Tattoos of the grim reaper, a wine bottle dressed as a peacock, and ju flammon unknown hiked up barely seen beneath the skirt. Her name is Nav and my roommate, sorry I'm a man.
Looping the trail around ALIF, I'm pretty sure we went in a larger circle than necessary, but air conditioned, we put our bags down and saw petit taxis spinning gems of hazard around the ville nouvelle. Ramadan photographers shoot glamour shots of children dressed as adults while adults act like children and cut corners to bring their kid to the front of the line. We waited an hour for 1 person to take 8 pictures, while we only had 4 people to take 2 pictures each in a fraction of the time. You wouldn't think it, but there are these stores with spiral staircases in the back that drop downwards into second stores.
Walking through the Ville Nouvelle, Gucci is on grande closale, Polo shirts are 11 dollars and waiting to be haggled. Nav gets cat-called with her immodest skirt and pale skin and her tattoos leading eyes upwards. I feel sorry for her, but even I've read the women's dress suggestions 5 times in 3 sources.
Everywhere recluses to Eden. Everywhere. Palm trees a mile high and cluttering green leaves to blot out the sun. We ate kous-kous in wal-mart lawn chairs in a building ornate and hand-carved, ate grapes the size of eyeballs, and discussed Texas and Wisconsin with a 9-year Moroccan. The climate is a twin. She tells us there's a rain season that starts anywhere between september and december and goes on for three months, heavy hard rain the majority of the time. Except last year where there was no rain.
We meet our host families. My brother Driss shakes my hand and palms his chest to say nice to meet you and friend. We don't speak again for a while. We have to find a taxi. Nav is a target again. My brother is her brother's brother. She tells her brother to beat them up, and he laughs. When he finds out I'm from Texas he makes gun-fingers and Butch Cassidy's the Medina's crumbling walls. I packed light. Nav is carrying two luggage bags, one hard-shelled and rolling like a tin can on its side down a hill, the other is empty, cheaper to check a second bag than extend the weight limit on one, go figure. Home is out of the taxi down a hole past a donkey and another Ramadan photographer and past the van blocking the street and the motorcycles honking and the cyclists cat-calling Nav and up the stairs and down and left with the spiralling alley between the wooden planks that can't be for support as they are held between two stone walls and past the Islamic upside-down heart butt archway. The doors are all large and studded wood near wrought-iron twisting windows guards. Through the alley you are protected on either side by 20 foot walls with small square windows the way a subway lets you see so little, but enough to be sure there is a crew in there. Nav's brother says this is your home and my brother opens the door.
We go upstairs and his family seems standoffish. I pronounce his mom's name Fat-ee-ma, his dad's Abdi-hammid, and his grandmother Ayisha. But I sit and watch TV I don't understand. My brother asks me to change my look, so I put on shorts and a t-shirt. He loves Justin Beiber, so I give him Jason Derulo. His family invites me to sit for dinner and they say Gool Gool, eat eat. Shkept, shkept, barakat, barakat. I'm full, no more. Shkurra. Jaheed.
It seems he and his dad are yelling, so I ask through google translator. He says: My brother called my brother a brother because he is a chum. I tell him I understand. If I don't understand, I will push my hand down my face like a reverse "that's over my head" and he will try to reexplain and type it again, so I tell him I understand. He asks me if I smoke and I say sometimes. I show him my snus. He asks hashish? No, tobak. He says now we go to the roof and in broken English websites explains that I should not tell his family he smokes. It's dark out. We go down the twisting alleys, past people moving a cupboard with a screeching animal inside, past shady-looking, greased-haired men on motorcycles. Driss peeks a corner and quickly turns. I ask what, but he doesn't explain, only walks quick. There are people behind us, a girl talking loudly and a man laughing with her. I can hear them stomp the sewer grates we stomp, slip on the sand gravel we slip on. Around a corner, though I glance back, it's a family. Not something to spook Driss. I look forward, and there's an old merchant who snaps fingers with Driss and exchanges two cigarettes for two dirhams. We get to the roof, Driss' roof, his family's roof and 2 other's. They hang the laundry there. I can see the entire Medina. Fez lays out before me and I am awed. Looking down I see tremendous alleys, grated windows revealing Arabic comedy hour, a hidden camera show where they play a mock armageddon newscast on the taxi's radio. Lights flicker and Driss tells me Ziat are the buildings behind us, and Fes a Medina is before us. Fes looks into mountains, jabel. I tell him this is a good view and he lights a cigarette for me. He tells me this September he was fourteen and will be fiveteen. I ask him what is after school for him and he says more school, I ask what after that and he says bacclaureate, and I ask a profession? He says medicine. I am in the midst of a future doctor. Driss apologizes for his poor English and I apologize for my poor anything but English.
Pictures to come.
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