I spent some time recently reminiscing about my time in Morocco. This is what I wrote as I thought about one of my favorite people I met there.
Zweena bzef! That’s what Adam, the head doorman-guard at my apartment in Morocco called me the day I stayed home sick from work and ventured out to buy some cold medicine. Very pretty! he had said. Normally I’d roll my eyes and brush off the compliment as if it were born out of pity for my disheveled appearance. But seventy-four-year-old Adam, a faithful Muslim who taught me phrases in Darija every morning while I waited for the bus, was my favorite person there. He radiated warmth in his interactions with me, and I perked up at the end of every long workday when I neared the guard shack where he waited to ask me how I was doing. There’s a special bond that exists between people who are so different in every possible respect, but who share kindred spirits. Adam and I had that bond. So when I stepped out into the blinding March light and he said I was zweena, I believed him.
It didn’t hurt that he’d met my parents a few months prior, and had said the same about my mom. Of course I believed that he genuinely thought my mother was beautiful, since I believed the same.
“Wow,” he said the first time he saw my parents and me together, drawing out and broadening the vowel in that Moroccan way I instantly loved. Waaoh.
“C’est ma mère, et mon père, Adam!”
“Ah oui? Ta mère et ton père, en vrai? C’est très très bon, marhaba bzef!” (Marhaba: Welcome!)
I translated as well as I could, but the words mattered much less than the pride my parents showed in me, the joy Adam and I felt in our friendship, and the delight he showed at meeting the people who had raised me.
Since we had first become friends upon my arrival in Marrakech, Adam (emphasis on the second syllable, which is pronounced with a soft “ah” sound) had asked about my family. Your mother, your father? They are well? I told him about my baby nephew Louis, then a year old, so Adam added Louis to the list of people he asked after. I showed him a picture of my sister and her husband at Thanksgiving dinner (Wow! Zweena bzef!), and they, too, joined the ensemble of family members Adam wanted to hear about. We’d cover their health before moving on to a short language lesson early each morning while I waited for the bus to take me to work. My notes app in my phone carries the running list of words and phrases Adam pantomimed or pointed to teach me:
“Shimts is sun
Tey is heat (I think) no it’s tea
Birret is cold
Shta is rain
Debaba is clouds
Ti khef is afraid”
He didn’t plan out what to teach me each morning, I don’t think. He let his environment suggest the word of the day. My favorite lesson happened the day the bus drove through a rare rain shower. (Marrakech sits near the Sahara, so it rains there perhaps 65 days a year.) As the teachers walked from the corner where the bus dropped us off to the apartment complex where the school housed us, someone must have looked up. She gasped and pointed at the double rainbow that graced the sky above our heads. Then I saw Adam.
“Regarder! Kalzokozah!”
“Kalzokozah?”
He fiddled with his phone, then lifted it to his ear. He pointed at the rainbow, and his eyebrows furrowed as he listened again to his phone.
“Rain-bow! Kalzokozah!”
“Oui? Kalzokozah, rainbow!”
“Oui, oui! Rain-bow, kalzokozah!”
We must have sounded insane to my colleagues and the other passers-by, but it felt like what I might imagine Heaven to be like: Connection. Exuberant joy. Love. That sense of shared humanity, the same-feeling-ness in spite of our differences. It was my favorite part of living in Morocco, and still is my favorite part of traveling. In fact, I think it’s why I crave international exchanges and experiences. There are so many differences to learn about and to honor. So many similarities to discover and take joy in.
The day my parents left Marrakech to go home, we gathered suitcases on the sidewalk as we waited for the taxi to the airport. We talked with Adam and said our goodbyes. My mom and I walked the suitcases to the taxi when it pulled up to us, but my dad stayed back with Adam for a moment and said something before joining us. All activity, we didn’t think to ask him about it until my mom brought it up.
“Oh yeah, what did you say to him?” I asked.
He cleared his throat self-consciously. “I said, ‘Thank you for looking out for my daughter.’ I think he understood me, I put my hand on my heart and then pointed at you when I said it…”
My heart thrummed with love and gratitude.
“I think he got the meaning, Dad.”
Thank you for a lovely lesson on communicating when it might seem too difficult!