I Have a Dagger

 

The silver dagger at the top and steel dagger in the middle are by
Mohammed. The leather-wrapped dagger is by Houcine.
They range from 16" to 18" long.





Mohammed at work in Shop #34 of the
dagger makers' cooperative in Kalaa,
a space he shares with Houcine.

Tok, tok, tok is the characteristic sound of my village. Heard from morning till night, it comes from the workshops of the dagger-makers all over town. Tok, tok, tok…tok, tok, tok
The village I live in is the center of dagger-making in Morocco. It just so happens that my host father is the patriarch of dagger-makers in the town. And all of his sons – my host brothers – are dagger-makers, too. So it was clear to me, from my first day here, that before I left I would buy a dagger from my family as a memento. As it turns out, I haven’t been able to stop at one. I now have three.


Two were made by my eldest brother, Mohammed, who is regarded as the top craftsman in the region. The other is by another of my brothers, Houcine, who’s right up there with him. My camera and photographic ability don’t do it justice, but the craftsmanship is amazing. I love to watch the dagger-makers as they sit at their anvils making perfect circles, arabesques, and symmetrical patterns freehand with metal punches and tiny hammers on little sheets of metal which they will later solder onto the handle or sheath.

Houcine taps a design into a piece of steel
that will become a part of a dagger's
scabbard.

Of the two by Mohammed, one is made of the usual material, steel, and is entirely new. The other is rarer. It has an antique blade, about 200 years old, to which he added a new sheath and handle made of silver and brass, decorated with fine, traditional designs. The dagger by Houcine is wrapped in alternating bands of leather and metal, a technique unique to him. This was his first piece made this way, though he has since made several more daggers and some letter openers and pens using the technique.

Some of my notes on dagger terminology.

The reverse side of the silver dagger.









Work

In my last post I promised to tell you about my work, and I will, but first a comment about the meaning of “work.”

At the top of the column on the left are Peace Corps’ three goals. None is more important than the other. So when I’m doing something that furthers global understanding (Goals 2 or 3), I’m working. When I’m having tea at someone’s house, I’m working. When I go to the hanut to buy bread, I’m working. When I joke around with some of the neighborhood kids, I’m working. When I go for a run, I’m working. What a job!

What I said about Goals 2 and 3 notwithstanding, like most Americans I tend to think of work as something I can see or can count. So, to answer the whispered question - “But what does he actually do?” - here’s my Goal 1 work:

Primary Project

As a Peace Corps Volunteer, we’re assigned a specific kind of work, which is called our Primary Project. I have an official connection to the local clinic and the nurse there is my “counterpart” – not a supervisor exactly, but a host country national to whom I’m somewhat accountable. We ‘re encouraged to seek out any appropriate ways to pursue our assignment. This is what I’m doing right now to pursue my primary project as a Rural Health Educator:



The equip-mobile in front of the sbitar.



·         Sbitar: I go to the sbitar (clinic) every Wednesday morning. That is well-baby day, so there’s lots of traffic. Probably about 50 women came through yesterday with their infants and toddlers to get shots, etc. Since I cannot give shots, I sit in the waiting room and talk to the women and children. I bring crayons and coloring pages with health themes to entertain the kids and do some stealth education. I hope to use the familiarity and trust I gain to engage in more formalized health education at the sbitar in the future.

·         Equipe-mobile: Last Monday, I went with the equipe-mobile, a mobile clinic, that goes to outlying douars (villages). We made three stops - at a mosque and two elementary schools. The nurse gave shots and other medication. We also recorded the weight and height of the first graders and gave them a very basic vision test. The equipe-mobile goes out every three months.



The middle school where I will work with the Health Club



·         Elementary schools: Beginning next week, I will be teaching in the three local madrassas (elementary schools) three days a week, six classes each day, 515 students. My lessons will be short – 15 to 20 minutes.

·         Lesson plans: The first week, I will tell them about myself and the Peace Corps. The second week, we (the teacher and I) will administer a survey on handwashing and toothbrushing habits. The third week, I will begin a unit on handwashing. Handwashing and Toothbrushing will make up the units for the fall semester.

