Ninety-Four: Part Twenty-Six: Wherein The Younger Me Gets To Tell You Stuff The Older Me Forgot, Continued.

Everyone has one year in their life that has a greater impact on them than any other year. Mine was 1994. From time to time, I'll recap that year. This is part 26. Click here for a table of contents.

I'm still working my way through the letters I wrote from Morocco -- reviewing the younger version of me's view on life, and realizing that it was pretty shallow and superficial and kind of dumb, which makes me pretty certain that, after all, I made the right decision throwing out that red notebook, because who wants to constantly be reminded of just how dumb they used to be?

Then again, I wonder if I will, in 17 years, look back on these blog posts (probably from my home in Hawaii) and think Man, I was dumb, then?

I'm pretty certain that won't happen. Just because I was certain, at age 25, that I knew everything and was smart and charming and successful and heading places but turned out to be wrong about most of that doesn't mean that, at 42, when I'm certain that I'm smart and charming and successful and also pretty good looking despite having put on a few pounds and still heading places, that I'll be wrong now.

Or, at least, I'm pretty sure that at 59, when I'm all those things, I'll finally be right then. And I'll look back at 42-year-old me the way 42-year-old me looks back at 25-year-old me, and the way 25-year-old me looked at everything.

Which is to say, sneeringly, without knowing enough to realize how dumb I was being. Back to where I was, which was midway through the first letter I wrote from home, which I'll recount verbatim and occasionally interject to point some things out.

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[When I last left off, I had just finished talking about how I'd been served various parts of a sheep's head for a dinner that was meant to honor me.]

I've seen some of the city; it's actually 2 cities, Rabat and Sale, divided by a river. (No one calls the river anything; it's just "the river.")

[Note: That's not even kind of close to being true. I just googled it and the river is called "Oued Bou Regreg", which is probably Arabic for "Just because you don't speak the language well enough to ask what the river is called doesn't mean they don't have a name for it, idiot."]

[Page 4 of the handwritten letter starts, as all my letters did, with a quote from a song at the top. The quote on this page was Shireme don't like it, thinks it's not kosher, from "Rock the Casbah" by The Clash.]

Rabat is westernized in that people drive cars and can buy Nikes. Sale is "traditional" and poorer. In Sale, the streets are about 4 feet wide, which doesn't stop people from driving. It's like a maze there. In Rabat, streets are paved & only a little narrower than ours, which lets people go tearing around them like Mario Andretti. Traffic is amazing. It's all on-way streets with no traffic lights, only a few signs, very few cops. People drive little tiny cars or mopeds, and pay no attention to little things like lane-dividing lines. I saw 2 accidents in 1 day. They park pretty much anywhere they want, usually bumping other cars.

[Note: This would seem like the usual views of an ignorant American making fun of other countries, a la oh, look they're terrible drivers. But it's not ethnicist; at that time, I'd only lived in Milwaukee and Washington D.C. and had owned a car for a few months, so I wasn't actually familiar with big-city driving in any way. I'd have said the same thing about any city where there were lots of people and cars.].

I haven't seen a new car yet, and only 1 American car. ("Too big," Hamid told me.) They use the horn like crazy, and seem to think brakes don't exist.

So far, I've seen the Palais Royale, where King Hassan II lives. It's huge-- about 2 blocks long. You can only go so close to it; there's a little "x" and if you get to close to the x the guards and the Twellga (Hassan's personal servants) get real alert.

It's very clean there (the only unlittered area in Rabat) and the flower gardens are beautiful. They have a lot of flower gardens here; in the Kasbah des Oudaiyah (Kasbah's Fort), an old monument at Chellah (Roman ruins) and near the Mausolee Mohammed V, where Hassn's dad is buried.

[NOTE: That's three. Three flower gardens. Which isn't a lot by any means. Madison, Wisconsin, has, like, seven.]

I've seen all of those -- they're mostly old temples. The roman ruins looked pretty much like every other building here.

[NOTE: That's not meant to be mean. They did.]

The architecture is very Spanish: small buildings, open spaces, terraces, they're mostly white or brown and all look pretty rundown. The whole city needs a good coat of paint.

[NOTE: I have no formal training in architecture.]

I've also been to the Medina, the old city, inside the walls that once surrounded all of Rabat. It's mostly a marketplace, where you can buy anything from a walkman to dried figs.

[NOTE: So, you know, completely unlike any other market. Or mall. Or modern SuperTarget.]

It's very cool.

[NOTE: Even then, I styled myself as a writer. Hence my brilliant use of language.]

It's really crowded and the shops and stalls are all crammed together. There's spice stands, and fruit stands, and musical instruments, and jewelers, etc.,

[NOTE: Again, look at how I use English like a fine instrument.]

They have open-air butchers, which is really sick. (The smell gags me; they don't refrigerate the meat. Have you ever walked by a row of 200 newly-killed chickens just hanging there all day.)

[NOTE: This is why I could not have been Indiana Jones. When you're watching those movies, you don't think about the fact that any food not in McNugget form makes you barf.]

and bakers with huge mounds of bread, etc.

