Finally, we’re settling into a busy but predictable routine in the school – arrive, eat, study, drink tea, have class, eat, have class, go home. And yet, I can say with all assurance and conviction, it is so much fun! It’s infinitely better than sitting in my house when there’s no class and watching YouTube all day (if you’re going to do that after reading this, I highly recommend a book. Or a walk. Or, well, almost anything else) and trying to convince my friends that “the rest is doing me good; I’m really enjoying myself”. And the thing that makes this so good and that so not, at least for me, is being surrounded by friends. And the best bit? Almost every one of them I have known for about 72 hours.
I suppose the main reason we make friends so quickly in this kind of circumstance is that we have no choice but to accept the people around us. Think about it – a friend is someone we know and accept despite all of their flaws. At quarters this close, we quickly know quite a bit about them, and see a lot of their flaws! Yet we decide to stick with them, because we’ve come to value them. Weird. I guess that’s partly what makes an enjoyable life – not just being passive about the people around us, but choosing to value them. In my experience, the best and most satisfied people are the ones that let themselves love and be loved by the people in their lives.
Anyway, emerging from the deeply philosophical, existential, mushy exploration of Friendship and Successful Living, a word about speaking Arabic is maybe in order. So, probably the best bit of today for me (except Moroccan Food Club (calm down, I’ll come back to this)), was going to the corner shop on the way home. Yes, really. Let me explain. So most of the time, in a foreign country, especially a non-Western country (that’s very Imperialist of me. I apologise.), you are often looked at by the locals as being, well, very different. Often as being suspiciously different. Between the locals and us often exists a barrier that is erected by difference in culture or beliefs or lifestyle or fortune. And yes, language is part of breaking that down. But most of the time, we will try to speak Arabic to the Moroccans, and so ingrained is their impression of ‘Westerners’ that they will regularly reply in French. And they’re stubborn about it. And yet today, in the little corner shop on Michliefen Street, I experienced the most, what’s the word, I suppose mature Moroccans I’ve met yet. We were squeezing through the tightly-packed shelves (and when I say ‘tightly’…) in this tiny little shop, and were getting in everybody’s way. Naturally, we apologised. And instead of a stony silence that was heavy with the word “Westerners”, these lovely people replied “sorry” and “thank you”, and smiled, and didn’t treat us differently but both ignored us and welcomed us as part of Business As Usual. And that was the freest I’ve felt just out in the city since we arrived. That feels weird, and almost wrong, to say in a culture of pursuing freedom and attaining “equality”. Yet for the first time, as a white Western foreigner, today in a little corner shop, I finally felt like an equal.
So anyway, Morocco is amazing. And the whole flat is buzzing with the excitement of three of our new home going on a weekend trip to the Sahara on Friday! Tasting the high life!
“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page” -Saint Augustine (I believe)
Maa al Salaama!
Hannah
I am a final year BA International Relations student at Sussex University, and I'm also studying the Arabic Language Elective Pathway. Alongside this, I am acting as a Student Language Ambassador, in hopes of convincing the world that a language is a beautiful thing :)
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