Do you remember that girl - woman, I guess - a couple years ago who was on her way to Africa, and before the plane took off she tweeted something like, “Going to Africa, hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding, I’m white!” She was in PR, I think, and her tweet went viral while she was in midair. Before the plane touched down her career, and probably more than that, had been completely dismantled. I guess that’s putting her in the passive role. Maybe it’s better to say that before her plane touched down, with that one small tweet and one massive display of ignorance she had set a torch to her career and god knows what else.
What was fascinating about that, to me, anyway, (because I was following along while her plane was charging over the Atlantic) was that we all knew something she didn’t know. Like catching someone with their zipper down, but worse. There was a hunger in waiting for her to land, so she could see what she had done.
(that's a soccer field, by the way.)
There’s something about social media that’s akin to watching a tightrope walker. The more followers they have, the shinier their pictures, the higher the rope and therefore the farther to fall. And the only reason we watch tightrope walkers is the possibility that they might fall.
And it’s this fear that has kept me off social media - with the exception of a toe-dip in Facebook’s beta years. The idea that I, too, might say something completely, insanely fucked up. Something I don’t really mean but thought was funny for a second. That, and, during the beta toe-dip, I spent most of time trolling other people’s amazing life posts which in turn made me feel worse about my own.
So it’s with great care, sensitivity, and awareness of my own ignorance that I say:
The call to prayer is loud as fuck. It’s more like a siren. It’s done over loud speakers, beamed out to the entire village, and the amplification distorts the voice in ways that, to the untrained ear, can be a bit unnerving. Before we got to Morocco it was one of the things I was most interested in hearing. I’d never traveled to a Muslim country before and I imagined it being a gentle, melodic beckoning. It does not beckon. It demands. But I suppose that, when the goal is to pray 5 times a day, a little amplification helps. If it were just whispered it would be easier to disregard, to pretend to forget. Now that we’ve been here a bit it’s become a comforting sound, it gives a rhythm to the day. I don’t pray but it gives me a pause. I notice things more. Where are all those people walking to? The mosque. Why are there shoes outside that door? They’re praying. What’s this faucet doing on the floor of this gas station? It’s to wash your feet. Every time Wilder hears the call his eyebrows go up and his lips purse. “They’re praying!” he says, in an excited, reverent whisper.
Morocco is 99% Muslim. I, on the other hand, am 99% agnostic, 1% optimistic. But there is something beautiful about being immersed in a culture that is so devoted to their beliefs that it seeps into every facet of their lives. The clothes they wear, the food they eat, the hour they wake. The thing I love about traveling is meeting people that are nothing like me, living a life that is nothing like my own; getting slingshot out of my comfort zone with no way to crawl back in it when things get dicey, like a turtle that lost it’s shell.
So when the woman we rented the house from in Essouira recommended we stay in her friend’s 16th century Kasbah in the Draá Valley, we booked a week without blinking. Surrounded by barren mountains, settled by the ancient Berbers, the valley is lined with palmeraies – narrow bands of palm trees that sprout out of the rocky landscape like miniature garden of Edens.
It was the perfect place to have a spiritual awakening.
Instead, I spent four days envisioning creative ways my children might off themselves, diving down the mud-stacked staircases, swan-diving off the panoramic roof where we ate all of our meals, or god-forbid eating an unwashed apple, grape or tomato. Hassan, the owner, graciously nodded when we asked if it would be okay to shorten our stay, and still invited us into his home for an evening of live music and sweet mint tea.
Billy and I spent four days eating like ancient African kings, chasing our children though the palmeraie paradise and trying to figure out why, as beautiful as this place was, we couldn’t quite get comfortable. Was it our own spiritual deficiency? Perhaps. But I prefer to think it’s the kid’s fault – or rather, their inability to grasp the concept of unintentional suicide. But Billy just read this and called bullshit on that too. I guess there are a few post-16th century comforts that I’m not quite ready to give up for the long haul, like central heating and a relatively strong wifi signal. And even though I’m a big proponent of traveling outside of my own comfort zone, it sure would be nice to have some wine for the trip.
But we’re not ready to pack it in quite yet. You can’t get this close to the desert and not get on a camel. Next up: The Sahara.
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