Rain and Early Modern North African History

I took this when I woke up to find it raining one morning.
Generally I'm not a fan of how early I have to get up for
class, but it does have it's perks

So I promised myself that I’d write a substantial post if it killed me this weekend.

So, I got better, and then I stayed up too late reading, and felt like junk at the end of the school week anyway. J has slowly been getting better, but then yesterday her problems started all over again, so healthwise, we’re not doing great.

We’re also a bit disappointed with our interactions with the Moroccan family. We haven’t been up for much, so mostly they’ve been perfunctory. “Hi, how are you?” kind of stuff. Better than nothing, but not significantly better than our relationships with people who run the little snack stalls we frequent.

This lack of real interaction has been harder for J than it has been for me. She’s studying Arabic because she wants to understand how Arabs think, how they live, and who they are. Interacting with people is precisely the reason she wanted to learn Arabic in the first place, and not being able to do that much has been frustrating.

For me, it hasn’t been so bad. I’m less outgoing by nature, and anyway I want to learn Arabic primarily to do stuffy old history things. I hope to be able to converse with Arabs in Arabic, but all I really NEED to do is read. And on that front, it was a fantastic week for me.

J and I were browsing through a bookstore when I found a book called Morocco and Europe, What Happened Between the Fifteenth and the Eighteenth Centuries. Honestly, I think I almost wet myself when I saw it (and that’s not nearly as much of an exaggeration as it ought to be). This might seem strange to some people, but it should only require a little explanation.

I’ve been interested in history since I was young. Back then, it was mostly the battles and armies that caught my attention, but it was still interest. When I got to OU, one of the first things I decided was to go into either history or political science, preferably both. When I met J, my interests shifted a bit. I had always been interested in European history more than anything else, probably because I lacked the basic context required to think about history for any other area. Dating a person studying Arabic will tend to pull a person in that direction, and anyway I’ve always liked history for its own sake.

Right before I decided to take up Arabic myself, I had gotten myself interested in Early Modern European (1500-1750 roughly) history. I could write for a much longer time than I could be interesting in talking about how criminal it is that we don’t know the basic outlines of history for this period, but that’s another post entirely. Suffice it to say, I was hooked on this time period.

Then I spent six weeks in Morocco with J, beginning my study of Arabic. There’s not much better at sparking the interest of a historian than plopping them into the middle of strange country which they immediately fall in love with. So when I got back last year, I did a research paper that combined all of my interests. I wrote almost thirty pages about the relationship between Britain (because my favorite professor specializes in British history, and I’ve taken five classes from him) and Arabic speaking North Africa in the Early Modern period.

So when J and I decided to return to Morocco this fall, I decided one of my top priorities would be finding books about my topic. I finished the paper, but I plan on submitting it to graduate schools, so I want it to be as impressive as possible. If I can incorporate Arabic sources into my research as an undergrad, I become a much more impressive candidate for grad schools.

So, when J and I explored several bookstores and found that most of books were written in French, it was a bit frustrating. French is the language of the intellectual class in Morocco (which was occupied by France for quite some time), so it wasn’t a huge surprise, but it’s still frustrating. It became especially so when we found several books that would make fantastic additions to my paper, except that they were in French. I plan on learning French eventually, as most of the best work about North Africa will be in French, but I won’t learn it in time to include French sources in my paper.

Thus we get the near pants wetting when I read, in Arabic, Morocco and Europe, What Happened Between the Fifteenth and the Eighteenth Centuries. Not only was it cool that I was able to read the title at all, but this book promises to be exactly the kind of thing I had wanted to include in my paper.

So that was cool.

In other news, winter has set in here. That tends to mean temperatures in the seventies when the sun is out, and the forties and fifties when it isn’t. It also means a decent amount of rain.

The rain is kind of a switch. J and I have spent most of the last couple years in our college town in the States, which due to some weird quirk of elevation, only rarely gets real rain. What it does get plenty of is drizzle, fog, and general ickiness.

So having it raining for two days straight has been odd. We’re talking drench you in seconds kind of stuff. I can probably count the number of times our town has had that kind of rain during the day on my hands. It’s a nice change. It reminds me of when I was younger and used to play in the rain. For just a few moments (before I remembered I was wearing a book bag with lots of stuff in it), the rain was just this friendly presence that it was fun to run through. I don’t think adults get enough of that kind of thing. At least, I haven’t in the past few years.

