9/12/10
Happy Eid everyone from Morocco! The three day celebration of Eid just finished a few hours ago, and tomorrow morning it is back to school. While Eid was a ton of fun, the most important part is that Ramadan is now over and hopefully this country will go back to normal.
Day 1: After fatoor Thursday night, everyone was eagerly waiting to see if we would be fasting again the next day. My host dad was pretty certain that we would because Morocco started a day after the rest of the Muslim world, but regardless the rest of the family had hope! So we are sitting around the fatoor table still, watching TV (which is the 6th member of our family) and all of a sudden this music starts playing, the show is stopped, and in Arabic it says Eid Mubarak. Im not quite sure what happened next, but all of a sudden everyone was jumping up and down shouting Mabroooook and kissing each other. It felt like the clock just struck midnight for the new year. Mind you, my host sisters are 23 and 13 and they were jumping up and down yelling “Eid is tomorrow, Eid is tomorrow”! And then the phone started ringing and the whole country was ecstatic.
My host mom quickly got dressed to go to the Medina to buy some things, she really wasn’t prepared. I sort of wanted to go with her, but she said she’s going to be really quick. Despite all the excitement, or possibly because of it, I was feeling incredibly exhausted so set my alarm for a short nap. Next thing I know, my host mom is waking me up and they got Julianne and I both Eid presents: Traditional yellow Moroccan shoes! They fit us both perfectly, me with my size 11’s and her with size 6’s. Apparently our mom had planned this a while ago and measured our shoes. She told me she wanted to buy mine gold, to match my new Jalaba, but couldn’t find them in my size. That was fine with me because I have had my eye on the obnoxiously bright yellow, Wal-Mart smiley face shoes that people are walking around with since day one, and now I have a pair of my own. Granted it didn’t match my Jalaba (that I had bought specifically for Eid) at all, but that was fine. My host mom is too cute for me not to wear them with it or say anything.
Wow, so this is about half a page, and the morning of Eid hasn’t even started yet, and I am writing this at 2 am because I can’t sleep (you’ll soon know why), so I am going to pick up the pace.
Day 1 rolls about, and I am excited but don’t really know what to expect so I wake up at 7 am (granted this is also because I went right back to bed after getting my present). My poor host mom however was up at 5:30 am cooking. So I get dressed in my green and gold Jalaba and go to the Eid prayer with my host dad in the morning. It was just the two of us and the mosque is packed, which already makes concentrating on the prayer difficult, but the women are all dressed in very elegant and colorful Jalabas and I may have spent most of the time comparing different ones and taking notes on what colors and styles I like. Everyone was dressed in their best, and I really wished I could have un-awkwardly taken pictures of people… Vogue magazine missed a great assignment!
Then I come back home and so begins the long amount of sitting around that I do not understand how is associated with such an exciting holiday. Its 9 am at this point and my mom is still cooking, so Im just sitting around, and the Jalaba is getting hot, and everyone else is still asleep so I go and change back into my pajamas… Bad idea! My mom saw me and gave me another one of her dresses to wear and told me to go put my hair down and put make up on and look zweena (nice). This wouldn’t be worth noting if she hadn’t given the same advice to Julianne the moment she woke up. 9-12pm is just sitting around waiting, there are cookies on the table that we’re snacking on, but at this point I am pretty hungry and sort of just want an egg or some bread to eat!
I also helped my mom out for a little in the kitchen making Raggheef, which is my FAVORITE Morrocon dessert in the world. Essentially its this dough that is made really thin and then folded into layered squares and then flattened out a bit before first deep frying and then dipping into honey and then covering with some type of seeds and almonds. The outside is crispy and the inside soft and moist. There a specialty for Eid so unfortunately I may not be seeing them again and I didn’t quite catch how to make the dough. I may ask my mom to break the tradition at least once before I leave Morocco. Its only been two days since eating them and I am already craving more!
At noon some of our dads family from Sale, a city right on the outskirts of Rabat come to pick us up (because we don’t have a car) and in fact we take all the food over there…that’s why no one was eating. There most of the family is gathered and essentially from 12-3 we are just sitting around snacking on all these sweets and cookies and drinking mint tea (which actually has more sugar than mint). This is the first time we meet this side of the family and everyone is really nice and welcoming. There is this 2 year old baby that is strapped into his car seat on the floor and then leached to a chair. That was a funny sight, but what was amazing is that this child was not complaining!! Parenting magazine anyone? He’s just sliding about his territory getting people’s attention to play with him and grabbing anything in sight…but not crying!
