The wealth

I met this guy Nabil when I was in Granada. He was talking about terrorism and immigration when I met him, about how Morocco has one policy towards both groups adopted from the US and Europe, one and the same, but he really looks like he's a big 12. He is very clean, and nice, and speaks perfect Spanish though he himself is from Rabat, and the other day I was sitting in Le Grand Comptoir and right there in he walked. He started speaking to me in Spanish and I understood what I was saying before I understood that he was speaking Spanish. Also, people generally don't throw big fits of surprise when they run into each other here.

And so Nabil invited me to come to this ceremony in Rabat today, where he would be one of two writers--he is also a novelist--receiving a prestigious award for writers under 30, or 35, or some cut-off age for the young. This morning, my friend, Anas, who is the tallest thinnest man I have ever met, and an English student at the University, took me to the University campus to meet some sub-Saharan Africans. We got on the bus and Anas told me he was suffering from insomnia. We got to the University, which is muddy and littered with stones, and looks like a military camp that was deserted and taken over by students. Anas told me that he has been walking through this mud for six years. He thinks universities should be pretty--like in the US--in order to, yes, set the mood. We got there, walked through gateless gates, and there were groups of sub-Saharan African students everywhere. I was supposed to just--what? Approach them? Hey--Christian? Awesome! I'm kidding, but I'm not, because that is basically what happened.

Anas and me were walking and he all but pushed me into a group of six or seven very black men and I honestly don't know how we started talking, but we did. Well the thing is they were all from Guinea Bissau. Do you not know a thing about Guinea Bissau either? Well, they were colonized by Portugal--one of five African countries--and so they speak Portuguese, for one (or two). And so I spoke Spanish to them and they Portuguese back at me, and we littered our conversation with the fundamental Arabic we were learning, which was more fun--Arabic littering--with them than it is with other native English speakers. The tallest and baldest one, who has to be at least 30, is going to be an engineer, kept on punching me a little girl when he wanted to speak English. In no other place--in every sense of place-- would I have talked to such a man.

They took me to eat in the cafeteria with them, which is really more important and more of a good sign than you might realize. I really dig that eating together is this codification, this unspoken deal, if not a big deal--they insisted I come with them, and they paid, to boot (the one with tight little curls laughingly handed me his ticket and talked the Moroccan guard-man into letting him in this time). They introduced me to several Moroccan girls who spoke Spanish--the Moroccan girls, they say, talk to them 100 times more than the Moroccan men do. We talked about learning English, and Brazil, and the size of the bread we were given (two feet), and Saturnino le Oliviera's hair, which we were divided on whether he should perm it. Saturnino took a spoon out of his pocket and handed it to me when cous-cous kept falling out of my bread--What? Yes, he somehow got the name Saturnino le Oliviera. Makes this Josh Cohen sad. We--me and a dozen of them--are going to go Church this Sunday, or the next. They like that I'm Jewish--"el Dios es unico; ademas, lo mas loco" (spanish trans).

After my morning with the men from Guinea Bissau I met my friend, Leungo, from Botswana, the British-trained actor, and together we went to Nabil's award ceremony. It was at CDG, which is the most important--i.e. richest--institution in Morocco. I don't know what the hell they do--all anyone told me is that it was an "institution". We met Nabil in the lobby, he actually walked past us and we grabbed him; he was wearing a pink shirt and pink tie and his cheeks looked full of something, and his sister, we met her, too, I mean, and we went up in the green elevator. Nabil was upset I hadn't brought more of a mountain of friends with me. When we got to the right floor, we got out, and immediately we we're dressed down. I cannot remember the last time I was dressed down. This was a very--how do you say--important event. We were greeted by a tight little woman with pulled back hair and a shin-length skirt and a checkered blazer, palimpsests of make up--it was awesome: I said Shukrayn to her in Arabic and I saw her little artifice shake and have to reassemble itself--I knew she was Moroccan. I feel sorry for her that she is such a bitch--she nearly spat at Leungo. Really, anyway, the hors d'oeuvres were what I--and Leungo--noticed first, as they were on full display but untouched. I was sweating like a pig in a heat and Leungo was black--I mean his skin--and in a t shirt and jeans. I--only I--was introduced to the editor in chief of Rabat's most important newspaper; to this young man who I should know; to two tall girls in heels and preppy sweaters, looking dumb as possible, who had braces--which braces are how you knew, funnily enough. People were mostly only speaking French--I wondered how much of a betrayal this was. We were invited by butlers with a sweep of the arm to approach the hors d'oeuvres. I ate many, and they were the best I have ever had. Little feats of perfection; packing punch. Tasting wealthy.

