammam, it was not the first time for Stephanie and Megan. And so, when Chadija yanked me over to her (I slid across the wet floor) and began to wash my hair, I was a little disgruntled that I couldn’t watch the whole experience happen to someone else before I experienced it myself.

The real fun began after Chadija washed my hair. She grabbed a loofah and aggressively scrubbed down my entire body. Dead skin was literally rolling off of me. At one point, she told me to “Shuuf!” (Look!) at a particularly disgusting hunk of grime; you know it’s bad when you’re impressing a professional with how dirty you are. After Megan and Stephanie were scrubbed off, Chadija left us again, and when she returned she gave us each an equally vigorous full-body massage. Of course, I went first again. Then, Chadija ushered us into the third and final room, where she unceremoniously dumped large buckets of water over our heads and then brought us back to the locker room, where we changed and emerged onto the street a much cleaner group of women.

I had survived my first hammam experience.

What struck me the most about my experience was how completely uninhibited the women were with each other. In the United States, women are conditioned to hate their bodies from an early age- We’re not thin enough, tall enough, our hair is too frizzy, our pores are too big, etc., etc. We’re constantly in competition with our peers to be the most “beautiful.” At the hammam, there’s no competition, no insecurity; it’s simply women enjoying an hour or two in the steam room with their friends and family. Which is why it’s completely ridiculous that artists sexualize the hammam- It’s an experience that couldn’t be less about men.

Without delving into the topic of gender roles in Morocco (I’ll save that for another day), I will say that, while the Western media loves to condemn Muslim countries for what they perceive to be oppression of women, nowhere in the United States can women feel as comfortable with each other as Moroccan women do in hammams. And maybe that speaks volumes about our own culture treats women. Just a thought.

Huzzah for harira!

If you travel to Morocco with the hopes of stuffing your face with couscous, the most famous of Moroccan dishes, you will be sorely disappointed during the month of Ramadan. Since I’ve been here, I’ve dined on couscous exactly twice, both times in restaurants that cater to tourists.

For those of us who are used to Near East’s three minute boxed couscous (a noble variety), it’s hard to fathom how labor-intensive the dish truly is. Moroccan couscous, traditionally served on Friday, can easily take three hours to prepare: The couscous is stewed in broth and then served with vegetables and/or meat. While I have a soft spot for the boxed variety, to compare the two dishes is truly an insult to the latter.

Anyway, couscous isn’t eaten during Ramadan because the fast is usually broken with other dishes, and, once an afternoon has been devoted to preparing a special Ramadan meal, the last thing people want to do is hunker down and make couscous.

So, what do Moroccans eat during Ramadan? Traditionally, the fast is broken with a sip of water or juice and a date. Harira, a delicious flour-based soup with lentils and spices, is served at every meal, as are hard-boiled eggs (accompanied by cumin and salt). Bread is a must, from plain wheels of white bread to delicious baghrir, the Moroccan equivalent of crepes, which are served with jam and happy cow cheese. Sweets of every shape and kind are ubiquitous – I’ve yet to develop a taste for super-sugary pastries, but maybe it will come with time. Of course, strong coffee and mint tea conclude the meal.

Even though I’m not living with a host family, I’ve still had several chances to break the fast with Moroccan families and take advantage of the famous Moroccan hospitality. Our landlord invited us to his apartment for Iftar, which resulted in a hilarious conversation with his mother about 1980s hair; a fellow Fulbrighter’s host family had the whole gang over for Iftar; and, in perhaps one of my most random experiences in Morocco to date, my housemates and I were invited to Iftar at the home of a nice young man who may or may not want to marry one of us as part of a plan to expand his business to the United States. In Morocco, it’s not strange at all to invite nearly perfect strangers home for Iftar. In fact, it’s rude not to.