Then there is our dad’s brother in law who is a religious studies teacher. He used to be an English teacher about 20 years ago, and his English is still pretty good! He sits down beside Julianne and I and the first thing he asks, in French is, are we Christian? Julianne says yes, I say no, and then he surprises us by switching to English and looking me in the eye to say, “you should teach your friend about Islam.” This is the first conversation we have and the beginning of that 3 hour period where we are waiting for dinner. For some reason I think the French word “drole” captures the situation best. Without going into too much detail, the news was on TV so we ended up having very “drole” conversations about Hamas and the Quran Burning Day in the US. Before being seated in a room with about 30 Moroccans while this story is being reported on the news, I didn’t really understand the repercussions that this church’s plans were having! I am pro free speech, but if the remaining 1.5 million Muslims all over the world were also watching their televisions with as much shock, confusion and grief as to why Americans would organize a day to burn the Quran, then you’re yelling “fire” in a crowded theatre… an uncomfortable moment to be American to say the least.
Looking on the bright side, the dinner was delicious, most certainly worth running on nothing but sugar and sugar until 3 pm. The men and women segregated and each side was given two courses, one huge dish of chicken and one of lamb. Essentially, there is this big plate of two huge chickens, and only using your right hand everyone digs in. This was the first time we have eaten in this true Moroccan fashion and didn’t really realize how good we were at it until in the end we saw our greasy right hands and our sugar headache was slowly fading. Soon after dinner Julianne and I left to go home, but not without me stealing one more Raggheef!
Our way back was a little difficult because there weren’t many taxis out, but we made it back without too much trouble. We rested for a bit and when our family got back, at around 7 I decided to head out to a café with some friends. Being an idiot and not realizing that there weren’t going to be taxis, I head out and after walking all the way to the other side of the madina looking for a cab, I stop one of the big white ones that usually carry six passengers and ask him to take me to the place. It should have been a maybe 6 dirham cab ride from there, but the guy wants 30! I guess it sorta makes sense because he isn’t really a cab, and I figured my safety was worth the 30 dirhams, but wow was I surprised on how he changed his price based on the laws of supply and demand…
Hanging out at the café for a bit was fun, not really worth the 30 dirhams to get there, but it was a nice night and again we had a little bit of trouble finding cabs home and since I was by myself going in one direction and the other three girls going in the other I had dibbs on the first cab. The driver was nice and when he realized I was American guess what we ended up talking about? … Quran Burning Day! Yep and then he missed the turn so we ended up driving two blocks in reverse to get to my apartment.
And by the time I got home it felt more like the first week of Eid than the first day
So really quickly…
Day 2: Went to visit some family in Harhura, this gorgeous beach town out side of Rabat, ate more good food, went on an hour long walk with Siham, my host sister and really bonded with her for the first time. Got back home around 7 and not wanting a repeat of the night before and also feeling a little sick decided to call it a night at 8 pm.
Day 3: Couldn’t sleep most of the night. For the first time felt incredibly sick and also had bed bugs. The saying, “don’t let the bed bugs bight” will never have the same nonchalant tone for me anymore! There were also ants that I was constantly flicking off of me…I even felt one crawling in my ear.
I wake up in the morning, still feeling really sick, despite taking Aleve during the night. My host mom makes me Zaatar, which is the same remedy my dad uses when I am sick to my stomach at home. The thing about me is that usually I am pretty good about not getting too home sick, but when I become physically ill then I hit my breaking point and just want to go home. So the fact that my host mom made me zaatar really meant the world to me!
Im lying in bed in pain, but not really sure what to do or how bad it is or even what it is. Its about noon now so I have been in bed for 16 hours and haven’t eaten anything since lunch the day before. I would have given anything to be able to just throw up. Then I get up to go to the bathroom and on my way back I stop being able to see, everything goes red and next thing I know I am on the floor.
Beep beep beep
And the entire family is around me but by the time I was conscious again the pain in my stomach had become absolutely unbearable and they called the program head, but because it was Sunday and still Eid most people things are closed.
Some good tips I learned from my host mom though if anyone gets sick to their stomach- drink something sour. It helps make you able to throw up. Usually I have a pretty strong stomach and can handle things, but the down fall of that is that its hard for me to throw up. I have probably thrown up at only like 5 points in my life.
The second thing that was really surprising is perfume. The mom sprayed perfume in her hand and brought it up to my nose and I distinctly remember feeling at ease for a moment there. So they get a cab, I am white as a ghost barely able to walk, in pain, and moaning. The other thing is that I would have not thought to go to the doctor because stomach pain is usually one of those things that comes and goes and had I not blacked out in the hallway I may have never made the call myself.
