A PRISON AND A PALACE
Passing the Long Days in Morocco
By Linda Smolik
This article was printed in Abroad View fall 2004
The sea and a terrace have instilled themselves in me, both havens of wonder and forces of confinement. Rabat may be the most contaminated city in Morocco, and I lived it for three months. It is also the capital, where the King’s palace captures gaping Western spectators, while unemployment and urban decay plague the people. A prison and a palace are not important in their physical existence. Actually, I have seen neither. The entities, rather, represent a set of contrasts. Rabat is the only city in Morocco I know inside and out, and in all its paradoxical filth and beauty, it remains my second home.
Before leaving to study abroad, my father made me promise not to marry while in Morocco. Well, I didn’t. But it felt like a marriage. For the summer, I was offered a well-paying teacher’s assistant job at the Rabat American School, a yuppy-ish institution where diplomats and American foreign nationals send their children. After first meeting Redouane in Rabat, and finding that he was one of the few Moroccan bachelors who did not propose marriage to me within 24 hours, I could not refuse his offer to live with his family. They were considered respectable by Moroccan standards—well-to-do parents, supported by six attractive, educated sisters and an attractive employed brother. But to live in the household was to become a part of the family, which felt obliged to take care of me as one of its own. The big bad city, I confess, was not paradise for a single American woman. My job lasted only one month out of the three, and when I had no place to go, I vegetated at home. And vegetation soon became my specialty.
First, there was the terrace, a sort of roofless attic where Moroccan women hang their laundry under the sun. A high brick wall surrounded the cement floor, an endeavor for privacy, which ultimately failed since other houses were higher than Redouane’s and people could easily snoop. The Moroccans even have a word to define this behavior: “fduli,” the art of being nosey. Furthermore, the wall of the terrace was not complete. Each side was a different height, and unused bricks lay scattered on the floor next to dried out houseplants and fallen underwear that had been carelessly hung. Above a rusty drain, a low faucet, which jutted from one of the walls, was multipurpose for washing clothes and rinsing away blood. Yes, blood. “Eid” is essentially the Moroccan Thanksgiving, an Islamic holiday when every family slaughters a sheep on its terrace.
The terrace was also our toilet, the secret one that Redouane and I used when we were too lazy to go downstairs. Well, maybe the fduli neighbors knew too. The faucet and drain were no less appropriate than what Moroccans call a toilet, a porcelain platform containing a hole that requires good aim and strong thighs. Although a place of practicality, the terrace was also a refuge for contemplation. Redouane had stacked the unused bricks so we could peek over the terrace wall. We could see the entire neighborhood and even other parts of the city. We could hear the brush and roar of the nearby sea and watch the stars on clear nights. We could see cats’ eyes glow in the dark as they feasted on their late-night suppers in garbage fills. It was our steeple, our tower, our palace from which to watch the world below us.
Mornings were different. Out of boredom I took to handwashing my laundry. I would secretly snatch detergent, lest “Khalti”—my respectful albeit intimate address to Redouane’s mother—insist that she put my laundry in the washing machine. No, I needed time alone. No, I didn’t feel like drinking tea and hearing the women chat in a language I could barely understand. Not today. I would sit on the terrace, bask in the sun, and rub my hands raw in the water. This was my territory. If Redouane disturbed me while washing clothes, I’d snap at him. He learned not to bother me at these times. I’d awake two hours before the others, eat my granola, and sneak to the terrace before they could stop me.
The sea. This too was my territory, though others claimed it as well. The beach was not far from the house, and every other day I went jogging at noontide. It was the worst hour—the sun blazed like a laser, and bored young men roamed the streets. They would try to capture my attention by whistling or hissing. I would not call it harassment, but rather an overwhelming expression of loneliness that they believed a conversation with me could satisfy. I would cross the street and get the initial grand whiff of sewer waste pouring into the ocean. Beginning on my path, I would pass a small “kasbah,” an abandoned military fortress that was perhaps a century old. Once the kasbah was behind me, the stench of fish, moist earth and sewage would fade to a fresh sea breeze.
In Morocco, paleness is considered a virtue, one for which I unwillingly qualified. Majda, Redouane’s sister, was my age and very white compared to her sisters. Staying indoors might in fact have been a way to preserve her complexion. She was the primary assistant to her mother, responsible for household chores. After working, she would lounge on the sofa in her satin pajamas, posed like Goya’s La Maja, watching Egyptian soap operas. When Majda did leave the house, she groomed herself extensively, carefully painting on eyeliner, mascara and a bit of eye shadow to enhance her large oval eyes. She did look stunning, her bright lipstick like cherries against her snowy skin and jet-black hair. But she never went out alone—never. I don’t blame her. It was not the family’s intention to deprive her of her freedom, but a natural precaution one took in the city. Rabat is full of invasive people, such as the multitude of males who sit at cafes and stare and stare, hour after hour, at each passerby. All Moroccan women recognize this behavior, and even Redouane rejects staring and feels ashamed of it.
Besides the terrace, Redouane had his language, his friends, his work, but I had only a copy of The Godfather I had found at an English bookstore. And there were only so many words I could absorb in one day. I would whine to Redouane about my boredom and accuse him of being selfish for leaving me alone with his family. He would take a walk by the beach, even at 2 a.m.—a luxury of power that I never dared. He had told me stories about his childhood when drunkards would flock there, waiting to molest children. Even though Redouane was 25 years old, I worried about him. Some nights I would wait on the terrace, watching for his return, listening for the iron gate to creak open. Other times I’d play music on my portable and watch the night.
Although the house was a place of confinement, it was also a shield against the mugging and knife-to-the-throat that has happened to women in Rabat. The city is tough, and I was lucky. But when I recollect my time there, the terrace and the sea are what I remember most. I bonded with them; they kept me sane. Even in a prison there can be a garden. AV
Linda Smolik is a graduate of Beloit College with a double major in creative writing and anthropology. She studied abroad in Morocco in the spring of 2003 and worked at the American School in Rabat the following summer. Recently, she spent her summer working abroad in England.