4.29.2008

Aid el Kabir and the Bastard Children

I’m taking a mid-day break in my humble abode, glancing around at my artwork on the walls. I’m glad to be back, even though I was very insecure about it. Yesterday was Aid el Kabir, the Moroccan holiday when each family slaughters a sheep and eats meat for three days straight. Since they all think I’m vegetarian, they think I’m starving. I walked into the kitchen yesterday and the sheikh's wife was fixing lunch. I looked in the pot and saw a jaw bone with teeth. 
It was interesting to watch them pull the fur and skin off the carcass in one long piece, not to mention when they blew through the sheep’s asshole to clean it out and flush it with water. I walked around the village greeting men with blood-splattered noses and cheeks, in between the butcher knife hacking. This holiday commemorates the story from the Old Testament when Abraham was going to sacrifice his son, to prove his faith in God. God sent a sheep instead, stuck in a fence, at the last moment.
This holiday reminds me of Thanksgiving. It’s a time of reunion and feast, a time of family. The men working abroad have come home, as well as students in college. Many people marry around this time. Next week are all the village weddings. I went to a circumcision this morning. It’s a big deal here. They do it when the boy is about four. The little boy looked sad in his mother’s lap with his crown on his head. His clothes were stark white against the worn rug and dirt floor. 
American, my neighbor, has got big problems. His oldest daughter is pregnant without a husband. The police came to warn him not to do anything, like murder. I think she might have been sleeping with some of them.
R’s sister was seen at some boy’s house. Her brother beat the shit out of her and she moved out. She’s still in the village somewhere. R said he pulled a knife on her.

Some man saw me and R on our bikes, heading off into the mountains. He thought I was a boy and started a rumor that R was off with a man. When she found out she caused an enormous scene, screaming and thrashing her arms about.

4.23.2008

A Desert Flood


I came into Tata last Tuesday, planning to head out to my village Thursday to leave for our vaccination drive into the mountains, but everything changed. I went by SIAPP to see when the nurses were heading up to my village for the Polio drive, so I could catch a ride. All vaccination drives were cancelled because all vehicles were down in Akka, Liz’ village, an hour south. They wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon due to the mass destruction and chaos the village was in.




I saw it on the Egyptian news. Five villages make up Akka. Liz’ village was one of the worst hit. Her village is set at the base of a mountain. Two riverbeds wind around each side of it. Heavy rains north sent a flood and two four foot walls of water wrapped around each side of the mountain, crashing into each other at the village’s center. There were an estimated 600 houses destroyed, 14 deaths, 1500 dead animals, including 150 drowned camels that are now traveling downstream somewhere. With all of this, we decided to catch a ride to Akka to see what we could do.


Peace Corps called SIAPP last week to check on Liz, to see if her house still stood. It did. She lives on the second floor of one of the few concrete houses. She and her downstairs family stood on the balcony and watched all of the houses around hers fall. When one neighbor asked if their house had fallen, Liz had to turn to them and say yes.


Liz looks tired and drained. Standing on her roof Saturday, I saw what used to be homes, but are now piles of rock and mud. The sound of three motors can be heard over everything, sucking out the pond that sits in the midst of cement blocks, wooden beams, and wet blankets of mud. Frogs have come out of nowhere, and are multiplying as fast as the locusts that swarmed through last month.



It is incomprehensible to me that there could have been that much water, that it could have come through here with such damaging force. I could describe and describe in detail and you still wouldn’t see it. A tornado I can understand. A hurricane I can understand. An earthquake could have done it. But this is the desert! I have only seen rain twice since I’ve been south. It makes no sense that a flood rush of fast water could bolt through this village and do this much damage in a matter of an hour.


People are worried about some kind of epidemic breaking out, like cholera. The fifteenth death was found yesterday, a young girl buried under the rubbage. It’s chaotic down here. Few people know how to handle this. Men are trying to get the dead animals out, taken away, and buried. Men in business suits get out of the many trucks and cars that have come. They pile in and out estimating damage. Bulldozers are on their way to start clearing out this mess.



And over against the side of buildings, or under the shade, are the many village men sitting on their asses, doing absolutely nothing. I want to run up to them, kick them off their ass, to start helping out. The fatalistic attitude of some Moroccans drives me crazy. God meant for it to happen, so they're drinking their mint tea waiting for God to clean up.

4.15.2008

Eelah gh agharrass

August 1995

While learning Tashlheit, I have noticed times when I hear something I've never heard before and then I hear it all the time after that. So when I heard eela gh agharrass, I didn't forget it. Not because I heard it a million times within the last two-three-four days, but because I played it over and over in my head that first time trying to decide the appropriate meaning.

Eelah can be "it is" or "there is" or "he is" and agharrass can mean "a way" or "a road". The sound gh is a preposition meaning "in" or "at" or who really knows anyway.

Anyway, I figured it could mean "there is a way" or "it is on the way" or "it is in the way" or "it is a road" or "it is on the road", and I mean I heard it every time I walked into a room. It was always said with a bit of sarcasm, like sarcastic preaching.

