Harassment
I hesitated to write this entry-to write it anywhere other than my own private journal that is. I am afraid to share this story because I feel it might invite negative preemptive judgments about a culture and country when, in truth, the story I am about to tell shouldn’t reflect on either of these in particular. Instead, I really just want to raise an issue that deeply distresses me- not only in Morocco but globally. Morocco, for me, just happened to be the context in which it most blatantly confronted me. Also, I was hesitant to right this entry for fear that my mother, in a rush of motherly love and/or feminist zeal, would either put me on the next flight back home or would herself right a personal letter to the King of Morocco about women’s rights, which I suppose might not have been such a bad thing. Anyway, now having been forewarned and beseeched not to judge to rashly a culture and a place I have grown to love, please read this account. And try if you can to remember that it is not Morocco, its culture or even the people in this story who are to blame but something far more complex and dispersed in our world.
As many of you know, I am an avid exerciser. It is a constant in my life, a stress reliever, my escape and preferred method of staying sane! As Moroccan cuisine is plentiful, delicious and frequently-served and as I am finding that my free time seems to abound here, I decided to take a long walk with three of my female American friends today. We donned our conservative workout attire. Our knees were covered. We wore t-shirts. Then, we departed for a fast-paced walk/run along the sea.
I could handle the honking. Men of all ages and in all types of vehicles for whatever reason felt the need to respond to our presence with drawn out car-horns and thumbs up out the window as they passed by. It was annoying, yes. It made me angry, yes. But aside from the intrusion on our conversation as we walked, the horns did little to impede on our excursion.
I could even tolerate the commentary. Again, men of all ages from 9 years old to sixty simply couldn’t help themselves from blurting out a “Bonjour les belles!” or “Run! Run! Run!” We were whistled at as well. Some men yelled out ridiculous phrases like “My bike is fast!” or “You like sport!” Others felt it necessary to let the world know, just in case it wasn’t obvious enough, that we were Americans. A group of four white-skinned blond haired jogging women do not exactly fit the description of your average Moroccan female.
It was when the commentary became crude and when the harassment became more physical and when the perpetrators became younger that I really became mad at the world. I could more or less ignore lesser incursions but these slapped me in the face. As we were jogging down the hill to the beach, a dozen ten to thirteen year-old boys stormed us. They ran with us for at least two minutes, yelling things both obscene and benign. They tugged at our arms.
The next assault came thirty minutes down the shore from a group of similarly aged boys. First came the light-hearted shouts, then the cruder insults and then- what really ruined my afternoon and has left me terribly unsettled-came stones.
I don’t mean to be too dramatic. My sense of black humor grabs onto the phrase “we were stoned,” but I don’t mean to either make light of those words or to ignore the underlying currents of what happened today. Humor is simply one of those tools people use to cope when they don’t or can’t understand certain things.
The rocks the boys threw were aimed low. A couple hit my calf. Despite my strongest efforts to ignore the harassment and the oncoming rocks from the brood following us, I finally turned around, seething with frustration and anger, and yelled in French for them to stop. They did, but I was still seething. I was hurt, not physically thank goodness, but emotionally. What is wrong with a world in which men, no matter how old, think it is ok to treat women this way? What is wrong with a world where children can learn patterns of behavior that encourage hatred? Why can’t four American girls in work-out clothing simply walk along the beach in a country they have traveled to in order to learn without being turned into objects of lust, play, hate, etc?
I don’t have answers to these questions. In fact, the more I think about this ordeal I only find more and more questions. For example- Would it be better or worse if these young boys understood the gravity of what they were doing as a political, sexist act or if they were simply imitating behavior of older men? Who or what can we blame as a source of all this? Because I certainly cannot pinpoint one cause for sure. And what if I could? What would I do?
Again, please do not judge Morocco on this story. Please do not judge Islam. Do not judge men in general and do not even judge the men in this story. I honestly do not think judgments can come from this ordeal-only frustration and sadness at what is, and commitment to figure out how, if possible, it can change.