·         Health Club: A health club is mandated for all middle schools and high schools in Morocco. Every other Tuesday, I will work with the health club at the local middle school. The science teacher is the advisor and the English teacher is also involved. My first units with the middle schools will be on handwashing and toothbrushing, too.

My office. That's a Morocco map on the wall. I've started
marking my travels on it.

·         Handwashing and Toothbrushing: Changes in handwashing and toothbrushing behaviors would provide the most significant improvement of overall health of anything else that could be done in this country. There is no culture of toothbrushing, which is apparent immediately, especially in small towns. People do wash their hands, but not always at the right time, and seldom with soap. There is no clear understanding of germs and the vectors of disease transmission. In this culture where people eat with their hands and do a lot of handshaking, that’s especially significant.

·         Teach. Did I Say Teach? Anyone who’s ever spoken in front of a group for 15-20 minutes knows how long that can be. And to do it in a foreign language? No matter that they’re between six and 12 years old. The big problem is that I can prepare what I want to say, but I can’t really prepare for what they’re going to say. And then when I go to the middle school and face those teenagers…that’s stress of a whole ‘nother order.

In addition to our Primary Projects, we PCVs are encouraged to do secondary projects as well. We’re supposed to discover these out of our experience in and knowledge of the community.

Secondary Projects

Associations

A topographical map of the Kalaa area.
I use it to learn more about where I live. It's
also helpful with the Road Association.
The green areas are where you'd see greenery
in the countryside. All the rest is red rock
and stony soil.

·         I’ve met with six different associations and may eventually do work with all of them. At the moment, work is continuing with two – a Road Association and a new Women’s Association.

·         Road Association: this is a group made up of 32 local communities that want to improve the road on our side of the river and the connecting link to Kalaa. My role is to help them find an ear in the royal government and to prepare their proposal. We’ve met 4 times.

·         Women’s Association: This project occupies a lot of my time and energy and it's very rewarding. It is a start-up that grew out of a comment a woman made to us PCVs way back in my pre-service training. Once I was assigned here permanently in June, I went back to her and asked her if she was serious. She said, yes, and we’ve gone on from there. Though still not formally organized, it has taken a number of significant steps already, including electing an interim board, conducting a survey of skills and interests to which 118 women have so far responded, holding several general meetings attended by from 60 to 125 women, and organizing literacy classes. The survey revealed great interest in literacy and in work other than the field and housework that forms the bulk of their days. My job is to teach them how to run and be members of an organization (they’ve never done this kind of thing before), to help them get legally organized, and to help them find resources for their training and other needs.

·         The Battle Against Illiteracy: Of the women in the Women’s Association, a majority have never attended even a year of school. 75% of them are illiterate, even though many speak three languages – Tamazight, Arabic, and French. We’ve had 85 women sign up for literacy classes and just this week got funding for them, so they’ll begin in about two weeks!

·         Handicraft Skills: The Women’s Association will also be providing classes in various handicrafts and try to develop a way to sell them, too, perhaps by forming a co-op. I’ve been making connections with PCVs who work with artisans coops to see about arranging workshops and meetings where our women can learn organizing and marketing information.

English



I bought a white board to use with my own classes and to
practice writing Arabic script on. It's a phonetic script and
what you see there was my attempt to write the names
 of the officers of the Women's Association. I didn't get a
single one of them exactly right. Very humbling.



·         Before Ramadan I taught English to a small group of women. We met three times a week for an hour. I also tutored a few middle school school students during the month of July. Both groups were suspended during Ramadan.

·         Now, especially with the progress the women’s association has made, two different groups are asking me to teach English – a group of men and a group of women. The men have a business motivation for wanting to learn, since, as dagger-makers, a lot of their customers are tourists. The women just seem to want to know English. These classes will begin in a few weeks, after I’ve gotten started with my elementary and middle school teaching.