I thought maybe it had to do with the heat, like the heat's on its way out the door, or when we had couscous, I thought they said it because it was an unbelievable amount of couscous to be dealing with. So today, I broke down and asked, a little nervous about asking these things because I feel I'm expected to know it or it's assumed that I know it because I've heard it a million times in the past two-three-four days.

A stranger came walking through the village last week, so it seems, a little coo-coo in the head. He came in the heat of mid-day, from 25-30 km away, on foot. No car. No donkey. No nothin'. He came walking through this neighborhood with his little bag and someone asked him where he was going.

Eelah gh agharrass.

It's the village joke now, their answer for everything. Where are you going? eelah gh agharrass. What are you doing? Eelah gh agharass. Why are you doing that? Eelah gh agharrass.

4.11.2008

Dorian in bloom


Up to now, this blog has been a memoir, written from the journal of my past. It is of the time that I lived in a small Berber village in the deep south of Morocco. It took an hour from the nearest small city and then another thirty minute dusty drive through the open flat desert to the edge of the stone mountains and my village of 2000, an oasis of date palms. I got water from wells and electricity from a village generator, only for a couple of hours each evening. I lived there for two years.

When I left Morocco, I left behind a family that I had grown very close to. In that small village, they took me in and I became part of their family. The shiekh with his two sons and all of their wives and children. They supported me through my father's cancer and taught me their language and culture and laughed at me and my many mistakes. They welcomed me open-hearted, and were with me from the very beginning, when I was so disoriented, to the end, as the Dorian in bloom.

I left twelve years ago and had no contact since. I've thought about them almost every day, though, and dreamed about them often. That experience has remained so close to me. I kept many journals of my time in Morocco and always wanted to share them. It wasn't until four months ago that I decided to start a blog with them.

Magically, a couple of days ago, I received an invitation to chat from M, my "brother" in my village. I didn't receive the message until later and when I saw his name on that email address, my heart skipped a beat. It was like the moment I've been waiting for for such a very long time.

We instant messaged, with his wife and girls beside him. I talked to his daughter N in French and Tashlheit. She's now 22 and studying to be a nurse. She was ten the last time I saw her. One of his other daughters sent me an invitation to video chat when I wasn't at my computer. She was two the last time I saw her. Amazing.

I feel so grateful to have them in my life again, in my present. In fact, I'm feeling so grateful to have all that I have right now, in my present, as the Dorian blooming again.

For many of you, this is the first time you're reading this blog. This is the first time you've even heard of this blog. And I'm sure some of you are asking why it took so damn long for me to give you the address to this blog. The answer is quite simple. I had to let go.

I am letting go...

Here continues my journal of my time in Morocco. For my current life, go to my other blog, Dorian in Bloom.

4.04.2008

Always Check for Scorpions

Photo by John Reid

I was going to take a nap, got as far as getting my clothes off, laying down on my pillow propped against my wadded up sleeping bag, and closing my eyes. Then, I thought, you know? I should probably check for scorpions. After all, it's been two weeks. So I lifted up my pillow. Nothing. I lifted up my sleeping bag and low-and-behold, the fucker was sleeping underneath it.

I found out he wasn't dead when he lifted his big ass of a stinger in the air and ran towards me.

Now he's in a jar. I thought, hmmm....maybe I'll send him home in a cassette case, but he won't fit. A videotape case maybe will work.

4.03.2008

In the land of R

Her sister's off in jail somewhere, got charged with prostitution. Two months. Z told me not to go to her house anymore. That if I want to talk to R, have her come to their house. S says they need to run away. R needs to go off to Agadir or something and find a job.

I just came back from R's. Her mother was fanning the flies off the face of her grandchild, her illigitimate grandchild. And now she cries nightly, daily about how her family could possibly be falling apart like this.
When her sister ran away the first time, taking her mom's money wrapped up in a scarf, she ran off to a house in this village for five days. Then she took a taxi to Tata.

When questioned if she stayed at the man's house, she said yes. When they asked if he gave her money, she said yes. And though he gave her money and she stayed at his house, and that's all that happened, they call it prostitution.

She won't talk. She's quiet anyway, shy, keeps those brains all locked up in her head and doesn't share 'em with anybody. She isn't defending herself.

S says, "Yeah. And her other sister doesn't even live in that house. She and her baby are in another house."
"I know," I reply.
"You know?"
"Yes, like four months ago she moved there."
S looks surprised. "Well I just found out yesterday. How is it you know more than I do?"
"There's no man in the house, that's why," he continues. And just a couple of days ago Liz was recollecting all the girls she knows that are strong, speak their minds, do what they want, get into trouble, and there's no man in their houses either.

15 days, Z says, R and her mother have been having it out, fighting all the time. Momma raised her girls to be strong, stand up for what's right. But what's right? And so she rubs her fingers ever so softly along her necklace of prayer beads, pleading to God to care ofr her and her poor children asking, "Why have you brought this to me when I've tried to do good?"

R curses it all. She's got that brain racing. She's saying you mother fucking family, why'd you have to go and fuck it all up for me? I had my true love waiting to marry me, and now, now I have a sister that went and fucked a whiter man, giving us this bastard child, and another one that's gone off to prison because she won't open her mouth and tell her story.

I remember when the letter came. She tore it up right after she read it, the letter saying he didn't want her anymore.