Meet the Parents
I have spent one week with my Moroccan family now and unfortunately still feel like an awkward, mute and confused fly on the wall probably 90% of the time. They speak rapid-fire Moroccan Arabic which might as well be an entirely separate language from Modern Standard Arabic as far as I am concerned. I pat myself on the back for asking for more coffee in darija (the Moroccan dialect) or understanding when a family member asks me how classes were. Baby steps! There are about a dozen people who are in and out of the house and my efforts to map out a family tree in my head have proved pretty fruitless thus far. By the end of my two month stay here, Inshallah (God willing), I hope to figure out the who’s who of this dar (house).
My father is an imam-That certainly is an odd sentence for the great-grandchild of immigrant Russian Jews to write. My father is, by my estimates, anywhere between seventy and eighty years old. He is a small man who wears a small white cap, glasses and a long djellaba. His hands shake when he pours water and he moves slowly. After dinner he sits outside the kitchen smoking. In the evenings I sometimes hear him praying in the salon outside my room. He preaches in the small mosque right around the corner. We don’t speak much but I think he likes me. We often exchange “La Bes?” (how’s it going?), and yesterday he told me he liked my pajama pants, which by the way are bright lime green, fleece and dotted with purple flowers! I had also just learned the word for pants so I was thrilled to recognize the word in an actual sentence!
My mother is equally aged and feeble. She only speaks darija so we do not speak much either. Every morning we sit together in silence for fifteen minutes while we eat a breakfast of coffee and bread with honey. I have made small efforts at communication and do my best to smile quite a bit.
The rest of the family is somewhat of a mystery as far as who is whose sibling/father/child/etc. Majida, the youngest child is somewhere around 30 I would guess. She speaks English but I prefer to answer her in French or Arabic when I’m not too tired. Then there is Bouchra who I think is another sister in her thirties. There is a forty year old man as well who appears to be a cousin of some sort. He speaks French, and though we don’t speak much, he makes efforts to include me in conversation occasionally. Miriam is another thirty-something year old, possibly a cousin. She is one of my favorites. She is very warm, smiles a lot and always asks about school.
Mohammed, or Mimo as he is called, is someone’s plump eight-year old. He doesn’t live with us but might as well because he is here all the time. The other day I helped him with his English homework and, hopefully, also won over some of the family members with this gesture-I can’t stress enough how much awkwardness I feel I exude. Any progress on integration into the family is much desired! Naima, the eighteen year-old maid is also one of my favorite people in the family. The fact that she has lived here as a maid since she was five years old deeply unsettles me. One could say that her life here in Rabat is likely better than a life she might have had in an impoverished rural village, but when I think about my life at eighteen compared to Naima’s the world seems terribly unfair. She is treated like any other member of the family for the most part; however at dinner time it is Naima who brings the food to the table after, I gather, a day of cooking and cleaning.
My house is a traditional median house. In the middle is a courtyard which, if it weren’t for a tarp overhead, would be open to the elements. This morning three small birds had found there way in and were hopping around the tiled floor. Surrounding the courtyard on three sides are three sitting rooms/salons (bit al-glass in Moroccan). A typical Moroccan sitting room is long and narrow, has a nice carpet on the floor and is surrounded by backless couches on all sides. The couches double as beds at night. I was given my own room, which is really a sectioned off area in one of the salons.
At meal time the family pulls a table up to the couches and, when they are full simply reclines. My mother, in fact, sleeps right where we eat and eats our ten o’clock dinner in her pajamas.
The Moroccan dining style has brought the food coma to a whole new level! It is impossible to eat lightly here. Bread is the utensil of choice, so each bite from the common plate in the middle of the table is accompanied with a carbo-load. Atkins dieters should stay away from Morocco for sure. There are always only two glasses of water on the table which we all share. So far, though, I am the only one who drinks at meals. Typically lunch is around 1-2 and bread and tea or coffee is served at 6. At 10 o’clock my family eats a light dinner. Each mealtime the entire family bombards me with “Kool-y” or “Mange!” (eat) I could have a mouthful of potatoes, a piece of bread in my hand and a cup of soup in front of me and I would still be urged to eat! Meat is always pushed my way as well. It is out of politeness, I know, but I have been diligently trying to ward off the force-feeding by mastering the Moroccan phrase for “Thank you. That’s enough. I am full.”
The bathroom situation, after much pre-move in dread, has turned out ok. Many of my friends’ homes have a Turkish toilet (aka-hole in the floor) and no hot water. Showers for them mean a bucket of boiling water and a wash cloth. Our family has a Western toilet and even a showerhead with hot water. I am, as far as I know, the only one who makes use of it though because the others in the family scrub down weekly at the local hammam. I have yet to venture into the public bathhouse, but I have heard from some of my brave American peers that it is worth the initial embarrassment for the immaculate feeling a two hour shower and exfoliation can give you! I will work up the nerve soon!
After week one in my host-family I still feel more like a misplaced visitor than a family member. There are small breakthroughs- laughs shared, vocab words learned, dishes washed together. Little by little I hope to become more comfortable and communicative. For now, I am going to revel in my awkwardness I suppose. Everything is an experience!

