the names of these currencies

(I'm still three weeks behind)

The weekends, we travel.

Two weekends ago we went to Rabat, the capital city, which all reputable sources of travel information like to describe as boring but which really isn't anything like that at all.

7 am: Get up, up, up and brush of the teeth and raze of the head and face, and wash of the body, the body- the one which, absent any repeated form of physical resistance, retreats further into its natural state of thinness. I'm a bean pole, ladies and gents, it's official.

--Did I mention I've found peanut soap here? The one whose ingredients are so base and basic, so only-the-slim-minimum of qualities necessary to be soap that it only just barely exists at all, the one sold in square, inelegant chunks, stamped on the surface with a picture of a sickle, the one that smells like nothing at all in particular (and to me, like two holy years in a wasteland) the one which lathers only half-heartedly but which cleans expertly, the one whose color is the color of sand and hazes- did I mention that I found that?--

My coffee habit is well supported here. A coffee machine and a coterie of cohabitating devotees conspire to help me drink cup after black cup of the stuff each day. Down a few quick glugs and a hunk or two of moon bread and exit.

Split off: We walk to a main boulevard and catch a petit red (cab) after only a moderate amount of hand wringing and watch-checking. On this roll of the dice the cabbie is nice (they're all guys). He's heavy and dark skinned and deep voiced and 50 ish and bearded ; he chats with me a bit and says “Welcome to Morocco”

Reconvene: Fes's temple-like train station has a giant clock on its wide front archway which announces a time with two, thick hands that is not only severely inaccurate, but which would be so in all time zones, everywhere.

Seriously though, the train station is cathedral-esque and full of light and lovely. Intricate wood panels in Maghrebi knots form the center of a sculpted ceiling; light floods; voices echo.

2^nd class: We grab 4 of our 87-dirham seats (consecutive, self-facing) and settle in, and laugh. It bears mentioning that I really have great affection for many of the other students here. It's honestly surprising, because after each point in my life at which I make new friends I become convinced that I'm no longer capable of making friends. But I just follow the script folks, and it happens again. 

The concession stand man squeaks through the aisle and flirts with X and Y, our two beautiful women. He wears a white shirt, with a worn black vest, and black pants, and pushes a flimsy, metal cart packed lightly with snacks, little bags of corn chips, plastic cups of coffee filled half-way – water bottles, sandwiches. Everything overpriced- so that though I am starving, I buy nothing at all.

*****

I love, love, love to watch the people here – men and women alike- interact with Y, our Egyptian lovely. When they hear her strange, consonant-dropping and letter-converting accent -the accent of television soap operas and pop music and glamor- a light enters their eyes. She asks for coffee and the young man bends down, and looks away and prepares one, smiling big enough to break his face the whole while. That's how you can tell: polite smiles fade in the shade, but real smiles are not for the benefit of others, but for one's own. 

*****

The first thing we notice about Rabat: the coolness. Rabat is an exhaled breath.

The second thing we notice about Rabat – the taxis are blue. It hadn't even occurred to me that another city might have anything other than Fes's rat-nosed little reds, which have square, hollow frames of yellow wood stuck on the roof, reading “petit taxi”. I take a moment to briefly imagine that every city in Morocco has cabs of a different color. (Only later travels will show me that this appears to be, at least partially, true. As of yet, I have not found a city with purple cabs, though I believe that if there is a god, he will have made one.)

*****

Rabat's rail station is the equal of Fes's in sleek modernity – breezy, subterranean stone stairwells connect the tracks; signs written in the same slim, precise font used everywhere else in the country, announcements in French and Fus-he Arabic made in a female voice so well pronounced and airy and aristocratic that it virtually squeaks at the top; walkways on the main level have slots of walk-over-able ornate blue glass, from which one can see down to the floor below, and, in my case, get dizzy; an in- house cafe-resto with some vaguely Mexican name advertises tacos; veiled 20 something ladies in sombre colored outfits lean into light laptops on Ikea-like tables.

*****

The train station sits right on the main boulevard of Mohamed the V. Just about every city in Morocco has one, – that and a Hassan II – as namesakes to monarch's past and present.

Our current king's portrait(s) - capturing him in various casual poses of life-doing (gardening, tea-drinking, off-into-the-distance-staring) - inhabits every concert stage, corner cafe and post office. He gave a speech the other night, which was kind of a big deal – amendments to the constitution and such, all against the background of the “Arab Spring.” But since I only understood about every 25^th word, I concentrated more on unimportant details like his utter unkinglyness.

He has a sort of pudgy-cheeked, pinchable face, he wears glasses, his brow sweats, he looks down at his paper while reading his speech -and he stumbles occasionally- he somehow gives the impression of being rather short whether or not he is in reality (I have no idea), he sits on a gaudy throne which makes him appear shrunken, and many Moroccans seem to like him. My (new and terrible) tutor says of the game of dominoes that Arab autocracies have become, that in Morocco at least we have a “nice king, Ma'sha'allah”. And maybe, we do.

*****

Rabat's medina is wide and flat with straight, gray-cobbled streets which intersect one another at right angles. Maybe now would be a good time to mention I have learned the derivation of the Arabic word to intersect (a form VI verb) which tweezes out ever finer threads of meaning from the concept of “cutting” into something which actually means to engage one another in a reciprocal act of cutting off. This is just a peek into the fussiness of Arabic verb construction.

