Lotfi and Me are out of cash. Walking to the city is 45 minutes in 50 degrees celcius, a cab is 10 dirham. Even split two ways, we cannot afford it. We are out of money because it is Saturday, and Friday night, despite his 12 hours of school and my intensive Arabic, we walked the Medina.
It's a funny feeling, when you can't speak with the people you live with. You speak telepathically. Em is worried. She thinks I'm bored, or worse, ashamed, to leave the house. She brings me tea. Today isn't the day that I don't want to leave, the international websites have snaked into my hard drive and I'm trying to fix it in vain. Streams of durogatory slang filter through.
Em stops at the door. Her meditteranean eyes don't need eye-liner. Her headwrap is pink today and overgrowing her sides her shirt billows sweat pants. Laa baas. Literally: no harm. Colloquially: you are doing well? Telepathically: are you going to sit in here for the next four months on your laptop?
No.
I finish the download. I didn't sleep last night. Lotfi sprawls on the spearmint couches lining the bland 1200 year old walls. He nods at me. Hamdulilah. "We go out tonight?" This is how I talk now. In broken syllables because I think the moghrebee will understand me better, like how we think talking louder tailors our words for all languages. If you go to China, for example, and yell long and slow enough, you can in fact find your way around.
Lotfi speaks broken English better than I do. "Nshalla. What do you want to do?"
I'm the guest. The honored guest, with the blessed name, and will be for three more months. "What do you do on a normal Friday?"
"I was usually studying on all Friday for school."
"Okay, if you had a Friday free, what would you do?"
"Eh, maybe we go for beers or something?"
Especiale tastes like honey and lays thick on your mouth. I have two. Muslim countries like this one have strict laws on alcohol. Here in the moghreb, you cannot drink as a Muslim. Since the 60's, bars are not for Muslims, they are for the French, and the Spaniards, and the Tourists. We buy beers and light cigarettes.
For 3 weeks, I have felt as a stranger. We all do at some point, get estranged. Like the first day of school, that new job, when you finally let yourself get dragged to a group of people you don't know but want to meet. I stick out like a sore white thumb trying to look like everyone else looks. I'm not depressed or lonely, just noticeable. Lotfi pays the manager and bumpy pool balls roll thunder. Regional rules are different, and I go twice in a row after Lotfi hits my ball first.
"You know how to play?"
"I mean, I think so..." Doubt follows me, too. Like looking at a pool table and thinking of solace until you realize the only marked ball is the 8. I break like a girl, and Lotfi laughs through his nose. The spotlight is on me in my head, even though nobody even heard the wooden 'twank' from my poor break.
Lotfi and I engage. We bond like this from time to time. Two days ago was an awkward fight attempting to choke the other, but the spearmint couch blocked any technique but improv. I apply pressure to lock Lotfi down until his voice goes high and his only concern becomes his testicles and my elbow's proximity. "Assef! Assef!" "Tonight, I will kill you." He says this a lot. We spar and jab. I try to caulk hollow Arabic into insults. He gets it telepathically that I'm the only person under 24 in the Moghreb who won't fall in line behind him. We have mutual respect.
So the only words spoken are occasional exhales of close shaves and good shots. I scratch on the eight ball. Let the verbal downpour begin.
I tell him I should've won and he laughs and says maghreebee. "We are best at everything." "Nshalla."
We watch the sharks play. Nothing is free in America, I tell Lotfi. They bring us fried fish and a bowl of rice with our beers. I tell him about the street in Lubbock that shuts down every Friday night, the lines out of the bars. There are no secrets in towns like mine. My foreign fears come out most when I am a stranger, a stranger like the one who walked into this bar behind Lotfi, into this bar with the black shades over the glass door and the low light and smoke fog, the stranger with the white skin who just lost at pool and laughs with Lotfi. The shark smashes a line of coke off his left hand.
I pay for my beers and walk with Lotfi. It's good to be out at night. Something I haven't done yet. My fears aren't unfounded. Americans aren't the most liked in the Arab world, and that's not racism, it's truth. And vice versa, I suppose, but I also suppose that it takes two to tango, and the 20% of the population who actually will interact with Arabs know they are human and we are human and some are crazy and some are nice and some plant roses and build mailboxes out of wood. And some hate you, but not very many. And vice versa.
