Two years ago, the Nimar began its intensive Arabic language program with three Dutch students. The year after, this number doubled to six, and this year we are expecting no less than fifteen students. They all come from Dutch universities, and they will be here for either an 8-week or a 14-week program. They have been arriving in Rabat since the middle of last week and have created quite a bit of extra work for Farid, the Nimar’s office manager, as he fetches them from the airport, assists them with their frantic and nervous search for housing, and provides a bit of comfort in all this Moroccan unknown that I’m sure is the cause of all their nervousness. On top of that, his apartment is still in the midst of renovations that were initially slated to take no more than his ten days of winter break, this past December, and so he has been a bit of a nomad.*
And so last night, he decided it was time to let loose. We dressed up, he called his friend Samad to meet us at the train station, and off we went for a night on the town. After a fruitless attempt to have dinner at the Goethe Institut (too crowded, too much of a wait) we ended up at a restaurant adjacent to the train station. The place was deserted, but it looked inviting and offered the great variety of menu options that is characteristic of this type of Moroccan restaurant: sandwiches, salads, “grille” platters, crêpes, tajines (Moroccan stew – the type of meal I ate every day with my host family), and couscous on Fridays. An option for any appetite, in other words. As we looked over our menus, both Farid and Samad engaged in a friendly chat with the establishment’s owner. It was the kind of conversation that always emerges in Morocco, that makes you think that everyone here knows each other. There was that instant comfort and friendliness that I love, and that always makes me smile. It turns out that Farid and Samad actually did already know the owner in some way: Farid had been there before, I believe, and Samad, who is a producer of tile and other bathroom hardware, had actually supplied the restaurant’s floors.
As the owner walked away, Farid leaned over to me and said, “see, this is how you do it. You chat a little, make friends. That way you know you’ll get good service, and perhaps they’ll even throw in a free dessert.” And he was right. Just as we were beginning to decide on our menu choices, the owner returned and made us an offer we could not refuse: a three course meal for the three of us, consisting of a large salad, a “mix grille” platter, followed by dessert. It was delicious. A “mix grille” is basically a platter of skewers with various varieties of meat: pieces of beef, sausages, kefta (ground meat with spices), and so on. Along came a bowl of a kind of harr (Moroccan hot sauce) though not as spicy as usual, as well as rice, fries, and bread (there is never a shortage of carbs here). The meat hit the spot: without a working fridge I’d been living on Nutella, bread, and bananas, and was craving some protein. By the time dessert – a platter of fruit – was served, we had all eaten way too much to touch anything else. We paid the bill (definitely less than we would have spent if we’d all ordered separately), thanked the owner, pocket the business cards he gave us, and headed out.
This is how it works in Morocco. It’s the thing that makes me most nervous, but it’s also what I love the most: the fact that every daily transaction involves a conversation, a friendly chat. It opens doors, broadens your options, renders everything more pleasant, and can make life a bit easier. There is always room for negotiation.** This can be unsettling to the foreigner (and to me) because it also means that the way-things-work here is much less straightforward, but once you get the hang of it, I think, it can be pleasant. There is a human contact here that warms me up. This happens sometimes in Chicago and San Diego, too, and it’s one of the things I love about these two cities. But it doesn’t compare to the Moroccan level of friendly interaction. This may sound strange, but I think that even in those moments when a vendor or taxi driver attempts to take advantage of a western-looking tourist, there is an openness to dialogue – and if you play along, if you engage in the way a Moroccan would, there is always a good-naturedness about it all that I appreciate. In the end, this person attempting to ‘take advantage’ is simply exploring his options for a bit of gain – a very human and understandable pursuit.
The trick is, then, to play along. I don’t even think it requires expert fluency in Arabic. I think the point is simply to try, to be open, to not be scared of the interaction. I’m getting better, but I really hope that someday, I’ll actually get good at it…
After a brief interlude involving another newly arrived student in need of help, the three of us ventured over to a lounge that doubled as karaoke bar, where we ran into an acquaintance of Farid’s, a Dutch woman who works for the embassy and has contacts with the Nimar (and who had, apparently, heard all about me already…), with her Moroccan partner. The five of us spent the rest of the evening dancing to upbeat, energizing Moroccan songs, and listening to the karaoke-attempts that interchanged them – invariably a slow-ish French pop ballad. An interesting mix of music…
Unbeknownst to any of us, it turns out that all but the real night clubs close these days at 1 am. This apparently has to do with an incident that happed about 6 months ago in Skhirat (a southern suburb), where a bouncer died after being hit by a drunk driver. And so, at 1, we headed home and, after another hour of conversation in the only room with heating, said goodnight and went to sleep.
Today I am taking it easy and trying not to get nervous about my first day of work tomorrow. But I’m going to relax, convince myself that I know more French/Arabic than I think I do (it’s just latent…), and get excited. I’m sure it’s going to be fun.
* He has actually been staying in the other room at the Nimar apartment for the last three nights – and I have to say it’s been nice to have someone else around.
** Don’t take this to mean that anyone can get anything here if they know how to work this system; of course there are a multitude of limits and inequalities to all this openness and friendliness (subtle ones and not so subtle ones) that I as an outsider do not see. What I’m talking about here is simply the general level of interaction involved in simple transactions such as the one at this restaurant, where the two parties operate from a standpoint of relative equality.
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Eid the Sequel
Eid-the-sequel – that is, day two – is apparently the day of real butchering.
Lured by a hot shower after all that sheep-handling, I spent the night on the couch in Salé next to the three carcasses – still on the floor where we had left them the day before. We were woken by the doorbell at nine: it was Khadija, with her bag full of knives, axes, and other tools, ready to get to work on the three sheep. While we were waiting for Fatima to serve breakfast, I was recruited to help Khadija. This involved pulling up a chair, holding the carcasses’ front legs while she cut away its sides, and helping to twist the carcass so that its lower body snapped off from its rib cage. Just as I was very self-consciously realizing what I was doing, I heard Alma laughing at me. This was a good learning experience for me, she said: when I married a Moroccan, I’d know how to handle a dead sheep.
I don’t think this is anything I had ever pictured myself doing. But once I forced the thought that these had been real sheep to the back of my head and retrieved a little of the anatomical interest that made me enjoy the dissection labs in medical school so much, it became interesting. I became intrigued again – as I did in medical school – by the layout of all those vessels, nerves, and other tubes that actually make the organs work. The way they are situated between all those membranes and layers of tissue, and how you can see traces of the animal’s embryotic development there.
What did bother me, though, is that no one else seemed very bothered by any issues of contamination. Maybe this is something not to get too worked up about with meat this fresh, but hadn’t those carcasses been lying there on the living room floor for about 24 hours already? Granted it’s cold in the house, but it’s no freezer. Yet I saw no one take too much pain to maintain a kind of hygiene, a kind of separation between raw meat and the rest of the world. All this meat-handling work was being done right there in the living room and sitting room, on the floor, sitting on turned-over prayer rugs. There was no hand washing between the cutting away of a flank and the taking a sip of tea, or the changing of the channel on TV. When it was time again to transport ourselves and our meat back to Rabat for lunch (it is beginning to seem as though Salé is our work room, Rabat our dining room), I was shoved into Manal’s backseat next to tens of un-sealed plastic bags full of cut-up meat, one of my two bags thrown right next to them all. Manal saw me looking a little worried and told me I had nothing to be concerned about, it was all good meat. Still though, it seems a little risky. Or am I too careful with this stuff?
It was mainly this that made me a little hesitant to try the meal of other organs that we were served for lunch today. The grilled entrails were served on the same plate as they had been placed on when raw, and there was no hand washing in between raw and cooked stages of preparation. But I did try it all – both the stew of what I think were lungs (including pieces of bronchial pipe), as well as the grilled kidneys and testicles. And again: not bad.
The streets were still deserted – though in Salé butchers had opened their doors and were clearly helping people with what we had done ourselves that morning: processing the sheep into manageable pieces. I did find an internet café in Rabat, though. A tiny one with a big lit-up sign on the busy street where I always walk. I had seen the sign for months, but had never found the actual place. Turns out, it’s 6 computers in the back of a téléboutique, all of which are occupied by little boys of Mustafa’s age, who are watching hard core porn in pairs. As I waited for a computer, the Ivorian proprietor complained to me about the clear lack of parental control here. He has these boys pay for their time in advance, he explained, and every five minutes he would get up and tell the boys it was time to go. In their most pleading voices, they would beg the proprietor for just another minute. Conflict continually ensued, usually ending with the proprietor turning off the computer to great consternation of the boys. Upon which I finally got my chance to read some emails – feeling slightly watched by the boys who were still around, still looking at things they should hardly know about at their age…
Lured by a hot shower after all that sheep-handling, I spent the night on the couch in Salé next to the three carcasses – still on the floor where we had left them the day before. We were woken by the doorbell at nine: it was Khadija, with her bag full of knives, axes, and other tools, ready to get to work on the three sheep. While we were waiting for Fatima to serve breakfast, I was recruited to help Khadija. This involved pulling up a chair, holding the carcasses’ front legs while she cut away its sides, and helping to twist the carcass so that its lower body snapped off from its rib cage. Just as I was very self-consciously realizing what I was doing, I heard Alma laughing at me. This was a good learning experience for me, she said: when I married a Moroccan, I’d know how to handle a dead sheep.
