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.

Money, Money, Money, Money, Money

A 20-dirham bill.  (from Wikipedia.org)

Learning about Moroccan money has been easy.  Learning how to spend it has been hilariously difficult.   Coins as well as bills are stamped with their denomination. So a coin stamped with 10 would be the equivalent of a dime as it takes 10 of them to make a dirham. A 50 rial coin is one-half of a dirham.  So I thought, "ok, that's simple enough".  And it is.

When it comes time to actually spend the money, though, that's when the problems start. Imagine going out to shop and having the price of everything given to you in nickels or in 50-cent pieces. Or in dirhams.  Aha! Now you see where the difficulty lies.  I have absolutely no clue as to why pricing is so...flexible, but there it is.

In the suq, or open-air markets, I will be asked for mia, or a hundred nickels, which is 5 dirham's worth of vegetables.  Mia mia is 10 dirhams. Maybe the vendor will combine units of nickels and dirhams: miasteen is a hundred nickels and 3 dirhams for a total of 8 dirhams. On the other hand, I can go to a hanute, one of the neighborhood stores, and the shopkeeper may ask for 72 rial or half-dirhams, which is 36 dirhams. 

How do I manage this confusing system? I can ask for all prices in dirhams, of course, but where's the fun in that?  It's like cheating. Besides, I want to figure this out. 

I have come up with some subtle methods to help. Sometimes I will turn to a companion and have her hold up her fingers as if I were a little kid.  Or hand her some money and let her pick out the right amount. Often I will have a general idea of the total and give what I hope is a larger denomination than the actual price, so I can get change back and figure the cost in reverse.

I'm starting to get the hang of it now. But sometimes, boy, I wish I had more fingers.

A Sunnah Wedding

Attendants and musicians are all female at this sunnah wedding.

A young woman was marrying a young man from a strict religious family. The wedding was to be a sunnah wedding, following the separation of men and women. No music. The ceremony was held on the roof of the house, thereby ensuring no univited women or men could can access or view the bride, even momentarily. So I was prepared to have to sit around and listen to all the female family members talk about people and events that I knew nothing about and wasn't going to understand. I was prepared to have to get through an evening of absolute boredom. Have stoic face, will travel.

When I get to the home, some people are women are sitting around talking, some are bustling about, some are in another room changing into their formal wedding finery. When we go up to the roof, I discover nearly the entire roof has been covered over with a huge tent. The sides of the tent are plastered somehow to the 5 ft walls of that surround the rooftop. There are two poles, with lights attached, holding up the tent roof about 20 ft above our heads. The tent provides privacy from the street below and the surrounding roofs, as well as protection from the late afternoon sun. Roughly 80 chairs are set up to face the white and silver sofa-length bride's throne that rests on a white dais. There is a low table and 6 chairs place to the left and between the throne and the rows of chairs.

About 25 feet down on the right from the door to the rooftop, there is a second and third door, each opening to, surprisingly, another room with couches and several women are sitting in there. It is the first time I've seen a room set on rooftop. I can imagine that in the hot summer nights, with the two doors open to allow good airflow, it's nice to sleep up here comfortably on the couches that go around 3 walls of the room. For the wedding,though, this room has another use. Tonight it is the changing room for the bride and all of her outfits.

I am curious about the single table up on the rooftop, and then 6 women come in a sit there. Special family members for some reason? VIP's of some sort? They start pulling out small drums that are held in the hands, somewhat larger and deeper than tambourines. And one is sort of bongo shaped, except it tapers in and out like a waist. (Sorry, I don't know the names for these different kind of drums.)  It was then I realized the music ban is on string and reed instruments, not the traditional drums. They start to sing when they are interrupted by the bride's brothers who are bringing up--what is this--a sound system? They hook up 2 enourmous speakers on 8 ft high stands, and fiddle with the electronics board while they do a sound check with the performers on all 4 microphones. Wow.

For the next four hours, the performer sing nasheed, religious songs about Allah and the Prophet Muhammad. Intersperced with these are wedding songs for the bride. And surprisingly, they all have a beat you can dance to. Another 20 or so chairs are set up for the last arriving guests, then all the chair are moved closer together to make room for the dancing. The guest frequently join in the singing as the songs are well-known to all. Women family members make countless trips up and down the stairs bringing trays of tea, coffee, and small plates of patries/cookies/sweets for each guest.