Back in Morocco

Week One:
Salam Alaykum Yet Again
Six weeks after packing up my new Berber blanket, Marrakechi kebab skewers and Al-Kitaab Arabic books to head back state-side, I am once again back in the land of mint tea and multilingualism. That feeling of eager anticipation before such an adventure never gets old. Waiting at the gate at JFK, I conjured up images of dessert dunes, steaming chicken tajines, and bustling medina souks. I knew to an extent what was awaiting me- in the previous four months in Morocco I had traveled much, eaten well, and befriended many. However, no matter how many stamps happen to be marked in my passport, I doubt I will ever feel anything but exhilarated at the prospect of travel and the possibility of people, places, cultures and experiences ahead of me.
Rabat is a welcome change from the small Middle Atlas mountain town of Ifrane where I spent last semester. For starters, Rabat and its twin city Salé tip the scales at 1.6 million inhabitants. Rabat is also coastal, buzzing with diplomats, and a far better fit for a cultural junkie like myself. I have decided that, after life in D.C., city life is certainly my cup of tea. I will be living inside the medina (old city) walls with my host family, which is not exactly Greenwich Village or DuPont Circle. However, I think the busy markets and twisting streets full of soccer balls and motor bikes, among other items, will keep me entertained and on my toes. I am also hoping my family entrusts me with the tasks of shopping at the corner bakery and grocer so that I can learn my way through this maze and get chummy with the neighbors!
Our “school” is called the Cross Cultural Center for Learning It is an Andulusian house built in 1875. A few of the narrow and intricately tiled apartments turned classrooms were built to house one of the wives of the house’s owner and her children. In the Center’s annex building down the street, one of these similar small classrooms-approximately the size of a horse stall- is my Arabic classroom. Including me, there are only two students in my class, which takes the student-teacher ratio to a new extreme! Also, if I may blow my own horn for a moment, I would like to point out that my classmate is Sudanese and grew up speaking Sudanese Arabic. That I tested into this class makes me simultaneously a little bit proud and a little bit scared out of my mind for three and a half hours daily of mile-a-minute native speaker Arabic. I am, however, incredibly excited for the benefits of this cozy educational experience.
On the third and fourth floor terraces of the Center you get a bird’s eye view of the medina’s rooftops and are in perfect earshot of the five daily calls to prayer. The prayer callers at the different minarets each have their own rhythm and style of singing that weave together in a not quite harmonious melody but still beautiful combination of sounds. There is always one guy who is late and is wrapping up his call nearly three minutes after the rest of them! Perhaps it is inappropriate of us (“haram” in this neck of the woods) but we can’t help but laugh at his lack of punctuality.
The first week is wrapping up and tomorrow I leave the safety of forty other students, orientation leaders and a hotel to go live with my new family. The real challenges and leaps forward with linguistic and cultural understanding I am sure are about to sky-rocket.
Here are a few fun facts I’ve learned in my first week:
* The highest building in Rabat is 19 stories.
I saw university graduates demonstrating on the main avenue of Mohammed V protesting the government’s failure to find them jobs. Unemployment is a huge social epidemic here.
* The McDonald’s in Rabat opened up at the sight of the former Soviet Cultural center- yet another victory for capitalism?
* Each Muslim country in the world is allotted a certain number of visas by the Saudi embassy each year for the Hajj. Apparently, the lines at the Saudi embassy in Rabat get pretty long come Hajj time.
* There is a high school inside the palace gates for children of royal officers. And, we got to drive through the gates and around the palace.
* In a pretty unsuccessful effort to seem less intrusive, the French colonial regime passed a law forbidding non-Muslims from entering Moroccan mosques. Prior to that, mosques had been a safe-haven for victims of all faith seeking refuge, such as persecuted Jews.
* Although the Algerian-Moroccan border is supposed to be closed, industrious low-profile merchants in border towns train their donkeys to travel over the border with smuggled goods and return home to reload. Those are some smart…donkeys!

