Пересказ: What Morocco Taught Me About Coming Home

What Morocco Taught Me About Coming Home

Источник: https://barbaraoneal.substack.com/p/what-morocco-taught-me-about-coming

One of the collages I made. Photo by Tammi Salas King tides today, blustery and wild, the perfect Oregon coast winter day. I’m wearing my gray sweater, which smells strongly of the spices I brought home—powdered ginger and ras el hanout, which the spice vendor ground in front of us. I also have a small bottle of sandalwood oil because it reminded me of a character in the book I just finished.

The jet lag has been extreme this time, likely because it was a fast trip back and forth across eight time zones, and I had only just finished the last of my edits the day before I left. Slowly, the pieces of myself that have been scattered across that path are returning. Some have come back from that stop at the Zurich airport where I hoped to see a little something of the scenery but it was a rainy day.

This Place of Wonder is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I sweep back a few molecules from the air over Casablanca, a city spread out between the desert and the sea. My feet remember the trip down a scree-filled slope in the Atlas mountains, where I saw a hiker with a group who was vowing never to listen to her boyfriend ever again as she limped along on her tired feet. I bought a rug there from a Berber who was training his son to sell rugs, too. The boy tempted me with geodes, but I wanted the rug for my gray dark kitchen, and I loved buying it in the mountains. We ate in a village there, too, and bought coffee from a roadside truck

.

I’m not sure I’ll gather all the bits of me from the Medina, because maybe I want to leave them there with the cats and the women making jewelry and the bookseller and the teenagers offering me weed (or maybe looking for weed?).

I traveled with a small group of women who are all creative in one way or another, all of us sober for a long time or a maybe only a couple of years. I don’t talk about that much here—it’s not what you come for—but it’s a deeply positive force in my life. It was great to travel with other people who also don’t drink. It’s all fine and well to be on a trip with drinkers—and lots of people manage it just fine—but honestly after the second round I’m probably heading for bed. It’s especially nice to be in a country that doesn’t drink, where the norm is not whiskey but mint tea.

Going into the trip, I’d been deeply immersed in studying the scripts used in Hindi, Urdu, Persian and some Arabic. The flow of those alphabets captured my attention, and there’s a lovely little twist between Hindi and Urdu that wove itself into A Thousand Painted Hours (the title of the new book in case I haven’t said), one I’ll talk about later.

I talked about this journey with the group when I discovered that Morocco has two languages and scripts, too, which I didn’t realize. One is Arabic, of course, but a particular form of Arabic called Darija (Moroccan Arabic). The other one is commonly known as Berber, or Tamazight, written in its own geometric Tifinagh script. Maybe because I love words, the idea of so many different scripts fascinates me, and I was on the search for both forms of newspapers.

We visited a rather lovely art gallery, and one of the women found me. “I think you might love this piece,” she said, and took me back to a large calligraphy piece made of Persian and Arabic script without actual word meaning, a practice I learned is called “hurufiyya.” It was quite striking, but it was the kind of gallery I didn’t want to ask the price.

And yet, the piece was on my mind every day. I finally decided it couldn’t hurt to go back and have a discussion. Moroccans like to bargain and I’m getting better but not that great. Still.

I went back. It was more than I wanted to pay, even if it would always remind me of this particular season in my life. He bargained. I bargained in return. We ended up somewhere in the middle.

I floated out of there. My friends and I found tea, and I sat in quiet jubilation.

After laughing and talking and collaging every day, it was two days of flying to get back home with my spices and mint tea. The rug and the painting will follow soon. My mind is rested, filled with new images. I’m quite taken by the country, and am quite certain I will return. It is a very friendly place, and full of both ancient and modern ideas I want to explore more deeply. All in good time.

Now I’m in the liminal space between books. The book I wrote this year is finished, and I have a concept and a character for the next book (unrelated to Morocco, in case you’re wondering) but I’m not ready to start it. In a week, I have to have that pesky little surgery on my thumb, so forgive me if my replies and notes are short.

Have you been to Morocco? What stuck with you? If you haven’t, are you intrigued?

Leave a comment

This Place of Wonder is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, a subscriber.

Share