So that’s my work for now. It’s more than I feel comfortable with, but Peace Corps tells us to line up lots of work because not everything planned actually pans out. If it’s too much, I’ll make a change. I’ll update you on it as the year progresses. And maybe cry for help.

An Eventful Day

Last Wednesday, October 5, 2011

6:00 am  The alarm on my iPod goes off. I hit the snooze button twice before I get up. I really like my Moroccan bed.

6:18        I get up, heat some water for coffee. Wash my face and brush my teeth (I took a shower – bucket shower – and shaved last night after my run). Have breakfast of bread with jam, corn flakes and milk, and coffee. Read at the kitchen table while eating.

7:00        Go online, check and answer email. Scan the NY Times.



In the space of about 10 minutes, the river went from a
slow-moving stream about 10 meters wide to...



7:45        Get my pack ready. Ride my bike to my landlord’s house.

8:00        My landlord insists I have breakfast with him, so I have a second breakfast of soup, dates, and coffee. We talk about a problem I’m having with my electricity. I share electricity with a neighbor. We agreed on a price before I moved in, but now he wants more. My landlord and I agree on what our approach should be, but it’s not clear yet whether my neighbor will agree.

8:30        I ride my bike to the sbitar (clinic). Wednesday is my normal day to go to the sbitar. It’s well-baby day, so lots of women come with their children for shots and check-ups.

8:45        I arrive at the sbitar. There are several women there already. I sit in the shadow of the wall with the rest of them and I read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time while we wait for the adbib (nurse).

10:00     The nurse arrives on his motorbike with several plastic shopping bags of supplies. I sit in the waiting room and talk with the moms. There are a couple of older children also today. I offer them crayons and coloring pages, but they’re too shy to try them.

11:45     Hamad, the nurse, has cleared the waiting room. We have a few minutes to talk. We make arrangements for him to pick me up here at the sbitar at 8:30 tomorrow morning with the Equip-Mobile (a mobile clinic). We’ll be going to some outlying villages to give shots and do other check-ups. I’m pretty excited about this.

12:00     I leave the sbitar and ride my bike to Kalaa.



...a torrent 70 meters wide and rose about 5 feet.



12:30     There’s no mail for me at the P.O.

12:35     I stop at the paint store where I’ve bought my paint. It happens that the co-owner is the treasurer of an association that has agreed to fund a literacy class for the new women’s association that I’m working with. We’ve had so many women sign up, I ask him if they’re willing to fund a second class. He tells me he’ll ask the association, but if they won’t, maybe another will, and he introduces me to one of his employees, who is a member of a different association that does similar work. We talk for a while and exchange contact info. I leave feeling we’ll get our second class funded one way or the other.

12:50     I ride my bike to the Gendarmes station to get my carte de sejour renewed and to notify them of my travel plans (this is common procedure for foreigners in Morocco). I’m daydreaming as I ride and go past the station. When I realize it, I do a little u-turn through the weeds at the side of the road.

1:05        I get my carte de sejour renewed for another month and chat for a bit with the officer about the destination (Nkoub) for my weekend trip.

1:15        I go out to my bike and see that I have a flat back tire. I pump it up and start heading back to town. I soon notice that my front tire is going flat, too. I stop and see that now both are flat. I walk my bike back to the dagger-maker’s co-op, where two of my host brothers have their shop, and ask them if I can leave my bike there while I go to souq (market)

1:30        I walk to souq.

1:45        As I’m wandering through the stalls someone calls my name. It’s Rachida, a friend and the vice-president of our new women’s association. She asks what I’m looking for. “A mousetrap,” I say. I’ve spotted a mouse in my kitchen – a rather brazen one. I need a trap or a cat. I’m planning to try the trap first. She say’s, “Oh, no, poison,” and takes me to a stall where I buy some rat poison. She admonishes me to wash my hands after I’ve handled it. Later, I buy some cord so that I can hang the white board I bought a couple of days ago. Then we wander for a while on her business, including stopping at her father’s stall (he’s a blacksmith), where I have tea and watch him repair a 3-legged tea tray. We take off and drop off the tea tray with the owner then go to another stall where her mother sells the handcrafted goods the women of the family make. I say goodbye. On my way out of souq I buy a mousetrap.



