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Gaining Perspective...Volume 4
Two Years in the Kingdom of Morocco
By Charlie Kolb
pleasant, but surreal, dream.
When
I reached the house, I yelled a greeting from the door before walking
inside. I shook hands with my host mother Rkia, father Said, and my
siblings Mo-hamed, Rachid, and Fatima. When I reached the baby,
Sufiyan, almost 2 years old, he looked up at me shyly with his big
brown eyes. "Sim" (shake hands) I said, and he held out his left to me.
I smiled and said "yadnin" (other one), and he offered his right. I
took it in mine and shook it once solemnly. He grinned at me, flashing
his baby teeth, before burying his head in his mother's arms. Now a
toddler, Suf was barely able to crawl when I arrived here last year.
Now he not only walks, but runs; he has learned to say some simple
words and can now ask for what he wants. Watching him grow and change
is another reminder of the passage of my time here and of all the
wonderful things I have seen.
Spring
has come to the Atlas. The apple trees are blooming and the poplars on
the riverbank are furred with a delicate haze of pale green leaves. The
willows are heavy with fuzzy grey catkins and the songbirds have
returned to perch on my windowsill when I open them wide to let in the
shafting morning sunlight. Tourists go in and out of the village on
motorbikes or riding in expensive Land Rovers. "Adventure Tours" they
are called, though I have a hard time seeing how a one or two day stop
in my village is considered an adventure. 14 months here and even I
feel that I have barely seen a fraction of what the Atlas and its
people have to share with the world.
A
few weeks ago I stood out on the fringes of a wheat field with a friend
of mine who I will call "MoHa". He is the brother of a local store
owner whom I know well, and one of the few people willing to let me
work in his fields with him. I try
I
sat down next to Said, in my proper place as another adult male, and
spoke with Rkia from across the room. She left after a few minutes and
returned with a conical clay tajine filled with spiced meat and
vegetables which I ate with relish. I stopped eating meat a few months
ago and Rkia no longer offered it to me, instead moving it to an area
of the dish where others would eat it. We ate with our hands, using
crusty fresh bread baked that morning as utensils. A teapot and basin
was offered to each of us to wash up after the meal was finished and
the children went out to play. Rkia, Said, and I stayed in the small
room and enjoyed a cup of sweet Moroccan tea to aid in digestion. I
left soon after that and stopped again in the graveyard watching the
light play over the stones and shimmer on the swaying grass.
to
come here once a week and learn about the farming methods practiced in
this area for millennia. After diverting water from the river through a
maze of shallow ditches, we removed the plugs of earth and sod and
watched as the water filled his small wheat field row by row.
As
I watched, the wind swept down the valley from the heights and brushed
the tender green shoots of the new wheat as a loving father might
playfully ruffle the hair of his small child in passing. It was cloudy
and cool that day, but not unpleasant, and I reveled in the smell of
wet earth and the feel of growing things. As Moha and I waited for the
water to fill his field, we sat on the edge of the ditch, him smoking
a cigarette and me staring at a small earthworm twisting sinuously in
my open palm. Looking at its pale pink skin, at the
delicate
organs and structures at work beneath the translucent surface, I felt
like a small child again, having just turned over a rock in my mother's
garden. Though her garden is 6000 miles away on the other side of the
world, this worm looked no different than the ones I had watched so
long ago.
Above
us the banded mountains soared overhead, and by the river ancient
willows bowed and stooped as if weary from the long months of another
winter quietly endured. At noon, I thanked MoHa for letting me help and
walked the long road back into the village, leaving a trail of muddy
footprints to mark my passage.
On
another afternoon, I leaned against a wall next to a shop and talked
with some older men with whom I have become friends. As we spoke
quietly about the state of the world and the weather, the sound of
singing reached my ears and we all turned to watch as a procession of
children made its way up the street toward us.
They
moved slowly, dressed in fine clothes, and sang a quiet song as they
walked. Most Berber music has a loud, fast tempo and is sung with a
frenetic energy. The song sang by the children, mostly young girls, was
slow and dreamlike—reverent and peaceful, like a dirge or lament.
Above their heads was a human figure dressed in a fine women's jelaba
and, at the back of the group, a small boy held a cross aloft. It was
exceptionally strange, and I had never seen anything like it here
before. Yet it still seemed strangely familiar. I turned to the man
next to me to ask about the procession, which was now even with our
group. "They are calling the rain," he said solemnly. I looked up at
the cobalt sky, cloudless and dry; no rain had fallen in months. I then
gestured to the cross and asked what it was. "Did you not know that
many of the Berber peoples were Christian before the Arabs came and
conquered Morocco?" I shook my head in wonderment and we fell silent
for a time. From questions asked later and from what little I can piece
together of this strange occurrence, what I had witnessed was a Roman
Catholic saint's procession, combined with an ancient Berber rain
ceremony. It was a sight to behold.
The
following day, I went outside to walk and watched as clouds gathered,
towering and swelling on the eastern horizon. The wheat shook in the
fierce winds before the storm and the pale tender petals of new apple
blossoms swirled around me like summer snow. As I reached my door, the
rain began to fall.
Later
that week, I found myself walking through the dirt streets and
alleyways of the old part of the village toward the earthen house of
the family that provided a home for me in those first crucial months
spent here almost a year ago now. My path took me across the graveyard
with its quiet stones protruding from a sea of waving golden grass. A
memory surfaced from the previous year of a small girl with a flashing
smile and beautiful eyes. Kalima. One morning in late summer she simply
did not wake to her mother's touch; she sleeps now beneath one of these
silent stones, marked red with a splash of paint, raw colored like a
fresh wound. Her passing shook us all.
Death
comes as no surprise to the people here; the harshness of this
destroyed place is not lost on the Berbers of the Ait Haddidou. Death
is a constant companion that shadows the children as they play and is
greeted by the stooped and weathered elders as an old friend if
perchance he comes to call. I am sure they would invite him in for tea
and bread if they were able.
A
village near here made national news when nine children died in a
single unrelenting period of cold several winters ago. Paved roads and
power lines followed the tragedy, but countless other villages suffer
in remote silence and families continue to bury their dead quietly and
resignedly, though they may go before their time.
Such
harshness eats at me at times. Even in my terrifying periods of
illness, being weak and alone unable to walk or speak, I was protected
by virtue of being an American. I knew that I could be evacuated at the
push of a button, and on a flight home within a day. There is no such
escape for my friends here. This harshness is their reality; it is all
they know and places outside the Atlas seem like a
I
have made two good friends here in the village, I will call them "Said"
and "Mostafa". They are 18 and 19 respectively, and good listeners.
Spending time with them, I sometimes forget I am speaking another
language and we talk and laugh long into the night.
Some
evenings, they stop by my home to smoke a hookah with me in my living
room. Hookahs are common here and exceptionally well made. Mine was
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