October 10 11:30pm
My American mom has been telling me that my eager Stateside readers want to know more about my Moroccan family. “They need updates!” she says. Well, here is one. It was an interesting evening. I hope you enjoy.
Carly and I spent about two hours at Chaharazade (it is spelt that way on the sign outside the restaurant, and Sheharazade on the menus; Moroccans have some trouble with transliteration), doing homework while drinking café au laits and banana juice. (It’s quite good). Lots of Arabic, lots of fun. After about an hour of sitting in the café, this young guy (we had noticed him staring), came over and started talking to Carly.
“You study Arabic? I help you...”
He reached his hand across the right side of her body, and rested it on her textbook. “I want study with you.” His left hand rested on the back of her chair and he leaned in to her. “I help you.” (Carly: “I don’t need help, thanks..... No, I need to study.”) I sat there, disgusted. Harassment is a daily reality for all of the female American students. Some days it’s worse than others, some days it effects you more than others. Usually we let it role off, go in one ear and out the other, and we laugh about the funniest things we’ve heard guys say. (“Chinese? Japanese?” “Hello. I love you.” “Beautiful.” “How-are-you-want-a-date?” and so on.)
Tonight was different. Playing off of behaviors he’s learned from his culture, this guy was being more than a menace. He was asserting his superior male-ness, and Carly, given her personality and mistrust of guys, was shrinking away from him. She kind of folded into herself, and looked frightened and beyond bothered. I watched this interchange for a few seconds, and when I realized that Carly’s attempts to ward him off were doing nothing, I said in a stern and obviously annoyed voice,
“Hey you. Go. Leave. Go away.”
He looked startled, and he removed his hand from her textbook and chair.
“Okay,” he said. “I go.”
We finished studying and paid for our drinks, and exited the café and began our walk home. Joy of joys........ who did we find waiting for us outside but “I want study with you” and his comrade! We started walking faster through the parking lot of Marchée Centrale. He kept trying to talk to Carly, and she kept saying, “
We continued down Mohammad V, and hung back in the crowd so that they would get ahead of us. We took a sharp right turn onto Rue Souika (it’s ridiculously busy: men selling things in the middle of the street; one small lane of pedestrian traffic on the right side of the street going one way, and on the opposite side, across the huge tarps of teapots, sweatshirts, pirated DVD’s, hammam scrubbies, and toilet paper, a lane of pedestrians slowly crawling the other way). There were hundreds of people in the street, all moving like molasses. We squeezed our way through people, knowing that even if these guys tried to follow us, they’d have to trample a dozen people to get within arm’s length of us again.
I called Fati (my host sister) while we crawled along Souika, and asked her if Baba (dad) was home. He wasn’t, but she was very concerned and told me she’d come down to meet us on Mohammad V. “Fati, we’re not there. We’re on Souika, and stuck in a crowd of people. We think we lost them, though.” The connection was lost, but she called me back almost immediately. “Yassine and I are coming. We’ll see you soon.”
Carly and I made it through the Souika crowd and onto Mohammad V. We felt better, and I felt triumphant, that we had lost our harassers. I found Fati and Zainab (my 13 year old sister) near a hand-bag vendor about 300 feet away from my street. “Fati!” I waved. We said goodbye to Carly as she walked down the street that would lead to her home (the “food souk”, as the SIT students know it), and I told Fati and Zainab the story.
Apparently when I called Fati, she told Yassine (my brother) what was going on, and he decided to be “big-brotherly” about it, immediately dropping what he was doing (which was homework he didn’t want to do anyway) to come to our rescue. He called some of his friends, and I think he and they were hoping for some sort of showdown. (What a story that would have been! “Hey, guys, yeah, so the other night, my American sister — she’s cute, right — she was getting harassed by some assholes and so we beat them up. I think she likes me.” Ha. I can see it now...). Moroccan men do love street fights. Alas, no showdown, for when I found my family, the harassers were long lost.
It was funny and cute, though, to know that Yassine had been so eager to come to my rescue. I think it was more out of hope for something more exciting than homework —more joy at this sudden excuse to leave his typing behind— than brotherly affection that he came to my rescue, but nonetheless, it was a nice, brotherly thing to do.
Yassine grunts and whines and yells at his mom and dad, always sleeps in, is moody and grumpy in the afternoons, and often makes Fati do his homework for him. Despite all of these things, I like the kid. He walks into rooms and proudly states, “I am beautiful,” while touching his hand to his chest. He tells me he wants me to make him two bracelets (I’ve made friendship bracelets for all the women in my family), and that one needs to be black and one needs to be white, because these are the colors he wears all the time. They are part the quintessential Yassine “look”: slicked back curly hair, designer jeans (or faux designer jeans, rather) with a belt, and a black and white screen print shirt. He thinks he looks hot. For a Moroccan, he’s not that bad, really. Most guys smell kind of bad (many haven’t discovered the modern marvel that is deodorant) and wear dingy clothes. Yassine takes pride in how he looks (“I am beautiful”), and dresses like an American gay man. Most nicely dressed men in
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