A Walk with Omar

The other night Omar motioned for me to put down my book and get out of bed. Downstairs, he motioned for me to follow him to the door; he motioned for me to hurry up, y'allah; and then like that we were in the alley outside our home. Omar, putting a finger to his head, motioned for me to wait, went back inside, and returned in moments with a black umbrella. Then, like that, me, Omar, and Hal (a Wisconsonian who, along with Eric, a Minnesotan, is temporarily living with us, who clearly tagged along) were walking down Hassan II at 10 pm at night, which is about the time the women and families go inside.

Omar did a sort of Vaudeville walk with the black umbrella as we started our walk. He made some English noises, like he was trying to think of a name--Charlie Chaplin? I suggested. Yes! And Omar repeated that to several of the old men sitting in corners that we passed: Chaplin, Chaplin, Chaplin.

You see different things on the same street in the dark. The dresses hanging from the canopies of the identical clothing stores are, in fact, for pregnant women; plastic blow-up globes are stuffed under the dresses--it isn't wind. Hassan II is also much smaller and slopier in the night.

As we exited the Old Medina, I realized that when Omar said, Medina, he meant the New Medina--he was taking us, for a reason we still didn't know, to the New Medina, which is a place many families in the Old Medina don't ever go at all. Stopped at the edge of the Old Medina, Omar took my bicep and said: Sheesha--you like? Well, sure, I said, both looking forward to and prematurely regretting smoking hookah with an 11 year-old.

We followed Omar between cars; into alleys that emptied you out onto the street you left to enter that alley; into and out of a carpenter's workshop; a kitchen; and along the 6-inch wide walls enclosing mini-gardens in the medians between Hassan II (the four-lane avenue now). Omar stopped at an ATM machine and pretended to take cash out; he stopped at a payphone and pretended to make a call; he hid behind pillars and shot at us; he strutted, his red sweatpants puffing out in the wind, his preadolescent potbelly just puffing; he hit leaves off trees and saluted Parliament. It got later and we got deeper into the New Medina. Omar poked Hal in the ribs when Hal asked him where we were going, and Hal actually got upset, you could see it in his scrunched up wounded face.

Semicircles of a dozen men stand above newspapers and magazines laid on the sidewalk, reading. Are they only reading the frontpages? Really, it's okay not to buy; I'd like to talk about the news as I consumed it. And another thing I'm seeing in the dark, I mean that I realized in the day but was thinking about in the dark, is that there are those carnival guess your weight scale things on almost every corner in the New Medina. Of course, I've never seen anyone stand on one. Is it entertainment? A few blocks later, we passed a beggar who was resting his head on one of those very scales, he was wearing a jellaba without anything underneath, which you could tell because you could see part of his bare lower body; at our passing, he lifted his hand and put his chin to his chest in the most classic beggar's pose I've ever seen. It was more piercing than being entreated with eyes.

We started making our way back to the Old Medina and Omar was holding my pinkie with his whole hand. The moon was directly above me; I don't think I can remember the moon ever being directly above me. Hal wasn't too happy that (technically) we hadn't gone anywhere, though he didn't let on. I got to carry the black umbrella now and I rested it on my shoulder, like you do if you're walking in downtown New York or did if you were in "old film of America". When we got back home, our mother, Hnia, was more suprised at than angry with Omar for taking the guests on a walk after dark in the New Medina. But Omar, finally playing the man, called her by the first name and squeezed her bicep. Then, he motioned for me to come back upstairs and watch him and Reda play Super Mario. We listened to the thunder and waited for the rain (which came for several seconds when we were asleep), which when the outdoors is actually contained in your home is one of the safer feelings I've ever known.

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