Tangier was extraordinary, the most beautiful big city I’ve been to in this country though a very European town in general.  We spent Saturday wandering the city with friends from the CLS group in Tangier and looking for a Spanish Cathedral that proved disappointing, it bore caged windows and high walls.  The highlight for me was visiting the American Legation Museum and learning about America’s historical friendship with Morocco, even viewing the letter Washington sent to the king back in 1787.

Spain as viewed from Tangier

Tangier was beautiful like any big European city, but Chefchaouen was mystifying.  Many a time wandering the suq or old medina we stopped in wonder, starring at perhaps the mountains, but more likely just down an alley or street.  I don’t know where they get all the blue paint, but the color appears throughout the old city like a theme in a story.  In America we see cookie cutter houses painted different colors to attempt some individuality, whereas in Chefchaouen the buildings all have the same color scheme (blue and white) but the result is all the people live and work it what seems a single piece of art, Chefchaouen’s old city.

Chefchaouen

I might have been distracted by the blue paint, but the prices all seemed incredibly reasonable in Chefcahouen.

Chefchaouen

I was looking at a shirt hanging on wall, semi-interested.  The store-keeper insisted I try it on and I did so just to humor him.  I start to take it off when he tells me it’s fifty dirham (5 bucks.)  I knocked him down to 35 in the spirit of bargaining but lord I’ll miss these prices in the U.S.  The plane ticket to the east is a pain, but once here one could live on a dime.

Adel, the unexceptional quintlingual

EDUCATION

Generally Moroccans grow-up speaking one of two languages, Darija or Amazigh.  Darija is the Moroccan Dialect of Arabic, influenced heavily by Amazigh and French.  Never taught in school, Darija’s spelling isn’t standardized and certain vocabulary and pronunciation change within the country.  Amazigh is the name applied to a diverse group of dialects spoken by the native non-Arabs in various places in North Africa.  In certain areas, like Merzouga where I entered the Sahara, people may speak Amazigh and have no knowledge of Arabic.  Amazigh became a written language with it’s own script for the first time in 2004.

Moroccans in grade school begin learning Modern Standard Arabic and French.  Amazigh children will also learn Amazigh, meaning they study three different scripts.  Grade schools in the north or very south of Morocco (where the Spanish protectorate was) may also begin learning Spanish.

Moroccans in high school continue studying French and MSA and may add on English and/or Spanish as well.  College language study is just as variable as in the United States.

THE RESULT

People remember the foreign languages they use.  Thus professionals and businessmen, or those in the tourism industry usually keep up fluency in MSA and a few European languages.  Shopkeepers, on the other hand, knew numbers or could explain the greatness of their products in French but usually not much more.  (Granted they may have never completed grade school).  Taxi drivers likewise knew the French names of places and maybe even some basic greetings in English but nothing more.  There were exceptions, however.

The result of this country’s many languages is interesting.  In America knowledge of foreign languages is a nice little plus, but here it’s necessary for most jobs.  For instance my friend Adel speaks fluent Darija, MSA, French, English, Amazigh, and quite a bit of Dutch, and this has earned him a customer service job a Match.com.

The lesson from this experience has been that Americans should study foreign languages but also something else, because other countries prioritize language more in education and provide environments where multilingualism naturally flourishes, while in America we may study some Spanish in high school and never NEED it, but on the other hand have great programs in subjects such as business or science that Moroccans often leave their country to acquire.

Last weekend was an arduous journey to reach the little town of Merzouga near the dune sea named Erg Chebbi.  The first leg of our journey was a train ride to Meknes (which took two extra hours because our train caught fire. Classic Morocco), followed by a nine-hour bus ride.  We didn’t have a hotel Friday or Sunday night—we just slept on the bus.

As soon as we reached the town I picked out a massive sand dune to climb.  What I thought would be a forty minute or so trip took over two hours and I realized all my perceptions of distance, size, and even angles were pretty unreliable looking at pure sand.  Ramadan began Saturday so if the Saharan heat didn’t keep people inside their inability to drink water did and I was lucky to find a store open to buy some life-giving water, though I had to haul it back to the hotel before drinking any so as not to offend anyone fasting.

