Time Lords and Holy Water

July 11, 2016 / Benjamin Barnabas / 1 Comment

Two seasons of Doctor Who in as many weeks. That’s getting dangerously close to an addiction. Fortunately, it was as much a memory run as it was a time-filler; the buck stops with the last of the Tennant episodes. For some reason I never got into the Matt Smith series. Maybe I grew up.

Yeah. Like that’s ever going to happen.

If my last post made it sound like Eid was one long endurance test in the kitchen, this one ought to shed some light on the matter. If the truth be told, I spent both Eid itself and the following day very much out and about, purposefully burning off any and all calories gained over the weekend. With all those sugary Ramadan sweets, I had plenty of energy to burn.

True to form, I messed up. The calories got burned, well and truly, but so did my back, my neck and my legs. Talk about splash damage. But when splash damage comes in the form of an entire day on the shores of the Mediterranean, who’s really complaining?

I confess, beach days are not really my idea of a day well spent, but for once it was nice just to kick back and relax by the sea, happy in the knowledge that last week’s conundrum was, finally, resolved.

Spot the Italians (hint: it’s got something to do with the Sun)

The Dar Loughat team has exploded from six to eighteen over the last week. The result is that the gatherings have got louder, cheaper and perhaps a little less personal. And perhaps for that reason I’ve been pulling away a bit this week, loner that I am. Curiously enough, that led me to spend the day after Eid with the Host. I didn’t have much of an idea as to what, where or why. The father simply knocked on my door in the morning and asked if I was coming with them. He didn’t say where. But aren’t they the very best of plans: the one that you have no idea about?

Hello Africa!

The destination, as it turned out, was Moulay Abdessalam, a holy site and place of pilgrimage for the Sufis of Morocco, sat high atop a mountain in the Bouhachem range. If I hadn’t twigged that I was in Africa yet, I certainly did when I saw the shrine. At the top of a flight of rock-cut steps, the shrine – a small white building with a green door cut into the side – seemed to grow out of the rock, sheltering a huge cork-oak sprouting from its centre. The floor, too holy for human feet, was nailed down with smooth cork-oak bark, and men walked to and fro across it barefoot, chanting and praying and bowing before the tree. It was mystical enough a spectacle, but add to that the swirling mists, sometimes thick enough to obscure everything ten metres away and more from sight, and it was almost otherworldly.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa

I suppose cameras aren’t particularly acceptable in such situations – I’m still stinging from that run-in with a couple of camera-fearing Chaouenis back in May – so I contented myself with a distant shot and resorted to sketching it instead, though how that is a less offensive practise than photography continues to escape me.

Continue up the mountainside a little way and you come to a telegraph mast, from which one of the locals willingly leads you to a metre-long fissure in the rock. According to local tradition, the rock is a test: those who can pass through the fissure will be blessed, and those who cannot will be cursed. Something like that, anyway. The words bendito and maldito were clear enough. As for the test itself, it revolves more around technique than skill: the nature of the fissure is such that there is a way to get through, though it requires keen observation and no small amount of manoeuvring.

Claustrophobes beware

Yours truly made the cut in less than a minute. I put that down to a staunch refusal to grow fat on Moroccan cuisine than any skilful footwork on my part, though I have to say it seems a rather sexist challenge: I just about managed to squeeze through with the rocks grazing my back and chest. Any amount of gym, good eating or femininity and you’d have no hope in hell. I’m blessed, then – but at what cost, I wonder?

Scarce Swallowtail – GOTCHA

We stopped on the way back to fill up on fresh water from for a sacred spring. To dispel any myths there, we were filling up industrial-sized plastic water bottles by the bootload, although I did suffer to drink straight from the well by means of a smoothed-out bark ‘cup’, as Moses and his followers might have done in the stories of old. Pretentious, much, but I was loving every second of it.

