The Strolling Donkey

Strolling Donkey, Part 1

I saw this donkey out for a walk in my neighborhood.  The owner was not in sight, and no one paid any attention to the solitary animal as he stopped to nibble on a small date palm tree and then moved on.

Strolling Donkey, Part 2

Several minutes later, the donkey was still strolling down the boulevard . 

Women Wedding Guests Prepare Their Clothes

Women do not generally travel in their takshitas.  If possible, they dress at the home of the bride just before the ceremony begins.

The female guests will arrive at your house with suitcases. While one bedroom is devoted to the bride and her 5 or 6 or 7 garment changes, the rest of your home, save the bathroom and kitchen, becomes one giant dressing room. The women get out of their travel clothes to get dressed and prepare for the wedding. Dresses, shoes, scarves, jewelry and make-up all come out of the bags. The women transform themselves and each other into sparkling showcases. Young and old, all of the women who may not even normally wear make-up, get dolled-up for the occasion.

A formal  dress worn to a Moroccan wedding is called a takshita (tak SHEET-ah). The older women are usually covered head-to-toe, but the younger women may wear newer styles of the takshita and appear bare-headed or with short sleeves or with dresses split to show skinny-legged pants underneath. But all of this is still modest by Western standards.  No one wears anything that is cut, as they say, up to here and down to there. But all of them come with strappy sandals and glittery dresses--sequined, shimmery, or embroidered with gold or silver threads.   And of course there is jewelry of gold, silver, pearl and all sorts of sparkling stones.

Once inside the wedding tent when the music starts, out of nowhere come the scarves that the women tie around their hips to better show off the moves of their dances.

The women and closely related male relatives gather inside the tent to sing, to dance, to eat, to view wedding gifts from the groom to the bride and to get photographed with the couple in any of the many bridal outfits worn during the ceremony by the bride and groom. Any non-related men have chairs and tables and are served outside.  Male waiters, photographers and entertainers don't count. Wedding logic. Go figure.

For families that want to have a sunnah wedding with male and female guests entertained separatedly, there are a couple of options. A high-end wedding may have two tents set up for males and females separately, but that typically doesn't happen because of the expense. More commonly, if the family maintains male-female separation, they may have a sunnah wedding in which all of the wedding proceedings take place in a female-only setting.  The men will have a banquet separately.

A Moroccan Grandmother



A Moroccan woman and her grandson



This is my favorite photo.

Where is Paradise?

I'm sure scholars, philosophers, and perhaps architects have written about the link between our view of the horizon and our awareness of the spiritual world around us.  I have seen a vast ocean, and I have looked upward at the limitless night sky. Always my idiosyncratic perception of the heavens was that Allah's paradise was "up there" or "out there" somewhere.  City skyscrapers always made paradise seem, to me at least, even further away, as if the height of the buildings themselves demaracated the material and spiritual worlds.

The single-story compound I visited in the Moroccan countryside had an unexpected effect on my own perception of paradise.  I  stayed in a family compound.  On all four sides of me, there were 10-foot high walls.  Beyond those walls, I could see nothing of the level farmlands,  other nearby structures of similiar height, nor the mountains in the distance.  As far as I could see, the material world stopped at the top of those walls. 

In this circumscribed world, it seemed to my spiritual self as if the breadth and height of paradise began at the top of those compound walls.  Paradise was sitting just above my head.  I could almost touch it, or I could be crushed by the weight of it.

I had not thought, when I went to  visit a family in rural Morocco, that the trip would have such a profound effect on my own  spirituality.  But even the passage of time there was affecting as night came, and the midnight blue of the sky was highlighted by stars.  Then fajr came, and the sky was cobalt blue, backlit from the rays of a sun still too far away to bring the colors of the dawn.  Shades of paradise just above my head.

Moroccan Winters

We are in the midst of the Moroccan winter, which is mild by most American standards, of course, except for the fact that the homes and buildings here are unheated.  It doesn't seem to get down to freezing, but it may get to 40 or 50 or so, with heavy winds and rain on the worse days. Coming into an unheated home  offers little relief  and it's not easy to get used to it.

 I learned quickly that Moroccans compensate in their own ways.  Moroccans have lots and lots of blankets.  Lots of blankets. Moroccan hosts routinely their wrap their guests in blankets as well plying them with with hot tea, coffee and food. A visit to a Moroccan home in mid-winter is reminiscent of a slumber party. Also, a trip to the hammam (ha  MAM), the steam-filled, public baths frequented by Moroccans of all ages, is excellent for restoring warmth.

