Palm Trees and Scaffolding

Today, I discovered the art of imitation. I found the deep blue of the Kasbah walls in the brilliance of this morning’s sky. The wooden fishing boats, scattered about the beach like giant jacks (of the dozens of boats in the marina, I have only seen two actually floating in the water like boats are supposed to do), are painted with large strips of color: yellow or brown for the sand they rest on, blue for both the sky and the ocean, and white for the clouds overhead. While leaning out of the second story window of an English school outside the city, I waved to a group of schoolgirls, who waved back, beaming. They kept watching me and waving so I smiled as wide as I could, inadvertently scrunching up my nose in the process. The smallest girl, perhaps eleven or twelve, laughed out loud and scrunched up her nose in return, then blew me a kiss. Mimicry has become a defining characteristic of my stay here. Yesterday, I told the headwaiter at the juice bar, who has become a fast friend of mine, that I’m learning Arabic. “Adrus al-fus-ha,” I said. I’m studying classical Arabic. “Tatekalmeen arabi al-fus-ha?” He asked in Classic Arabic. You speak classical Arabic? “Shway-a,” I answered in the Moroccan dialect. A little. It’s hard to avoid picking up dareeja (the Moroccan brand of Arabic) here. Moroccans laugh at me when I use both dareeja and fus-ha in the same sentence. I find their laughter contagious.

Yesterday I met my friend Chakib – the painter from the Ensemble Artisinal – for tea at the beautiful little cafe in the Kasbah. At one point I asked him how to say seagull in Arabic – he told me and I promptly forgot ten seconds later – and the conversation drifted towards our shared childhood dream: flight. He told me about a painter who used to share his studio, who decided to paint the Kasbah from a bird’s eye view. It’s an uncommon angle and I found myself cocking my head to the side and closing my eyes as I tried to imagine the result. The ocean becomes the ground, the mosque a simple circle. The narrow streets of the Kasbah become an intricate network of lines that connect the dots that are all the people and houses in the city. It’s an interesting perspective and the image stays with me.

Unexpected things that have happened in the past couple of days:
-The soldier, looking imposing in his green uniform and severe beret, tiptoeing gingerly past me so as not to step in the puddle that might ruin his shiny black combat boots.
-The sun.
-The chance to spend the weekend in Marrakech, after much uncertainty and phone-tag.
-Yto Barrada, an artist who opened an exhibit at l’appartement-22 tonight, whose husband is from Massachusetts and who knows of the Berkshires. Small world, n’est-ce pas?
-The impressive amount of business cards I now have in my wallet, thanks to the large number of artsy, intelligent, and sort of crazy people I met at the opening tonight.
-The pleasure I experienced in watching two men smear mortar onto a foundation and slowly lay brick after brick, knowing that what was at that moment a complete outline of a house had once been a single brick.
-My own ability to accept that sometimes it’s okay to not know exactly how each day is going to pan out. Mushi mushkil.

Until next time (perhaps from Marrakech), inchallah. Bisoux.