I feel bad for the cab driver who I think was also pretty scared and drove super fast! Oh and the entire family accompanied me to the doctor’s office which was also very nice! So I get there, to the place the program told me host parents to take me, and there’s no doctor! So my mom throws a little fit and keeps saying “Shooma, Shooma” (shame, shame!!) before we go to the UN clinic. There I went straight in, felt like a patient on ER, and had two doctors examining me. The problem with Morocco though is that all foreigners get spoken to in French. So here I am speaking my broken French and whenever I don’t know the word for something like “pressure” use the Arabic word, and still these guys are speaking to me in French! Anyways, lets just say that its infinitely easier to explain your symptoms in your native tongue!
So I got two shots of pain killers, for the first time in my life and could instantly feel my body relaxing and the pain easing. Then talking to him in French was much more bearable and I might add that I was surprisingly impressed by how easily I was able to communicate! One thing to note though- when I am in pain and scared at the same time, I cant stop laughing. So here I am all sweaty and in pain and the guy is poking my hand looking for a vein while the nurse is carrying a huge needle, and I am cracking up!! He must have thought that there was something else wrong too!
And literally within a minute after getting my shots of pain killers, I am almost completely fine and beginning to think that the entire morning was just my imagination. It’s a little incredible how one can go from feeling like they are on their death bed to feeling like there is not a care in the world within a few minutes. Right now I am doing much better, alhamdulilah and if it wasn’t for the four different medicines I was prescribed then I wouldn’t think that anything happened to me.
So what has wrong with me? Apparently the doctor didn’t feel the need to tell me. What medicine am I taking? Not really sure, just know that two of them have pictures of stomachs on them. What did I do upon coming home? Just slept some more. What am I doing, now at 3 am? Not sleeping. Oh and guess who has a note that says that I don’t have to go to school the next three days? Me. And guess who is super bored dork and tired of sleeping and will probably go anyways…
Yep, so that is my Eid weekend. Day 1: sweets, looking nice, and sitting around. Day 2: beach, good food, good company. Day 3: pain killers. Let me just add that holidays away from home are always tough and that my yellow shoes and the family trip to the doctor made me feel like I was with family!
Monday, September 20, 2010
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Weekend in Casa
9/6/10
Yes, I now refer to Casablanca just as Casa, and yes It does make me feel cool! This past weekend was the first time that I have travelled outside of Rabat and it made me more appreciative of many aspects of Rabat that I have taken for granted so far such as the proximity of everything in this city and the quiet familiarity that it carries. The trip was just over 24 hours but it was long enough so that when we stepped off the train the next day in Rabat we all thought “home sweet home!”
The train ride was a surprisingly pleasant experience. The train station had this European feel to it and it was incredibly clean and well kept. A first class round trip ticket to Casa only costs 70 dirhams or about 8 dollars. Yep, my first time in first class! It was Shabneez, Gabby, Alissa, Nadine, and me on this trip and the main purpose of it was to visit Hassan II mosque, which is one of the largest in the world, second only to the one in Mekka. Upon first arriving we took cabs straight to the mosque trying to catch the 2 pm tour, but when we got there they said that because it is Ramadan the last tour was actually at 11 am. Non-muslims can only go into the mosque by paying something 100 dirhams for a guided tour but we were quite disappointed because our trip was short and this was the main purpose. While regrouping to discuss a game plan the guy comes up to me and asks if we are Muslims, and I said that Shabneez and I are. He goes, so are your friends Muslim? And a light bulb goes off in my head and I am like, yes….
So we all cover up and go in. I figured it wasn’t that horrible of a thing since the mosque is open to everyone, our timing was just off. So we go in to do Wudu and it was hilarious watching the other girls trying to act Muslim and copying everything we did. They were keeping up pretty well through wudu, until it came to the hair, ears, neck step that I usually perform really quickly. So we all performed wudu and are covered and heading up to the mosque and we see the guy again. He asks If we just want to pray or if we want a tour. Now, to the five of us a tour means a guided tour where he explains the history, so we thought why not! So he asks for 200 dirhams for the five of us, which isn’t that bad for a tour. After we finally figure out the money and each pay 40 dirhams, the guy disappears and we are left dumbfounded. It is a little frustrating to think that you got ripped off when visiting a mosque, but I think there was this lack of communication somewhere in between.
I was secretly a little happy that this was the first time that I felt ripped off in Morocco. Getting off the train station I came pretty close when the cab driver asked for 20 dirhams to take us to the Mosque and even though I didn’t know how far it was asked that he just use the meter. He said that the meter didn’t work and then offered 15 dirhams. When I said no to that too and began to walk away, the meter decided to magically work and apparently it is like a 5 dirham trip from the train station to the mosque!
