What is Morocco?

(A beautiful day).

Morocco is my walk through the souk with Carly this afternoon, when we stopped for apricots and almonds. I pointed to the apricots and said, “Ash’ra”, signaling to the shop owner that I wanted 10dH worth of apricots. Then I motioned to the almonds and said, “Ash’reen”, for 20dH worth. A kind-faced man standing to my right corrected Carly when she next motioned for 10dH worth of apricots, saying, “Meesh mesh,” the Arabic word for apricot. “La, Meesh mesh... standard Arabic. Mush mesh, Moroccan Arabic.” “Ah!” I said. “Meesh mesh = Fus’ha, Mush mesh = darija.” “Eeyeh,” he responded, smiling. He seemed genuinely happy to know that we knew the words for the different types of Arabic spoken here. As we left, I said, “B’salaama, darija, Ma’asalaama, Fus’ha,” and he smiled and repeated the farewell.
We continued on our walk toward my notebook seller—mulhannut dfftar—a precious elderly man who smiles whenever I visit. (Correct darija might say muldfftar, or seller of notebooks, but today I just ran “shopkeeper notebook” together as one. He seemed to like it). This is the third time I’ve visited him for notebooks. Whenever I see him we say “Salaam aleikum” and exchange French right cheek, left cheek kisses. I love returning to this notebook seller because he always seems genuinely happy to see me, and excited when I try to use darija with him. They’re always funny exchanges.
Today he had a calculator to help show his customers what his prizes were. He seemed proud to be holding and operating that calculator, and he demonstrated his pride at his mastery of the instrument. He held out to Carly the different size notebooks he sold, showing which had more pages, which had spirals, which had the prettiest graphic designs on the covers. Carly made her choice and he typed the price into the calculator, even though we could understand the number he spoke, and he could understand us. It was cute. She bought the notebook and we wished each other Salaam aleikum and B’salaama and were on our way.
We walked through the Ensemble Artisanal, which is the very tourist-y strip of the souk. It’s clean and all the shops sell higher-end goods and art. A nice break from the rush of the souk in the medina, although soon you start to miss the character of the local shopping district.
We made our left turn as we left Ensemble Artisanal and made our way back to the center, down the road where my favorite door-painter works. Four days ago he had just begun his intricate design by stenciling flowers and other flourishes on the wood. Two days ago he had one panel of the buffet table painted; today only the top (fouk) was left. A beautiful, breathtaking design of such precision and detail that you can’t take your eyes from it. We continued the conversation that we had begun through darija at the beginning of the week. I always exclaim, “Zweeyna!” (beautiful), and he replies, “Shokrun”(thank you).
Today, though, Carly and I sat down on the steps across from the beautiful design and he sat down with us. We talked about darija and fus’ha, and how fus’ha is difficult because it is different. I opened my notebook to show him how I had practiced writing the Arabic alphabet, and tried to write my name. I forgot how to connect the “yeh” letter to the “sin”, and so I gave up. He smiled and took the notebook from me and proceeded to write his name, both in Latin letters and in Arabic. Carly and I told him our names and he wrote them for us. There was lots of smiling and laughing at my mistakes and “shokrun’s” when he had written our names for us.
Somehow within that conversation I had used a few Spanish words so he excitedly asked, “Hablas español?” “Sí!” I replied. “Tú hablas español?” “Sí!” We started laughing at how hard we had struggled to communicate before, in broken darija and broken English. Now we had a common tongue in which to communicate! His Spanish wasn’t perfect, and neither was mine, but we were still able to communicate general meanings. Carly has studied Spanish and speaks Italian, so between the two of us, we had a fruitful conversation with our new friend Najib.
He told us that he had lived in Barcelona for four years, but had to return to Morocco because prices had gone up drastically. When the peseta was the currency, he was able to pay for life in Barcelona. With the birth of the Euro he had to come back to Morocco. “Muy caro,” he said. “Very expensive.” He wanted to go out to coffee with us, but we had to make it back to school to use the internet and study, and then had to go home. Through poorly conjugated verbs and limited vocabulary we were able to communicate this to him. Mañana, we promised. And we will go see him tomorrow.
So that is Morocco. Morocco is making friendships with shopkeepers and artisans, and speaking very poor Arabic to them, communicating your appreciation of their art and their kindness. It is choosing your favorite notebook seller and going to see him every few days. It is making friends with people with whom you can’t fully communicate, but with whom you can laugh and gesture and spend time.
I love Morocco.