Dumb Bards

Steph, I already told you this but—finally, my brothers and me are speaking gibberish. When I come home, if it is Omar and Reda who opens the door, we grunt and mumble at one another in an imitation of the ceremonial greetings adult Moroccans exchange. It is, I think, even more fun for them than it is for me.

And then the other day Omar and me were taking a walk and he put his hood up and began to shadow box. Naturally, I hummed him the Rocky theme, which even if Omar has never seen the movie he recognized it…and so now, whenever Omar sees me furiously typing, he hums Rocky (he just rested his head on my shoulder, the chubby musical 11 year-old—it'd be favoritism if he didn't call me hoya).

On the train to Marrakech this weekend, Michael and me we’re sitting in a compartment with our professor, the two program assistants, and a lecherous intellectual Greek reading Alain de Botton (which Greek really half-inexplicably evoked the word: “pederast”). In order to communicate just the two of us, Mike and me, we actually spoke Pig Latin, which is something I haven’t done in how many years—I don’t even think I was the kid that I did it then, when you’re supposed to. I wonder, though, especially in such close quarters, how much of our made-up (why is it “made-up” but, say, French, isn’t, by the way) language was actually understood. If anything, weren’t we giving ourselves away by publicly resorting to a strange child-like manner of communication? I don’t just think tones of voice, facial expressions, body language, all that jazz, is what gave us away—sitting in that compartment (which is something I’ve never done, properly ride with strangers on a train), it felt pretty clear that no conversation is only ever happening between just two people. Even if the professor, the program assistants, and the intellectual pederast weren’t talking, might not have even been knowing they were listening, they had access to me and Michael’s conversation—it’s an idea Morocco has been instilling in me. The absurdity of using three languages to form one sentence hammers it home. Like, everything worth communicating requires stupidly futilely babbling; it’s the byproduct, the wholesome rind and what have you; talking can only ever be the shedding, not the becoming; and when you communicate you put it out there and you don’t really get to choose who hears, since most people don’t listen much anyway (that’s not rude here; it’s accepted that talking is something you do for yourself).

I miss being able to effectively bullshit. It’s throwing me off balance, like I need to bullshit on a daily basis. And yet then I think the thing that’s quietly unnerving me most is that I don’t feel all that repressed.

I don’t feel like my Arabic is improving, but maybe I’m only in situations where I wish it were improving more, or faster, than it was.

My host brother talks in Arabic in his sleep. Do languages exist in dreams?

All the academics that I’ve met here are academics with a capital A. They are historians cum sociologists cum philosophers cum everything else. The designated smart people of a generally illiterate society. I’ve never read, or heard, so many obvious things repeated with borrowed (i.e Western) jargon as an excuse for thinking. A lot of them are interesting good men, torn between being European intellectuals and Moroccan, but the academic language they’ve chosen to speak in has them absolutely confined to meaninglessness. It makes you think that in societies more reduced to the essentials (compared to ours), artists are more necessary than academics.

I’ve only just realized how dryly funny my mother is. It's simply the way she lets you see her smile a little and watches your reaction out of the corner of her eye when she makes a suspiciously passing comment; a lot of the women here have that undermining sense of humor. I love it. (Today, a girl in my class who was trying to be creative put on a hijab and went out into the street to see what sort of attention, comparatively, she would attract; less, of course. I myself never realized how much erotic power was manifest in hair). Can you tell how a person is without knowing how they use language?

The only thing worth writing about Marrakech, which is a simulation of what might have been a cool city 200 years ago: it is known for women on motorcycles. Everywhere, women in hijab straddling bikes. I even saw several men sitting holding onto women who were driving. Can't describe that any other way but directly, I think.

In Marrakech, also, the vendors are notably witty. Fuzzy wuzzy was a bear, whispered some short shoe salesman into my ear. Eat for change! Screamed one streetcorner chef.

And then, too, when Moroccans speak English they often use the phrase “as you like”. If you repeat that often enough it makes this sort of stressful situation wherein you think love is near being mentioned but, of course, never is.

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