But yep, so no tour… However the mosque was gorgeous! The women’s section is on the upper level with tiles and carvings and gold and chandeliers and all the gorgeous decorations you can think of. At first, afraid that we were still supposed to be undercover everyone was afraid to take out their cameras, but then realized that everyone was in their own element. There were people sleeping there with bags or stuff that I was confused about, but we will come back to that later! While the mosque was beautiful and it was great praying there, there is something a little unsettling about how flamboyant it is.
I am very happy we visited the mosque in the afternoon though because it carries very different beauty in the night and day. One of my friends from Philadelphia is actually spending time with his family in Casablanca so we met up with him and his sister afterwards. His name is Othmane and his family also invited us all over for fatoor which was really nice of them. But it was incredibly bizarre that Gabby, Othmane and I were all spending time together in Casa! It just goes to show how small the world is and how random life can be at times. First we toured the city which is HUGE compared to Rabat and has so many different parts, but because it is still Ramadan the streets were relatively quiet and most stores were closed. Afterwards we checked into our hotel which cost $10 per person and on a scale of 1-10 for sketchiness, 10 being the highest, it was probably a 7, but I am writing this safe and sound back in Rabat
Afterwards we went to visit the king’s palace then headed over for fatoor. On the drive over to their house we drove by the beach where I possibly saw the most incredible sunset of my lifetime that looked like an angel’s wing. We arrived a little after fatoor due to the traffic but Othmane’s mom went all out for the fatoor and there was fresh orange juice, delicious dates, homemade shabakiya, homemade bread (ragheef), the pancake bread, hareera soup… and this was just the first course. While eating I wished so hard that I had more room in my stomach and it required strategy to not get full too quickly. Then we had a whole grilled stuffed fish (picture below) with an olive and grape stuffing along the side. Also we were eating in the outdoor patio and it was a gorgeous night. This has to have been my favorite fatoor in Morocco!
After fatoor some of us went back to the mosque for the Taraweeh prayer, thinking that we were leaving early to get a good spot. Little did we know… In front of the mosque there was so much traffic so we got down to walk while Othman’s dad parked the car. Never in my life have I seen that many people. The next day in the paper we read that there were 250,000 people there that night that not only filled the mosque and the terrace, but also the entire surrounding area out to the street. As massive as the sound system is, half the people could barely hear the imam reciting the prayer! Shabneez and I first tried to pray along the outskirts but really couldn’t hear anything, and thanks to her braveness, the two of us ventured closer to the mosque. Better crowd control really could have allowed more people to get closer to the mosque because there was some extra room for people to squeeze in. After about 20 minutes of steering past people praying and climbing up and down these waist-high steps we reached a place where we could here, and were lucky enough to have the ocean right behind us. The salty air, starry sky, crowdedness of people and sight of a 300 meter minaret in front were all topped off by it actually being the night that they completed reading the Quran in the prayer, so there was a beautiful invocation at the end. Now I understand however why those people were sleeping in the mosque earlier that day, its just like staking out a spot for a concert!
And trying to leave with all the traffic was also like a concert! It took us over an hour to get to the hotel that’s about 10 minutes away. We called it a night early and then left to the train station first thing in the morning. Happy to have visited Casa and surprised by the sense of belonging we all felt upon arriving in Rabat!
Yes, I now refer to Casablanca just as Casa, and yes It does make me feel cool! This past weekend was the first time that I have travelled outside of Rabat and it made me more appreciative of many aspects of Rabat that I have taken for granted so far such as the proximity of everything in this city and the quiet familiarity that it carries. The trip was just over 24 hours but it was long enough so that when we stepped off the train the next day in Rabat we all thought “home sweet home!”
The train ride was a surprisingly pleasant experience. The train station had this European feel to it and it was incredibly clean and well kept. A first class round trip ticket to Casa only costs 70 dirhams or about 8 dollars. Yep, my first time in first class! It was Shabneez, Gabby, Alissa, Nadine, and me on this trip and the main purpose of it was to visit Hassan II mosque, which is one of the largest in the world, second only to the one in Mekka. Upon first arriving we took cabs straight to the mosque trying to catch the 2 pm tour, but when we got there they said that because it is Ramadan the last tour was actually at 11 am. Non-muslims can only go into the mosque by paying something 100 dirhams for a guided tour but we were quite disappointed because our trip was short and this was the main purpose. While regrouping to discuss a game plan the guy comes up to me and asks if we are Muslims, and I said that Shabneez and I are. He goes, so are your friends Muslim? And a light bulb goes off in my head and I am like, yes….