The bride changes clothes several times.  Her wedding dresses are white, red, green, a gorgeous, deep royal purple, and white again.  The first white dress is a Moroccan takshita with a wide belt, the last dress she appears in is an American-style wedding dress with veil.  She gets henna applied in front of all, and everyone takes photos with her. She has the "boat" on which she is seated, then lifted high by women attendants while guests throw flower petals. Downstairs, we eat in shifts, two dozen at a time at table set up in the living room.  Roast chicken, beef, bread,  a variety of fruit, soda.

The men? The groom? Oh, the bride's family had a luncheon for them earlier in the day.

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

It doesn't matter.  The real question is how did the chicken cross.  An American chicken crossing the road will stop when a car approaches and wait for it to pass.  A Moroccan chicken will, barring an imminent collision, just keep going and assume the car will go behind it.

Marrakech probably has half the stop signs and traffic lights of an American city the same size.  While there are highways that connect the city to others throughout Morocco, there is no highway within Marrakech itself.  So maybe it's because traffic only goes so fast. Maybe it's because the cars are smaller and more manueverable, as are the motorcycles, bicycles and the occasional donkey carts.  I can't say why, but there are distinct cultural assumptions at work that are dead giveaway.

Tis true.  So I can't tell you where said chicken is going, but I can tell you where it's from.

First Impressions

It was night when I arrived in Marrakech for the first time.  Tired and trying to peer into the darkness around all the luggage, I wasn't sure that I was processing the images correctly inside my head. The architecture was strange and alien. It seemed as if I had fallen into a Dr. Suess book. 

Note the awnings on the building to the left.

I discovered later that windows here are generally square instead of rectangular, and most of them are topped with concrete awnings for protection from the sun.  Beautiful wrought-iron grillwork covers most of them.  Some rooflines appeared crenelated.  All-in-all, my first impression was that I wasn't in Kansas anymore.

The Noble Steed of Morocco

If you were expecting a horse, you are going to be disappointed.  The noble steed and workhorse, if you will, is none other than the donkey.  Donkeys are quite common on the streets of Marrakech.  Vendors use donkey carts to carry the fruits and vegetables that they sell on the streets to passersby.  Donkey carts make deliveries of produce to the suqs, the open-air markets located throughout the city.

And don't be surprised if a store owner calls one of them to bring newly purchase items such as furniture and appliances to your house.  If you ask nicely, you might be able to ride along.  I have.  The cart owner probably went home to tell his family about the crazy Americans, but the ride was fun nonetheless.

What a Woman Wears to a Wedding

The women attending the weddings are almost as spectacularly dressed as the bride.

The formal dress for a woman to wear to a wedding in Morocco is called a takshita (tak SHEET ah).  They usually have a 2-color scheme and are worn with a wide belt.

Some young women favor a takshita with skinny leg pants underneath.

This taksita is a shimmering black with silver lace

Takshitas with brocade, velvet, and a brilliant blue

A takshita may also have a plain underdress with an elaborate lace and gold- or silver-trimmed, full-length jacket

Small Businesses

A common arrangement for home is design is for the first floor to be a commercial space, and the family or familes live above it.  Many tiny businesses are no bigger than the bedroom space of a house and the owner simply opens a door and to enter the rest of the house. No commutes.

The commercial spaces can be anything-- tiny grocery stores, beauty salons, mechanics' shops, cyber cafes, school supply shops, pharmacies, bakeries, appliance stores. Small businesses are everywhere. Much of what you need on a daily basis is in walking distance.  There must be a dozen tiny grocery stores within 4 blocks of my house.

 I think the reason they can coexist is the fact that they are so tiny.The dimensions for these shops must be about 10' wide by 12' or 15'deep. The "big" stores are doublewides. Since the stores are so limited by space as to the amount of goods or services they can offer, none can really take over any given area. Everybody wins--customers and shop owners alike.

The guy in the red shirt is standing by the tall steel shutter-type doors that are typical of businesses all over. This tiny pool hall is just large enough for 2 tables and a little room to maneuver on each side.

Wedding Dresses for a Bride

The bride in white and gold.

A bride in Morocco will often have several dress changes during the ceremony. The wedding ladies help with all of the gown changes and make sure everything falls just so for poses and pictures throughout the night.

 One of the wedding ladies (in purple) keeps and eye on the train 

A heavily brocaded green wedding dress

The bride is heavily bejeweled in this print wedding dress

 An artfully arranged bridal veil

A traditional Berber wedding dress

A Wedding in Casablanca, Part 2

A groom in a Moroccan wedding

The band played the whole time except for a couple of  breaks when they put on tapes--some of which, surprisingly, included soft jazz.

The groom by the way. had just 3 outfits- a dark pinstripe suit and tie, a off-white thobe, and a pakistani style long shirt and pants. He had a beige pair of Moroccan slippers and and a pair of black dress shoes. He wore the suit twice and beige pakistani outfit twice. So he changed 5 times too.

