anti jameel

I think some of my new Arabic vocab is starting to stick. I can recognize more words on TV and I can pick out a few in my family’s conversation. I have a strange mélange of vocab though, as some words I know only in darija or fusHa and not French.

Today’s not-so-fun academic exercise included waiting around for 40 minutes for a meeting with Abdelhay to chat about the upcoming ISP. I’m thinking I want to do something with the perception of history in Morocco and how it affects archaeological sites and materials.

I finally got home and began to get hamman equipment together because Jesse and I were going to go. When Hajja got home she told me that our hammam is closed to women after 6:30pm, when it’s the men’s turn to use it. Dammy. Thankfully the hamman Jesse goes to is open to women only and all the time. Jesse’s hammam is larger than ours and cleaner, however, there were considerably more people and it was exponentially louder, especially with the addition of screaming soap-covered children.

After I got home there was teatime, where I was literally cornered (as usual) and couldn’t leave until everyone had finished their tea and biscuits. I hurried to meet Allison for dinner at her house, although the wait was fine because her mother had forgotten twice that I was coming. Therefore dinner was spaghetti and involved CHEESE.

The best part was getting to meet another Moroccan family and seeing another house. Allison’s sisters are 3, 5, and 7 years old, and all the most adorable little girls ever. OK maybe with the exception of Isabella, but I guess I’m a bit biased. Malek, who’s 3, was teaching me words out of her school book in the manner of 3-year olds, but they weren’t the words written on the page. I know because I could read it. We played some games with family photos that I didn’t quite understand because the rules were created by Malek.

It was nice to be speaking English at home, a home anyway, even if it wasn’t mine. It gets kind of trying here at my house having to listen to all the conversation but not know what any of it means because it’s all in darija. I mean, I can usually get the gist of it if I pay attention because it’s usually based on what’s the TV at the time or about the food. Except that time they were talking about some kind of traffic accident and made the spoons roads and the knife a bus, etc. Anyway, Allison and I got to speak English and have our own conversational privacy where were were on the understanding side of the conversation wall instead of being the loners on the outside.

Walking back home at 11pm through the medina was an adventure, to put it mildly. All the shops were closed up, so the street was bare except for the odd pile of trash here and there and the roving bands of young men. Since I was a single female, and obviously foreign, of course I got “bonjour”ed and “bonsoir”ed and “salut”ed and “ooo la la”ed. My personal favorite was “anti jameel” which is in fact Arabic for “you’re beautiful” except the adjective was the wrong gender. Does that signify anything or were they just being lazy about adding the “a” to the end that would make it grammatically correct? I was tempted to holler back “ana a’rif”, which means “I know”, but responding to catcalls (hahaha because there are cats everywhere in the street) is a bad idea. I just had to hold my smirk in until the posse had passed.

The worst part about having to walk to or from home is the fact that I must walk down the veggie street. I forget the real name of the thoroughfare, but it’s a market street for fruits and veggies and meat and chicken and essentially any food item a Moroccan cook would want. During the day you have to dodge flying crates of produce, tiny trucks, pieces of animals on hooks, bikes, motorbikes, children with backpacks, mothers with children with backpacks, puddles, piles of goo, sewers, garbage and cats. At night you only have to worry about the last five and the roving bands of young men. The only good thing about walking down the veggie street at night is the absence of chickens. Chickens smell vile. The award for Most Vile Moroccan Smell is a toss-up between camel fart and chicken coop.

I went to an oriental dance class last night with a few friends. It was a good workout, if you consider that climbing a flight of stairs may be the only physical activity I have all day. It was a belly dancing class. American hips can’t move like that, period. When I got home (wet to the knees because of the accursed Ankle Splashers) I discovered my sister Soukaina is ridiculously good at oriental dance.