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Tag Archives: arabic

The kindness of a stranger

05 Sunday Mar 2017

Posted by seejanesblog in Morocco, Observations

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addicted, arabic, happy, homeless, kindness, kindness of strangers, life, man, marrakech, Morocco, stranger, thanks, travel, vagabond

In Marrakech, Morocco, I walked to the car wearing a back pack and realized I needed to pay the parking attendant, so unzipped the pack to remove the wallet. Unzipping the wallet, I grabbed some change, handed it to my business partner so he could pay the attendant, and tossed the wallet back into the backpack. As I continued walking to the car, a man stopped me. He is a man I have seen many times; a vagabond, a man addicted to drugs, someone I considered unseemly, dirty, even shifty and untrustworthy.

I backed away, giving the signal that I wasn’t interested in anything he had to say. Stop. No. Not interested. He pointed at me and made a zipping motion over and over. Thinking he wanted money from my zippered wallet, I shook my head vigorously back and forth. He persisted. I became more emphatic and said, ‘La!’, the Arabic word for no. This went on for a bit as I made my way toward the car.

My business partner, Mokhtar, arrived, talked with the man for a few moments, and said to me, “Your back back is unzipped.” My back pack is unzipped? Oh! My back pack is unzipped!

This man was simply telling me with his zipping motion that my back pack was unzipped. I was stunned. Embarrassed. Ashamed. I had thought the worst.

With body language and broken Arabic I did my best to thank him. “Shukran besef! Shukran besef!” I repeated. Thank you, very much. Thank you, very much. He responded with a huge smile and a hand over his heart, a common sign in Morocco to symbolize thanks and appreciation. He walked me to the car, opened the door while I got in, then gently closed it behind me, waving and smiling as we drove away, hand over his heart.

Stunned, Mokhtar and I stared at each other, shocked at what had just happened. Shocked. And also thankful for the kindness of a stranger, someone from whom we least expected it.

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A house in Marrakech

09 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by seejanesblog in Morocco house, Observations

≈ 4 Comments

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A House in Fez, arabic, imperial cities, joy, marrakech, medieval walled city, medina, Morocco, mysterious, neighborhood in marrakech, old medina, paul bowles, pure joy, riad, Riad Zany, Suzanna Clarke, traditional neighborhood, travel

I’m reading ‘A House in Fes: Building a Life in the Ancient Heart of Morocco’ by Suzanna Clarke. It’s not the first time I’ve read this book and it won’t be the last. Since I read most books on an iPad / Kindle, I can see which passages impressed me the first time by the highlights placed in yellow.  This time around I’ve added even more since I can relate more fully to Suzanna’s experiences. In fact, it may serve better to highlight the parts to which I don’t relate!

While vacationing in Morocco, Suzanna and her husband were inspired to purchase a home in Fes, one of the medieval walled cities that is one of Morocco’s famed ‘Imperial Cities.’ But the Clarke’s didn’t just buy any old house. They bought a dilapidated, centuries-old house with no plumbing, no electricity, and myriad other issues with which to contend! Their goal was to restore it using only traditional craftsmen and handmade materials. It’s a great story chronicling the restoration of the house, but it also offers an insight into Moroccan customs and lore, as well as a window into the lives of its people and the relationships Suzanna forges. In the end, the house, Riad Zany in Fes, is restored to probably even more than its former glory and the writer (and most likely Sandy, her husband) have ended up restoring themselves to the very core of their beings! I enjoyed the book the first time around but I’m enjoying it even more now that I have my own perspective on Morocco and home-ownership there.

The writer Paul Bowles called Morocco a place where travelers ‘expect mystery, and they find it.’ He also said, ‘Africa is a big place and will offer its own suggestions.’ There’s no better way to find these truths out than to own a house or to renovate one, like Suzanna Clarke did.

A few of the highlighted passages that strike a chord with me:

“Maybe it was a fit of madness, but on just our second visit to the old Moroccan capital of Fes, my husband and I decided to buy a house there – – as one does in a foreign country where you can’t speak the language and have virtually nothing in common with the locals.” (I strongly disagree with the last phrase. Although I barely speak the language, I find I have a lot more in common with the locals than not!)