My first winter here took me quite by surprise.   My Moroccan friends were telling me that heat dries you out and makes you sick.  I looked at them. Yes, right, I got that.  That's why vaporizers and humidifiers were invented.  I was trying to tell them that no heat makes you dead, as in frozen popsicle dead. They looked at me.  They didn't get it.  Although they have had hail in during a bad winter, they had no frame of reference for things like snowdrifts and blizzard or below-freezing temperatures.  I was distressed.

So I've decided now that I need to toughen up a bit and learn to adapt.  I do have space heaters for the really cold weather, but I actually find myself not using them for just "normal" cold days.  I have, instead, discovered the joy (that's not the right word, surely) of wearing up to 5 layers of clothing and sleeping nearly fully dressed.  And of waking up because I'm too hot.

A Country House

 I went with a family here to see other family members  who live in the countryside. Their home is about 2 hours outside of Marrakech. We were going to take a bus, but the busses were crowded, the rates had gone up, and we ended up taking a taxi for about the same price.

The trip on the highway was nice.  Hills in the background. Flat farmland in the foreground. The occasional flock of sheep. Finally we turned off the highway onto a white gravel road that was bordered on both sides by fields of low greenery and followed it about a mile or two to its end. There was a single story modern building with lots of window and a low wall to our right--an elementary school. To our left was a single story adobe style compound . The wall around it extended down to the edge of the road. Sitting on the ground were  grandparents and a great-grand mother. They had just been sitting there, waiting for us to arrive. Hugs and kisses all around.

Inside the walls were several adobe buildings. One was the outhouse, which was in a corner and faced the rear wall of the compound. It will never be mentioned again. But there was a light, so you could go at night. Enough of that. There were two corral areas. The small one was for the chickens, rooster, and one very large turkey. Next to that was a much larger corral for the donkey. There were a couple of cats.

There were three buildings, one was a store that belonged to an uncle. One was just a large room, long and narrow--about 8 ft by 20 ft. The third was about 7ft by 30 ft. and was divided into 2 rooms with two separate entrances.  The left side was the kitchen that measured about 7ft by 12 ft. The right side of building was the living area. In both the living room and the other large room, which was used to sleep guests, the floors were carpeted and the the walls were lined with cushions, blankets and pillows for seating. The living room also had a low table for eating and a televison with great reception in the corner.

First we had the traditional tea, bread, and cookies. This little meal is not to be dismissed. They don't begin cooking the evening meal until after the guests arrive. They would never insult anyone with leftovers or cold food.  That means it will be a long while before dinner with every element prepared from scratch. So the tea service is an important little meal.

Dinner was chicken with lentils served over a bed of thin breads that had been rolled, flatened, layered, cooked, then torn into shreds and tasted like dumplings.  Four women helped prepare the dumplings. One to roll, one to cook, one or two to separate and tear. One of the woman also cooked the chicken and lentils. We ate with two tables at either end of the living room, one for grandfather and uncles, one near the tv for the women. The food was delicious. We also had large bowls of fruit--apples, bananas, oranges.

After dinner, the men left and the women had the tv. It was Saturday night and a variety music/comedy show came on. We danced playfully making fun of each other's style, or in my case, the lack thereof.  Everyone was dying laughing. I had just got going with an old fashioned, one-leg-up-in-the-air Chubby Checker twist when the grandmother and great grandmothers, practically on their sides laughing now, asked me to stop. I can't imagine why.

Eid al Adha

Eid al-Adha, the eid following the hajj, is a major holiday in Morocco.  Schools and businesses are closed.  Everyone cleans house and redecorates according to their budgets.  People save money all year if they have to, in order to sacrifice a sheep or even a cow.

I find that unlike in America, where the eid is often simply squeezed into a couple of hours to go to the mosque during a work day, the importance of the holiday here has given me time to reflect on the way that it is significant to me personally.

Our sacrifice of an animal reflect the test of Abraham, whom Allah allowed to sacrifice an animal instead of his son Ismail.  So the first thing I found myself thinking about was death.  Three sheep were sacrificed for various families on the roof of the house.  I watched as they were killed, skinned and gutted.  Each sheep was killed out of sight of the others so as not to alarm them.  All unsuspecting of their own imminent deaths, they were like each of us human beings, who cannot foresee our own ends.

I thought about Allah, Who has the only power there is over our existence. There is no other power but His as we have to live each minute and to die without recourse.

I thought about work, for turning the animal from a living being into food is a time-consuming, difficult and messy business. People here spend a brief time in the morning in their new holiday duds and then change into work clothes as they work through all the steps that will end in having meat on the table.

After all the work is done, folks can relax for couple of days and go visit friends and family.  They enjoy cakes, share laughter and give money to children.  That is how Eid al-Adha is done in Morocco.