How to drink, oldie-worldie style

We took a late lunch in the misty forests. I was in one of my strange, quiet moods and contented myself with watching the mists swirling through the trees. It was a pretty magical sight. This time last year I was dodging traffic, crawling into a hole with Henry Rider Haggard and steadily losing my mind in the dusty streets of 40ºC Amman. To think that at the same time of year I could be standing in a cold, misty forest with the wind in my hair and the sound of birdsong… It’s everything I wanted and more. Morocco, you’ve done me such wonders. Thank you.

Africa, forest, mists, but no gorillas (there might be some macaques about, though)

Everybody’s heading out today; half for the mountains, half for the beach. As for me, I’ll be staying right here. Our Fes plans fell through due to illness, which isn’t so bad a thing, as I have a lot of work to do today. Essays – the bane of our lives. The sooner I’ve got some more of this work done, the sooner I can get back to enjoying my time out here. A target language research project is all well and good for assessing one’s advancement in a language, but it doesn’t half cast a shadow over your enjoyment of the year abroad. Just a thought, and not even mine, but one I adhere to. Katie certainly had the right idea there.

Well, three weeks remain. This time in three weeks I’ll be on a plane bound for Madrid, and then for home. But whilst it’s the end of the story for me, the story is just beginning for so many others (ugh, how crass a line is that). So, whilst you’re here, don’t forget to see how things are going on with fellow bloggers Alice Abroad and the dream-team at Langlesby Travels. Doesn’t everybody need a breath of fresh air from time to time? Blogging can seem a pretty solitary activity, but in actual fact it brings you so much closer to people by opening a window on a world you might never have seen before. It also keeps your writing muscles very well flexed. As an exercise, I couldn’t recommend it more highly. Which is odd, really, because I don’t go in for recommending exercise as a rule.

Until the next time, I’ll try to keep you posted as often as I can. The end is so near I can taste it, but I’m not about to lose sight of the goal with the final line in sight. Let’s smash these last three weeks, ya3ni. Positive attitude, that’s what it’s all about. That’s what it’s always about. BB x

A Question of Appetite

July 9, 2016 / Benjamin Barnabas / 3 Comments

The fifth week in Tetouan is drawing to a close. Eid has come and gone and Ramadan is over. The streets are full of smiles again and I have my own key. Dobby is free. I really should have done some more posting over the last week, as I’ve been pretty busy – but there’s your reason. It’s been a rather non-stop five or six days, both in and out of class. When I haven’t been in class or tempering my Arabic skills with the Host, I’ve been wining and dining with the massively-engorged Dar Loughat student body, burning several shades of red at Cabo Negro and frittering away four gigabytes of mobile date on Doctor Who, not to mention putting a great deal of thought aside for my Target Language Research Project on Spanish banditry legends and, in the not-quite-so-long term, my dissertation – to be confirmed in a couple of weeks, if the rumours are true. The end of the Year Abroad might be drawing near, but the pressure’s not about to be released. Not yet, anyway.

The biggest headache of the last week – and probably the biggest reason for the lack of posting – will become clear in a few months’ time. All I’ll say is that it was a very difficult choice to make, and that Cortés, Tariq Ibn Ziyad and Alexander the Great would all understand.

Breakfast this morning was standard fare. Mint tea with not too much sugar, honeyed r’ghiif (Moroccan pancake) and another ticking off from the Host, who can’t get their heads around why I never ask for things.

Ben, you never change. You are always quiet. If you want something, you must ask. You never ask. When Alex was here… etc etc.

I’d love to use the excuse that I’m English and that I’d rather die of shame than ask for something, but the previous student who stayed here was also English, and by the sounds of things even more reclusive than I am, so that’s not going to work (I was also a little irked that they’d gone back to comparing me to him, which they used to do all the time a while back. I really tired of it). My reasoning was that I simply eat and drink what I need; anything else is just extra.

If you want something from the kitchen, take it.
I did, though.
What did you take?
Water. Delicious, cold water.
You have a choice. Anything you want, if you are hungry. What would you do at home?
The same. Cold water.
Just water?
Seriously, though. I love water.