That’s the news. I’d say I’m going to try to post more regularly, but that never seems to lead anywhere good. Until next time…

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PS

J’s hoping to put up some posts soon. We’ll see if it actually happens, but that’s the plan.

Pink Eye, Chocolate, and a Birthday!

So, you may or may not have noticed, but J and I haven’t posted for a little while. At least for me, I can assure you it isn’t because I stopped liking the sound of my own voice (in my head, as I type this).

Rather, class is keeping us on a punishing schedule. Well, the combination of class and distance anyway. You see, while J and I are thrilled to be settled in with our Moroccan family, the location isn’t as good as it might be. A trip to the grocery store is a thirty minute walk, which isn’t bad by itself. The real problem is that the trip to school involves thirty to forty minutes of walking each way. That takes a toll after a while.

Why we’re getting a bit run down can be better illustrated by running through our schedule. Our day starts at six or six-thirty (depending on whether we had shouldered through all our homework the night before). We leave to go to the taxi station at about seven-twenty, and arrive at eight-twenty (at least half of that time is on foot, with our books).  At eight-thirty, classes start. Imagine the next four hours being one long meeting that’s conducted in a foreign language, and you’ll have some idea of the mental drain it entails (and given how poor the chairs are, a physical drain as well).

We eat at the school, and after lunch we’ve started taking some optional tutoring. So we’re not back until three-thirty at the earliest, and by then we need to crash for a bit. After crashing, there’s a decent chance we need to run out to the grocery store or the pharmacy (more on that later). Homework hasn’t been too bad for J, but it takes me probably three hours a night, so between supper and other necessary breaks (necessary to keep my head from exploding), that’s my day.

The bright side is that class has picked up in a big way. Most of the problems I was having last month have been resolved and I’m progressing quickly. So basically I’m tired, but it’s worth it. I’m hoping to use this weekend to get ahead (I know my homework for the next three weeks), so hopefully next week I’ll be able to post more regularly.

In tragic news, J’s kindle busted about a week ago. I hadn’t realized how fully we relied on them until we started sharing the remaining one. They really are incredible little machines. I don’t think I ever posted about this, but when J and I were in transit between Morocco and Turkey, we used the 3G on them to send our parents regular updates. It’s so weird to think that ten years ago I had barely used the internet, and now I have access to it on this little slab of plastic.

Don’t get me wrong, I dream of library with book covered walls (and a fireplace) when I get older, but the kindle is just too useful not to love. I can get books more cheaply (many for free), search them by keyword, and take my entire library with me when I travel. J’s kindle breaking has forced me to realize that we both use them several times a day every day.

Speaking of convenient things (for lack of a better transition), I really like Moroccan medicine. Yesterday I woke up with one eye all pink and puffy looking. When it didn’t get better by lunch, I went to a pharmacy five minutes from our residence, pointed to my eye, and a small Moroccan man sat me down, used a dropper on my eye, and gave me some more medicine for about five dollars. As I write this, my eye is still a bit red, but it will probably be all better by tomorrow.

This is the third time J or I have had to use a pharmacy here. The other two times (in two different pharmacies) have been similarly efficient and cheap (and effective). And that’s just pretty cool.

Finally, I wanted to wish Grandma S a happy birthday from both J and I. In her honor, tonight we will celebrate the occasion with a piece of Pralinutta bread. Similar to Nutella, this chocolate/hazelnut spread lists sugar as its first ingredient, and will have to do in the absence of cake. We love you, Grandma!

The WWE, Oprah, and People

So J and I definitely made the right decision to move in with the family. And not just because we can watch the sun set over the Atlantic, either.

No, right now I’m glad we moved in with the family because of the family. Not because they’re Moroccan (though that’s cool, too), but because they’re them.

Last weekend they sent up a few plates with some tea and some food (which was fantastic, by the way). When we took the plates back down, we decided to try and chat with them a bit. The whole point of moving in with the family was so that we wouldn’t create an American bubble around ourselves. We wanted to genuinely get to know some Moroccan people, and in order to do that we decided not to be the tenants that never leave their rooms.

So we went downstairs, and for the next thirty minutes, we laughed our butts off.

For starters, the dad is hilarious, and he’s hilarious in a way that crosses language barriers. Which is a good thing, since at any given time any one of four languages might be in use. Both the dad (H) and the mom (M) speak excellent Darija (Moroccan Arabic), Fus-ha (Classical Arabic), and French. They also have some English (It sounds like H served some time in the Moroccan military in the Gulf with Americans), but that’s a bit shakier. Meanwhile, J has good French and English, some Darija (way more than she should after a month of study), and some Fus-ha. I have English, a bit of Fus-ha, and some scraps of Darija and French that I’ve picked up from J.

