Okay, We're Sisters
The Ties that Bind Two Women Worlds Apart

• Home
» Africa

This article was published in Abroad View's fall 2009 magazine.

Hannan in the garden picking vegetables for dinner with her son Abdeele in tow.

Article and Photos by
Erika Spaet

When I was 13 years old, I was taking Algebra in Budd Lake, N.J. I had soccer practice on Thursday nights at my old elementary school soccer field, and Danny, my first real crush, was my lab partner—I made him dissect the frog.

Meanwhile, in a small, rural village in central Morocco, a few thousand miles but worlds away from the suburban New Jersey house where I grew up, a young woman, also 13, was taking her wedding vows. Her family was gathered. The girl had henna covering her hands and feet in celebration. The groom was a strapping, mustached, 23-year-old farmer with dark, sunned skin. They drank sweet tea that night in a house passed down for years in the groom’s family. The bride’s kaftan was amber-colored and silky; her cheeks sprinkled with the freckles of youth and long days working in the sun.

Almost a decade later, Hannan and I were brought together during part of my study abroad program. In spring 2008, I went to Morocco to try to improve my Arabic and to see someplace different—and that someplace different turned out to be Hannan’s modest but tidy stone home. It’s the same home where she was married to Abdelkabir seven years ago in Fryad, a village a few hours outside of Casablanca, where homes are spread across miles of rolling countryside. My program traveled there for a one-week stay to get us out of city life in Rabat. Hannan became my host “mother” for that week.

One evening we were peeling fava beans together in the kitchen and, in an overture of warmth and welcome, Hannan said, “You are my daughter.”

“But we’re the same age!” I answered.

“Okay, then we’re sisters,” she said.

We laughed, both relieved and a little giddy at having a rare moment in which we could understand one another in Darija, the Moroccan Arabic dialect.

Hannan does have a daughter of her own, Ilkham, a freckled little thing with sass, born when Hannan was 16. The joke around the house was that Ilkham looked more like my child than Hannan’s because we both have blonde, curly hair. Hannan also has a son, Abdeele, a 14-month-old who gets into everything and who Hannan brings to her breast anytime he starts to cry.

Over the week, Hannan taught me how to make butter from start to finish. Together we pulled the weeds to feed the cow, rode the donkey to the well to water the cows, milked the cows (I was horrible and my contribution was purely for a picture’s sake, though I was eventually successful), and shook the chigawa, a lamb’s skin whose legs are tied to a tripod, to make the butter and a sour milk called libbon. We also kneaded bread together each day, her with strong and able hands. And we made msimmon, Moroccan pancakes that I accidentally burned on the skillet.

We rested together, too. In the heat of each afternoon we would lie down on the floor and try to convince the kids to join us in a nap. She would shower them in kisses, asking if we kiss our kids like that in the States. I said of course we do, though I’m not much of a kid person myself. It was when she was sleepy that I saw how young she really was. She didn’t hesitate to pick up a crayon out of the carton I brought with me from the United States and color in Ilkham’s new coloring book.

Since her wedding, Hannan has grown a little thicker around the waist and become the cornerstone of her small family. She works all day to provide for her family, both in terms of food and affection for her husband and, especially, children. Inshallah, or God willing, they will become teachers, or doctors, or whatever they want. Neither she nor her husband can read or write, but at each meal Ilkham recites the letters of the Arabic alphabet. Hannan wants to learn the letters too, and she asked me to write them out for her so she could watch. I was glad to do it—it’s one of the few aspects of the Arabic language that I’m confident in—but more than a little uncomfortable teaching a native speaker how to write her alphabet.

Since that spring night back in 2000, when I was at soccer practice and Hannan was promising to devote her life to her husband and children, we have both become women. I’ve since given up soccer and most of the things unique to my middle school days—except, of course, silly crushes on lab partners—while Hannan has learned the skills essential to fulfilling that promise she made. Ilkham will undoubtedly become a teacher and Abdeele a doctor, in no small thanks to their mother’s selfless work and all those kisses.

Now I’m back in Budd Lake; the week in Fryad was too short, my semester in Morocco a sweet memory. But I’m glad to be with my family and friends and to go to our favorite diner again. Before I left, Hannan asked our program assistant if she could just keep me. I know she will miss the companionship of a girl her own age, even if I was more like a child who she needed to monitor than a true equal. I even had to ask Hannan each time I needed to use the field as a bathroom—on account of the fierce dogs that lingered outside the house—and it should go without saying that I was no help in the kitchen.

But Hannan and I found kindred spirits in one another; though we live lives so different from the other, we’re women just the same. In many ways, I envy her. Her life is filled with the most important things: children, love, and the purpose that those bring with them. My life, on the other hand, is now being spent trying to find my purpose. My worries are focused on finding a successful job that will look good on my resume and thinking about whether I should open a Twitter account.

More than once, especially after admitting that I had no idea how she intended for me to chase a chicken out of the house, I asked myself, “What must she think of me?” I was ashamed that I was simply not equipped to do the many chores and skills she performed with ease every day.

To Hannan, though, it must seem that I’m living the life she hopes for her children, one of intellectual pursuits and wealth. I do wish for Ilkham and Abdeele to learn everything they want to learn, but I wanted to tell Hannan that intellectualism and wealth are not really better than simplicity. I also wanted to tell her that she’s living the life that I hope for my children, and the one I hope to live: one based on loving my children and providing for them. I’d like to think that someday I could be as selfless as to sacrifice something­—something just as important as my youth, as she did—for the people whom I love.

And I hope that I, too, can learn and pass down my own mother’s recipe for homemade bread to my daughter. I think I’ll teach her how to make msimmon, too.

Erika Spaet graduated from Ithaca College in Ithaca, N.Y., this past May with dual degrees in journalism and politics. While in school, Erika was a Roy H. Park School of Communications Park Scholar. She studied abroad with World Learning/SIT Study Abroad in Rabat, Morocco, in the spring of 2008, an experience which sparked her drive for adventure and her love for travel. She has remained close with her host family in Morocco, whom she writes about on page 36, and plans on visiting as soon as she can. Until then, however, she will be volunteering for the next year with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Portland, Ore., as the member coordinator for a prisoner advocacy and reentry nonprofit. Erika will then pursue a graduate degree in religious studies and social work. Along the way, she hopes to have an active freelance writing career so she can continue to record the wonderful travel experiences she may be lucky enough to have.