We set out on our camels in the evening for a two-hour ride to our camp.  Camels are like horses except raised an extra foot or so and with a totally unmanageable sway, forcing me to hold on or fall off.  The camp was behind another massive sand dune to protect it from the wind, and there we climbed the nearby dunes and chatted with our guides before dinner.  We couldn’t practice our Arabic with them because they were Berbers (a technically politically incorrect term, but you can tell THEM that) and didn’t speak even the Moroccan dialect.  Luckily after working in the tourism industry for only a few years they’d picked up a considerable amount of English.

Our guides recalled their visits to cities with distaste, and often repeated the phrase “the desert is my dream”.  In the day, sunlight makes the landscape of flawless dunes seem a distortion of reality, and at night the stars are memorizing.  At four thirty the next morning my bud Brandon and I hoofed it up to the top of the massive dune adjacent to our camp.  We reached the top after about half an hour with just enough time for a rest before sunrise.  It was insane.  I don’t know if the desert is unspeakably beautiful, or it was just new to me.  All I can say is “the desert is my dream”.

Fez is famous for its leather, and I was happy to support the industry.  I purchased a messenger bag of sorts that still reeks of pigeon excrement and cow urine, each ingredients in the Fez tannery process, so I know it’s good.  We had an assignment to discuss politics with the locals and discovered that most common Moroccans are decidedly supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Islamist politics in general.  Our taxi driver said “Islam and democracy are married” (I think).

According to the anthropologist Clifford Geertz suqs are markets where information is scarce and unreliable.  Everyone in it is trying to overcome or manipulate the resulting ignorance, and nowhere was this truer than Fez’s suq.  Here one shopkeeper (a god of suq knowledge) gladly helped us bargain with another and a random man guided us to the inner depths of the tannery free of charge.  On the other hand, I overspent on my bag because the shopkeeper I bought from offered 1200 dirham and I only dropped it to 650 (when I may have gotten 500) and random men stood near the tannery entrances asking for money to enter.  Another fellow tried to sell us a wandering street kitten for 10 dirham (a dollar).  Chaos, but I like it.

Volubilis is the site of the best preserved Roman ruins in Morocco.  Several Latin students in the group (myself included) enjoyed pretending to understand the mosaics or attempting to read a few surviving Latin inscriptions.  While not quite America, a visit to ancient Roman ruins was still a welcomed little vacation from drowning in Arab culture.  Regardless of the distance in time I still feel I understand people under the Roman Empire more than regular Moroccans, but I enjoy the challenge.

Saturday morning we went to Eureka valley, an awesome sight and a fine place for rock climbing.  Classic Indiana Jones-style bridges everywhere and delicious tanjine (specially marinated and spiced chicken and vegetables) famous in Morocco.  Every plant there was sharp in some way, and then it died and left little traps all over the ground, but we climbed amongst the cacti and had a wild time.

Back in Marrakesh, the snake charmers were certainly interesting.  My friend Gary was walking a little too slowly and a man tied a snake around his neck.   When my bud Mike and I stopped for him, we each got snake necklaces as well until we paid to have our picture taken.

Tourists could have a rather inaccurate perception of Morocco from merely visiting Marrakech.  Many Moroccans there speak English, but unfortunately those that do only know it for their job, which is to make money off of tourists.  Thus when the only interaction Westerners have with Moroccans is through being shouted at, grabbed by the arm, or intimidated with drugged snakes and urinating monkeys, they’d be led to think rather poorly of these people.  While I’m not under any delusions idolizing Moroccans, they are good people.  They have strong values of respect and civility and an experience of live entirely different from ours in America.

Rolling with the punches.

On Friday night the real ceremonies occurred.  This is called “Henna Night” and is when the bride and groom sign the marriage contract and are sung to with verses from the Quran.  Only close friends and family attended, and the bride was decorated in intricate and beautiful henna patterns for luck and extra beauty.