[NOTE: I'm like if Hemingway had a kid with Emily Bronte and that kid invented a thesaurus.]

Then there's kids running all over, and beggars (some are really badly disabled) and guys chanting the Quran for money. (To people asking for stuff, you say La Shukran -- "no thank you" or asif -- "sorry" -- and keep walking. Never stop. If you pick up something, or even pause more than a moment, you're done for. They assume you're ready to buy.) The Medina is where you haggle. You look at something, ask chi halleh? (How much?) They name a price, you chop it in 1/2 ,then go up a little. But once you start haggling, you almost have to buy it, or they accuse you of wasting their time.

[NOTE: It might seem odd to have to explain how to haggle, but it had to be explained to me: The first time I tried to buy something, the guy named a price, I paid it, and everyone was shocked; my host student, Nadia, told me that I must be rich because I hadn't haggled, and then showed me how to do it after I said that in the US, we didn't haggle.]

There's also guys called Gerbeds in the Medina. They carry around water in a big skin, and lots of cups hanging on bandoliers. Nadia insisted that I try some; it was real cold, and kid of weird-tasting. She explained that the cold and the taste come from this black paste smeared on the inside of the water skin just for those reasons. They also use the paste in their hair. So apparently I drank some kind of Moroccan shampoo.

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That's it for this time. But as a teaser, next time, I discuss the money, and how hilarious I found it.

Ninety-Four: Part Twenty-Five: Wherein Present Day Me Continues Reading An Old Letter And Gets To The Part About The Sheep's Eyeball.

Everyone has one year in their life that has a greater impact on them than any other year. Mine was 1994. From time to time, I'll recap that year. This is part 25. Click here for a table of contents.

As you may remember, from the last time I posted an entry in this ongoing kind-of-a-memoir, I found some old letters I'd written home from Morocco, and it's almost like time-traveling, and almost a lot more like a time capsule, in that I get to see, first-hand, what 1994 Me was like and also see a lot of things that 1994 Me was very excited about talking about, things that 2011 Me has completely forgotten.

That last post -- three months ago, now -- had reprinted the beginning of my first letter home, written on May 31, 1994 -- or, as I wrote it in a totally nonpretentious way, 31 May 94; Tues.

Here's where I left off. Having detailed my flight to Morocco -- my first time on an airplane ever, I wrote to my Mom and sister (the recipients of all the letters home) this:

The JFK-to-Casablanca trip was really rough; we had to keep our seatbelts on most of the time because of turbulence. Then, Casablanca was fogged in, but he pilot still tried to land twice. It was sort of like being on a roller coaster with 500 other people. I had to have other students explain to me what was going on, because all the flight announcements were in French & Arabic.

So let's dive in to the continuation of that letter! As before, I'll be throwing in comments from 2011 Me.

************************

We got into Casablanca about 8:30 a.m.; it's only a 5-hour time difference, but I'd been awake 23 hours or so by then (we all had). The organizers brought us up to Rabat right away. (It's about a 1 hr. trip.) The 1st day, we were shown our school ("Cite Universitaire -- City of Knowledge")

[NOTE: that's not at all accurate. Babel Fish says Cite Universitaire means "university residence."]

And met our host students; mine is Nadia Acherki. She's 23, majoring in English lit. We slept in our dorm rooms that night.

[NOTE: I hadn't known, when I was signing up for the trip, that I'd stay with a host family, let alone that the host student would be a girl. This is shaping up to be a pretty hot story, right? Like "Road Trip 3: Road To Rabat!"]

The next day, we moved in with our host families for a week.

[NOTE: See?]

[NOTE: These teasers aren't in any way accurate. Sorry.]

Mine live on Rue Dakar, right near "downtown" Rabat.

[NOTE: I'm pretty sure those quotation marks, present in the original, were meant to convey a smug sense of superiority. Because, you know, I was so cosmopolitan at the time. Way above those Moroccan rubes who only thought they knew what a 'downtown' was.]

There are 7 of them: Nadia, her Mom, her grandma, her 2 sisters: Sanna & Rasheeda, her Aunt (I don't know her name), and her uncle, Hamid. Their apartment is about the size of Bill's [NOTE: that's my older brother], a 4th floor walk-up. I don't know if they're rich or poor; the whole city looks poor to me.
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that's the end of page 1 of the letter. Remember, I put quotations from songs at the top of each page of my letters back then. The quotation at the top of page 2 is a suitably inspirational-sounding quote that's a perfect fit for a wanting-to-seem-important college student:

"And do the things you should have done."
-- Jethro Tull, "Skating Away"

[NOTE: Get it? Because it's about traveling. Kind of]
Back to the letter, page 2:
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Of them, only Nadia speaks good English.

[NOTE: Unlike your letter writer.]

Rasheeda speaks a little, and Hamid speaks some. (Except they all know the 3rd-World-slogan: "No problem.")

