In my friend's village...
"Oh the irony!"I chanted, walking out of the TV room, after Laila Khadija called me to the TV and pointed her arms up as if using a rifle. Sean O’Conner was playing some James Bond role on TV. Liz said, "Yeh! It’s like one time I heard Soundgarden on the show Taxi Music and Kiltoum asked if I danced like that in the States. You know, like it was a bunch of guys dancing around with a garden hose." Or when the three black women of this house walked in Liz’ kitchen in their black wraps, and asked why I had the top off the pressure cooker. Why is this American cooking their Moroccan dinner? What is this? Or then, just downstairs, at the little corner store, they were watching a special on the tube about the American women’s sailing team. Here in this oasis by the Saharan mountains, America still reaches.
We went up to the big white house last night. We were summoned earlier in the day to come at 5:00 but were late because of the discussion group we were attempting to finish in the white section of town. I had a headache and was all stressed out because of the pressure to write down everything they were saying. I wouldn’t have been freaking out if the loud, obnoxious woman would’ve let us tape the conversation as planned. But no. She was afraid that somehow her husband would find out. They were such wonderfully horrific stories about the health staff.
I saw an old, cute woman sitting on the ground, her back against her mud house, rubbing her prayer beads. Her hennaed braids snuck out from under her black wrap. She had few teeth but a good smile anyway. When we asked her what she was doing, she informed us she was waiting for God to take her away. Where? we asked. She pointed over yonder and said, why, where the dead people are, as if we should've known. She seemed ready to go.
We had tea at another woman’s house. She told us the story of her nine children, one dead, with a son in Casa, another in Rabat, one in Tangier. All are married but the two girls and one son in the house. A few extra women were hanging about while a soccer game played on the TV. An old frail woman next to us kept cracking jokes that she thought much funnier than myself. Her laughing at her cute self was what moved me the most.
Rumor has it that the king was on TV last night and told everyone not to kill a sheep for L’Aid this year. There’s not enough sheep for every family to do it. Given they’ve been doing this holiday for hundreds of years, I can’t see people going for the request. The family above us said they were gonna move the slaughter into a room and eat away. Perhaps others will be glad they don’t have the pressure of the thousand dirhams for the sheep. Taking their sheep away on this day is like the president asking us not to have Thanksgiving dinner on Thanksgiving.
