Note to self...

• Adminor's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Rabat

Trip Start Aug 23, 2008 Previous
Entry Trip End May 16, 2009

  Rabat, Morocco
Monday, September 29, 2008

I sometimes forget just how forgetful I am. I can never seem to get a good reference point by which to judge where I'm at, because I'm constantly forgetting where I've been. Maybe that's why I need to write these blogs. But I had the good luck tonight to get a surprising, and very interesting reminder of myself last winter break. Shortly after returning to the States from The Gambia, I could find myself, nose in a book called The Caliph's House, curled up by the fire in my mother's house, surrounded by those comfortably familiar Christmas decorations that we unpacked like memories each year. But it was not the memories I was paying attention to. I was itching for my next opportunity to explore a new place, a place where I would be strange and out of place, where the people, language, religion, customs, and values would be completely unfamiliar to me. And there would definitely be no Christmas decorations, familiar or otherwise. For a series of arbitrary and practical reasons, Morocco was the particular spot on the globe my finger had landed, and upon entering the country into the "subject" slot of my local library's catalog, The Caliph's House was one of the first titles to appear. From the back cover alone I could feel that same itchiness I was feeling on the part of the British-Afghan author, Tahir Shah. He was determined to declare a break from normalcy (whatever that is) and ensure that his life, and the life of his young family, was full of as much color, consciousness, and education of the most diverse and direct kind by putting himself in a completely unfamiliar, and potentially even stupid situation. So he bought a dilapidated old Caliph's house in the middle of a slum in Casablanca, and then wrote about it.
 
            This book was my first introduction to Morocco. When reading it, I was not sure whether or not I would actually be in Morocco this fall, because I had decided to stake all my hopes on a single scholarship. (Perhaps this was my own hesitancy at work, an unwillingness to take full responsibility for such a sudden and strange decision as leaving all my family and friends to go to a place where I had absolutely no ties.) Regardless, it was a well-written book with an accessible voice that served as a starting point for my own daydreams about this completely foreign country.
 
But Morocco, and more specifically Rabat, has been the setting of reality, rather than dreams, for me for about a month now. It is now the plane on which the mundane occurs, rather than the extraordinary. But tonight, I found myself around a large, glamorous conference table with professors, professionals, Oxford intellectuals, Her highness the Princess Lalla Joumala, and Tahir Shah, all discussing this book. The event was hosted by a local NGO called the Moroccan British Society, headed by the Princess, as an opportunity for exchange between intellectuals of two countries. One particular Moroccan Professor had written a long poem, or more closely a theatrical piece recalling an enthralling oratory style of storytelling, that seemed to even go beyond Shah's own liveliness, creativity, and passion in describing his Casablancan reality as it attempted to summarize the book.
            Sitting slightly self-consciously in this high-ceilinged room, enraptured in this long poem, I got my thinking - why do I have to so clearly separate the perspective I had towards Moroccco from my mother's fireplace from the one I have from my Moroccan host family's salon? Have I let the gray wash of routine stain that wonderfully colorful view I can have in my imagination? That professor, as well as Shah, both seemed to maintain it, even in the face of reality. Maybe it's just their strange, literature-orientated brains, or theatrics for an (royal) audience, but I was inspired. I'll let you know the color of my next few weeks here.
            I also found out today that I received an internship with the Moroccan British Society. As of right now I have absolutely no idea what this means. Hopefully it will give me a flexible opportunity to get involved in a small slice of the NGO world of Rabat, allow me possibilities to initiate my own ideas, and help me meet some interesting people. But, if nothing else, I'll be able to say I worked for a princess.

Rabat hotels Share

Previous Entry