I don’t think this is anything I had ever pictured myself doing. But once I forced the thought that these had been real sheep to the back of my head and retrieved a little of the anatomical interest that made me enjoy the dissection labs in medical school so much, it became interesting. I became intrigued again – as I did in medical school – by the layout of all those vessels, nerves, and other tubes that actually make the organs work. The way they are situated between all those membranes and layers of tissue, and how you can see traces of the animal’s embryotic development there.
What did bother me, though, is that no one else seemed very bothered by any issues of contamination. Maybe this is something not to get too worked up about with meat this fresh, but hadn’t those carcasses been lying there on the living room floor for about 24 hours already? Granted it’s cold in the house, but it’s no freezer. Yet I saw no one take too much pain to maintain a kind of hygiene, a kind of separation between raw meat and the rest of the world. All this meat-handling work was being done right there in the living room and sitting room, on the floor, sitting on turned-over prayer rugs. There was no hand washing between the cutting away of a flank and the taking a sip of tea, or the changing of the channel on TV. When it was time again to transport ourselves and our meat back to Rabat for lunch (it is beginning to seem as though Salé is our work room, Rabat our dining room), I was shoved into Manal’s backseat next to tens of un-sealed plastic bags full of cut-up meat, one of my two bags thrown right next to them all. Manal saw me looking a little worried and told me I had nothing to be concerned about, it was all good meat. Still though, it seems a little risky. Or am I too careful with this stuff?
It was mainly this that made me a little hesitant to try the meal of other organs that we were served for lunch today. The grilled entrails were served on the same plate as they had been placed on when raw, and there was no hand washing in between raw and cooked stages of preparation. But I did try it all – both the stew of what I think were lungs (including pieces of bronchial pipe), as well as the grilled kidneys and testicles. And again: not bad.
The streets were still deserted – though in Salé butchers had opened their doors and were clearly helping people with what we had done ourselves that morning: processing the sheep into manageable pieces. I did find an internet café in Rabat, though. A tiny one with a big lit-up sign on the busy street where I always walk. I had seen the sign for months, but had never found the actual place. Turns out, it’s 6 computers in the back of a téléboutique, all of which are occupied by little boys of Mustafa’s age, who are watching hard core porn in pairs. As I waited for a computer, the Ivorian proprietor complained to me about the clear lack of parental control here. He has these boys pay for their time in advance, he explained, and every five minutes he would get up and tell the boys it was time to go. In their most pleading voices, they would beg the proprietor for just another minute. Conflict continually ensued, usually ending with the proprietor turning off the computer to great consternation of the boys. Upon which I finally got my chance to read some emails – feeling slightly watched by the boys who were still around, still looking at things they should hardly know about at their age…
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
'Eid
Today, then, was the big day. Mostly, today was (finally) the kind of holiday that I had anticipated: a day of special customs and traditions – a day where ordinary life had clearly been suspended both at home and on the street. Yet there was no formality to it, no etiquette, no special dress, no decorations – but I guess this makes sense, given that most of this holiday’s special customs involve getting your hands (and feet, legs, clothes…) dirty with dead sheep.
The processing of dead sheep was, indeed, all this seemed (seems) to be about. After the actual moment of sacrifice, my family spent the entire day either dealing with parts of the dead animal, or eating it. Ilyas had mentioned to me that the most important element of ‘eid is family togetherness – as I had indeed expected – but I didn’t sense much of this in my surroundings. Of course, everything in Morocco is family oriented, and my daily life here in Rabat is dominated by a family much larger and extended than our general western conceptions, and much less private. The same kind of togetherness prevailed today. Still, I had expected a heightened sense of communalism today – I had wondered if other children of Khadija and Lahcen’s might come back to the family house – Amma’s father, for instance, or the sister who lives in Marrakech. I had even wondered if Si Mahmoud’s own family – who live in Salé – might join us. There was a whole sheep to be eaten, after all. But no such thing. We spent this holiday with even less individuals than make up the daily family circle – Amma wasn’t there. I am sensing a pattern: I think she spends most major holidays with her mother’s family in Kenitra. Ilyas had also mentioned that ‘eid is a time to solve family conflicts, but Manal and Alma carried on their usual politics of silence and made sure to be contributing to the overall sheep-handling process in separate rooms.
Before the big day I had asked my host family to point of exhaustion what was going to be happening and what we were going to be doing. In part because I was curious, and in part because I wanted to prepare. As I have mentioned earlier, most of the planning in this family takes place entirely without my inclusion, which makes everything feel very last minute and un-premeditated to me. It also feels frustrating, because when my host family finally informs me we’re doing something – by saying “yalla, noudi, ghanimshiu” (‘come on, we’re going’) – I am left with no time to get appropriately dressed and packed. Unfortunately, all my asking about ‘eid this time around did not help. I got little in the way of answers, and if they did tell me something, it was usually conveyed in a tone of voice that implies “you know, the way it always happens.” All I knew by the morning of ‘eid was that we had bought our sheep this weekend, that it was in Salé, and that around 10 AM it was to be slaughtered.
Not knowing much else, I got up early this morning and followed my family around so as not to miss anything. The day started as any other; apart from the fact that there was clearly more preparatory work going on in the kitchen than for an ordinary lunch, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I gathered with my host sisters, Khadija and Yunus (who had slept over in Amma’s bed, next to mine) in the sitting room for tea and rghayef – my favorite breakfast: a kind of pita bread but softer, that you dip in a mixture of melted honey and butter.* We sat around watching the pan-Arab version of the Today Show – “Sbah l-kheir ya ‘arab” (‘good morning, Arab’, broadcast from Dubai by the London-based-but-Arab channel MBC). I had deliberately not yet changed, because I wanted to wait and see what the others were putting on. Caftans, or butcher’s aprons? What kind of day was this going to be? But I soon regretted this decision to wait: at 10 o’clock – which Alma had mentioned would be the sheep’s last hour – she told me to yalla, noudi, ghanimshiu; and five minutes after I had gotten upstairs I was called because the car was waiting. Where we were going, I had no idea. Were we picking up the sheep? Was the sheep going to be slaughtered somewhere else and then brought here? In either case, what should I bring? With my last ten seconds I threw my camera and wallet in my bag and with un-brushed hair and half-finished makeup, was pushed out the door to Manal’s car.
As it turned out, we were going to Salé. As it turned out, our sheep had been staying in Si Mahmoud and Fatima’s front yard since Saturday. As it turned out, my family had not just one, but three sheep. And as it turned out, we arrived just moments after the moment suprème. Manal, Yunus, Khadija and I entered the front yard to see a dead sheep bleeding its last drops on the ground, the two others already strung up and in the process of being skinned. I was so relieved to be spared the choice of watching-or-not, that any kind of anticipatory queasiness I had melted away entirely and I began, a little over-confidently and perhaps a bit morbidly, taking pictures of the dead animals hanging in the front yard, of their abandoned heads stacked up in a corner, of steaming hot sheep guts being cut away from the carcass. Unexpectedly, I did get a sight of an actual throat-slashing later on: none other than the king himself, who sacrificed two animals on live television. Seeing that on TV, I think I’m glad I did not witness that in reality… a little too much blood for my taste.
The butchers who had slaughtered the sheep cut out its main organs – guts, heart, lungs, liver, pancreas, peritoneum. These were transported inside to the kitchen, which had already been prepared: it was filled from wall to wall with a myriad of plastic bowls, containers, buckets, colanders, and so on. The women spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon washing, cutting, and otherwise handling these entrails, while the men brought the carcasses inside, laid them out on a table cloth spread out on the living room floor, and left (after a glass of tea, served by Fatima). I kept offering my assistance – I guessed that three sheep was going to be a lot of work… – but other than drying loads of dishes, I couldn’t be of much help; with Manal, Khadija and Fatima at work in the kitchen, all of them clearly experts at the routine of cleaning out internal organs, I would have only been in the way. So, not having thought to bring anything to do, I spent most of the day in the sitting room with Mustafa, watching cartoons and playing around with my camera (he has discovered the video setting, and now asks me to make recordings of him dancing and singing, which he insists I title “Mustafa le fou” – Mustafa the crazy).
Just as I had decided I was going to keep myself busy by going outside for a little walk, I was told there wasn’t time: we were going back to Rabat for lunch. We gathered all necessities: plastic buckets of organs, the bucket in which the three sheep’s heads had been collected, the barbeque equipment. Everything except for the three carcasses, which we left on their table cloth in the living room. All of this was loaded into the cars – the women’s purses placed right next to the sheep-matter without issue – and off we went, to unload it all in the Rabat medina. My assistance is always gladly requested whenever anything has to be transported, and so I soon found myself walking through the streets of our neighborhood with a tile full of sheep testicles in my hand…
Back in Rabat, Alma (who had stayed behind) had prepared a small grill in the courtyard, on which we barbequed our lunch: pieces of liver, wrapped in slivers of the sheep’s peritoneum, strung onto big skewers. Once done, we put the pieces into a small round pita bun and added some ketchup, mayonnaise, or “harr” (Moroccan hot sauce – very good). We ate these sandwiches along with the bowls of “shlada” that are always served with lunch – dips made from carrots, a kind of Moroccan spinach, finely cut tomatoes.
