First Day of Fasting

The first day of Ramadan technically started Saturday night at the dinner call to prayer around 9:30 p.m., but the crowds in the streets and people’s attitudes all day on Saturday made it clear that the following day would not be a normal Sunday. Upon entering the grocery store in Errachidia, you would have thought you were in Florida before a category 5 hurricane was set to move through. Everyone was sipping water and snacking on doughnuts and milawi (Moroccan fried bread) in the streets. For the next month, any consumption of food or beverages during the day – approximately 3:30 a.m. until 7:30 p.m. would be forbidden for Muslims in public.

It was a calm evening in general, and I had decided to spend it at my dar chebab chatting with the assistant director, since all the kids were out enjoying the last evening before fasting began. Suddenly, a group of about 100 people started trickling into the dar chebab to have a party for group of teenage runners at a local association – an event my assistant director seemed to be surprised about but still allowed to take place, even though he would have to stay quite late and clearly did not want to. It’s a little hard to say no here. I happened to have met two of the guys working with a running association at a café before, so they invited me into their awards ceremony. I agreed, figuring that it was a situation I could escape from easily if need be, since I was on my home turf at the dar chebab. The MC spoke mostly in standard Arabic, so I was a little lost, but the pain didn’t last too long, before one of the guys invited me to have dinner at his house with him, his friends, and four Spanish volunteers on a two-week trip to Morocco. It was 8:00 p.m., and I had no idea when dinner would be, since the next day fasting would begin, but I agreed again, hoping that I could escape if there were too much of a delay.

I ended up being sardined into a huge SUV, making a pit stop at the grocery store again to endure the painfully long lines and slow cashiers, and then arriving at one of the guys’ house to have tea and snacks and to learn how to play a type of drum that I hope to never have to play again. By 11:00 p.m. we made it to the other friend’s house to have dinner, but dinner didn’t come. By 1:45 a.m., the streets were getting quiet, and I was contemplating just going home and eating something before the sunrise prayer sounded around 3:30 a.m. signaling the end of eating, but the conversations were good, and there were cute, little, entertaining kids running around. I figured I should keep practicing Darija, so I stuck it out, and two tajines were displayed for our consumption just before 2:00 a.m. I ate the bread and salad and avoided the meaty, fatty tajines, knowing that I had leftover pasta at home. I scurried home through the deserted streets around 2:30, chugged three liters of water, and fell into bed, exhausted and ready to sweat my way through the night.

I had enough energy to get out of bed around 10:30 a.m., but I didn’t know what to do with my time, since I usually spend quite a bit of my day cooking my meals. There is very little pre-cooked food available in Morocco other than bread and snacks, so any decent meal must be made completely from scratch. I already understood within the first few hours of Ramadan why people say they have so much free time to do other hobbies. The problem is that I already felt thirsty and tired when I woke up! By 1:00, I knew I had to leave the house to avoid the temptation of eating, so I walked lethargically through the once more deserted streets to the dar chebab. Luckily, it was a mere 106 degrees. I figured I sweated out at least two of the three liters I had chugged the night before during the 30 minute walk.

I spent the afternoon chatting idly with the assistant director again. After a long search, we found batteries for the remote control for the aging air conditioning unit in the office at the youth center, and got it to blow air that was at least cooler than the outside temperature. One of the guys who usually comes to my English and Spanish classes showed up, so we all ended up chatting for about four hours, and then I headed to my Errachidia host family’s house, as I had told them the day before that I’d join them to break fast with them for the first day of Ramadan. There was still about an hour and a half before the sunset when I arrived, so I went on a quest for bread with my host brother, but it seemed like the bakers hadn’t yet quite gotten their Ramadan rhythm down pat, so most hanuts were sold out of bread or only had the few pieces left that everyone had clearly already picked through.

I had never been so happy to hear the call to prayer go off, and I promptly chugged nearly two liters of water. What followed was a little smorgasbord of sweet and savory delights: fried bread, white bread, jam, olive oil, moist dates, crushed dates, zameta or salew (a delicious peanut, flour, and oil combination), sweet scalding hot tea, fresh peach juice made from the kilo of dates I brought as a gift (even in Morocco one should never go empty handed, although I don’t think any family would be offended if I didn’t bring anything), and harira (a tomato based soup with chickpeas, pasta, rice, and lima beans). There wasn’t too much talking before the family retired to rest, and I went on my way home to prepare dinner and drink more water.

I probably never in my life had gone 17 hours without drinking water, especially in weather over 100 degrees. Many of you in the United States are probably wondering why I would be crazy enough to do such a thing. Perhaps most surprisingly though, many Moroccans ask me why I’m fasting and tell me that I shouldn’t do it since I’m not Muslim. However, even after doing it for only one day, I’m glad that I made the choice. Those 17 hours made me hope that I never again take water for granted or disregard someone who is in need of the basic necessities in life – food and water – which is the main premise of fasting at Ramadan. I don’t expect to get any spiritual return for my efforts, but I certainly feel that my mind and body will be stronger after completing this challenge. Also, despite the few Moroccans who have scoffed at my desire to partake in the country’s most significant cultural and religious period, most Moroccans are tremendously surprised and happy when they ask me, “nta syyam?” and I respond “daori.” “Are you fasting?” – “Of course.” Also, everyone fasts – at least in public. I won’t speculate as to what happens when people are alone, but during the day, the city is deserted. Day becomes night, and night becomes day. I have the slight impression that just by going out during the day I have been judged by passersby that imagine I am not fasting. I do have to say though that people have never been nicer to me than they have been in Errachidia in the days immediately before Ramadan. I left for a two week training in Marrakech and was nervous that people would forget about me, but I came back feeling extremely welcomed. I thoroughly believe that joining them for fasting has and will continue to strengthen my bond with my community, which is, after all, what I’m here to do.  

PS - I promise I'm not exaggerating that troupes of drummers and kids with pots and pans run around the streets at 2:00 a.m. to wake everyone up, so they can eat their last meal before the sunrise call to prayer!  

Covered in Cookies

“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.