They also had what I call the wedding ladies who posed them for photos, making sure the dress flowed properly, that their hands were up or down,  whatever made for the best pictures.

There was no clergy or license signing--that was done beforehand. They'd actually been married about 8 months, but waited to have the ceremony until they could afford it. Not unusual in Morocco. The delay dimished none of the joy of the occasion.

There were about 150-200 people there. It was very crowded. The tent was about 20' x 60'. I was told that was a small tent and and the budget was very modest. There was a 4 piece band and 2 male singers. There were 5 or 6 waiters in black shirts and jeans. A photographer. A dvd recorder guy. The two wedding ladies. The bride and groom sat on a small white and silver couch, raised like a throne in the middle of the side wall of the tent--mostly just the two of them, but family came up and sat or stood on either side for pictures. About 500 pictures, easily, A modest budget, indeed.

A Wedding in Casablanca, Part 1

A Moroccan bride carried by attendants

I went to a wedding in Casablanca. The wedding was 5 hrs long, and the bride had 5 dress changes. Welcome to a Moroccan wedding.

In the first phase, the bride is carried on a small silver boat on poles carried by 4 men in white with white capes. Her first outfit is a white dress and veil with zirconium, dangling earings and a belt with a zirconium oval-shaped belt buckle about 6 inches across. Dazzling. Then there was the red dress with matching jewelry, followed by the emerald green one followed by this very heavy red, white and gold horizontal stripped brocade with a headdress that flared out and down from the top of her head like a sphinx. It's a traditonal outfit. Finally there was the white American-style wedding dress. She had her hair restyled and had matching jewelry each time.

Each dress change signalled a different phase of the wedding. First the photo-op in the white dress with family and close friends, then in the red dress came a display of the gifts the groom given were brought by him and his family in huge trays with cone-shaped lids that were removed for viewing. There were clothes, shoes, purses, a box of dates that must have weighed 10 or15 lbs.The groom also brought a floral arrangement about 3' tall.

The gifts were removed for the next change and phase and the green dress, when we were served dinner. They bride and groom ate some at the dinner, but had to leave to change clothes again.

At dinner, each guest had a chance to wash their hands first as the waiters carried water and towels to each table. Then each guest had a small round indiviual loaf or bread. In the center of the table we had a platter with 4 whole roasted chickens. We were supposed to break the bread, and use the bread to tear off the chicken. After that course, we had a huge mound of a fine, short strand spaghetti topped not with sauce, but with finely gound nuts and a small bowl of powdered sugar to sprinkle on the spagetti as we ate. I know that sounds weird, but think of powdered doughnuts--it was delicious.

Next, while the bride wore the spinx-type outfit, it was the groom's turn to be carried in the silver boat. When they carried the groom, he stood in the boat and did his happy dance to the music that lasted about 4 or 5 minutes. It was happy, funny, joyous. Even the guys carrying him were laughing. It was wonderful.

.
Last was the American-style dress, a few more pictures, and they were done.

Roll Roll Ha Ha Ha

Right now I'm listening to thunderous rolling sounds from my extended family downstairs. Thunderous rolling, followed by shrieks of laughter. More rolling. More laughter.

It turns out that a couple of family members are trying out a skateboard by pushing each other forward across the slick tile floors. Skateboards haven't really caught on here as they have in America. I haven't seen any besides my grandson's here in the neighborhood. Hence the rolling, laughing, rolling, laughing.

Yes, we're doing our bit for cross-cultural understanding.

Menara and the Camel

There's a beautiful park in downtown Marrakech called Menara. There's a huge pool of water with giant fish that come to the surface to eat bread that people throw to them.  There is a  wooden platform over the water at the far end of the pool and a small bleacher area for concerts. Behind the bleachers there is restaurant with indoor and outdoor seating. Strolling musicians perform for tips around the restaurant and among the grove of trees in the adjacent area.

 From the bleachers you can see across the way to palm trees and behind them are the snow capped Atlas Mountains.  They don't look that far or that tall, but then I realized I could see a thin layer of cirrus clouds in the sky. About a third of the mountains' height still rose above the clouds.

So that's the beautiful part. Here's the good part. The sound you hear--it should just be reaching you now--the sound you hear is me with my eyes closed and screaming when the camel I got on stood up. A camel stands  hind legs first so it looked and felt as if  I was about to be pitched over her head (I know my camel was a her because her baby was tied to her and trailed behind).