I am not a fan of liver, and having seen where that peritoneum came from, I was not eager to taste this. But I have to say that, once I made myself forget what I was eating, it wasn’t bad at all. Maybe because it was so fresh, or maybe because everything grilled kind of tastes the same, it did not taste like liver at all.
It became clear that not much was going to happen after lunch – as usual, the women seemed to retreat for a siesta, while Si Mahmoud retreated with his paper, cigarette, and coffee. A little restless these days, I decided to keep myself busy by looking for an internet café – but in vain. In fact, I have never seen the medina as desolate as it was this afternoon, except maybe at 1 AM. All storefronts were boarded up, and absolutely nothing was open – even on Ramadan mornings I do not remember it being this extremely deserted. Even the streetlights seemed to be taking a hiatus, and it was dark and rainy. There were people outside, though: about every 50 meters, groups of men stood around self-made street fires, built of coal and drift wood from the looks of it, on which they were grilling sheep’s heads. The streets were a mess of burnt material – old pieces of wood, coal, a sheep’s horn here and there, twigs. In combination with the pouring rain and the general desolation, it made for a very strange, almost apocalyptic, atmosphere.
Now it is 10 PM. At the end of day one, having eaten only the sheeps’ liver, I am left with this question: how on earth are we, this small family of eight, going to eat three entire sheep?
* rghayef are round slices of dough that you cook in a skillet. On the stove, they blow up like balloons, creating a perfect little pre-sliced bun. I am so intrigued by how this happens.
The processing of dead sheep was, indeed, all this seemed (seems) to be about. After the actual moment of sacrifice, my family spent the entire day either dealing with parts of the dead animal, or eating it. Ilyas had mentioned to me that the most important element of ‘eid is family togetherness – as I had indeed expected – but I didn’t sense much of this in my surroundings. Of course, everything in Morocco is family oriented, and my daily life here in Rabat is dominated by a family much larger and extended than our general western conceptions, and much less private. The same kind of togetherness prevailed today. Still, I had expected a heightened sense of communalism today – I had wondered if other children of Khadija and Lahcen’s might come back to the family house – Amma’s father, for instance, or the sister who lives in Marrakech. I had even wondered if Si Mahmoud’s own family – who live in Salé – might join us. There was a whole sheep to be eaten, after all. But no such thing. We spent this holiday with even less individuals than make up the daily family circle – Amma wasn’t there. I am sensing a pattern: I think she spends most major holidays with her mother’s family in Kenitra. Ilyas had also mentioned that ‘eid is a time to solve family conflicts, but Manal and Alma carried on their usual politics of silence and made sure to be contributing to the overall sheep-handling process in separate rooms.
Before the big day I had asked my host family to point of exhaustion what was going to be happening and what we were going to be doing. In part because I was curious, and in part because I wanted to prepare. As I have mentioned earlier, most of the planning in this family takes place entirely without my inclusion, which makes everything feel very last minute and un-premeditated to me. It also feels frustrating, because when my host family finally informs me we’re doing something – by saying “yalla, noudi, ghanimshiu” (‘come on, we’re going’) – I am left with no time to get appropriately dressed and packed. Unfortunately, all my asking about ‘eid this time around did not help. I got little in the way of answers, and if they did tell me something, it was usually conveyed in a tone of voice that implies “you know, the way it always happens.” All I knew by the morning of ‘eid was that we had bought our sheep this weekend, that it was in Salé, and that around 10 AM it was to be slaughtered.
Not knowing much else, I got up early this morning and followed my family around so as not to miss anything. The day started as any other; apart from the fact that there was clearly more preparatory work going on in the kitchen than for an ordinary lunch, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I gathered with my host sisters, Khadija and Yunus (who had slept over in Amma’s bed, next to mine) in the sitting room for tea and rghayef – my favorite breakfast: a kind of pita bread but softer, that you dip in a mixture of melted honey and butter.* We sat around watching the pan-Arab version of the Today Show – “Sbah l-kheir ya ‘arab” (‘good morning, Arab’, broadcast from Dubai by the London-based-but-Arab channel MBC). I had deliberately not yet changed, because I wanted to wait and see what the others were putting on. Caftans, or butcher’s aprons? What kind of day was this going to be? But I soon regretted this decision to wait: at 10 o’clock – which Alma had mentioned would be the sheep’s last hour – she told me to yalla, noudi, ghanimshiu; and five minutes after I had gotten upstairs I was called because the car was waiting. Where we were going, I had no idea. Were we picking up the sheep? Was the sheep going to be slaughtered somewhere else and then brought here? In either case, what should I bring? With my last ten seconds I threw my camera and wallet in my bag and with un-brushed hair and half-finished makeup, was pushed out the door to Manal’s car.
As it turned out, we were going to Salé. As it turned out, our sheep had been staying in Si Mahmoud and Fatima’s front yard since Saturday. As it turned out, my family had not just one, but three sheep. And as it turned out, we arrived just moments after the moment suprème. Manal, Yunus, Khadija and I entered the front yard to see a dead sheep bleeding its last drops on the ground, the two others already strung up and in the process of being skinned. I was so relieved to be spared the choice of watching-or-not, that any kind of anticipatory queasiness I had melted away entirely and I began, a little over-confidently and perhaps a bit morbidly, taking pictures of the dead animals hanging in the front yard, of their abandoned heads stacked up in a corner, of steaming hot sheep guts being cut away from the carcass. Unexpectedly, I did get a sight of an actual throat-slashing later on: none other than the king himself, who sacrificed two animals on live television. Seeing that on TV, I think I’m glad I did not witness that in reality… a little too much blood for my taste.
The butchers who had slaughtered the sheep cut out its main organs – guts, heart, lungs, liver, pancreas, peritoneum. These were transported inside to the kitchen, which had already been prepared: it was filled from wall to wall with a myriad of plastic bowls, containers, buckets, colanders, and so on. The women spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon washing, cutting, and otherwise handling these entrails, while the men brought the carcasses inside, laid them out on a table cloth spread out on the living room floor, and left (after a glass of tea, served by Fatima). I kept offering my assistance – I guessed that three sheep was going to be a lot of work… – but other than drying loads of dishes, I couldn’t be of much help; with Manal, Khadija and Fatima at work in the kitchen, all of them clearly experts at the routine of cleaning out internal organs, I would have only been in the way. So, not having thought to bring anything to do, I spent most of the day in the sitting room with Mustafa, watching cartoons and playing around with my camera (he has discovered the video setting, and now asks me to make recordings of him dancing and singing, which he insists I title “Mustafa le fou” – Mustafa the crazy).
Just as I had decided I was going to keep myself busy by going outside for a little walk, I was told there wasn’t time: we were going back to Rabat for lunch. We gathered all necessities: plastic buckets of organs, the bucket in which the three sheep’s heads had been collected, the barbeque equipment. Everything except for the three carcasses, which we left on their table cloth in the living room. All of this was loaded into the cars – the women’s purses placed right next to the sheep-matter without issue – and off we went, to unload it all in the Rabat medina. My assistance is always gladly requested whenever anything has to be transported, and so I soon found myself walking through the streets of our neighborhood with a tile full of sheep testicles in my hand…
Back in Rabat, Alma (who had stayed behind) had prepared a small grill in the courtyard, on which we barbequed our lunch: pieces of liver, wrapped in slivers of the sheep’s peritoneum, strung onto big skewers. Once done, we put the pieces into a small round pita bun and added some ketchup, mayonnaise, or “harr” (Moroccan hot sauce – very good). We ate these sandwiches along with the bowls of “shlada” that are always served with lunch – dips made from carrots, a kind of Moroccan spinach, finely cut tomatoes.
I am not a fan of liver, and having seen where that peritoneum came from, I was not eager to taste this. But I have to say that, once I made myself forget what I was eating, it wasn’t bad at all. Maybe because it was so fresh, or maybe because everything grilled kind of tastes the same, it did not taste like liver at all.
It became clear that not much was going to happen after lunch – as usual, the women seemed to retreat for a siesta, while Si Mahmoud retreated with his paper, cigarette, and coffee. A little restless these days, I decided to keep myself busy by looking for an internet café – but in vain. In fact, I have never seen the medina as desolate as it was this afternoon, except maybe at 1 AM. All storefronts were boarded up, and absolutely nothing was open – even on Ramadan mornings I do not remember it being this extremely deserted. Even the streetlights seemed to be taking a hiatus, and it was dark and rainy. There were people outside, though: about every 50 meters, groups of men stood around self-made street fires, built of coal and drift wood from the looks of it, on which they were grilling sheep’s heads. The streets were a mess of burnt material – old pieces of wood, coal, a sheep’s horn here and there, twigs. In combination with the pouring rain and the general desolation, it made for a very strange, almost apocalyptic, atmosphere.
Now it is 10 PM. At the end of day one, having eaten only the sheeps’ liver, I am left with this question: how on earth are we, this small family of eight, going to eat three entire sheep?