There’s a cultural divide there, especially when it comes to food. Not a divide, a fissure.

This year has taught me that, for all the wonderful creations of my housemates last year, food will always be for me a means to an end and not an art. I need what little I can to get by and no more. Morocco, like Uganda before it, seems to have no understanding for the concept of a small appetite. Can you blame them, when the Arabic language itself has no distinction between vegan and vegetarian? Fortunately I am neither, which makes traveling and flitting between cultures infinitely easier, but it doesn’t negate the fact that I’m in a world where the concept of an appetite is a thing of myth. I’ve lost count of the number of times where I’ve eaten so much that my ribcage felt like it might just burst. Lailat al-Qadr – last Saturday night, and one of the holiest nights of the Islamic calendar – has become a byword in the family for disaster, as I had to wade through two iftars and three dinners, consisting of all of the usual delights, but on a much larger scale.

But Ramadan is over. No more rushing home at irregular hours for that 7:41pm iftar every night. No more six o’clock fights in the streets. No more guilty fast-breaking in Reducto. The wait is over and the smiles have returned. Oh, and no more excuses for my TLRP. It’s do-or-die time. BB x

Halfway There

July 2, 2016 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I’ve crossed the halfway mark. As of five minutes ago, I’ve been in Tetouan for four weeks. Four weeks exactly remain. It’s strange to think that the year abroad, essays outstanding, will be over soon. It feels like I’ve been away from home for so long. Jordan dragged, but Spain was over and done with in the blink of an eye and now I’ve only four weeks left at this Arabic game, inshallah, before I can return home at last and, for the first time in over a year, not have to think about where my next placement will take me.

At least, not for a month or so.

Victoria left for home this afternoon, which leaves me as the last of the old guard, if four weeks makes a veteran. I think I’m going to miss her, and I don’t say that about just anybody. She’s bound for brighter and better things and I can only wish her all the best wherever she goes. She’s been such an inspiration whilst she’s been her. It’s not every day you meet somebody who speaks nearly fifteen languages to varying degrees.

Goodbye Victoria!

Inspiration is so very important to me. I had an English teacher once who once complained about a parent asking her to motivate her child; her response was that she was ‘paid to teach, not to inspire’. I’m pretty sure I’ve used that example before, but the argument still stands: she was so very wrong. Inspiration is fundamental in teaching. When the pupil is ready etc. You know the phrase. I won’t repeat it. Inspiration is essential, especially for a subject as challenging as Arabic, and I’ve been so inspired by the people here at Dar Loughat. By Dris, the man who seems to know everything; by Jamal, the diplomat; Alex, the adventurer; Victoria, the original polymath; Katie, the courageous. For somebody who was dragged out of Spain by his heels, it was absolutely essential that Morocco delivered the goods and got the job done, and so it did – and how!

Relations with the host family have got significantly easier, too. That’s probably because I’ve been going out less of late, but maybe my rising confidence in Arabic has dealt a fair hand in that. The library in my room is a gold mine of information, the food every day and night is amazing (and much too plentiful) and the conversation is fantastic. That the father has a firm naturalistic understanding from his palaentological hobbies is just an added bonus, really.

Oh, I’ve been spending my time wisely, I have…

We had a few teething problems, I admit, but I discovered recently what I had guessed to be true: my predecessor was a bit of a social recluse, prioritizing a rapid mastery of Arabic over any and all gatherings. He rarely left the house, spent every spare hour out of class with the family and was constantly asking questions. The family just kind of assumed I’d do likewise, I guess. Is it any wonder, then, that they were a little confused by my silence, preference for books and long, long walks at the weekend? I reckon they’ve got the hang of me by now – insofar as anybody ever can – and my deep attachment to my own freedom. Maybe I’m more British than I thought.

I think I’ll go for my own apartment in Villafranca next year. BB x