Earlier this week, the wisp of Wifi I’d been siphoning from the neighbors all semester finally dematerialized—it was only a matter of time. My friend lent me her Moroccan bootleg copy of “Crazy, Stupid, Love” and I looked forward to an evening of companionship with the romantic comedy.
What struck me most about this particular movie seen in this particular place (the guest bedroom of a multi-family house, Rabat, Morocco, Africa, world) was something that’s been on my mind recently—the idea of change. Of course I understand the concept of change that happens around us, because I often find myself resisting it. I even understand the concept of gradual change, and that I am not the same person as I was when I was 13–and thank goodness for that, right?
However, the type of change that happens in the span of time I’ve been in Rabat (58 days to be exact) is anything but gradual. I find that being abroad is the perfect place and time to release myself, in months, from ideas I’ve carried for years—hardly a gradual process. As I watched “Crazy, Stupid, Love” reference the marriage between Demi and Ashton—now dissolved—and jest about Steve Jobs’ footwear—laid to rest, perhaps, with their late wearer—I realized just how much had changed in a year.
As it is, North Africa is the perfect backdrop for personal transformation–it’s undergone such seismic changes of late, that it puts my own development into perspective. Here, all around me, the ground is still spongy from the thaw of the Arab Spring. Wherever one steps in Rabat there are reminders that the country has changed forever—a political landscape that remained static for so long is saturated with new thought.
The sidewalk vendors setting up their illegal shops share a profession with Mohamed Bouazizi, whose self-immolation was the catalyst for the Tunisian revolution. Before the revolution, these men and women would shove their wares in bags and run at the arrival of police—now they are left alone. Thus, each time I step around a row of watches or figurines, I think about what they represent—a sleeping dragon of survivalist frustration that the powers that be dare not anger.
Last week my host mom and I had a lesson in give and take. She handed me a large bowl of popcorn and I took a handful before passing it back. She shook her head and said something in Arabic. “Take?” I said. She looked confused as I searched for the word in French. Finally, I held out my hands. She held out the bowl. “Give,” I said in English. I took the bowl from her—“take.”
A few days later I came home with a bag of cake balls for the family (leaving somewhat alarming grease stains on their individual paper wrappers). My 10-year-old sister was in the kitchen making meatballs, the first time I had seen her in the kitchen. (The kitchen is a multi-purpose room—for trash disposal, eavesdropping on street fights, and the elaborate preparation of cous-cous.) With the adults nowhere to be found, and my older sister back in Sale, the house became disconcertingly quiet.
I had already decided to stay in, and was messing around on my laptop, when my sister came in and sat on my bed to watch me. I wasn’t sure what to do so I pulled up Paint for her to use, which drew my 8-year-old brother into my room as well. It was the first time I can ever remember feeling annoyed with my younger siblings, as their mother is always hyper-aware that they aren’t bothering me. My older cousin dropped in with a succession of commentary—“You look tired…you look flushed…it’s Friday night, why aren’t you going out?”
Feeling guilty with my own annoyance at my family, I changed my mind about staying in and hailed a taxi to meet friends at a Tapas restaurant. Two incorrect stops and a full fare later I was ready to cry into a plate of overpriced croquettes when I walked in to find that the only free seat at my friends’ table was either next to or across from my Moroccan date. I hadn’t talked to him since the night I shoved his baseball cap through the slot in the door, and I wasn’t about to attempt conversation in my state of petty frustration.
After an unsuccessful trip to the bathroom for composure, I started back home on foot, already mentally typing an apology to my friends for my immature and emotional behavior. I also unsuccessfully rooted through my purse looking for my cell phone. Giving up, I stuck my hands in my pockets and felt something familiar—a small slip of paper. I pulled it out and read it: “Popcorn: bao mi hua”…
The other side said: “What great things would you attempt if you knew you could not fail” and, I kid you not, I was in such a crappy mood that my first thought was “This.” So I walked home without a cell phone, and without mishap, to the tune of “Bonsoirrr Cherie” and my own self-indulgent misery.
The next morning I brought the bag of cake balls to my mother in the kitchen. “Take,” I said in Arabic. She kissed me on the cheek. “Enti Mareeda?” (Are you sick?)
“No,” I replied, “Yesterday was a bad day, but today will be better.”
And I knew it would be true, because the fact of the matter is that “give” and “take” and “change” are all rolled up in one another. We offer ourselves up to our experiences in order to be reformed, and take away what endures.
Before I came to Morocco I went to dinner at P.F. Changs with an old friend. I saved both our fortunes in my wallet and I found them again when I was waiting in line to pay for the cake balls. His and mine, mine and his—all because of the romantic notion that someday I would be happy that I saved both our fortunes from the time we went to P.F. Changs, and the ice outside was bad, and we realized that after ten years of dancing around each other we didn’t have much to talk about (like the married couple 13-year-old me swore we’d be), so we pretended we’d never met before and I asked him questions like, “Do you have any siblings?”
I’m not just a sentimentalist who likes to write about old fortunes she finds —I haven’t stopped finding things since I stepped onto the runway in Casablanca. Here, there, shoved into the cracks of un-scrutinized consciousness. Some are informative—the foreign word for “popcorn.” Others are reminders that saving isn’t keeping.