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"We think you are insulting us," said Akmed, the blind Moroccan, "when you say that time is no problem in Morocco".
As the Technical Coordinator for the Peace Corps Orientation and Mobility program (Stage, '93) I was hosting a seminar for the administrators of the blind schools from all over Morocco. I had been given two days notice to coordinate it. My first response: a PANEL! I figured if I got a panel of people together to discuss blindness issues, spoke real slowly, and used complex American jargon that would take the translator thrice as long to find an Arabic equivalent, I'd be able to make it through the day and use my allotted time fully, if not completely productively.
Time...
Yes, I had perhaps been a bit insensitive on occasion to the cultural differences between my Western concepts and habits, and those of timeless Islam. Sure, I had made a crack about how, landing in Morocco, I suddenly felt almost 1400 years younger (Islam was founded 627 CE).
And, at a bull session with my newly found best friend Arab buddies, I had apparently really crossed a line when I asked, quite innocently I thought, how it
By the Bou Regreg
"Bou Regreg" translated: "The River of the Father of Reflections" was that women and men were separated at the Friday mosque services, yet the men were promised the 72 virgins when they got to heaven.
My question also involved whether or not the women would remain virgins perpetually, in heaven. I knew that here, on earth, in certain places (think: Casablanca) the surgical practice of restoring hymens was a growth industry. I just had some honest concerns about if plastic surgeons should automatically go to heaven. And, in the USA, where I came from, sex and religion were not only fair game for discussion: they were often the staples of cable TV programs.
I mean, in the USA, one former President (Clinton) can refer to another (George Herbert Walker Bush) as a member of the "Frozen Chosen" edition of Christianity. Everyone laughs.
Not here in Rabat.
"Excuse me?" I asked Akmed. It was stated in the form of a question, but what I really meant was, "Excuse me I want to go home to my Mommy."
Some background: I am a neurotically timely person. My DNA is made almost entirely of minutes, seconds, and hours instead of ACG and T. If I am not 40
minutes early, I feel that I am an hour late. A friend of mine told me that I had a bad case of "LSS".
"What is LSS," I asked?
"Late Salesman's Syndrome" he said. "I just made up the name of the illness. For you."
"But I'm not a salesman", I said.
"That makes your LSS all the more serious" he answered. "There is no known cure. The rumor is sex helps alleviate the most dramatic symptoms."
So, in a desert nation where the numbers and urgencies of a timepiece were superfluous, timeliness was not only not a virtue, it was an impiety: only Allah can determine when, where, and how a thing may occur.
It is written.
Look, in a desert culture there's not even the POSSIBILITY of a sundial in the sand, where the landscape is as flat as a Texan road armadillo.. There are no mountains to get in the way of the view. (The High, Low and Middle Atlas mountains are the exception).
"...I say again", Akmed said again, "we think you are insulting us when you say that time is no problem in Morocco".
True,
I had said it a lot. Every time (and it WAS every time) that an appointment was changed, ignored, elongated, shortened, trimmed, eliminated or just plain butchered, I smiled. I swallowed. The "time alarms" within me were ringing, screaming, panicked, right down to and within the cellular level.
To keep my sanity, I would say cheerily (maybe TOO cheerily: "IT"S OK!!!! IT'S OK!!! TIME IS NO PROBLEM IN MOROCCO!!!"
I cleared my throat. I decided to go for it.
"Akmed, my friend, please hear me out. Not only is the phrase a compliment, it is a praise of the highest order.
"It is indeed intended as a blessing, each time I use this phrase about time being no problem in your beautiful country, where Allah controls even the breeze that we just now are experiencing, and the scents of lemon flowers and rare spices bring joy and life to even the most calloused heart... although I believe in the strongest part of my heart, in the deepest well of my being, that there is not a calloused heart in all the blessed earth of your country..."
I was buying time here. I had read my Sheherezade.
Fez
Each of the "Imperial Cities" has a gate with a color scheme. Fez is magic blue. I knew how to filibuster. I can do the Arabesque. I mean, damn, I wasn't only an ENGLISH MAJOR in college. I was well versed not only in verse, but also in COMPARATIVE LITERATURE . I like the florid scribblers best back then. I knew it would pay off some day.
"Akmed, Insh'alla ("If God Wills It), I will tell you why I use the phrase.
Insh'Allah, I will tell it exactly and honestly, as a father of horses might tend his most precious stud.
"And afterward, I tell you from the purest garden of my soul (where neither weed nor fungus visit, as the angels are my landscapers: here, where the roses are watered by tears of joy from heaven, and the blossoms neither fade nor die) you will understand, Insh'Allha... why this is so. Time, thank God, really is no problem in Morocco, and the world is better for it."
"Akmed, I will explain. And when I have finished you will understand why the phrase is NOT an insult, but why it is one of the most perfect sayings I could possibly use to celebrate the generosity and honor of
Marrakech
Rush hour traffic, Marrakech your countrymen; and to illustrate a Moroccan gesture of graciousness and compassion, the equal of which I have rarely experienced in my own country, where one of our ugliest and most damaging sayings is: Time is money..."
And then I told the true story of where I got the expression. It involves a young woman friend of mine, her decision to drive the back roads of Morocco, a flat tire, and a very wondrous (was he a genie?? An incarnation of Aladdin himself?) car mechanic.
When I finished the story, Akmed and all the others rose as one, cheered me, clapped, threw the sound of Hosanna's in my general direction. Cheers, hugs. Miracle!
I had saved myself.
But to hear the story you must (as in Sheherezade) meet me in the next blog entry, where the story of Why Time Is No Problem In Morocco will be concluded.
***********
MAY Qs
1) Who was Richard Burton (NOT the one with Elizabeth Taylor)
2) Tahar Ben Jallou: who?
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Tara Costello
LOL time is never a problem when getting to the airport early