Then before anyone was finished stuffing little indulgences in their mouth and grotesquely swallowing avocado milk and exchanging long dizzying nauseating concatenations of greetings and blessings in French, we were ushered in with more sweeps of the arm. There were two or three photographers that were not bothering to hide at all. They took photos of people sitting, talking. These people sitting, talking kept on sitting, talking while bright camera lights flashed literally feet from their faces. Once, the woman photographer took the chin of one sitting, talking man and turned it at an angle and I am serious he kept on sitting, talking as if she had not touched him at all. And once, the really fat male photographer squatted down in front of Nabil, almost falling--what if he had?--and took photo after photo of Nabil reading the event brochure, presumably the page on himself (What was Nabil actually thinking--nothing?) They both joined to photograph the three important men on the dais--photographing always looks like it has a purpose, I noticed. The really really fat men on the left looked like he was trying to wince at the camera in his face but was unable to do this and read from his paper at once. There was a tripod, too--which turned its human head slowly at different angles focusing on us while we watched the three judge like men talk, list the reasons we were here (I understood that). Man, it felt so much like we were being--trained. To pretend that the camera, among other things, wasn't there. I whispered to Luengo, What the hell were these photographs for? The photographing was aan event in itsef--it was the only thing with a heartbeat happenig. And I mean by pretending it wasn't happening we were acknowledging it was; it can't be any more than that really it edified us--oh but falsely, with little feats of hightech edification. These cameras really putting themselves in our faces and snapping us au natural was stilling; everyone was still and quiet and I think it was because the entire time we are sitting in this quiet dull glistening conference room we are being captured from some angle. This training must carry over beyond this room. At one point a man with little white wings of hair sticking out of his head stood right up out of his seat and corrected something one of the judges said--flash flash. No one stirred. Morocco's most famous movie director, the winged man. And these are Morocco's most important writers and poets. I mean: ?

Me and Leungo left quick when it was over. While we waited for the elevator we returned to the hors' d'oeuvres 3 times. These little egg things killed me. You could just leave your glass anywhere. Outside, we laughed, and I ran to meet my adviser for my fieldwork, who I would miss. Tomorrow I am going to go to a seder in Casablanca, I hope--but they are all orthodox. I emailed Rick Gold. And Sunday I am going to a Nigerian church, or French church populated by Nigerians, in Casa (another paranoid shepherd there, I think: should I go with the men from GB, instead?). Did I mentioned my blue-eyed born again come here after the US-Morocco Free Trade agreement to spread the Word I mean wealth I mean shit--and on Tuesday I am going to go to the University to tell some Moroccans about being Jewish, and about the Trinity, too. On Wednesday I am going to go to see that play and the day after that--when I was watching a protest the other day a little man in a sweater vest said to me from behind my back--are you surprised? I think about the violence. I said no, are you? And then we began to talk--in no time he was spitting lines of Hebrew at me. The friend who wasn't a friend that saw me and approached us talking came and left, because we were talking good deep philosophy right there while people were screaming and singing and being beaten. I am going to the dar al haditha al hassania, the school of theology where he studies, to talk with several Moroccaon phd religion students about Maimonides, Ibn al-Arabi, Augustine. Mohammed tells me we have a lot to learn.

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