* rghayef are round slices of dough that you cook in a skillet. On the stove, they blow up like balloons, creating a perfect little pre-sliced bun. I am so intrigued by how this happens.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
On the Marrakech Express
Yesterday morning, I awoke at 6.30 to catch the 7.45 train to Marrakech for a little weekend escape from Rbati family life. A friend of mine from Rabat had spent a week in central Morocco with her aunt, and I was going to join her for a fun Marrakshi weekend before both heading back to Rabat on Sunday evening.
It was a four and a half-hour trip that reminded me of how much I love traveling by train. Perhaps I learned to love it as a high school student, when memberships of regional and nationwide symphony orchestras required a fair amount of train travel to and from rehearsals across the country. Unlike on a plane, I can easily sit on a train for hours on end, content just with watching the changing landscape and letting my mind wander freely. I love air travel, too, but it is sterile, it’s unimaginative. It consists simply of leaving a place, arriving somewhere else, and a white, anonymous zone of nothingness in between. On a train, however – much like in a car – the trip is all about the in-between. And as such it is ‘travel’ in the real sense of the word – it is movement, constant transition. You see the landscape changing, flashing by, as you move through it. It renders me reflective, makes me turn inward in a pleasant way, and sometimes there is nothing I love more than to be alone, listen to appropriate travel music, and stare out the window of a train.
Traveling from Morocco’s Atlantic coast to the dry mountain valley in which lies Marrakech, the landscape slowly changes color: the moist black earth of the fertile coastal regions becomes red, then yellow, as it dries out. Its surface begins to ripple and fold, first into hills, and then into mountains. The first sign of Marrakech is a vague outline of the Koutoubia’s minaret – built by the Almohad dynasty in the 12th century, it is twice as high as its sister minaret in Cordoba, and visible for miles. It is not until after the train passes through a vast forest of palm trees that the city itself emerges, in all its pink beauty. Elsewhere in Morocco, walls, buildings, and cities are white or grey. But in Marrakech, they have all been washed a dark, orange-tinted pink.
The walls of Marrakech are also noticeably cleaner than they are elsewhere in Morocco. This is so clearly a city that is run by people with a particular aesthetic: it is a city that caters to an audience of rich foreigners intrigued with the city’s exoticism. Marrakech represents all that makes Morocco so interesting and intriguing. It is colorful, traditional, exciting. Arab, Berber, and tangibly African: in other words, the capital of the Moroccan exotic. This has attracted not only the hippies portrayed in Hideous Kinky, but also a rich Western public with enough money to create a little exotic space for themselves in this old and famous city. And as Moroccans left the declining medina for apartments in the Ville Nouvelle, Westerners came in to take over and renovate the traditional riads.* In the medina they cleaned up the grit to create a more sterile, more picture-perfect rendition of what they expected Morocco to be, and in the Ville Nouvelle they built pools, nightclubs, and casino’s for some European-style entertainment.
All this makes Marrakech feel a bit like a Hollywood version of what it once must have been. And so it is beautiful, and creates an incredibly pleasant refuge for a little weekend getaway. But with its shiny coat of gloss, it lacks a bit of the reality, the grit, that a city like Fes has always maintained. The grit must still be there – in concentrated form, probably, beyond the playgrounds of the wealthy. Beyond the hotels, nightclubs, the medina souqs that cater to tourists. The disparities between rich and poor must be tremendous in Marrakech, and a part of me wonders how this other, less fortunate, half must live.
But the other half of me was overjoyed to be back here – this city I had fallen in love with four years ago. I, too, get a little swept up in its beauty, and simply in the idea of it – all that the name “Marrakech” represents. And I eagerly let myself drown in all it had to offer, feeling wonderfully free with the knowledge that I would not have to return to my wonderful but very noisy and dominant host family in Rabat, until Sunday evening. After a glass of juice at a café overlooking the jma l-fna, the huge open square that is the heart of Marrakech (and the groups of Sufi drummers its beat), my friend and I spent a few hours strolling around the touristy area of the medina. Following the general flow of traffic, we stayed within a certain perimeter lined with traditional shops selling earthenware, wooden objects, jewelry, carpets, paintings, babouches, traditional beauty products. We shopped successfully: apparently, knowing some Arabic gets you a lot of smiles, open doors, and lower prices in Marrakech. Sampling music at a small cd-shop, for instance, we got involved in a conversation with the proprietor of the traditional drug store next door, who was full of smiles and enthusiastically told us about his life in Italy – after which we simply had to take a look inside his shop as well. It was a small square place lined with shelves that were filled with jars of powders, soaps, and liquids. Large containers of powders (most of it different kinds of henna, I think) stood at the center, and a collection vats of sabon bildi (the traditional soap used at the hammam) was placed at the entrance, all with different fragrances and consistencies. Curious objects hung from the shelves – large beads, goat- and gazelle horns. As he continued his stories, he and his brother sampled their products for us. One after the other, they took down the large jars from their shelves, and lifted out cubes of musk, powdered lavender, kohl, and so on. They would rub it on our hands, have us smell, and look at us expectantly: “zouina, yak? (‘delicious, isn’t it?’).” An excellent opportunity to buy some sabon bildi, I decided, and the scrubber-gloves that go with. The proprietor showed me his collection – not only a choice of soaps, but a variety of gloves as well, each with different degrees of roughness. With a big smile, he looked at my pale skin, and gave me the mildest of them all. Normally, he said, he’d charge tourists a lot for this. But because it was me, and he liked me, he’d give me a good price! I gave him my best appreciative smile, and told him that because he was so nice, I’d take two each of gloves and soap.
And so we spent the afternoon. A few hours, some more souvenirs for family and friends, and a slightly lighter wallet later, we had a snack at a streetside café (Moroccan pancakes with Nutella…to die for) to tie ourselves over until Moroccan dinnertime (9 PM, approximately), and then returned to the hotel to get ready for the evening.
The Marrakech film festival, which had been going on all week, was on its final night. Films – new releases from all over the world – were playing at cinemas across the city, as well as on a big screen constructed on the jma l-fna. One of these cinemas was located just around the corner from our hotel, and we so we went to the 8 PM showing of a South African film starring John Malkovich. At 10 Dirhams a showing, seeing a movie most certainly was not a pleasure reserved only for the wealthy guests of the festival. In fact, the festival encourages locals to join in on the fun, and indeed, the entire theater was full to the brim with Moroccan teenagers, who could not stop giggling at every romantic or sexual scene on screen.
After the movie, and after a quick meal at the snack bar next to the cinema, we were ready for a real night out. But where to go, and how to find out about the city’s hotspots? We found a quick, and apparently efficient way of answering these questions. We headed for a trendy-looking bar, sat down, and ordered ourselves a drink, a dessert – and some nightlife advice. Our server listed at least four different clubs we could choose from. We decided on a location that wouldn’t leave us too isolated (and thus dependent on scheming cab drivers) at 3 in the morning, and made sure we’d get our 150 Dirham cover charge’s worth: was he sure it would be busy? Oh yes, he said, it was always packed. The place to be.
And so we went, to Teatro, located (as the name gives away) in an old theater adjacent to a huge casino in l’hivernage, a neighborhood in the Ville Nouvelle. At 00.15, we were uncomfortably early. Nearly the first, in fact; we arrived to a completely empty space, the music still at manageable volume, and the servers and bartenders standing at attention just past the door, waiting for their first customers. It was a huge space, decorated in a lush theatrical red and chrome. It was filled as far as we could see with tables and lounge chairs – all of them reserved for bottle service, all already supplied with bottles of soda and water, glasses, and containers with ice. We went to the bar (created, from the looks of it, in what used to be the orchestra pit), asked the bartender a little about how these reservations worked, and got ourselves a free round of drinks. Don’t worry, the bartender said, feel free to sit down at one of the reserved tables as long as it’s unoccupied.
In fact, we sat at this table long after that. The table we had chosen had been reserved, it turned out, by a suave and friendly Frenchman of Moroccan descent and his work associate – a middle-aged gray Frenchman who, it seemed, was seeking to reclaim a lost youth through trendy clothing, an age-inappropriate enthusiasm for the core-shaking bass of the music being played, and the young Moroccan girl he had brought with him. They invited us to stay, and we spent the rest of the evening around their table, dancing and trying in vain to communicate.
Because the music was loud. Louder than I have ever experienced in a club. I noticed how core-shaking it really was when I went to the bathroom; though removed from the speakers and subwoofers, the bass was inescapable even here. Even here, I felt it rippling right through my body; even here, it made most communication impossible.
But it was fun. Teatro put on quite a show – live music, beglittered staff dressed in devil-costumes, a veritable fire-show, even. And I let myself go with the music. It was house – the real stuff, the stuff I miss in American clubs – the stuff I love, to most Americans’ consternation. Unable to truly talk, unable above all to escape the bass, there simply was no other choice but to let ourselves go with the music. And so we danced, until 4 AM, after which the suave French-Moroccan drove us back to our hotel. And at 5, after a brief shower to wash away the stench of smoke, we finally rolled into bed.
* Riads, by the way, are the traditional Moroccan houses of the medina – a court yard, salons leading off it. Marrakech now even has new quarters, built recently just outside the medina, in traditional medina-style. They are suburban subdivisions of cookie-cutter riads, all next to each other, all exactly the same. It is such a sign of the kind of people Marrakech attracts.
