Christmas Parties and Travels!

My next entry will be from London! I am preparing to leave Fes for the first time in months, what feels like years, to go to England for Christmas!

Three of the faculty at my school hosted a Christmas party this week that was amazing. I do enjoy the typical Moroccan parties, in which everyone dresses up, sits around and talks, is served food, dances, is served more food and talks some more, etc... This party reminded me just what it can mean to have a party: our hosts set out snacks and made the announcement, 'Since this is an American celebration, we are serving food help-yourself style. We are bringing around the tray of mini-pizzas to get you started, but after that, you are on your own to get food from this table!' They performed the funniest skit of making hot chocolate with one person's arms on another's body, and proceeded with other improv games and activites. For our student teacher who is finishing her internship this week and going home, we had a box where we all wrote her notes, and there was still plenty of talk time and eating time. The weirdest part of it all was when the party ended. It just... ended! We sang every Christmas carol we knew, and our hosts wished us Merry Christmas, offered out leftovers, and all the 30 people or so left. It was a great evening!

My roommates Dottie and Rachel should be back in Texas by now; they left on the train last night to fly home from Casablanca. I'll be returning to Fes the night after Christmas!

Princess for a Day

This was an exciting week at school. Between field trips, Tuesday off for lunar new year, student council elections, the arrival of the basketball hoop, Poetry Night, and the December Cup intre-high school soccer tournament, there has been little time to settle into our normal school routine. Friday was our bi-monthly half day for staff development, and we celebrated with a school spirit event: Traditional Dress Day for the whole school.

Although ‘traditional’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘Moroccan,’ that is the natural standby. Traditional dress days in the past have also yielded cowboy outfits, kimonos, and togas.

Traditional Moroccan casual-wear is a wonderful bathrobe-like creation called the djellabah that goes over any other clothes (usually ones that don’t match or don’t look appropriate for outside) and robes the wearer in a full-length dress of some bright color. They remarkably resemble wizarding cloaks, and it’s all I can do not to shout “You shall not pass!” at anyone walking toward me.

For this traditional dress day, I stepped it up a notch, to a kaftan-taksheta: beautiful formal gowns made for weddings and fancy celebrations!

Moroccan dress clothes are not really what Americans would call comfortable. There are multiple layers of stiff, rustly fabric, the sleeves fall well over your hands, and the skirt well over the feet. Wearing a Moroccan traditional dress is a big enough and complicated enough endeavor to be dubbed ‘and experience.’ But, you know, it’s not really about the dress.

Like so many of my experiences, I was surprised to find that, what I thought was the point, was really not the point at all. It was actually a means to an end. It’s not really about the dress. The dress is not the finish line, and the physical appearance not the aim.

The act of getting dressed couldn’t have been less dignified; I have never donned a taksheta by myself before, and I quickly discovered why Moroccan women put these on in a room all together. The satin has no give to it, the fancy decorative embroidery catches like teeth as it scrapes over my face, and each sleeve has enough fabric to considered an arm-skirt. When I finally have the first layer on, I have to tackle the second layer, still attempting not to drown in the first. The belt is wide like an obi, with lacings up the back. The train of the second skirt tripped me as I tied these up. You know what I did? I fell. I had a fleeting dream of catching myself before the reality of all those skirts and beading caught up with me, and rather than tear the skirt, I just let myself fall straight over like a bowling pin.

Finally I was dressed for school, with Moroccan make-up, which rivals theatre stage pancake, and ten million bobby-pins in my high hairdo.

Then I realized what the Moroccan dress was really about.

I walked into drawing class before the bell to the usual: squirrely students rushing about, chatting, riffling through papers, throwing things, and general manageable chaos. When I opened the door, the room fell silent. Students froze with papers half out of their bags and mouths still open from conversations, and the only sound was my deafeningly rustling skirts. “Miss,” one of them voiced, “You look like a princess!”

I have to confess that, at that moment, I felt like a princess, too.

We started class, with students drawing sketches for ten minutes each before a rotation. After about 5 minutes, one tardy senior opened the door, and I froze mid-attendance. She was beautiful in an untouchable way, like a porcelain doll, needing care, but somehow outside the daily life we shared. The rest of the room, too, had stopped mid-sketch to stare at her. She floated into the room without a trace of sheepishness at being late – and why should she be? Clearly, she was a princess.

Every repetition of this phenomenon was as dramatic, and each as natural. The production undergone in the morning was forgotten. Today, the girls were all princesses and the boys were all kings. The point of Moroccan dress isn’t the clothes, it’s the ceremony, the honor, and the respect that you do yourself and those around you, by stepping regally back from your careless, casual self, into a china figurine, admired, protected, and regal.

Catch Up

Here's what you missed:

1. School is more organized this year, and continues to get more organized each week. We have discipline now, and working internet, and we even take attendance in detention.

2. Amina is engaged! Her fiancee is an older Frenchman who is very calm and sweet to her. They are aiming for a summer wedding. Her parents are happy, and her siblings are excited for her. Her family doesn't understand her love of working, but her fiancee does, and says that if she is ever without a job she can help him out with his business, which is sort of a trade enterprise between France and Morocco.

3. I have started seeing an Arabic tutor once a week! I'm learning the finer points of grammar, most notably the difference between the four verbs that equate to various forms of 'taking' and 'bringing.'

4. My roommates have continued to visit with their American friends in Meknes, who came to visit last weekend, bringing Dottie a guitar that she had given them earlier! We are now a two-guitar household, and have been taking advantage of this fact.

5. I have spent a lot of time lately with three sisters who are my age and live together close to the city. They are a lively bunch, each with her own distinct talents and interests, and they know a lot of people around Fes. We had a birthday party for one of their friends recently and belly-danced around her living room for 5 hours!

6. The Eid Kabir, the biggest Moroccan holiday, was last month. I spent the time with Amina's family, and actually just lived with them for the week. We sacrificed a sheep, and I learned how to obtain, clean, and prepare everything from stomach and uterus to brains, lungs, and fat. And I did it with dignity.

7.I have had a few guests from Europe and America stay with me for a night or two here and there. It's fun to meet people who are just passing through Fes and get their impressions. It's also fun to tour them around the city and introduce them to everyone.

8. The weather hasn't changed yet. It's chilly, but not raining yet. It thought about raining, and we had 3 days of such intense rains that Casablanca suffered serious flooding, and the mountain highway to Ifrane, the major north-south road through central Morocco, was closed. But it's been dry for a week now. The rain should start any day now, and continue until the end of February.

You are caught up in Moroccan life! Insha'allah, blog entries will resume as scheduled this weekend.