I’m always grateful for any opportunity to get out of the house and have a home-cooked (free!) meal, and breaking the fast with Moroccan families inevitably leads to some interesting cross-cultural interactions. To many Moroccans, overfeeding their guests to the point of discomfort is a point of pride. Maneuvering this situation is difficult enough when it’s not Ramadan, but during Ramadan it’s even more difficult to get out of that second or third bowl of harira, since families assume that I’m as hungry as they are. Which I’m not, since I’ve eaten regular meals all day. But, by explaining that I don’t fast, I’m opening up a whole new can of worms. If I’m not Muslim, what am I? (One memorable interaction with a cabbie: Him- “Are you fasting?” Me- “No.” Him- “You are Christian?” Me, emphatically- “Yes!”) Maybe, they suggest without a hint of judgment, I should try fasting. Just to see how it is.

Maybe I should. Everything in Fes seems to run on Ramadan time- The city is eerily quiet when I head to school at 8:30 am, frantic when I leave school at 5 pm, and chaotically exuberant when I try to sleep at midnight. But then again, our class schedule shows little consideration for Ramadan time, and the thought of fasting through 6 hours of class is daunting at best.

And so I sneak snacks at school, continue to furtively drink water, and count down the days until eid al-kabeer, the end of Ramadan, when the city will come alive during the day again. And, in sha allah, I'll be able to get some halfway decent internet again.

Don't take this the wrong way, but...

There’s something oddly satisfying about taking your pants off in the comfort of your own home. Wait, wait. Hear me out. I’m not a nudist or anything, but there’s no denying the moment you peel off a pair of grimy jeans is pure bliss. After a full day of Arabic in a city where nearly everything is challenging for me, being able to walk into my room and change into shorts and a t-shirt is no small thing. Because my room is my space- I don’t have to worry about offending a my neighbors, entertaining a host family, or deal with the inevitable friction that comes with sharing a dorm room. I can just be myself, with or without pants.

I’ve spent a lot of the past two weeks attempting to get settled, to strike a balance between my former and current lives. I, like many Fulbrighters, find comfort in the oddest places. Finding Ramen noodles at Marjane (the Moroccan equivalent of Wal-Mart) was perhaps the highlight of my day yesterday. Drinking NesCafe (powdered) with milk (it comes in a box) in the mornings is nice. And, of course, our cat Marley is pretty much the cutest cat ever.


How did this glorious cat come into our lives? Roz, one of my two housemates, arrived in Morocco fully prepared to be a responsible pet owner, with a flea collar, cat nip rug, and a book on cat parenting. One of our first days here, we took a walk over to a quieter part of the medina, where we spotted a group of kittens pitifully huddled in a door frame. Marley approached us immediately, which, according to Roz, is one of the best traits in a potential cat. After a trip to Marjane, where Roz bought kitty litter, a litter box, a bed, cat food (wet and dry), and a carrying case, she brought him home the next day. Is this girl together or what?

Marley is, in a word, adorable. He purrs all the time (human contact of any kind will set him off), learned how to use the litter box immediately, and kills cockroaches with glee. The world is his playground. He’s a very welcome addition to my life, even though he’s starting to learn the power of his claws, which is not such a fun developmental stage.

One of the best parts about living in Fes is the bizarre, wonderful coincidences that I seem to experience on a daily basis here. Case in point: Last weekend, a few friends and I were trying to catch a cab at a crowded medina gate. We waited futilely for close to 15 minutes, barely even having the time to move towards cabs before they were snagged by Moroccans far more adept at cab-catching than us. And then- A cab came in our general vicinity! Alas, we were outrun again by a Moroccan family. Again. But luck wasn’t on the family's side, because the cabbie was none other than our landlord, Mustafa, who kicked the family out of the cab and took us instead. Ahh, serendipity.

It’s hard not to get discouraged with myself on a daily basis here: I’m an educated young woman who speaks Darija like a 5-year-old. Consequently, I’ve started treating myself like a 5-year-old. I pat myself on the back for even the smallest accomplishments: successfully using my Arabic to purchase fruits and vegetables in the packed street market near my house. Not peeing my pants in terror when I ride to class on my roommate’s motorcycle. Successfully outrunning Moroccans for cabs. It's all part of making myself feel at home here.