On Saturday we arrived at the wedding at six thirty at night and returned home at six in the morning.  No one parties like a Moroccan.  The ceremonies here were many but brief, and all seemed centered on flaunting the marriage as much as possible.  (Since the wedding I’ve even seen marriage processions in the streets.)  The bride enters carried in an Amariya, pictured here:

Throughout the night she wore five different dresses while parading around the main room or sitting at the wedding couch with her groom.  Four flat screen TVs and two cameramen ensured we missed nothing.  Somehow my host father and others managed to dance all night, while he also got Orion and I coffee so we wouldn’t embarrass him by falling asleep.  I can’t remember how many courses of food I had, but it was over seven.  Moroccans are usually rather austere, but I’ve never attended something as beautifully hedonistic as this wedding.  They aren’t decadent, but they know how to party, perhaps even more than two American college students, and they dance a child-like, visceral dance of pure happiness.

Traditional band

Host Father Said and Host Brother Hachmi lead the dancing.

The adhan (call to prayer) begins with a single “Allahu Akbar!” blasting from the speakers of a nearby mosque.  As other mosques join in, the call becomes a distorted hymn from the past, (think of the end of a psychedelic Beatles song.)  At the same time, satellite dishes crowd the skyline of archaic buildings, and the French language has spread throughout the city.  Rabat, Morocco is half contradiction, half anachronism, and entirely ideal for studying Arabic this summer through the Critical Language Scholarship Program (CLS).

I’ve spoken more Arabic these past few days in Rabat than I did in a semester in college.  I’m still adjusting to immersion in the language, and have spent much of the past few days with the other American students.  Culture shock hit me for the first time Monday, and I had the mantra of “country roads, take me home” for a few hours.  Since then I’ve gained infinitely more confidence with my Arabic and ability to handle my situation, and will hopefully ease into more interaction with Moroccans.  I live in the old medina (city), particularly in the suq (marketplace), where the streets are too narrow for cars and too winding for navigation.

In reality I’m studying two forms of Arabic here, darija and standard.  Darija is the Moroccan Arabic dialect, and I spend about a fourth of my class time studying it as well as using it out on the streets.  The other three fourths are dedicated to standard Arabic, which most Moroccans seem to understand though far fewer will reply with it.  The two are not as different as Spanish or French are from Latin, but also not nearly as similar as British and American English, so we study them separately.  Both standard and darija Arabic have become for the first time immediately useful to me for communication.  There is not better answer to the question “why should I study?” than “You won’t be able to get home or eat or communicate.

I haven’t seen my host family much because I’ve spent so much time with Americans, and the family was preparing for their daughter’s wedding last Saturday (to be described in a future blog.)  Of course, as Said’s (my host father and father of the bride) guests, my roommate Orion and I are attending.  Said is a successful man with a successful man’s home.  The house has its entrance at the end of a sketchy alley in the suq, but inside it’s a palace, with intricate tile work along all the walls and two rooms dedicated purely to decoratively embroidered couches for socializing.  The family is considerate even while so busy, and we’re lucky that Said is dedicated to the study of standard Arabic and thus speaks and understands it well.  Not to say that we can communicate with much proficiency.  Orion is a far more serious and advanced student of Arabic than I and even he reflects that he must sound idiotic with his slow speech and limited vocabulary.

Studying Arabic here is only so rewarding because it is so challenging and disorienting, but I love it.  I also have the chance to experience a culture that so far doesn’t make much of any sense.  I won’t pretend to understand it, but I have noticed some sad bits.  The adhan goes unanswered.  God’s call is ignored while new idols (white, Western models) have become the modern ideals for emulation.  The old medina seems like the most enduring traditional neighborhood, and for now its labyrinth has obstructed the infringing Western culture, (Western television, secularism, and technophilia) well as many of my attempts to return home.  Even here, however, the hypnotic, desperate call to prayer is ignored for the necessities of business.  (Colloquially, it’s like after a high school breakup where one person still texts the other several times a day, in vain.)  It’s a constant reminder of the past being abandoned for a future where religion and tradition are placed on the backburner in favor of modernity.