It was a four and a half-hour trip that reminded me of how much I love traveling by train. Perhaps I learned to love it as a high school student, when memberships of regional and nationwide symphony orchestras required a fair amount of train travel to and from rehearsals across the country. Unlike on a plane, I can easily sit on a train for hours on end, content just with watching the changing landscape and letting my mind wander freely. I love air travel, too, but it is sterile, it’s unimaginative. It consists simply of leaving a place, arriving somewhere else, and a white, anonymous zone of nothingness in between. On a train, however – much like in a car – the trip is all about the in-between. And as such it is ‘travel’ in the real sense of the word – it is movement, constant transition. You see the landscape changing, flashing by, as you move through it. It renders me reflective, makes me turn inward in a pleasant way, and sometimes there is nothing I love more than to be alone, listen to appropriate travel music, and stare out the window of a train.
Traveling from Morocco’s Atlantic coast to the dry mountain valley in which lies Marrakech, the landscape slowly changes color: the moist black earth of the fertile coastal regions becomes red, then yellow, as it dries out. Its surface begins to ripple and fold, first into hills, and then into mountains. The first sign of Marrakech is a vague outline of the Koutoubia’s minaret – built by the Almohad dynasty in the 12th century, it is twice as high as its sister minaret in Cordoba, and visible for miles. It is not until after the train passes through a vast forest of palm trees that the city itself emerges, in all its pink beauty. Elsewhere in Morocco, walls, buildings, and cities are white or grey. But in Marrakech, they have all been washed a dark, orange-tinted pink.
The walls of Marrakech are also noticeably cleaner than they are elsewhere in Morocco. This is so clearly a city that is run by people with a particular aesthetic: it is a city that caters to an audience of rich foreigners intrigued with the city’s exoticism. Marrakech represents all that makes Morocco so interesting and intriguing. It is colorful, traditional, exciting. Arab, Berber, and tangibly African: in other words, the capital of the Moroccan exotic. This has attracted not only the hippies portrayed in Hideous Kinky, but also a rich Western public with enough money to create a little exotic space for themselves in this old and famous city. And as Moroccans left the declining medina for apartments in the Ville Nouvelle, Westerners came in to take over and renovate the traditional riads.* In the medina they cleaned up the grit to create a more sterile, more picture-perfect rendition of what they expected Morocco to be, and in the Ville Nouvelle they built pools, nightclubs, and casino’s for some European-style entertainment.
All this makes Marrakech feel a bit like a Hollywood version of what it once must have been. And so it is beautiful, and creates an incredibly pleasant refuge for a little weekend getaway. But with its shiny coat of gloss, it lacks a bit of the reality, the grit, that a city like Fes has always maintained. The grit must still be there – in concentrated form, probably, beyond the playgrounds of the wealthy. Beyond the hotels, nightclubs, the medina souqs that cater to tourists. The disparities between rich and poor must be tremendous in Marrakech, and a part of me wonders how this other, less fortunate, half must live.
But the other half of me was overjoyed to be back here – this city I had fallen in love with four years ago. I, too, get a little swept up in its beauty, and simply in the idea of it – all that the name “Marrakech” represents. And I eagerly let myself drown in all it had to offer, feeling wonderfully free with the knowledge that I would not have to return to my wonderful but very noisy and dominant host family in Rabat, until Sunday evening. After a glass of juice at a café overlooking the jma l-fna, the huge open square that is the heart of Marrakech (and the groups of Sufi drummers its beat), my friend and I spent a few hours strolling around the touristy area of the medina. Following the general flow of traffic, we stayed within a certain perimeter lined with traditional shops selling earthenware, wooden objects, jewelry, carpets, paintings, babouches, traditional beauty products. We shopped successfully: apparently, knowing some Arabic gets you a lot of smiles, open doors, and lower prices in Marrakech. Sampling music at a small cd-shop, for instance, we got involved in a conversation with the proprietor of the traditional drug store next door, who was full of smiles and enthusiastically told us about his life in Italy – after which we simply had to take a look inside his shop as well. It was a small square place lined with shelves that were filled with jars of powders, soaps, and liquids. Large containers of powders (most of it different kinds of henna, I think) stood at the center, and a collection vats of sabon bildi (the traditional soap used at the hammam) was placed at the entrance, all with different fragrances and consistencies. Curious objects hung from the shelves – large beads, goat- and gazelle horns. As he continued his stories, he and his brother sampled their products for us. One after the other, they took down the large jars from their shelves, and lifted out cubes of musk, powdered lavender, kohl, and so on. They would rub it on our hands, have us smell, and look at us expectantly: “zouina, yak? (‘delicious, isn’t it?’).” An excellent opportunity to buy some sabon bildi, I decided, and the scrubber-gloves that go with. The proprietor showed me his collection – not only a choice of soaps, but a variety of gloves as well, each with different degrees of roughness. With a big smile, he looked at my pale skin, and gave me the mildest of them all. Normally, he said, he’d charge tourists a lot for this. But because it was me, and he liked me, he’d give me a good price! I gave him my best appreciative smile, and told him that because he was so nice, I’d take two each of gloves and soap.
And so we spent the afternoon. A few hours, some more souvenirs for family and friends, and a slightly lighter wallet later, we had a snack at a streetside café (Moroccan pancakes with Nutella…to die for) to tie ourselves over until Moroccan dinnertime (9 PM, approximately), and then returned to the hotel to get ready for the evening.
The Marrakech film festival, which had been going on all week, was on its final night. Films – new releases from all over the world – were playing at cinemas across the city, as well as on a big screen constructed on the jma l-fna. One of these cinemas was located just around the corner from our hotel, and we so we went to the 8 PM showing of a South African film starring John Malkovich. At 10 Dirhams a showing, seeing a movie most certainly was not a pleasure reserved only for the wealthy guests of the festival. In fact, the festival encourages locals to join in on the fun, and indeed, the entire theater was full to the brim with Moroccan teenagers, who could not stop giggling at every romantic or sexual scene on screen.
After the movie, and after a quick meal at the snack bar next to the cinema, we were ready for a real night out. But where to go, and how to find out about the city’s hotspots? We found a quick, and apparently efficient way of answering these questions. We headed for a trendy-looking bar, sat down, and ordered ourselves a drink, a dessert – and some nightlife advice. Our server listed at least four different clubs we could choose from. We decided on a location that wouldn’t leave us too isolated (and thus dependent on scheming cab drivers) at 3 in the morning, and made sure we’d get our 150 Dirham cover charge’s worth: was he sure it would be busy? Oh yes, he said, it was always packed. The place to be.
And so we went, to Teatro, located (as the name gives away) in an old theater adjacent to a huge casino in l’hivernage, a neighborhood in the Ville Nouvelle. At 00.15, we were uncomfortably early. Nearly the first, in fact; we arrived to a completely empty space, the music still at manageable volume, and the servers and bartenders standing at attention just past the door, waiting for their first customers. It was a huge space, decorated in a lush theatrical red and chrome. It was filled as far as we could see with tables and lounge chairs – all of them reserved for bottle service, all already supplied with bottles of soda and water, glasses, and containers with ice. We went to the bar (created, from the looks of it, in what used to be the orchestra pit), asked the bartender a little about how these reservations worked, and got ourselves a free round of drinks. Don’t worry, the bartender said, feel free to sit down at one of the reserved tables as long as it’s unoccupied.
In fact, we sat at this table long after that. The table we had chosen had been reserved, it turned out, by a suave and friendly Frenchman of Moroccan descent and his work associate – a middle-aged gray Frenchman who, it seemed, was seeking to reclaim a lost youth through trendy clothing, an age-inappropriate enthusiasm for the core-shaking bass of the music being played, and the young Moroccan girl he had brought with him. They invited us to stay, and we spent the rest of the evening around their table, dancing and trying in vain to communicate.
Because the music was loud. Louder than I have ever experienced in a club. I noticed how core-shaking it really was when I went to the bathroom; though removed from the speakers and subwoofers, the bass was inescapable even here. Even here, I felt it rippling right through my body; even here, it made most communication impossible.
But it was fun. Teatro put on quite a show – live music, beglittered staff dressed in devil-costumes, a veritable fire-show, even. And I let myself go with the music. It was house – the real stuff, the stuff I miss in American clubs – the stuff I love, to most Americans’ consternation. Unable to truly talk, unable above all to escape the bass, there simply was no other choice but to let ourselves go with the music. And so we danced, until 4 AM, after which the suave French-Moroccan drove us back to our hotel. And at 5, after a brief shower to wash away the stench of smoke, we finally rolled into bed.
* Riads, by the way, are the traditional Moroccan houses of the medina – a court yard, salons leading off it. Marrakech now even has new quarters, built recently just outside the medina, in traditional medina-style. They are suburban subdivisions of cookie-cutter riads, all next to each other, all exactly the same. It is such a sign of the kind of people Marrakech attracts.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Bastila-Thief
Manal has been yelling at everyone for a day and a half now. This is not necessarily surprising – her general condition is one of slight, but perpetual, indignation. Nevertheless, her usual outbursts of irritability have seemed heightened recently. I suspected something was going on – and last night this feeling was confirmed, as she explained to me what was wrong: an anonymous someone had eaten her portion of the bastila that Khadija had made for Sunday’s lunch.