Anyway, unlike Fes's narrow, claustrophobic death trap of streets these are at least wide enough to raise one's voice in, and spacious enough to offer some (vague ) possibility of blending in.

The first thing I buy is sun-screen (okay, I don't buy it- I just borrow some) because I suddenly remember I'm white.

The second thing I buy is a flaky, crusty pastry which looks like a sugar cookie but tastes like peanuts.

*****

The market slowly, slowly climbs an easy hill toward the sea, and shortly before it gets there the road trickles out into a narrow path which threads through a low, stone wall. Behind that is the most peaceful cemetery I've ever seen. It's not the shady, green kind of peaceful- that's something else entirely. This is sunny and hot and dry and bright. It has a kind of stillness which only comes through juxtaposition with something active (a hundred feet away the ocean jostles and slaps on volcanic rock faces). The breeze blows a little. Palm-like shrubs and reedy grasses sprout at the corners of old, white graves. Piles of fresh reddish earth sits in clumps on the sides of new ones, short grave diggers in stained shirts rest on shovels as we wind through wordlessly.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, the Atlantic......

*****

The beach is filthy but we lay on it underneath rented blue umbrella and sleep anyway. The sand is coarse, almost small pebble -sized grains of varying white and gray shades. It sticks to Y's bare, brown shoulders as I lay beside her. It is the best nap I have ever had, it's under a blue, blue sky and in the sharp, salt scent of the ocean. 

When I open my eyes again I stare (horizontally now) at the little family unit next to us, a blanket under a sand-stuck umbrella, a handsome, shirtless husband in yellow trunks playing with his curly headed daughter, his plump wife, covered veil to toes in pastel pink, looking on.

*****

Then: overpriced scoops of rainbow ice cream and coffee at an oceanside restaurant.

Then: an impromptu art exposition inside a shadowy casbah (fortress). The paintings are each unremarkable and the lovely, thick stone walls of the casbah overshadow them without effort.

Then: Two gangly, goofy, gelled-hair, macho teenage boys strut down the street with unchained rottweilers. Old women glare and young children cower.

*****

We wander back in a rough circle toward the point of origin, past the light house and along the hook of the coastline. We enter the medina again, this time choked and clogged with evening hordes doing their shopping. It's crowded, crowded, crowded and everyone presses all around me, and it's hot and loud and confused, and I'm in love.

We branch off a bit down a sparsely occupied little way in search of a much signed-about restaurant (which does not, in reality, exist). Instead we discover a mother and her daughters making round, greasy pancakes on a hot griddle, on a raised platform inside their closet sized food stall. Each one has a bright and easy smile, and wears their hair covered in milk-maid fashion -in a flower patterned kerchief- up on top of their head, their throats naked. Each one wears a short sleeved dress and white apron. Their bare arms are steady and unhurried but strong. They look capable. Each has dark eyebrows and solid, emotional lips.

*****

Here's what happens: I buy one little pancake (about the size of a large English muffin) and have daughter # 2 smear it with triangular, Laughing Cow “cheese” and roll it up into a little tube and wrap it in brown paper. Then I have a bite or three of Y's, which is drizzled with honey instead, and which is seven times better. Then we sit on a doorstep right beside the stall and take pictures and giggle and watch the women work, and smile and say a few cute words to them as we munch our pancakes, and watch the people pass by on their way to do utterly every day things.

*****

After 10 minutes daughter # 3 arrives, with her particular interpretation of this family's sombre and lovely face, with her fushia, velvety jellaba, with her two young children, with her youthfulness.

Y's vibrant magnetism attracts things- people's attention, bemused stares- today it attracts this woman's baby. We hold it for thirty minutes cooing and petting it while sister # 3 visits loudly with her family. The baby's older brother, a cute five year old named Hamza can't decide whether he wants to hide behind his mother's legs or come out and play. I tell him to shake my hand, and he grins, and I ask him if he wants me to take his picture. He agrees, but every time I raise the camera he brings his own greasy pancake to his mouth and freezes in the act of eating.

Daughter #3 starts to stroke Y's arm, and ask her her name, and tell her emphatically about Islam, and show us her baby's sixth digit- a functionless, knob of flesh (complete with fingernail) attached to his left pinkey, which she flicks with her forefinger. We leave.

*****

We wander some more and have one last meal: it's all chicken and fries and rice (how surprising) grease on the tables, football on the TV, strange smirks on the waiter's face, and cockroaches in the bathroom. End scene

*****

Return: Our morning train was cool and uncrowded and bright. The evening train is none of those things. For the first hour we wander around from one over-crowded, over-heated train compartment to another like rail road nomads, searching for seats. We get stuck in the windowless rear of the car with a young, bad-postured man who, despite the heat and airlessness, lights up a Marlboro. Smoke immediately drifts around us in gray twists, and people begin to cough.
Eventually we thread our way out to the hallway where the air moves, where the windows crack open at the top, and where we can press our noses to the glass, watching as the darkening gloom zips by minute after minute towards home.