I waded to my knees in the rising water.



2:45        Back at the dagger-makers co-op I take the tires off my bike and discover they’re riddled with thorns. One inner tube has six holes in it, the other many more than that. My host brother says, “You need new tubes!”

3:15        He and I walk into Kalaa where I buy 2 new inner tubes (23 dh, about 3 dollars, each).

4:00        I put the tires with new tubes back on my bike, stop and talk with my landlord (who also has a shop at the co-op) some more about the power problem.

4:45        I ride into Kalaa and buy some things from the supermarket, then start back to my village.



5:30        As I near the river I see a bunch of people on the ridge on the other side and wonder what’s going on. As I get to the bank, I see that the river is higher than usual, and about 10 meters of water separates the bank (and me) from the footbridge. One of my host brothers is on the bridge and spots me. He yells, “hurry,” splashes back through the water, grabs my bike. and heads back across the bridge. I wade into the water with my shoes on, carrying my plastic bags of souq and supermarket purchases. It has taken me a few seconds to comprehend the urgency in his voice, but even as we’re crossing the bridge, I can see the water rising. When we get to the other side, a sheet of brown water is gurgling over the usually dry stones. I climb the ridge and watch with the other people. In the space of about 10 minutes, the river has gone from a barely moving stream about 10 meters wide, to a torrent 70 meters wide and has risen about five feet. The bridge has been inundated. I wonder where it will end up this time, or if we’ll even see it afterwards. (As it turns out, when the water settles the next day, the bridge is still in place and repairs are easily made.)



The Moroccan version of the old standby - just like the American, except
all metal.



6:15        I go home and wash and change into clean, dry clothes. I put my purchases away. And I set my mousetrap, baited with bread soaked in oil. I’m being clever. The brazen beast has been nibbling at the top of my bottle of cooking oil. He must need fat in his diet.

7:30.      I go to dinner at a friend’s house.

9:30        I come home, and see that I’ve killed a mouse. I dispose of its body outside and rebait the trap. In the morning I will discover another tiny carcass. I hope that’s the last. I really do not want a cat.

10:00     I go to bed. I read for about half an hour by the light of my headlamp, then go to sleep in my comfy bed.

The flat tires and flash flood are unusual circumstances, but the rest of day’s events gives a pretty fair representation of the pace and content of my days. I haven’t talked about work much so far in this blog. In fact some people have said to me, “But what do you do?” I’ll talk about that in my next post.





My Blog Goes Polyglot

One of the interesting things about life here is the way conversations can range over several languages, sometimes in the space of a single sentence. English is not often one of those languages, but Tamazight, Arabic, and French definitely are.

I’m at a disadvantage. The languages I speak well, English and German, are not in the mix. I know a little French. My 50-year old high school French enables me to read at a level that actually amazes me. But I don’t speak it well at all, and my listening comprehension is like that of most beginners. French spoken at a normal rate is mainly just a blur of sounds to me. I actually speak Tam better than I speak French, though Tam spoken at a normal rate is often still just a blur of sound to me, too. Admittedly, I can understand some speakers better than others, just as some Tam speakers understand me better than others. And I don't speak Arabic at all.

But I digress…

One of the workarounds I’ve discovered recently is Google Translate. Whenever I’m going to a meeting where I have important information to impart – and I don’t have a good English speaker in attendance – I try to write my important information in advance in English. Then I pop it into Google Translate and produce versions of it in French and Arabic and print them out. It has worked amazingly well.

That success led me to add French and Arabic translations of my posts to this blog. You can see them at the en francais and  باللغة العربية tabs above.

I’ve done this, not because I have a lot of readers in French or Arabic - though I hope I will. My main reason for writing my blog is simply to have an efficient and effective way to communicate what’s happening in my life to my friends back home in the States. The blog also is a means for me to carry out Peace Corps’ Goal 3: To promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of the American people.

