“Smahali, wesh katarf ila kayn si dar f la-kra?”
Excuse me, do you know
of a house for rent?
I had the phrase perfected. I already had mumbled it to
every corner store owner in Errachidia that week, and now, in my desperation,
was beginning to throw it toward anyone who dared give me a second glance or
seemed unoccupied at the moment: the group of men chatting in front of the
hanut; the young man watching his grandfather smash a brick into a oblivion
with an aging hammer; the woman carrying her olive oil and fresh laundry; and
the children in the middle of a war in which a mushy, dirty sphere was the sole
object of their attention.
I stood patiently for a moment behind the customer making
small talk with a woman and her husband – the owners of this pressing shop. I
hadn’t a moment to waste. Unaware of the rudeness of my action, the phrase cut
the man short, and suddenly everyone within earshot saluted to attention.
Who is this foreigner?
Why is he here? Should I respond in French or Arabic? Darija is for us.
The couple sent hesitant glances back and forth, and the man
set his iron aside. The steaming jellaba on the ironing board would have to
wait.
“I’m sorry, sir, there’s nothing around here,” he eventually
murmured, seemingly exasperated by his consideration.
Despite this firm statement, I saw in his eyes that he
hadn’t yet consulted his full mental rolodex, so I lingered. I glanced sideways
to see the customer ushering me out with his intense glare.
“Actually, there’s a man who smokes cigarettes all day two
corners up from here. His name is Brambabil.” The silence was broken with the
owner’s statement. With my mind racing to understand the desert Darija I had
been abruptly thrown into just days before, my face clearly showed resignation
that I could not possibly remember that name after picking my way across broken
cement tiles for two blocks as the sun lashed my skin outside – apparently
unconstrained by any atmospheric barrier my body had become accustomed to in
the U.S.
A moment later I was in heat holding on to the tiny square
of paper with too many Arabic Bs scribbled on its surface. After a week of
searching, my golden ticket had just been handed to me by the kind shop owner.
Two blocks later: a leathery man on a broken lawn chair. An
ashtray. “Brambabil!”
He looked around as if maybe I were talking to someone
sitting beside him he had noticed, and upon verifying that he was indeed alone,
as he had probably been all morning, he pointed down a narrow alley and garbled
something about a blue Mercedes whose tail light I could see behind a tangle of
flowers fifty yards down the curving passageway. A quick thanks, and I scurried
off.
Just like Charlie, I handed my ticket the man oddly sitting
alone in the back seat of his once luxurious means of transportation. I
understood that he could not read the name written on my paper and referred me
to his daughter unnoticed and silhouetted in the doorway of his home. Her
French was flawless as far as I could tell, but it did little to aid me in my
search. The motion of her hand alerted me that I must proceed two doors to my
left.
Finally, my knock on Brambabil’s door pierced the hot air of
the alley.
“Shkun!?,” I heard from within.
No one you know.
My unsatisfying answer led to an inquisitive crack in the
door and reassurance that I had again missed my target. However, before I had a
chance to step off the tiled stoop back onto the dirt path, the door opened
further, and the woman within identified herself as Brambabil’s wife but stated
that he was not home. Two young boys inquisitively peered at me through from
behind the woman’s dress.
After explaining my role as a Peace Corps volunteer at the
local youth center, I saw two small coins fall into the hand of one of the
boys’, and he took off toward the main street. By the time he returned with the
coins still in his hand a few minutes later, a group of small children had
begun to congregate around my feet – each one tugging on my clothes and
inquiring incomprehensibly. The woman emerged from the house with a yellow
chair that somehow made its way from a post-war American kitchen to this
scorched corner of the Sahara. I was ordered
to sit, and a silver tray of hot tea and cookies was thrust onto my lap.
As she made her way to try her luck at contacting her
husband, the children swarmed me. Suddenly I was aware of the prying eyes laid upon
me from every house lining the alley. It was probably not every day that an
American sat on a house chair in the middle of the road drinking tea and giving
cookies to ravenous children. Little girls giggled as they snapped cell phone
pictures of me, and two little boys shouted names of every vegetable they could
think of to see if I know them and eat them. Twenty minutes or more passed
before the woman – mother, aunt, neighbor of the raucous crowd – returned to
pull children from me and refill my glass of tea. She assured me to wait just a
while longer.
Moments later, a small, white hatchback rattled across the
rocks and broken tile and came to a stop directly in between my comical resting
place and the threshold of the home.
“Brambabil?”
He warily shook my hand and asked what I was doing here,
pretending to be unaware of the reason he was summoned. He gestured toward the
next door down the street and frowned. If only someone weren’t renting the
house, it would be mine.
Why did you come just
to tell me no?
“Please come inside. Marhaba,” he said.
Wonderful, there must
be another option he is planning to show me.
More tea was poured along with a shockingly orange beverage
which tasted unsurprisingly like the thin plastic bottle within which it had
been stored. His children climbed on us as he pulled an old laptop from a faded
side bag. The first picture to display was just a mistake in my mind. A group
of ten Moroccans singing at a festival in the desert had nothing to do with my
episode of House Hunters International,
right? Right. The pictures and stories went on until I had consumed a half liter
of the electric liquid. I then politely listened to his quick attempt to
convert me to Islam before pointing to the clock and announcing that I must be
on my way, declining the family’s invitation for lunch. Another day.
I brushed the crumbed left by the children onto the bright
red carpet and kissed the kids twice on their cheeks. I hopped into Bramabil’s
car, certainly not refusing a free ride back to my host family’s house. We
exchanged phone numbers on the way and passed by his shop in order for me to
see where I could find him most days.
A friendly handshake, and I stepped back into the sun. Still
homeless, but suddenly very at home.