[NOTE: I really think I should've been punched a lot more than I was, back then. I wonder if 17 years from now, I'll look back at 2011 Me and think what a jerk I was back then/now. If so, maybe I need to rethink how I live my life.]

They say it all the time, sometimes for no apparent reason. It's a nice family, but tiring. They all keep watching me, (see what the crazy American does!) and trying to talk. It's something all the Moroccans do when they find out you're American.

[NOTE: I have been in Morocco, as I wrote that, exactly one week. I had probably met about 10 Moroccans... which I obviously felt to be a representative sample.]

They love to talk politics & religion and if we all really own guns. Everyone was excited to learn I'm studying "politics" (they don't know "political science") Among the most common questions I've been asked:

1. Anyone can own as many guns as they want, right?
2. What do I know about the CIA? (They're really afraid of the CIA.)
3. What do I think about the Gulf War? (Kind of a tricky question, here.)
4. What's it like, being Christian?

[NOTE: Those really were very common questions that first week. I remember that.]

And, 5. Do I like Whitney Houston? (She's really big, here.)

[NOTE: That, too, was a very common question.]

The family thing gets on my nerves because (1) they're always hanging around waiting to see what I'll do, and (2) They eat all the time.

[NOTE: Everyone reading this blog by now knows that I'm really not crazy about people and tend to like to spend my time alone or at least in small groups of people. Notwithstanding that, it's entirely possible I mis-read the situation back then -- in fact, it's completely likely -- and Nadia's family wasn't "waiting to see what I'll do" but, rather, being very polite and attempting to make sure that I was comfortable and taken care of, being in a strange country where I didn't speak the language. MY GOD, I was a jerk.]

The Arabic word for "eat" is pronounced "cool" and it's all the mom says to me. You can't explain easily that you're (a) full, or (b) not that hungry for goat. And they eat a lot. They have breakfast (bread, cakes, tea, coffee); tea (cakes & tea); lunch; tea; and dinner. Then, sometimes, more tea. Breag, big huge loaves, is served with every meal. The "cakes" are mostly almond pastries. You all sit around a low table, and it's served in 1 big dish (no plates, but they'll give you a fork or spoon if you want, even though they think it's weird.) Most of the food has rice, chickpeas, raisins, cucumbers, squash, carrots and/or potatoes, mixed in randomly. They usually can't explain what I'm eating, and I've learned not to ask (more on that in a bit.) They don't drink with their meals, and when they drink something, it's tea, coffee, Ikuka (Coke, warm), milk (gross) or yogurt (like warm, soupy Dannon without fruit.) I drink water, or, sometimes, coffee, because I want caffeine and they don't have diet Coke here.

[NOTE: One reason I was so focused on food... and diet soda... was that at the same time as I'd begun going to D.C. and Morocco, and doing things like that, remember, I'd also decided to lose weight, resulting in my losing just over 100 pounds in six months, and also developing what would more or less be an obsessive fixation on exercise and food that would last several years, and would see me get down to 162 pounds and run 15-17 miles at a shot before, one day, abruptly stopping that kind of thing. Now, while I don't want to necessarily re-start that whole thing again, I wish I had a little of the madness that I could maybe use about 3-4 times a week to make me go exercise.]

(There's no "diet" anything; I had trouble explaining it.)

[NOTE: Imagine that! A poor country where many people don't get enough to eat can't understand the concept of deliberately starving oneself to look good.]

Mostly, the family eats chicken, but, as atreat for me, they've cooked 2 special dishes: "Real Italian Spaghetti" (noodles & fish, no tomato sauce); and, of course, couscous.

Couscous is the national dish; they make it on Friday (their holy day.)

[NOTE: I have no way of knowing if that's true, then or now.]

There's 3 kinds: (1) Sweet couscous (not bad), (2) "Couscous of the 7 vegetables" (no meat, real salty), and just 1 time per year, (3) "Couscous with the HEAD OF A SHEEP."

I'm not joking. We got here just after the big festival when everyone had a sheep slaughtered. (It's related to the story of Abraham.)

[NOTE: I'm pretty sure that in that part of the letter I'm relating what Nadia and her family told me, as opposed to "just making things up."]

So they saved the sheep head (in the 'fridge) to cook for me. So here I am, excited about getting to try couscous

[NOTE: Really? I don't think I was being sarcastic there, so when I'm not a jerk, I'm kind of a nerd?]

which is rice with a zillion veggies in a bowl the size of a small table, and they're handing me bits of meat, which all tasted weird, but, hey, I didn't know. Then they told me what I was eating. I didn't really believe at first, so they pushed aside all the other stuff, and there was this boiled sheep's head. All in all, they said, I had cheek, tongue, ear, and eye. (The eye is special; they gave me one.) We then had a fairly complicated talk about just which parts of an animal Americans eat, and how it's served. I was about to learn the Arabic word for puke.

[NOTE: On that, I'll end this entry. That actually happened, though, and I actually did not barf, but only because I reminded myself...this is true... of that scene in Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom where Indy ate all that weird stuff, and decided that if he could do it, I could do it.]


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