But there’s also Peace Corps Goal 2: To promote a better understanding of American culture and people on the part of the peoples served. Now that I’m getting to know more Moroccans, some of whom do have computers and spend some time on the Internet, I thought it would be good to provide access to them to what I’m saying about my Peace Corps experience in Morocco. In that way, maybe my blog can help me address Goal 2 as well.

Unfortunately, there’s no tab for Tamazight. Google Translate does not support Tamazight. And my own Tam is just not strong enough, or fast enough, for me to be able to translate my own blogs. Yanwas incha’allah (someday, God willing).

Six Months in Morocco

I just got back from Ouarzazate where I spent eight days in training and meetings. While I was there, my six-month anniversary in-country slipped past.

Six months is an important anniversary because…well, I’m not really sure why, but it seems like it should be. It’s such a tidy chunk of time – six months, half a year, a quarter of my Peace Corps commitment. During pre-service training, staff gave us a session on the emotional cycles of PCVs. Six months was typically a low point: you’re still having difficulty with the language, you haven’t done much tangible work yet, you’re isolated in a village where you don’t really have any close Moroccan friends and you’re separated from family and English-speaking friends by hours of travel or thousands of miles.

The footpath to Kalaa, with donkey

All those are true for me - check, check, check - though I can’t really say I’m feeling sad or useless (a word I heard more than once from staj-mates in Oz). However, I do sometimes wonder if I’m having any impact or how effective I am or ever can be. And I still have trouble articulating why I’m here – in English, let alone Tamazight!

And then this morning, I walked to Kalaa to check my mail and found a small package from a friend, Jessica, an artist who runs Springtide Press in Tacoma, Washington. It was a packet of her cards to help me with my color project (and state of mind, too, I'm sure). On top was a note card that said “Your brain is a map, your heart is a compass. Now find your way.” It wasn't exactly the meaning, but the the reassurance, that settled my spirits. And it complemented so well the motto I adopted shortly before entering the Peace Corps: “Proceed as the way opens.”

I went off to do my other errands.

I searched high and low for a pillow to fit the case that came with my hammock. Eventually, I found myself in a narrow shop that sold mattresses and bedding. At the back sat a young man behind a sewing machine – Hafid. Like all the others, he shook his head: No, he did not have one. “But I could make one for you,” he said. He showed me the materials he would use. “Fine,” I said, “When?” Right now. So while I watched, in about five minutes, he made a perfect, 60 cm square, soft pillow (not hard and heavy like most Moroccan pillows). I gave him the 40 dirhams ($5), we exchanged names and mtshrfin (pleased to meet you), and I went on my way

Next I went to a fabric shop. There’s a tailor there – Mohammed, a dwarf who stands about four feet high, with a hunchback and a club foot, and the sweetest smile you’ll ever see. I chat with him for a bit whenever I pass the shop. I thought it was his shop, but it turns out he’s hired help. Anyway, from the owner, I bought two pieces of fabric to help keep the dust and sand out of my book case and clothes chest. I asked Mohammed if he could hem the green one for me, which had unfinished edges. He was in the midst of sewing fringe on meters of black lace, a material women in my region traditionally wear slung over their shoulders. He interrupted what he was doing, threaded some green thread into his old Singer treadle sewing machine, and hemmed my piece of cloth. When I asked how much, he waved it off – walu (nothing) – he said with his sweet smile.

They're building a new bridge over the river...

When I went to the transit stop to catch a ride back to my town, the driver, who has been known to drop me far from my usual stop just because it happened to be inconvenient for him to go that far that day, told me he would wait while I ran to the city market to buy some olives. And he did!

In the afternoon, I met with some men who’ve formed an association to improve the road. Last time I was in Rabat, I’d bought a topographical map of the area and one of the Peace Corps staff members had pointed me to a couple of government agencies that fund this sort of high-cost work. The four of us spent about three hours checking the agencies’ websites, pouring over the map, brainstorming about the reasons our project should be funded – creating our “story” – and agreed to meet Sunday morning to drive the whole route to make notes and take pictures.