Manal was fasting on Sunday, and so she sat on the other end of the sitting room while we all gathered around the table. Very uncharacteristically for a Moroccan meal, we did not all dig into the big plate at the center. Instead, the bastila was very scrupulously divided into exactly 8 parts – one for everyone, including those who weren’t at the table. Those of us there for lunch were each given our slice, and Manal’s portion was taken back to the kitchen for later. She had decided to eat it on Monday, she explained to me last night, but by Sunday night had discovered the theft from the fridge, to her (and whether we wanted to or not, our) great consternation.
Bastila certainly is delicious, and something worth competing for. It is a pastry of filo dough, shaped in the form of a disk, topped with lots of sugar and cinnamon and filled with almond paste, lots of spices – and chicken. It is very, very good, but it takes a long time to make (even if you don’t make your own filo dough), and is therefore most definitely something for a special occasion. Khadija had been working on the bastila for the entire weekend: first the chicken was cooked in a broth of onions, an unidentifiable green, and spices, until the meat practically fell off the bones. Then the meat had to be cut into small pieces. Then the almonds had to be cooked, peeled, ground up, mixed with rose water and sugar to make the almond paste. And finally, of course, there was the assembly, the careful positioning of it all on the sheets of filo dough, the careful wrapping up of the fillings, so that it all formed a perfectly symmetrical disk.
Eating it is heaven (and it is, very understandably, almost everyone’s favorite food). It is dinner and dessert rolled into one. And for me, the cinnamon completely quenched the sudden craving for pumpkin spices and speculaaskruiden I developed when I realized, a few days ago, that it is late October.
And so a part of me understands Manal’s anger. I’d feel the same, if my bastila got eaten by an anonymous thief. But another part of me wonders: Is this really worth being so angry about, for two whole days? This is the cynical part of me, perhaps: she herself chose not to eat on this special bastila-day. It was her own decision to fast, despite all of the deliciousness being served. You can’t have your cake and eat it, too – literally. Perhaps to say no to bastila when it is being served means to risk not getting any at all. Saving something for later is always a little risky. And there is a little hypocritical part of me that thinks: doesn’t it go against the whole idea of fasting, to save what you’re abstaining from for later so that you can still enjoy it, and then be this mad when someone has taken your prize? Seems to me that just eating would cause a lot less trouble.
No one in the family really took her anger seriously. I am not sure what they are saying to her, but the tone is dismissive. Which clearly only fuels her anger…
Meanwhile, my stomach has transitioned from slightly uneasy to perpetually hungry. I love Moroccan food and there is too much of it, all the time. I eat three big meals a day, at least, not to mention the cookies served with coffee at 5 o’ clock. My particular vice is the white bread, which is heated up on a George Forman-style grill before every meal. I cannot resist. I am also not yet very good at using my bread as a spoon – which means that I eat a lot more bread than the rest to scoop up the same amount of food. I am afraid – very afraid – that I will come back to the US in December with 15 extra pounds…
Manal was fasting on Sunday, and so she sat on the other end of the sitting room while we all gathered around the table. Very uncharacteristically for a Moroccan meal, we did not all dig into the big plate at the center. Instead, the bastila was very scrupulously divided into exactly 8 parts – one for everyone, including those who weren’t at the table. Those of us there for lunch were each given our slice, and Manal’s portion was taken back to the kitchen for later. She had decided to eat it on Monday, she explained to me last night, but by Sunday night had discovered the theft from the fridge, to her (and whether we wanted to or not, our) great consternation.
Bastila certainly is delicious, and something worth competing for. It is a pastry of filo dough, shaped in the form of a disk, topped with lots of sugar and cinnamon and filled with almond paste, lots of spices – and chicken. It is very, very good, but it takes a long time to make (even if you don’t make your own filo dough), and is therefore most definitely something for a special occasion. Khadija had been working on the bastila for the entire weekend: first the chicken was cooked in a broth of onions, an unidentifiable green, and spices, until the meat practically fell off the bones. Then the meat had to be cut into small pieces. Then the almonds had to be cooked, peeled, ground up, mixed with rose water and sugar to make the almond paste. And finally, of course, there was the assembly, the careful positioning of it all on the sheets of filo dough, the careful wrapping up of the fillings, so that it all formed a perfectly symmetrical disk.
Eating it is heaven (and it is, very understandably, almost everyone’s favorite food). It is dinner and dessert rolled into one. And for me, the cinnamon completely quenched the sudden craving for pumpkin spices and speculaaskruiden I developed when I realized, a few days ago, that it is late October.
And so a part of me understands Manal’s anger. I’d feel the same, if my bastila got eaten by an anonymous thief. But another part of me wonders: Is this really worth being so angry about, for two whole days? This is the cynical part of me, perhaps: she herself chose not to eat on this special bastila-day. It was her own decision to fast, despite all of the deliciousness being served. You can’t have your cake and eat it, too – literally. Perhaps to say no to bastila when it is being served means to risk not getting any at all. Saving something for later is always a little risky. And there is a little hypocritical part of me that thinks: doesn’t it go against the whole idea of fasting, to save what you’re abstaining from for later so that you can still enjoy it, and then be this mad when someone has taken your prize? Seems to me that just eating would cause a lot less trouble.
No one in the family really took her anger seriously. I am not sure what they are saying to her, but the tone is dismissive. Which clearly only fuels her anger…
Meanwhile, my stomach has transitioned from slightly uneasy to perpetually hungry. I love Moroccan food and there is too much of it, all the time. I eat three big meals a day, at least, not to mention the cookies served with coffee at 5 o’ clock. My particular vice is the white bread, which is heated up on a George Forman-style grill before every meal. I cannot resist. I am also not yet very good at using my bread as a spoon – which means that I eat a lot more bread than the rest to scoop up the same amount of food. I am afraid – very afraid – that I will come back to the US in December with 15 extra pounds…
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Eating Ramadan
The topic of today’s class was Ramadan. On the basis of another magazine article, we discussed what it means to fast, and what it means when some people don’t. It is a huge transgression to ‘eat Ramadan’ in Morocco: it is worse to violate the pillar of Ramadan than it is to violate the pillar of prayer.* Apparently it is even illegal to eat in public during the month of fasting, and being caught can lead to jail time or fines. In fact, Ilyas explained, fasting is taken so seriously in Morocco that there is even a North African joke about it. There are five countries that make up North Africa, just like there are 5 pillars in Islam: Morocco, Mauritania, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya (apparently Egypt doesn’t really count – too much part of the actual Middle East, I guess). As it happens, each country seems to favor one pillar over the others. So the joke is that the North African countries divided up the pillars amongst themselves, each taking responsibility for one. Morocco has fasting, Tunisia has prayer. Mauritania has alms giving, Libya has pilgrimage, and Algeria has the profession of faith. Just a joke, said Ilyas, but there’s certainly some truth to it.
Obviously a failure to fast is a religious violation, and suggests that you disrespect the faith or maybe even that you are an atheist.** But perhaps even more so than a religious sin, it is a cultural violation. Not to fast is to turn your back on the community, to suggest a lack of identification with the rest of society, or even to imply that you stand above the rest. Religion is imposed in Morocco, Ilyas explained. It is not sold to the masses; it is forced upon them, and most people have no choice but to accept. Except for the rich few, the bourgeoisie (same word in Moroccan, just pronounced with a thick Spanish ‘r’); these people can afford to disregard society’s peer pressure. And these are often the people who do not fast. But, he said, once they turn 40, 45, all of a sudden they become concerned with fasting. Why did I think that was? Well, I began, perhaps they begin to fear death, and turn back to God?
No, Ilyas said. Not God. Culture. They want to belong, all of a sudden they become concerned with their identity as Moroccans. And that’s it, I am now thinking. I get the sense that Ramadan is not simply more cultural than religious; in fact, Ramadan is precisely what defines or maintains Moroccan culture for Moroccans. It reinforces and thus sustains precisely what Moroccans take pride in about their cultural traditions: solidarity, togetherness, hospitality, merriment. I mentioned at some point in the discussion that I had been so surprised to see my host family in such good spirits after a month of fasting and very little sleep. That’s not surprising at all, said Ilyas. That’s the point of it all, that’s Moroccan culture, and Moroccans take pride in this self-defined characteristic of always being good-humored and inviting. In fact, he explained, that’s why the terrorist attacks of May 2003 in Casablanca were such a blow to the country. Because who would do such a thing in this country where even those who have nothing are always smiling? And that’s what Ramadan is meant to remind us of: to be happy, be together, be kind, even when you must endure deprivation. If it weren’t for Ramadan once a year, Ilyas said, we would lose those values – we would lose what it means to be Moroccan.
Strangely enough though, despite this strong connection to culture and community, fasting is and remains an individual duty. I asked Ilyas if one person’s refusal to fast has repercussions for the whole community’s relationship with God. No, he said – each person is individually responsible for his or her relationship with the divine. Apparently, however, this individual duty does not translate into personal freedom to do what you wish. As I’ve mentioned already, religion is quite a compulsion in Morocco (and in most of the Muslim world, according to Ilyas). Religion may be an individual duty, but it is part of culture to urge one another to fulfill that duty. Religion has become the property of culture, convention, and tradition, and has thus moved from the realm of individual choice into community pressure.