So we all cover up and go in. I figured it wasn’t that horrible of a thing since the mosque is open to everyone, our timing was just off. So we go in to do Wudu and it was hilarious watching the other girls trying to act Muslim and copying everything we did. They were keeping up pretty well through wudu, until it came to the hair, ears, neck step that I usually perform really quickly. So we all performed wudu and are covered and heading up to the mosque and we see the guy again. He asks If we just want to pray or if we want a tour. Now, to the five of us a tour means a guided tour where he explains the history, so we thought why not! So he asks for 200 dirhams for the five of us, which isn’t that bad for a tour. After we finally figure out the money and each pay 40 dirhams, the guy disappears and we are left dumbfounded. It is a little frustrating to think that you got ripped off when visiting a mosque, but I think there was this lack of communication somewhere in between.
I was secretly a little happy that this was the first time that I felt ripped off in Morocco. Getting off the train station I came pretty close when the cab driver asked for 20 dirhams to take us to the Mosque and even though I didn’t know how far it was asked that he just use the meter. He said that the meter didn’t work and then offered 15 dirhams. When I said no to that too and began to walk away, the meter decided to magically work and apparently it is like a 5 dirham trip from the train station to the mosque!
But yep, so no tour… However the mosque was gorgeous! The women’s section is on the upper level with tiles and carvings and gold and chandeliers and all the gorgeous decorations you can think of. At first, afraid that we were still supposed to be undercover everyone was afraid to take out their cameras, but then realized that everyone was in their own element. There were people sleeping there with bags or stuff that I was confused about, but we will come back to that later! While the mosque was beautiful and it was great praying there, there is something a little unsettling about how flamboyant it is.
I am very happy we visited the mosque in the afternoon though because it carries very different beauty in the night and day. One of my friends from Philadelphia is actually spending time with his family in Casablanca so we met up with him and his sister afterwards. His name is Othmane and his family also invited us all over for fatoor which was really nice of them. But it was incredibly bizarre that Gabby, Othmane and I were all spending time together in Casa! It just goes to show how small the world is and how random life can be at times. First we toured the city which is HUGE compared to Rabat and has so many different parts, but because it is still Ramadan the streets were relatively quiet and most stores were closed. Afterwards we checked into our hotel which cost $10 per person and on a scale of 1-10 for sketchiness, 10 being the highest, it was probably a 7, but I am writing this safe and sound back in Rabat
Afterwards we went to visit the king’s palace then headed over for fatoor. On the drive over to their house we drove by the beach where I possibly saw the most incredible sunset of my lifetime that looked like an angel’s wing. We arrived a little after fatoor due to the traffic but Othmane’s mom went all out for the fatoor and there was fresh orange juice, delicious dates, homemade shabakiya, homemade bread (ragheef), the pancake bread, hareera soup… and this was just the first course. While eating I wished so hard that I had more room in my stomach and it required strategy to not get full too quickly. Then we had a whole grilled stuffed fish (picture below) with an olive and grape stuffing along the side. Also we were eating in the outdoor patio and it was a gorgeous night. This has to have been my favorite fatoor in Morocco!
After fatoor some of us went back to the mosque for the Taraweeh prayer, thinking that we were leaving early to get a good spot. Little did we know… In front of the mosque there was so much traffic so we got down to walk while Othman’s dad parked the car. Never in my life have I seen that many people. The next day in the paper we read that there were 250,000 people there that night that not only filled the mosque and the terrace, but also the entire surrounding area out to the street. As massive as the sound system is, half the people could barely hear the imam reciting the prayer! Shabneez and I first tried to pray along the outskirts but really couldn’t hear anything, and thanks to her braveness, the two of us ventured closer to the mosque. Better crowd control really could have allowed more people to get closer to the mosque because there was some extra room for people to squeeze in. After about 20 minutes of steering past people praying and climbing up and down these waist-high steps we reached a place where we could here, and were lucky enough to have the ocean right behind us. The salty air, starry sky, crowdedness of people and sight of a 300 meter minaret in front were all topped off by it actually being the night that they completed reading the Quran in the prayer, so there was a beautiful invocation at the end. Now I understand however why those people were sleeping in the mosque earlier that day, its just like staking out a spot for a concert!
And trying to leave with all the traffic was also like a concert! It took us over an hour to get to the hotel that’s about 10 minutes away. We called it a night early and then left to the train station first thing in the morning. Happy to have visited Casa and surprised by the sense of belonging we all felt upon arriving in Rabat!
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