...but the road, itself, is little more than a rough 2-track.

It’s my running day (I run about 45 minutes every other day). About 6:00, when I took off, there was a light rain, and the wind was in my face. Off to my right, I could see the rain hanging from the clouds in brown wisps and in the distance a band of clear sky and an orange flat sun. Dusk is a time when there are many people on the road. When I first started running here, I was often met with jeers from teenagers and skeptical, or even hostile looks from adults. But now they know me. Little kids will run with me for 100 meters or so, teenagers nod in recognition, adults give me a thumbs up. Some people call me by name. Every now and then, someone will ask me to stop for tea, an invitation I have yet to accept – though some day I expect the time will be right.

When I got back to my house, it was nearly dark, with just a thin band of light silhouetting the Atlas Mountains and the electric lights of Kalaa floating in the pool of black in the middle ground. Fatima, one of my host sisters, and Sulayman, my six-year old host nephew, were at my door. I hadn’t seen him since I’d gotten back from Oz. He wanted to come in, but I told him I had to take a shower and would see him at dinner, which Fatima had just invited me to. When I got there an hour later, he had already fallen asleep. After dinner, his parents, Mohammed and Sadiya, and I left the house at the same time. Sulayman’s infant brother Ayman was in a sling on Sadiya’s back, Sulayman was walking in a sleepy stumble, clinging to the folds of his mother’s caftan. At the corner, where we separated to go our own ways, Sadiya said, “Say goodnight to Jamal.” Sulayman, rousing himself, twisted his skinny body this way and that until he spotted me in the dark, then blew me a kiss.

So, six months in-country. A landmark.

What I’m Doing to My House

Since my house is so big that I could never really furnish it on my Peace Corps allowances, I decided instead to furnish it with color. I was inspired by the Jardin Majorelle. I haven’t yet actually visited the place, but it’s in the guide books and I definitely intend to when I get a chance to spend a few days in Marrakesh. For those of you not up on the sight-worthy places of Morocco, the Jardin Majorelle is a place built by the painter Jacques Majorelle and subsequently bought and restored by the French designer Yves St. Laurent. It’s now a public museum and garden. It’s famous for Majorelle’s use of intense colors, especially blues, greens, reds and yellows.

My palette is different – orange, green, violet. No slavish imitation for me!. And not the comprehensive painting of the Majorelle, either. I’ve just finished painting my doors. I’ve also found a carpenter/cabinet maker who is making some plain wooden furniture for me at a good price – a couple of benches, a printer stand, a bookcase, and a case for my clothes. I’m also painting those.

The first test of my decoration – quite different from the colors used by my townspeople – came yesterday, when I hosted a meeting of a fledgling women’s association I’ve been working with. About 125 women attended. As the women came into the house, I saw a bunch of wide eyes and occasional laughter. But it was the laughter of delight, not mockery. There’s a gesture used here – fingers and thumb curled into a very loose fist, then flicked outward two or three times toward something or someone – which means beautiful, easy on the eyes, eye candy. Several women told me by gesture my house was eye candy.

After my big event yesterday, I took the day off today and went to Kalaa and found that a package from America had arrived. It contained, among many other treasured things, a brightly colored hammock! It not only helps carry through my project of decoration by color, but has already become my favorite place to read.

To see what my house looked like before the paint job, see my post “My New House” from June 27.

Can you tell I’m having fun?

Not OSHA approved.
Hey, maybe this is why we have an OSHA!

I can finally get all my books off the floor!

Ramadan Ends

Decked out

Today was Le’id Amzzan (or Le’id Lftur, or, in my town, just Le’id). It’s the day following Ramadan when everyone celebrates the ending of the fast. It’s one of the major holidays in Morocco, and in order to celebrate it appropriately, I went to the souq yesterday with my host father and bought new clothes – a tajlabit (jellaba), ikurbin (pointy-toed slipper-shoes), and a tarbut (woven skull cap) – all in white. Basically, dress clothes. In our town, to finish off the ensemble, you also wear a dagger. Since I own one, a rather beautiful one, I was all set.