*The basis for the practice of Islam rests on five ‘pillars’: the profession of faith, prayer five times daily, almsgiving, fasting during Ramadan, and pilgrimage to Mecca.
**The article had conducted a poll on this question: can someone who does not fast be a Muslim? Forty percent had said no, someone who fasts is not a Muslim. Ilyas confirmed again how inconceivable atheism is to some people. I am glad I didn’t reveal myself to my host family.
Obviously a failure to fast is a religious violation, and suggests that you disrespect the faith or maybe even that you are an atheist.** But perhaps even more so than a religious sin, it is a cultural violation. Not to fast is to turn your back on the community, to suggest a lack of identification with the rest of society, or even to imply that you stand above the rest. Religion is imposed in Morocco, Ilyas explained. It is not sold to the masses; it is forced upon them, and most people have no choice but to accept. Except for the rich few, the bourgeoisie (same word in Moroccan, just pronounced with a thick Spanish ‘r’); these people can afford to disregard society’s peer pressure. And these are often the people who do not fast. But, he said, once they turn 40, 45, all of a sudden they become concerned with fasting. Why did I think that was? Well, I began, perhaps they begin to fear death, and turn back to God?
No, Ilyas said. Not God. Culture. They want to belong, all of a sudden they become concerned with their identity as Moroccans. And that’s it, I am now thinking. I get the sense that Ramadan is not simply more cultural than religious; in fact, Ramadan is precisely what defines or maintains Moroccan culture for Moroccans. It reinforces and thus sustains precisely what Moroccans take pride in about their cultural traditions: solidarity, togetherness, hospitality, merriment. I mentioned at some point in the discussion that I had been so surprised to see my host family in such good spirits after a month of fasting and very little sleep. That’s not surprising at all, said Ilyas. That’s the point of it all, that’s Moroccan culture, and Moroccans take pride in this self-defined characteristic of always being good-humored and inviting. In fact, he explained, that’s why the terrorist attacks of May 2003 in Casablanca were such a blow to the country. Because who would do such a thing in this country where even those who have nothing are always smiling? And that’s what Ramadan is meant to remind us of: to be happy, be together, be kind, even when you must endure deprivation. If it weren’t for Ramadan once a year, Ilyas said, we would lose those values – we would lose what it means to be Moroccan.
Strangely enough though, despite this strong connection to culture and community, fasting is and remains an individual duty. I asked Ilyas if one person’s refusal to fast has repercussions for the whole community’s relationship with God. No, he said – each person is individually responsible for his or her relationship with the divine. Apparently, however, this individual duty does not translate into personal freedom to do what you wish. As I’ve mentioned already, religion is quite a compulsion in Morocco (and in most of the Muslim world, according to Ilyas). Religion may be an individual duty, but it is part of culture to urge one another to fulfill that duty. Religion has become the property of culture, convention, and tradition, and has thus moved from the realm of individual choice into community pressure.
*The basis for the practice of Islam rests on five ‘pillars’: the profession of faith, prayer five times daily, almsgiving, fasting during Ramadan, and pilgrimage to Mecca.
**The article had conducted a poll on this question: can someone who does not fast be a Muslim? Forty percent had said no, someone who fasts is not a Muslim. Ilyas confirmed again how inconceivable atheism is to some people. I am glad I didn’t reveal myself to my host family.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Sickness & Culinary Experimentation = Bad Combination
The old man – Lahcen – is like a phantom presence in the house. I forget he is there, except for the two minutes a day that he comes out of his room to go to the bathroom. He takes about two steps a minute, dressed in his long-sleeved kaftan (a sort of shirt-dress that comes down to just above his ankles), a little knitted cap on his head, and his socks. He holds his dark, misshapen and wrinkled hands in front of him and thus struggles to the bathroom. No one helps him. The rest of his day and night he passes sitting or lying on his bed in his room, watching Moroccan public television. He hardly interacts with any other member of the household. He says little, sometimes calling out a name, and no one speaks to him – except when they walk into his room to turn down the television. The interactions never sound friendly. He yells (I’ve even seen him kick Alma for turning down the sound), and they yell back. They treat him like an angry old man, which he probably is – but I wonder what came first.
I went to Marjane tonight with Khadija, Manal and Mustafa – a big supermarket right on the edge of town that sells everything from industrial-size grocery items to clothing and appliances. I notice that the prices say very little to me. Everyday items range from 12 to hundreds of dirhams, but I have very little index for it. When I calculate how much something would be in dollars, everything seems immensely cheap – very roughly, you take off a zero and get the dollar amount, and for some reason that process seems to make everything dirt cheap in my head. I have to remember, first of all, that the dollar isn’t worth that much anymore at all. And second, that to a Moroccan these prices are much steeper. I don’t know how much because I am not sure of the average monthly salary here, but a cheap washing machine - something that I’m pretty sure is a serious purchase in any country – is about 2500 Dirhams. To think that I spent half of that on minutes for my phone without a second thought…
I think Khadija is illiterate. After an aisle or two at Marjane I began to realize she was asking Mustafa for the price of everything, though it was printed clearly on every shelf. I guess in a sense it’s not surprising that she cannot read; she must be at least 70 if her fifth child is 42 (Amma gave me the lowdown: her father is oldest, then Fatima. Then Manal, then another sister who lives in Marrakech, then Alma, then two boys who are in Italy and the UAE, respectively) – and 65 years ago, in the middle of the protectorate period, the average Moroccan girl did not routinely go to school.
I am getting sick, I think, which is unpleasant. My nose is congested, I have a headache, and that feeling that my head is about to explode from sinus pressure. I wonder if it’s something going around – Khadija and Alma have both been complaining of headaches. I know I am sensitive to these things when I am stressed and exhausted – and I guess I am both. I feel a lot better, but this week – the voyage, the adjustment to being here, the stress of being a guest in strangers’ house – has been tense, and the sleeping schedule has been erratic to say the least. First of all Moroccans seem to sleep very little (which becomes a lot more doable because of all the lounging around and napping after lunch that is done), and sleeping together in one room does mean that I wake up whenever anyone else gets up – like at 4 am, to pray/eat. This they don’t do quietly. The light is turned on, people talk – I wake up.
Anyway, I hope it passes by without doing too much damage. If I take it slow tomorrow, maybe it will get better.
As luck would have it, though, my host mother seems to have chosen these same few days to serve meals that feature, shall we say, less conventional animal products. Yesterday I was given liver for lunch, for dinner that evening at 11 pm, Khadija served what I think was the foot of a cow, and tonight around the same time, she gave us what I think came from some animal’s spine. Only the shape of the bones gives me any clue as to what all this is, and on the plate I saw what I really suspect were vertebrae. I am trying to get away with eating as little as possible, despite continued urgings to ‘khoudi, kouli’ (‘have some, eat’) – when I am feeling under the weather, unfortunately I am not at my most culinarily adventurous. My host family loves this stuff though – the meal is not over until all these weird bones are sucked clean of all juices.
I went to Marjane tonight with Khadija, Manal and Mustafa – a big supermarket right on the edge of town that sells everything from industrial-size grocery items to clothing and appliances. I notice that the prices say very little to me. Everyday items range from 12 to hundreds of dirhams, but I have very little index for it. When I calculate how much something would be in dollars, everything seems immensely cheap – very roughly, you take off a zero and get the dollar amount, and for some reason that process seems to make everything dirt cheap in my head. I have to remember, first of all, that the dollar isn’t worth that much anymore at all. And second, that to a Moroccan these prices are much steeper. I don’t know how much because I am not sure of the average monthly salary here, but a cheap washing machine - something that I’m pretty sure is a serious purchase in any country – is about 2500 Dirhams. To think that I spent half of that on minutes for my phone without a second thought…
I think Khadija is illiterate. After an aisle or two at Marjane I began to realize she was asking Mustafa for the price of everything, though it was printed clearly on every shelf. I guess in a sense it’s not surprising that she cannot read; she must be at least 70 if her fifth child is 42 (Amma gave me the lowdown: her father is oldest, then Fatima. Then Manal, then another sister who lives in Marrakech, then Alma, then two boys who are in Italy and the UAE, respectively) – and 65 years ago, in the middle of the protectorate period, the average Moroccan girl did not routinely go to school.
I am getting sick, I think, which is unpleasant. My nose is congested, I have a headache, and that feeling that my head is about to explode from sinus pressure. I wonder if it’s something going around – Khadija and Alma have both been complaining of headaches. I know I am sensitive to these things when I am stressed and exhausted – and I guess I am both. I feel a lot better, but this week – the voyage, the adjustment to being here, the stress of being a guest in strangers’ house – has been tense, and the sleeping schedule has been erratic to say the least. First of all Moroccans seem to sleep very little (which becomes a lot more doable because of all the lounging around and napping after lunch that is done), and sleeping together in one room does mean that I wake up whenever anyone else gets up – like at 4 am, to pray/eat. This they don’t do quietly. The light is turned on, people talk – I wake up.