And, if all of that fails, I can always take off my pants.

"230 years of friendship... Let's keep it that way."

After one three-hour bus ride, two and a half days of orientation, five nights spent in two different hotels, thirteen and a half hours of Arabic class, and countless furtive sips of water during daylight hours, I am officially settled in the city of Fes, where I am the proud tenant in an honest-to-goodness Moroccan house in the city's medina (old city). How much is the rent for this glorious three story-plus-terrace house? 5500 dirhams per month, split between three people, which means I’ll be paying around $275 a month.

The roof is by far my favorite place. From it, you can see the whole of the medina, the mountains, and a lot of the new city.

Originally, my roommate and I were a little worried about finding a place to live, since finding a house or apartment in Morocco usually involves going to cafés where simsars (real estate agents) hang out. But, since it’s Ramadan, there isn’t much hanging out at cafes during the day. Amazingly, when we arrived to our Language Institute, we were conveniently provided with a list of available housing throughout city. No simsar needed!

After a few unsuccessful phone calls to landlords, we were in touch with Mustafa, who picked us up 15 minutes later to take us to the available house. It’s a few minutes walk from Batha, one of the main gates of Fes’s medina, but it’s not so far into the city walls that we’ll feel unsafe if we’re walking at night alone (Fes is know as the city of 9,000 alleys, and is notoriously difficult to manage if you’re new to the area).

Once we navigated our four alleys and entered the house, we were greeted immediately with the beautiful interior courtyard I’ve come to know and love in Morocco. As Mustafa showed us around, my roommate and I kept looking at each other in disbelief- What’s the catch? What’s getting lost in translation? Do we have to baby-sit his kids every afternoon? Where’s the shower?

Well, I haven’t found the catch yet. Objectively, it’s not a perfect place to live (It’s the type of place that will never be truly clean, cockroaches, freezing in the winter, etc.), but it’s the perfect place for me to live for the next four months: spacious, in a great location, and cheap. And there’s a private roof!

Now that the stress of finding a place to live has been eliminated, I have the time to focus on studying Arabic and throwing myself into medina life. Arabic classes started on Wednesday after two very long days of Fulbright orientation. We’re talking lectures about every facet of Morocco from 9-5 here, people. I love Morocco, but I think I reached my saturation point somewhere around lunch on day one. The highlight of orientation was perhaps a grizzled, wizened State Department Regional Security Officer, who began his talk with the statement, “Morocco and America: 230 years of friendship… Let’s keep it that way.” (Morocco is proud of the fact that they were the first country to recognize the United States in 1977.) Err, I hope I can do my part to not destroy bi-national relationships, at the very least. I guess it’s important to set realistic goals.

After the Fulbright orientation ended, most of the Fulbrighters made our way from Rabat to Fes to begin our language grant at the Arabic Language Institute in Fes, located in a beautiful building in the nouvelle ville.

I’d decided originally to take mostly Modern Standard Arabic classes, with a few hours a week of Darija, Moroccan Colloquial Arabic. But after a few pathetic days of ineptly interacting with Moroccans, I decided I should commit myself to learning Darija. So now I have 20 hours a week of Darija class and 5 hours a week of MSA tutoring. After two days of class, I can confidently say that I am in for a lot of hard work (my tutor told me to photocopy a verb chart and sleep with it under my pillow), but I’m committed to learning and, perhaps more importantly, excited about learning the language for the first time in a long time.

Fes is a maddening, beautiful, confusing, wonderful city. If you get beyond the throngs of European tourists in capri pants and halter tops, the history is overwhelming- there are signs up right now that promote the 1200th anniversary of Fes. 1200 years! That’s ridiculous! It’s incredibly daunting to live here, especially in the medina; I feel like as hard as I try, I’ll never learn enough about the city in just four months. But, as I meet more Moroccans, improve my Darija, and get to know the immense markets better, I feel like I'm always getting a little bit closer to figuring it all out.