Decked out in my new duds, I went to my host family’s house a little after 7:00 and had breakfast in the morning for the first time in a month. Actually, it seemed plain, though filling – just coffee, bread with olive oil, and dates – after the many-course feasts that evening lftur accustomed me to during Ramadan.

In my town, all of the men of the village gather in the morning for a prayer service at the top of a high hill just outside of town. About 8:45, Mohammed, my host father, signaled it was time to go. I asked one of my host sisters to take a picture of us in our finery. Wouldn’t you know it, the battery in my camera died. Not only would I not get a picture of us, I wouldn’t be able to get pictures of any of the proceedings! I did get some pictures later in the day. You’ll just have to imagine them peopled.

The shatu supplies water to the village

We climbed to the top of the hill, where the shatu (the water tank and pumping station that supplies tap water to the town) is. I’d never been up here before. The view was extraordinary. Along the way, we passed the cemetery. Since the graves were basically neat mounds of dirt and stones, some marked with tombstones, some with a flat, incised concrete, others with just an arrangement of rocks, I didn't realize it was anything other than the stony hillside till we were abreast of it. At the top of the hill, several hundred men, most of them in white tajlabits, were sitting on their prayer rugs chatting and waiting. At 9:00, the imam turned and faced east. All the rest followed suit, and they began their prayers.

The town cemetery

Behind them, I stood in the shadow of the shatu with a great view down the hill.  I could still see a stream of men coming up the hill, some breaking into a trot as they realized the prayers had begun.

I was standing with about 50 boys - it was all males here - who were cheerfully and loudly oblivious to the sacred proceedings going on on the other side of the chateau. One of the boys sold chick peas dusted with cumin for half a dirham. He served them up in cones made of sheets torn from one of his old school notebooks, the pages covered with the red, green, blue and black script – some sort of color-coding – that Moroccan teachers seem to require of their students. Other kids were sliding down the steel pipe that feeds water to the community. Occasionally a short scuffle – some pushing or kicking – broke out as the physical play of young boys went too far.

After about ten minutes, the prayer ended and all the men turned around and faced west. The imam gave a sermon, I guess, intoning from a prepared script for about 15 minutes. As the time wore on, some men pulled up the hoods of their tajlabits and others draped their prayer rugs over their heads to protect them from the sun. When the sermon was over they all stood up and formed a big U-shaped line. Beginning with the imam, the line started curling back on itself, with each man greeting every other man who was there. Hussain, a friend of mine from the village, saw me standing by the chateau and called me over. I reminded him that I had not taken part in the prayer or the service. "Mashi mushkil" (doesn’t matter), he said, pulling me into the greeting line. That process took longer than the whole previous service. In the meantime, someone had brought five or six large serving plates piled with couscous and set them on the ground. As we finished going through the line, many men went to the plates and took a handful of the couscous, symbolically breaking the fast, though a few seemed to linger there, making a meal of it.

The annual prayer service for le'id takes place on this
cleared ground with a concrete seat and platform for the imam

About 10:30, Mohammed and I, along with my nephew Sulayman and his dad, walked back to the family’s house, where the women had prepared tea and a spread of nuts and dates and cookies. For the rest of the morning and on into mid-afternoon, family, neighbors, and friends streamed through the house as they made the rounds of the village wishing everyone mbruk le’id – congratulations on the feast of breaking the fast.

So Ramadan is over. I managed to keep the fast the whole time, even while traveling, and I read the Qur’an in its entirety, my two goals for the period. I had several tough days, but I learned to schedule my physical activity so that it didn’t really put me at risk. I found that adapting to not eating for long stretches was not too difficult, but that it never got easy to go without water. And, as I’ve said before, it messed with my sleep. I’ll be curious to see: Will I return to my old pattern of falling asleep in seconds and sleeping straight through for seven hours, or will I be plagued with insomnia and fitful nights as I have been this month? Only time will tell.

From the hill there's a tremendous view of the town, the
green fields of the Dades Valley, Kalaa,and the
Atlas Mountains