So with that kind of language situation, just trying to figure out what’s being said can send the whole group of us into fits of laughter.

Anyway, we’re down there talking with H and M, with the younger daughter (Y) sitting near. Y is very shy. She’ll give us a both a big smile when we see her, but after a few days in the house, we couldn’t remember if she’d said more than a few words to both of us put together.

Anyway, we’re sitting there talking, I think about the television that was on in the background, when H just starts exclaiming, “John Seena! You know John Seena?” In the back of my head, I’m thinking, “Isn’t that the wrestling guy? But no, that can’t be right.”

But it was right. In no time, Y had jumped up from the couch and was yelling, “John Seena!” right along with her dad. It turns out that H and Y (an eight year old girl) love watching WWE wrestling together.

Speaking of stuff you don't expect to see in Morocco...

I have to admit, I hadn’t seen that one coming.

It then came out that M liked watching the Oprah Show, which is less surprising, but still.

It just goes to show that putting people into boxes is silly. I have described the people we’re living with as “a Moroccan family,” and I had certain preconceptions about what that meant. Some of those preconceptions might still be true, but I have to admit that others have been smashed like a folding chair over the back of a large sweating man.

It just goes to show you. Generalizations might be accurate, or even helpful, but if you think generalizations will really help you much with a particular person, you’re likely to be surprised (generally speaking). I learned that I was living with two WWE fans after two days with this family. I’m sure I’ve barely scraped the surface of who they really are.

Our New Digs

J and I, finally, are set somewhere to stay. At least, we hope we are. Right now, we’re renting the entire second floor of a Moroccan family's house. The house is in the Oudaya of Rabat, a fortress from the olden days where the populace would hide out if Rabat was invaded. As our hosts said, “Rabat is the capital of Morocco, and Oudaya is the capital of Rabat.

Anyway, it’s a great set up. We have a goodish sized bedroom, a smaller bedroom, a large living room, a kitchen and a bathroom. The family (husband, wife, and two daughters) lives downstairs. The whole thing is set up in the traditional Moroccan way, with rooms on all floors opening into a central courtyard that keeps the whole thing cooler in the summer. Above us is a rooftop terrace for hanging laundry out to dry, though I suppose it could be used for watching the sun rise over Rabat and set over the Atlantic, if a person was so inclined.

We're pleased to be away from our last apartment for several reasons. First, it was loud. We were on the second story, and there was a salon on the first one that liked to blast music all day. The stairs smelled like smoke. It seems like many of the other occupants were about our age, and people in their early twenties are not a quiet age group when you stick a bunch of them together.

Another reason we made the move was the price. Even without all the noise, our one room studio had no place for laundry.  We had a better kitchen set up in our dorms at OU. And our beds (yes, two twins) had some of the worst mattresses we've ever used. It was fine, but it wasn't a four room place. For the price we were paying for it, that just wasn't going to work. Right now, with this family, we're looking at paying half as much in rent as we would at the studio.

Then there's the location. We are farther away from the school we're attending, but we're also across the street from the medina. That's the older section of the city, the part that's been inhabited for hundreds of years. Everything is squeezed into these narrow streets. During the day, most of the medina becomes a market place or crafts shop. In a hundred yard stretch, you'll probably have a

leather shop, a traditional Moroccan shoe shop, a tennis shoe shop, a juice shop, a rug shop, a shop for traditional Moroccan clothes, a shop for t-shirts clothes, and a shop for touristy knick knacks. Repeat that a hundred times, toss in the odd shop for everything else, and you've got the medina.

This is our part of Rabat. The medina has more character. There's more to do there. And, importantly for us, you're a lot less isolated there. In newer parts of Rabat, you might end up walking for a while if you wanted a cheap bottle of water, a loaf of bread, or any other item. That will never be the case in the medina.



So, we have the medina on one side. On the other is the ocean. We're maybe a five minute walk from the beach here, a beach which isn't really that crowded this time of year. I don't think I need to explain why that's cool.

Ideally, we'll be here until about May. That'll be a nice change for us. We haven't stayed in the same place for much more than two weeks since August, and our luggage is starting to show the wear.

This is basically our front porch.