Day 5: One Last Look
April 15th, 2002
Writer’s note: this entry is directly from my journal. I was unable to reproduce the coffee rings and smears of dust using current HTML tags, but the reader should appreciate not having to decipher my handwriting.
My last cafe au lait above Djemaa el Fna. I actually heard one of the shaman doctors down below use the phrase ‘Allah-Ka-Zaam!’ which I didn’t realize was still in use. But I know what the real magic words are: Djemaa el Fna. Even at 8 in the morning when it really just looks like an empty parking lot – just a letter writer or two under their umbrellas, one determined snake charmer (or maybe he’s just still here from the night before), a drummer, a boy sitting on his bike in the middle of the Assembly of Nothing…
I really had meant to get up early. I had even set my alarm and was awakened by an arguing couple well before sun-up. My unfinished dreams called me back to sleep and now I feel robbed of my morning walk around the souq. But now I’m sharing the rooftop sun with a half domesticated tabby and I’m trying to pick out the window for the studio apartment I’ll surely return to. I will rent it by the week, and write my book and fall asleep and wake to the sounds of Djemaa. Sure, it’d be about a week before I systematically strangled every snake charmer in earshot, but for a while I would be grand…
Now it’s mid afternoon – already! My walk this morning felt like I was saying goodbye to an old neighborhood. I didn’t even get lost. How can I be nostalgic for yesterday? Everywhere I look I see a clock ticking, though I would swear there were none in this square. My time is running away like henna-water down the drain.
Henna tattoos
Speaking of henna, I finally had my hands done – twin vines of arabesques and leaves crawl across the back of my hand and loop around my finders in tendrils of dark oranges. I’d wanted to get it done from the start, but my nightly trips to the hammas would have ruined it, so I saved it as a going-away gift to myself. I walked around the square, being hailed and beckoned by a dozen different woman offering to show me small photo albums of their work. They seem to operate in groups of two or three, all sitting on the same small plastic blue stools like campers around an invisible fire.
I finally chose three ladies on the edge in the shade of the orange juice carts. One elderly woman did the initial pitch, a fully veiled woman displayed their album, and a young worldly-looking girl did the bargaining. Once I had pointed out my design and heard the pros, cons, and prices of the three different types of henna (orange, brown, and black), and was squared away on my own blue seat, the young girl turned her attention to a couple behind me. She talked to them in fast Italian for a few minutes, translating to Arabic for the other two, and then switched to shout in German at a passing family.
Amazed, I interrupted to ask her how many languages she spoke.
“All of them,” she said, sounding bored.
“No, really? How many?” I pressed. “Do you speak Japanese?”
“Yes, of course. Look at all these air-conditioned buses.”
“Alright, what about Russian?”
“Dah.”
“Hindi?”
“Ok, Hindi I’m not fluent.”
“But you speak some Hindi?”
“Yes, I speak some Hindi, I speak Spanish, German, Arabic – like they do here, like they do in Egypt, like the Saudis. I speak Turkish. I speak Swedish. Ok?”
Henna handiwork
“Ok” I said, knowing she was brushing me off and totally in awe anyway. I had a billion questions – could she read all those languages (could she read anything?). How had she learned? Was it a common skill or did she have some natural talent? Why was she working on the street? But I was just another tourist in her life full of overly-inquisitive tourists. So I hushed up and enjoyed squatting in the middle of things.
By the time she was done, the sun had moved passed the orange carts and was directly in my eyes. The veiled woman said something to the polyglot who turned her bored-teenage gaze back to me. “She says you have very pretty eyes. She says blue is very good and she would like blue eyes.” I looked at the dark brown eyes staring out from between two bands of black. I had no idea what she looked like, except for her eyes. You’re supposed to be able to tell a lot from someone’s eyes, but hers, adrift and without context, on a black field of cotton, told me nothing…
One last look
And now I’m having my last meal. I don’t mean to get so melodramatic, really, but I feel like I’ve come much further in the last three days than just the miles from Casablanca. There’s no way to know a place as rich as this in just a long weekend, maybe not even in a long lifetime. This trip was like any good holiday romance, knowing it won’t last makes it that much sweeter.
I wish I could stay till dusk and watch the evening incarnation of the plaza – the sudden appearance of steaming food stalls with soup and meat and veggies piled high amidst dining foreigners and locals, the white lights and noisy generators, the soft dusk and quiet beyond. I want to linger a few more minutes, but already I’m running late and will have to catch a cab. It seems fitting though. I arrived too late, and now I am leaving much too soon.
