The Storks Bring the Prayers

"This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge, keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal, and do well." - Sir Francis Bacon 

                                                  

I read that slight Canetti book on the plane, the one with essays about his time in Morocco, and in the last chapter he talks about seeing a really old donkey get a hard-on. He uses a word I didn't know, concupiscence, to describe the animal's lust. So, I was happy to learn a new word, but I was wondering what he was doing crawling around under a donkey to see how turned on it was. 

But, like the great Canetti, I saw a donkey's...concupiscence in the streets of Fes, and it's pretty difficult to miss. They have big ones. Donkeys have big dicks. It was on my mind when the call to prayer woke me up. Was I dreaming of it? It was my first thought when I awoke. What did it mean?

Today I was scheduled to go on a three-day trip through the mountains, the desert's edge, and end up in Marrakech. I had hired a driver over the internet a few months ago, and he was very cool about rescheduling after my mishap with TAP airlines. Moha had agreed to serve me an early breakfast. 

While I packed I thought about the cab driver ditching me yesterday. He had shown me a postcard when I got in the car, a picture of the Golden Gate bridge on the front and the words "Great Ride! - Becky" in ballpoint pen on the back. The implication, I suppose, was that he was trustworthy. I mean, he'd gotten the coveted Becky endorsement. There was no stamp on it, so she must have written it on the way out the door.

I hoped the dude picking me up was going to be cool. Would he have a postcard? Usually, if someone has to convince you of something, the opposite is true. I wanted to see Secret Morocco and Natural Morocco and not more blackmail and gift shops. It would soon be told. Loaded up, said good-bye to the courtyard and met Moha in the lobby. 

He had a giant bag of dates and bread for me. 

There was some checking out to do and settling up, and the change was fifty dirham, about five bucks, and I gave it to him as a tip. His hands shook when he took it and his jaw was set. It made me feel like I had deeply insulted him. 

The two reactions when you offer a tip here are a loud, vocal, "That's it?!!" or a silent pain radiating out. The latter is much more effective. I felt terrible. I had given more to a dude in the street yesterday. He was probably snoring off his concupiscence in a brothel while poor Mohar was washing my dates. 

Eternal regret. 

Went out in the dark to the post office in the plaza and there was my driver. Call him Ismail. Cool young dude with a nice smile. He welcomed me into his SUV and we were off. He asked me if I was excited, and I said yes. He asked me what other countries I've been to. I told him Latvia and Lithuania, but he'd never heard of them. I told him Vietnam, and he said:

"Did you eat flies in chicken-blood soup?"

I said I did not.

"That's what they eat," he said.  

I told him I had missed out and would have to go back. I asked him where he had heard that. He said that Morocco was a "mixed salad" and that you get people from all over the world coming in and out of the hotels and the taxis. Along the way, he had met some Vietnamese and that's what they'd told him they liked to eat. 

This was going to be a very good three days.

Our first stop was a town called Ifrane, "the Switzerland of Morocco." It was a small, wealthy area and quite unlike anyplace I'd been so far. It was more European even than Spain or Portugal. Such a contrast from the stone walls of Fes. 

The story here was that when the French took over, they were like, "We can't be expected to live like the locals. Let's make this town as French as possible. So, they built Euro-style houses and gardens, etc. When they got kicked out, the Moroccan government thought about knocking it down, but decided it was preeeetty nice, so they were like, "Let's not be so hasty. Let's, maybe... keep it? For ourselves?"

So, they did. The most famous thing there is a giant stone lion that, apparently, an Italian prisoner sculpted while he was waiting for release. People were lined up to have their picture taken next to it. I got a cup of coffee, and we left.  

I ate from the breakfast bag and asked Ismail if he wanted any. He told me six days in Morocco was long enough to trust my skills at selecting dates, so he trusted me. I told him I'd trained on olives and worked my way up. 

As we sped through the countryside I saw a few packs of stray dogs and since dogs have been on my mind the whole trip, I asked him what the deal was. He said it says in the holy books that dogs are devils and that if a dog licks your plate you have to wash it seven times and then drag it through the dirt. 

According to some interpretations of Islam, he said, they're to be killed on sight and aren't allowed in people's homes. God. I asked if it was because they are expensive to feed and he said no, it was because they were evil. 

BUT! You're allowed to use them for work. So the tribal people, the Berbers, use them to help herd the sheep, etc. BUT! during the holiday that just passed, all the sheep were sacrificed, so the Berbers abandoned the dogs. "I'm afraid the season's over, Fido, and I ain't got any more jobs for you. Go on, git."