Every street corner looks like a drug corner with the low light and large men in small groups. Lotfi is taking me to a hookah bar, but no dice. Only two shops are open because of underage smokers and the cops. Next weekend, Nshallah.
Where to now? He doesn't answer, but my family often doesn't. I don't need to know and they don't need to tell. What difference does it make, anyway? I'm going there.
A supermarket for gum. Three days ago, Lotfi was sprawled on the spearmint couch and I went in to ask him a question. Em was rubbing her fingers on his teeth and speaking Arabic. She feels my presence and looks up to laugh at the show she must've been giving. I laugh and shrug it off. Lotfi says, she thinks I smoke and doesn't want my teeth to turn yellow. Ah. Ana, I say, and she looks at me and says: Inta? Shwaya. Ah! She hits her chest and coughs and says inta! Inta! Ehh, shwaya. This is the most useful word. Little, or shwaya shwaya, little by little, or slowly. You get the jist. I know Lotfi smokes, but Em doesn't. So we need gum.
We walk long to Acima. My spirits are lifted by the booze and I joke about how low the trees are, and Lotfi says they didn't know we were coming this way or they would've cut the branches. I say, you, my friend, are ridiculous. We pass stores that are dim light with packs of customers and no lines. I can't help but search the magazine shelves for blacked out plastic covers, and playboy bunnies. Not here. Pornography is banned. And people call this country impoverished.
Lotfi smokes 4 cigarettes before we get to Acima after asking a poor street vendor with a carton of Marlboros for a light. The store is a let down. When Lotfi said Supermarket, I expected things I wanted, Hershey's chocolate syrup, coca-cola flowing like a waterfall down a cliff made of Velveeta cheese and 1% Milk cartons. It was a supermarket.
He says what now? I look at him and smile. No telepathy this time. I say, "You know what sounds good?" "Hm?" "Mmmmmmm, a huge" I make my hands into an exaggerated square, "fat, greasy, Mcdonald's cheeseburger. Oh yea." Lotfi laughs and says let's go.
I ask if we are getting a taxi and Lotfi says no, unless, are you tired?
No.
"We don't go out like this much, you and I, and we don't get to talk." I like Lotfi for this. I like Morocco for this. There is no wall here. We walk and talk to Mcdonald's. Lotfi asks me if I have any ideas. He says there are no balloons here. It would be so cheap to come here with helium and balloons and sell for expensive. He says, I have many ideas like this, like a place for tourists to live, but start up money is not here. He has good ideas, and I listen. I hope to God that Lotfi won't be like the 99% who have great ideas but little ambition. A great idea is worth a dime per dozen if you there is no great person to back it. Maybe poverty will swallow him and his family, and maybe not. I think about this while we walk in a beaded necklace shape. See, Lotfi is from a culture where you are close and talk close and kiss cheeks and hands and personal space is shared like everything else. I instinctively move away as he moves towards me and we converge and diverge and converge and diverge and leave ovals strung in a straightish line behind me across Moghreb.
We walk to the McDonald's that's more like a night club than it is a fast food joint. You dress up for this place and throw on a nice layer or three of cologne. You put your Marlboros and car keys on the table next to you, the signs of a rich man. A different kind of first class on this boat. Anyway, I catch Lotfi staring and I nudge him. He has to laugh knowing he's caught. We grab our food and stay on the terrace to eat. It overlooks the dividing line between Old Fez and the Ville Neuvelle. We eat and he tells me about the disquoteque. He says that when a girl is dancing and she bumps into you a couple times she wants to dance, take a cigarette and put it upside-down in the box and if she takes it, she wants to go home with you. In the meantime, put your car keys and Marlboros on the table and eat your McDonald's as bait.
When we walk back, Lotfi has more words. I tell him that I am lucky to have his family, very lucky, and I ask how to properly pronounce my Arabic name. He says that his mother says I am like one of her sons and that I am like my name: Generous. You can't help but feel a bit of pride at those words. When we get back, the family is happy to see us and we sit and watch TV.
Lotfi says: it was a good night.
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