Camels are popular throughout Morocco with tourists

When we left Menara we went across the street to perennial tourist attraction of camel and pony rides. I got on a camel, and in order to get on, I made this graceful move where I hitched up my long dress--while wearing jeans, of course--to get a leg over the camel. Her single hump was about four feet high even as she sat. When she stood, my eye level was about ten or twelve feet above the ground.

So after the camel stood, I opened my eyes and closed my mouth. I rode no more than about 200 feet up and back again, but I did it. Yay me. The fearless. The tamer of camels.

Forget what I said about the screaming.

The Big Chicken

I made the kids fried chicken yesterday. I told them they better enjoy it because to get chicken here, I had to go to a LIVE CHICKEN STORE.  I had to tell the guy how many kilos I wanted. He picked a chicken, tied a string around its feet and hung it on a scale to weigh it. Then he  said Bismillah as he cut off its head, doused it in scalding water and put it in an automatic chicken-plucker. (An automatic chicken plucker--who knew?) Then he cut off the head and feet, gutted it, rinsed it off a couple of times and put it in a bag.

I had to take the chicken home, rub the whole thing inside and out with salt and rinse it with water. The salt kills the chicken smell. I'm not sure if that's dead chicken smell or live chicken smell. Better not to dwell on that point. Anyway, I put it in the fridge for a couple of hours while I recovered from the trauma.

When I took it out of the refridgerator, it looked and smelled like supermarket chicken. Hooray!!!!!

So then I fried it.  Yummy.

Casablanca Ocean

On a hot spring day I was in Casablanca.  I walked near the side of a bay overlooking the ocean. There was no sandy beach and no safe place for swimming. The water was deep, deep ocean. To my left, the bay jutted out into the water and I couldn't see beyond it. As I stood on the road that ran parallel to the  shore, I could see gravelly beach and rocky sandbars directly below me. If I had been so inclined and a whole lot braver, I could have carefully made my way down.  There were a few fishermen, covered in ocean spray, standing on the rocks.

A man alone was out on the ocean fishing in a round, black rubber raft. I didn't see a motor or oars.  As far as I could see, his only way back to the shore the was the motion of the waves pushing the raft back toward the beach.  

For about a mile or more as I looked to the right, the shore was lined with boulders shaped exactly like dominoes that had been stacked and then tipped at an angle by some giant hand.

I walked with my family along the road at night, and it was a quiet time. Enormous, white-crested waves crashed in water so deep it sounded terrifying, It was a sound of great power, as if thunder were rumbling constantly under the sea.

The Neighborhood

So when I told someone about the roosters, the donkey and the sheep (did I mention the sheep?), she said, "where are you living again?" Ok. So I really am in Marrakech, also called the Red City because the buildings and the houses traditionally were all the same color--not red, really, more of a salmon color. But let's not split hairs.

Much of Marrakesh is new construction from a building boom that has been going on for some few years now. The new residential construction is mostly 3 or 4 stories. (It also makes for a nice, low skyline.) In the  houses I've been in, there is one apartment per floor. Often different couples within the same family will occupy the whole building.  In my case, my extended family and I have the 2nd and 3rd floors, the unrelated property owner has the 1st floor.

I live right on the edge of an old section of the city that is about 2 or 3 miles not-so-square miles and is bounded on all sides, I think, by new housing construction. By old section, I mean single-story, adobe-style dwellings and dirt roads. When I first saw those houses, I thought they were abandoned. Then I noticed that quite a few of them have satellite dishes on the rooftops. Some, I'm told, are very well appointed on the inside. I think the satellite dishes would bear that out.  Some are poor and use tarps held down with cinderblocks for their roofs and a plastic bamboo fencing for a wall or door. I've heard that some folks are holding out for big bucks from developers or individual perspective new-home builders.

There is a paved road runs past my corner.  I live 2 doors down from the corner and while the building on my side street has sidewalks, the roadway itself is the beginning of a dirt road that extends throughout this old section of town.  (The dirt road, by the way, has street lights just like the rest of the city.) At the corner to my right starts the paved streets. And just to complete the picture, two blocks away to the right is a wide boulevard lined with trees.

So what's up with all the livestock in my neighborhood?  To my left is the old Marrakech. A donkey cart owner parks his donkey directly across from me. Ahh, the braying I've come to know and love. I'm not sure who has the rooster nearby, but someone else has another one a few blocks away and they sometimes talk to each other.

There's also the guy with the small flock of about 20 sheep. I don't know where he lives, but I discovered that there's a small field in this old section of town, and he takes them there to graze. I discovered the field when I looked out of an upstairs window of an old, adobe mosque about 2 blocks away at the end of the dirt road  that runs by my house.