So, these dogs I was seeing had been part of a seasonal labor force and then kicked out. It made me incredibly sad, of course. We passed through a little town with a fountain shaped like a giant apple, and I couldn't smile at it. Ismail told me we were in the apple capital of Morocco. Kind of cheered myself up saying applecapitalapplecapital over and over. 

As we passed through fields of black kohl, he said "What will you do, your election?"

"It sure is a mess," I said, "I'm very happy to be on vacation and not hearing about it."

"But it is over, yes? Since Clinton die."

"What?"

"Hillary Clinton, she is dead. Two days ago, I hear."

I'd been kind of following the news, and I was sure I would have heard that. It was kind of hilarious.

"She had a cold, like, pneumonia, but she's not dead. She was just sick for a few days."

"News say she die and Doe Nail Trump your president now."

"Ok, well, we'll find out later. I don't think so, though."

His feelings seemed a little hurt. I'm having trouble navigating these exotic emotions. I felt like I'd been careful not to make him feel foolish for misunderstanding the story, but maybe I was so surprised when he said she was dead, I made a face that bothered him.

We were quiet for a while, and I watched the mountains and fields. Then he said:

"Ok, ok. Oh, something else America. What is Haw Loo Loo?"

"Haw Lulu? I don't..."

"Hah Loo Loo?"

"Do you mean, hallelujah?"

"Yes. Hallelujah. Where you wear mask and have party."

"Uh,"

"And children get the candy."

I fell deeply in love with him.

We stopped in a little park swarming with monkeys. They had knocked over a bunch of garbage cans and were having high carnival. Some dogs slept near them unmolested. I hoped they shared.  Maybe here among the monkeys they could find peace.

I took some pics and we talked about about animals some more. We saw a giant nest and he said it was a stork's. I told him I'd seen a large one on top of a column in Volubilis. He said they usually make their homes on the tops of minarets and he said:

"I know you have in America this story that the stork brings the baby, but here we say the stork brings the prayers."

That was great. It felt very special to hear that. I thought about generations of fathers pointing to the towers of mosques and asking their sons if they saw the nests. 

Then he asked me if the "quarter break" was the most important player on an American football team. I said it was. 

We passed through a village and he blasted a song called Wiki Wiki, which was a kind of Cuban dance music like reggaeton, I guess. It was kind of uncool to do this and I hoped we weren't disturbing people, but I went with it. Watching old women carry bundles of sticks on their backs while this goofy dance music thumped hit me just right. 

We yelled "wiki wiki!" together at the appropriate times. 

Passed through a town where everyone had dead lambs hanging upside down from their doorways. I don't think I've ever seen anything like that. He said it was the best town in Morocco to eat BBQ in. It made me very hungry. 

We sped through it, though, and ended up at a hotel for lunch. Here, I got the first sense of what our relationship was really like. We had been laughing and singing together and trading idioms and stories, but... he led me into a dining area and left me to eat alone while he relaxed in the bar. 

It was a reminder that we were driver and passenger and not buddies. 

The tajine was terrible and the napkins were dirty.

I found him smoking in the bar afterward. He asked me how the food was. "Poor," I said, "Can we go back to the BBQ town?" He said he wasn't allowed to let me eat there, but I wondered if he had some kind of deal with the hotel. I mean, he must have.

Got back in and we headed off again. Quiet again.

The next stop, he said, was the desert where I was going to ride a camel to my tent. I had thought that was tomorrow's activity. It was suddenly upon me. Of course, I got excited again:

"Today you will ride not a camel, but what we have here Morocco, which is dromedaries."

"Ok."

"Camels have two of the humps, but the dromedaries have only one, which is shame, because with another hump, you could have the WiFi."

"Camels keep WiFi in their humps? What else do they keep in there? Cable TV? Hot coffee?"

"No, no, I am joking."

"Haha, I know, I am joking with you."

"Ok, ok. But you know there is no WiFi out there, right?"

"Yes. Because we have dromedaries."

"Yes. But..also camels do not have...I think you are still joking."

"We are two good joke tellers."

"Maybe so. Maybe no."

Then he told me dromedaries cry when they see fat Americans, because they don't want to carry them. He said we would know if I was in bad shape by watching the dromedary's eye. I told him to save the dromedary for his mamadary, but it didn't land.