“Nevertheless, [we] responded to Morocco in a way we had to no other country. We found it as multi-layered and intriguing as the patterns in the tile work adorning the buildings, each of which has its own hidden meaning. Morocco has the mystique of a land from the Old Testament yet appears to be coping comfortably with modernization… Outside mosques, running shoes are lined up next to pointy-toed babouches. In the souks, women wearing long robes and headscarves escort daughters with beautifully cut hair and high heels. You can eat at a street stall, in a Parisian-style cafe, or next to a tinkling fountain in an ornate courtyard. You can find yourself in the midst of a crazy, honking traffic jam, or dodging donkeys in cobbled alleyways, or riding a camel in the solitude of the Sahara.”

“There were obvious drawbacks, like the nuttiness of buying a house on the other side of the planet, a leg-cramping, blood clot-inducing, [12-hour journey] away. And just when would we actually get to spend time there? Our jobs consumed our lives… When exactly would we fit in a commitment to a property in another country?”

The writer Paul Bowles also said this: “Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well.  Yet everything happens only a certain number times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty… And yet it all seems limitless.”

It’s because of this sentiment, because of the fact that I don’t know when I will die, and because now Morocco is so deeply a part of my being, that I decided to do the nutty thing of buying a house on another continent in a country where I barely speak the language! And it’s because I cannot conceive of my life without this beautiful, vibrant, and mysterious place!

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A word on literacy

26 Saturday Mar 2016

Posted by seejanesblog in Morocco, Observations

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

arabic, cooking classes, cyrano de bergerac, Dar Basyma, Education, French, google translate, illiterate, learning languages, literacy, marrakech, Morocco, reading, recipes, riad, roxanne, stever martin, texting, texts, translator, writing

I take for granted that people know how to read and write. But in Morocco that’s not always the case.

One day I was home alone with our housekeeper / cook at Dar Basyma. I was without the aid of my constant interpreter / business partner and was excited about this chance to get to know her better. I pulled up the Google Translate iPhone app, typed my message and showed it to her in French. She shook her head no. Misunderstanding, I typed it in Arabic instead. Again, she shook her head. The look on her face jarred me to the realization that she cannot read. Not at all. Eventually I spoke into the app and it voice-translated, but not in Darija (Moroccan Arabic) so it was cumbersome and hard to understand. So we sat awkwardly in silence and smiled until Mokhtar came back and was able to help us “chat.”

Since then I’ve learned that guests have left her notes that she cannot read. And we’ve had some mishaps with household cleaning products being used for the wrong things, lotions put in the conditioner containers (because they’re both white), and using the wrong settings on the washing machine. And she has no ability to read texts or to proofread her own spoken texts to others.

I know this is more frustrating for her than it is for the rest of us. Our house man works well with her. They’re close friends and spend much of their time laughing and huddling together over their phones as he has become a sort of Cyrano de Bergerac, penning her texts to family members, suitors, and friends; like Steve Martin in ‘Roxanne.’ It’s sweet and it’s funny, but the bottom line is that it’s mostly sad that she can’t do this work herself.

As she tells it she was a girl who liked only to have fun (I believe it, as she’s always laughing and joking). She consistently ran away from school and finally just quit. School isn’t required and for sure not required for girls so there was no motivation for her to stay at the time. Now she regrets it. And as she’s in her mid- to late-30’s, so feels it’s too late for her now.

Since she teaches the cooking classes at Dar Basyma, I’m working to put together her recipes since she obviously has nothing written down! She’s an excellent cook and she communicates well without speaking fluent English or writing, but we have no record yet of any of her myriad dishes she prepares at Dar Basyma. It’s a big job that I will pursue on my next visit.

Her solution for our inability to speak to one another is for me to learn Arabic. As though that’s an easy (or quick) task! Since she speaks French and Arabic, to her that seems an easy solution. I’m trying…

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The recent past

  • Living above my means
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  • The kindness of a stranger
  • Walk gently on this earth
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  • And suddenly it hits you…
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My traveling past in Flickr photos

...dunkler Himmel über StykkishólmurPapučica / Slipper flower (Calceolaria herbeohybrida)Dreamlike PathASUNDERGambrelWinter over the Grand Union Canal …"The Unknown From The Seine"Free  Feature • Read the 'Behind the scene' storyMare d'inverno
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