No More Wahm

Only one thing is forbidden, I was told when I turned in my check back in March: you are stictly forbidden from riding a moterbike. Of course today, my first full day in Morocco, I arrived to class by moped.

Today's Arabic lesson ended up being more about life than about dialectical Arabic. Wahm, is a form of imagination, but insinuates that one builds upon premises that don't exist. Hence, wahm loves judgemental stances. When you build an incorrect or paranoid assumption and then make someone's fault (which everyone is bound to have) support your false assumption, you take yourself away from reality. The correct response is to investigate, or better yet -- assume the best. Perhaps this will be the biggest lesson that Morocco has to teach me.

At the French market, I had a harrowing episode of bargining gone horribly wrong. The shopkeeper became very angry and menacing, and no amount of French could get me out of it very easily. Hopefully I'll get the hang of shopping; for now, I want to avoid it completely.

This evening we went to the cafe and I ordered my first qahwa bil-halib. (Jittery Joe's, I've left you for another coffee)

After coffee, we walked to the medina, which is the original part of a Moroccan city. The sun was low in the sky, only intesifying the red of the medina's clay walls.

Once in the medina, we walked another 10 minutes to the souks and an intense, open plaza called the Jaamelfna. Heady food smells, snake charmers, monkeys, ghanouan music surrounded us on all sides. We twisted through the thick crowds to head to Cafe France, which has a panoramic terrace with a gorgeous view of the sprawling market as dusk set in. We waited until the evening adan was called, when the speakers announced the call for evening prayer and men walked briskly towards the mosque. I felt so privledged to be there, and especially so for Sindney, whose father was born in Morocco.

Posted 09:39 PM (GMT)