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Published: June 14th 2005
Medina
Casablanca I can't help but enjoy Morocco. It feels so good to be back in an Islamic country. I got a 60 euro ticket from Paris to Casablanca(very cheap), and as soon as I left I might as well have arrived, with the Arabic and Berber music blaring in my ear, the smell of foreign food and sweat. It occurs to me that my friend Muhamad said he thought I was Moroccan before he talked to me on the bus, and I was going over all of the nationalities I've been mistaken for in the last year: English, Spanish, Portuguese(today), Afghani, Tajik, Uzbek, Chinese, German, Irish, French, and others I can't remember at the moment.
I talked to Muhamad somewhere around Tangier and he offered his hospitality. It was nice to stay in a proper Moroccan house my first day, and the next day I went to mosque with he and his brother and prayed, my first time actually getting in the line with everyone and going through the motions. There's a very big mosque here and I prayed there as well. It's very beautiful, what with the singing along with the praying.
I don't know if I'm just
getting into progressively less awkward homestay situations, or if I'm developing a tolerance to awkwardness. I think I'm just getting better at staying in other people's houses, which I've been doing an awful lot of on this trip(probably at least 70 percent of the time) but it really seems a better way to get a feel for the culture, and I like to think that I'm a pretty good guest.
I just had some kebab like thing for dinner, and I was talking with the proprietor, who seems to be very intelligent, but an extremist. Very focused on his religion. I've never seen such deft subject changing... 'Where are you from?'
'Seattle. Do you know it?'
'Yes! Seattle Supersonics!'
'Ah, you like basketball?'
'Yes, the best player Michael Jordan!'
'Yes; he's quite good'
'And do you know who the best player of Islam is??'
'No, who?'
'bin...'
'Laden?'
'Yes! BIN LADEN, THE CHAMPION OF ISLAM! You must become a muslim'
'Okay.'
But, as he went on to tell me, bin Laden is not the face of Islam... the prophet Mohammed is. But anyway, he gave me my sandwiches for free. He's the first extremist I've met yet though,
but what a man. I like extremists though, they are usually the sweetest and most generous men, until you start to kill their family members, then they pick up the guns. That's the real difference between an extremist and a moderate - moderates just kind of mumble and look sad. No, I suppose that's a silly thing to say.
On the other side of the spectrum, the reason I ended up talking to Omar the extremist was because I had gotten stuck talking to Stephen, the American extremist. I started to talk to him, and eventually found out he was here on a misson trip, which is illegal. He's sort of a commando for Jesus- he could be deported for what he's done, apparently, distributing Christian literature. He's also technically a member of the US military. When I asked him about his work, he was very vague and secretive, but as he started to open up he started to tell me about his way of doing things with his partner, and how they have disagreements. Eventually he started to describe his problem solving techniques with metaphor 'See, if you are attacking 100 men with certain weapons, and they don't
have a tank, it's a completely different scenario if they have a tank. I like to imagine the possibility that they have a tank -just in case.'
His thoughts were a bit disjointed and I didn't see what that had to do with converting Moroccans, but I suppose it takes all kinds. Wow, he really wouldn't stop talking. Okay, can't write much more now, have to be off, but that's the highlights of my first 2 days in Morocco.
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anonymous
non-member comment
Morocco is very nice! You're so lucky. God, you don't know how shameful I am. An infidel knows how to pray and I don't. - Janet Ghazizadeh