Drop-off:
On the early morning of the second day of our program, I sat aboard a bus with forty nervous American students, tracing and retracing in their heads the bus’s meandering route from our hotel. “Jillian Slutzker,” the ominous call came from the front of the bus. I took a deep breath, stepped forward, and took the twenty dirhams from our academic director’s hands. “Are you ready?” He asked. “Got your walking shoes on?”

Armed with twenty dirhams in emergency cab fair and the sole instructions of “observe clothing and make sure to find your way back to the Cross-Cultural Center in two hours”, I stepped off the bus. As thirty of my peers and my life-line of group leaders pulled away, my feelings of sheer panic abated and my super powers kicked in. “I can do this,” I told myself. “I can’t be more than three miles away from the Center. I have a functional, if not first-rate, sense of direction. And, I love people and clothes!” Given that I was alone, essentially lost or bound to be, and wearing-as I discovered two blisters later- pretty shoddy walking shoes, I was absolutely ready. I was ready to be the best observer of Moroccan clothing that I could be and ready to turn on my internal GPS and find my way around Rabat!

The observation itself didn’t take long. ‘Note to self-some women cover their hair. They also wear jellabas (long robes). There are business men in suits, children in Western kid’s clothes, and old men in small white caps.’ No huge surprises there. Thus, after thirty minutes of wandering, I gave myself a new mission-find the ocean.

It took a good half an hour, but alas I succeeded! Like a just-hatched baby turtle on a Discovery Channel documentary, I sniffed out the sea like it was my job! I walked atop the hill above the sea, taking in the hillside Graveyard of Martyrs (from the war for independence),which was washed by the tide, and the panorama of Rabat sprawling behind me. The walled old city, or the pre-colonial medina, contrasted to the taller and ornate buildings of the Ville Nouvelle, .built between 1912 and 1956 by the French. Across the river branching off from the ocean stood the city-scape of Salé, the twin city of Rabat.
I stopped to watch the mammoth waves crash down on the rocky inlet, thinking to myself that surfers (surfers in general and particularly those in Rabat) must have a death wish. These waves would make Malibu’s best, brightest and most bodacious of surfer dudes tremble in their trunks. You should, however, probably take this comment with a very very large grain of salt. I am, after all, a girl whose boogey boarding repertoire is limited to hip-deep water! But, suffice it to say, Rabat waves can be pretty colossal!

My second thought as I stared out at the waves was this: if I ever really got homesick and could somehow make it past those killer waves, I could theoretically swim back to somewhere in Georgia. One of my academic directors had actually pointed out this fact- the geography that is. I don’t think he would really advocate the swimming. I really don’t count on executing this contingency plan though so please don’t worry. I loved Morocco last semester and am just as excited for this one. However, it is a slight comfort to know that, although I am a couple thousand miles east and a few cultures removed, home is just across the water.

Finally, after my two hour trek of people/clothing watching and strolling above the beachscape, I safely returned to the Center. I was weathered and blistered but also much more confident in my ability to navigate the city that will become my home these next few months. What is more, I still had the 20 dirhams in emergency cab money in tact! (That’s a good two cups of mint tea.)
Aside from my earth-shattering observations of Moroccan clothing, I came to this conclusion on my drop-off. I think everyone should, at one time in their life, be dropped off by a bus in the middle of a foreign city with the simple task of observing and wandering. You might be surprised what a little confusion and alone time can do for your comfort, confidence, understanding, and practical sense of direction. I know now that if I get lost again (highly likely), I can always find my bearings!