Anyway, I hope it passes by without doing too much damage. If I take it slow tomorrow, maybe it will get better.
As luck would have it, though, my host mother seems to have chosen these same few days to serve meals that feature, shall we say, less conventional animal products. Yesterday I was given liver for lunch, for dinner that evening at 11 pm, Khadija served what I think was the foot of a cow, and tonight around the same time, she gave us what I think came from some animal’s spine. Only the shape of the bones gives me any clue as to what all this is, and on the plate I saw what I really suspect were vertebrae. I am trying to get away with eating as little as possible, despite continued urgings to ‘khoudi, kouli’ (‘have some, eat’) – when I am feeling under the weather, unfortunately I am not at my most culinarily adventurous. My host family loves this stuff though – the meal is not over until all these weird bones are sucked clean of all juices.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Cookies
The women in my household began their race to catch up with Ramadan today. There are certain circumstances under when you don’t have to fast: when you’re traveling, or sick; and (at least for women) there are circumstances when you are not allowed to fast, for instance during menstruation. But every day that you miss has to be made up by fasting an additional day after Ramadan. I think technically you have until the next Ramadan to do this, but mostly people do it right after ‘Eid. All the women in my household have a debt of 6 days due to their periods; Alma has an extra 10 to go on top of that for reasons I’m not quite clear on. So this morning, they got up again at 4 to eat.* Today I wasn’t the only one not fasting because Yunus and Mustafa were over again with their mother, but Mustafa just informed me that he has school tomorrow, so I’ll probably be eating alone then.
Nevertheless, the cookie-baking went on. I started wondering if maybe the real ‘Eid gets postponed until the first Friday after Ramadan, so I went for it, and asked: is there going to be a big party, or something? Nothing of the sort, it turns out. ‘Eid really was just nothing more than sitting around and calling family and friends. Apparently one of the family’s friends is either going to Mecca or just returning from there, and all the cookies are for her. That explains it.
I asked to help today and made clear that I love to cook – and they grabbed me a chair. They were making very traditional half-moon shaped Moroccan cookies today: an almond-paste filling enveloped by a very thin layer of dough. At first I helped roll the almond paste into little cigars, later on I was promoted to actually roll out the dough and assemble the cookies. Basically you roll out the dough until it’s nearly see-through, and then you roll a cigar of almond paste in it. You press the dough so it closes around the paste, and then you mold it with your fingers until it has a crescent-shape. It took hours – the quantities that are being made are ridiculous. We ended up with two full baking sheets of about a foot and a half by three feet. But it was kind of a bonding moment. It becomes a lot easier to ask questions when I’m participating in these activities,** and it makes me feel like part of their club. This is, as far as I can tell, what most of the day is about: sitting around in PJs, doing this kind of work – cooking, baking, cleaning, eating, resting; and talking during all of it.*** As I said, this is a merry bunch. They make each other laugh constantly, imitating people, singing songs, and so on. Now that they have discovered that I am Dutch, they keep asking me about the Dutch words for every day items they come across, and this leads to a lot of laughter as well. Dutch to them sounds funny (this they have in common with a lot of other people). It all started over some confusion between the words ‘citron’ and ‘limon’. Because ‘limon’ here does not mean lemon; it means orange. ‘Citron’ is the word for lemon. I told them we had the same word in Dutch, and ever since then, Alma has been saying ‘citron’ to me. Today I taught them the words for table and rolling pin – especially the latter they found incredibly funny: deegroller.
Mustafa hung around the assembly table all day, begging his mother to be allowed to help. After a lot of urging, he was finally allowed to help me roll the almond paste into cigars. He enjoyed this thoroughly, and kept showing me new ways to get the perfect shape. When he saw that I was allowed to assemble the cookies, he begged to be allowed to try that as well. I think I heard someone tell him he couldn’t, because he was a boy. Then he said something to the effect of ‘if I was a woman, I could help you’, to great hilarity of everyone else (of course my knowledge of Arabic is very, very, limited – so perhaps I am wrong about all of this). But apparently, he was finally allowed to try one with what little was left of paste and dough when we had finished – right before we sat down to break the women’s fast, he came to show me the perfect little miniature crescent-shaped cookie. He was so proud.
*I know this because I sleep downstairs in the sitting room with the other women. Long before coming here, when I was trying to decide if I was going to live with a host family again or by myself, I thought that would be the weirdest thing to get used to; I had only just realized that Moroccans sleep in their sitting rooms and that this is why it is impossible to find bedrooms in a traditional Moroccan house. But actually, it’s not bad. I kind of miss reading a little before going to sleep (or watching DVDs…), and I wonder if at some point I will start missing the time alone – other than being in the bathroom, there is not much of that. But then again, I also take a little time each day to write these notes, and that gives me a breather of about half an hour.
**Maybe the dish-washing theory applies to this as well: the idea is that people open up a lot more easily when they’re washing dishes together. It’s something to do with the fact that you’re not looking at each other, but you’re doing something together and you talk to pass the time. In other words: the perfect time to bond. My dad always cited this theory to defend his resistance against getting a dishwasher.
***Many women work, of course, in which case this does not hold up. And even those that don’t go out – shopping, visiting friends, and so on. The women in my household don’t work. Actually, I am not sure about Manal, but Alma doesn’t. I had had a hard time figuring out how old she is, and decided on 25-30, but it turns out she is 42. She is not married, and I wonder how she feels about this. And if there is a reason.
Nevertheless, the cookie-baking went on. I started wondering if maybe the real ‘Eid gets postponed until the first Friday after Ramadan, so I went for it, and asked: is there going to be a big party, or something? Nothing of the sort, it turns out. ‘Eid really was just nothing more than sitting around and calling family and friends. Apparently one of the family’s friends is either going to Mecca or just returning from there, and all the cookies are for her. That explains it.
I asked to help today and made clear that I love to cook – and they grabbed me a chair. They were making very traditional half-moon shaped Moroccan cookies today: an almond-paste filling enveloped by a very thin layer of dough. At first I helped roll the almond paste into little cigars, later on I was promoted to actually roll out the dough and assemble the cookies. Basically you roll out the dough until it’s nearly see-through, and then you roll a cigar of almond paste in it. You press the dough so it closes around the paste, and then you mold it with your fingers until it has a crescent-shape. It took hours – the quantities that are being made are ridiculous. We ended up with two full baking sheets of about a foot and a half by three feet. But it was kind of a bonding moment. It becomes a lot easier to ask questions when I’m participating in these activities,** and it makes me feel like part of their club. This is, as far as I can tell, what most of the day is about: sitting around in PJs, doing this kind of work – cooking, baking, cleaning, eating, resting; and talking during all of it.*** As I said, this is a merry bunch. They make each other laugh constantly, imitating people, singing songs, and so on. Now that they have discovered that I am Dutch, they keep asking me about the Dutch words for every day items they come across, and this leads to a lot of laughter as well. Dutch to them sounds funny (this they have in common with a lot of other people). It all started over some confusion between the words ‘citron’ and ‘limon’. Because ‘limon’ here does not mean lemon; it means orange. ‘Citron’ is the word for lemon. I told them we had the same word in Dutch, and ever since then, Alma has been saying ‘citron’ to me. Today I taught them the words for table and rolling pin – especially the latter they found incredibly funny: deegroller.
Mustafa hung around the assembly table all day, begging his mother to be allowed to help. After a lot of urging, he was finally allowed to help me roll the almond paste into cigars. He enjoyed this thoroughly, and kept showing me new ways to get the perfect shape. When he saw that I was allowed to assemble the cookies, he begged to be allowed to try that as well. I think I heard someone tell him he couldn’t, because he was a boy. Then he said something to the effect of ‘if I was a woman, I could help you’, to great hilarity of everyone else (of course my knowledge of Arabic is very, very, limited – so perhaps I am wrong about all of this). But apparently, he was finally allowed to try one with what little was left of paste and dough when we had finished – right before we sat down to break the women’s fast, he came to show me the perfect little miniature crescent-shaped cookie. He was so proud.
*I know this because I sleep downstairs in the sitting room with the other women. Long before coming here, when I was trying to decide if I was going to live with a host family again or by myself, I thought that would be the weirdest thing to get used to; I had only just realized that Moroccans sleep in their sitting rooms and that this is why it is impossible to find bedrooms in a traditional Moroccan house. But actually, it’s not bad. I kind of miss reading a little before going to sleep (or watching DVDs…), and I wonder if at some point I will start missing the time alone – other than being in the bathroom, there is not much of that. But then again, I also take a little time each day to write these notes, and that gives me a breather of about half an hour.
**Maybe the dish-washing theory applies to this as well: the idea is that people open up a lot more easily when they’re washing dishes together. It’s something to do with the fact that you’re not looking at each other, but you’re doing something together and you talk to pass the time. In other words: the perfect time to bond. My dad always cited this theory to defend his resistance against getting a dishwasher.
***Many women work, of course, in which case this does not hold up. And even those that don’t go out – shopping, visiting friends, and so on. The women in my household don’t work. Actually, I am not sure about Manal, but Alma doesn’t. I had had a hard time figuring out how old she is, and decided on 25-30, but it turns out she is 42. She is not married, and I wonder how she feels about this. And if there is a reason.
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