Experience of a lifetime

Dear Mindy, et al
You would not believe where I am now. For the last five days I have been living in a Morrocan home, with a mother of fifteen children, a widow of 70, who owns the tenement house that holds fifty poeple, (because that is what it is) where five of her grown children live with her, along with their families, the two other children she has adopted. They have adopted me, andI am having an absolutely incredibly amazing experience. And, yes, I am writing it all down.

I am living with them because the Palestinian man, the former P.L.O officer and friend of Yasser Arrafat (who quit because of the corruption he saw in the army that was tolerated by Arrafat) whom I met on the bus from Agadir to Essouira, the man that I wrote about before, asked them as a favour, to take me into their home and treat me as he would. And they did.

He sent me to them, sight unseen, and they are now my family. They have given me a Morrocan name, Zahara, and they take me everywhere. I bathe with them, eat with them, go to the Medina with them, talk about their love affairs with them, laugh, cry and dance and sing with them. At moments, they burst into song and everyone is clapping and dancing and celebrating to the music on the Television, which is constantly playing, or they grab drums and tambourines, and sing and undulate and ullulate to the stars!

The first night I arrived, a baby had been born hours earlier. I was welcomed to the celebration which went on until two in the morning.Since then I have heard the story of how the beautiful Assia was asked to marry a rich Egyptian man, after only eight days. She is so beautiful, and it was a Cinderella story come true. But, living in Cairo, returning to Morroco from time to time, to be with her family and the five year old she has taken as her own child, because her friend abandoned him, the marriage was strained. After two years, during a trip home, she received divorce papers. Over, as quidly as it began. Now, at 29, no longer a virgin, she has lost her value on the marriage market, and lives with her mother, works in a factory, and dreams of marrying again and having children, like her mother.

I am learning Arabic. They laugh at me, but they can translate from French, which I speak, thank god. The sights, the smells, oh my God, the smells! The food, constantly coming, huge platters of food, served by Maman, who sits, like a sultan in her living room with a propane stove at her side, perparing meals. We all sleep in the same room, on benches or banquettes. We sleep when we are tired, wake at dawn to crow of a rooster, or the rising of the sun, kiss each other on both cheeks and say "bon jour," and begin again.

What takes fiteen minutes at home takes hours here. To shower means you must heat the water on the propane stove, bring it to the kitchen, fill a bucket with water from the tap and add the hot water to that, bowlfull by bowlfull. Then, shampoo your hair, pour water over your head onto the floor, where it goes down the drain along with the soapy water from washing the clothes, all into a hole in the tiled floor.

The intimacy of the women in the home is so deep and real. they are themselves copletely in the home, and they stay there day in and day out. Assia and I go out from time to time, to shop or have a cafe, or ice cream, or visit a family member.

That glace, or ice cream with their adopted friend, Hamid, who drives a first class Mercedes taxi, the large kind, not the petite kind, was the cause of a bout of diahhrea (I do not know how to spell that) that laid me out for a full day! Yesterday we went to the Medina where I bought the most important item on my list, toilet paper, a luxury they do not have in their Morrocan toilet, which, of course, is a hole in the ground, with two ceramic places for teh feet, and a bucket of water under the tap to flush with. Saba, Assia's sister, gave me medication for the diahhrea, because she works for a doctor, next door to a pharmacy, and she always carries remedies with her.

There is so much sickness here. Of course, I never drink the water, but there must have been a microbe in the milk, because everyone was sick from the ice cream. I suspect the milk is not pasteurized. I have gotten used to the smell of excrement every time the apartment door is opened, and the constant Morrocan tea, and the primitive showers, except, of course, at the home of the doctor, who is rich; and has a huge apartment, and was the head of an intsitute for the study of sexually transmitted diseases in Morroco. He is rich, divorced, and has all the amenities. He educated them to use protection, but the prostitution rate among the poor is so high that he had one prostitute with aids who had slept with over three hundred men, unprotected. He estmates that one in a thousand persons has Aids. That is incredibly high. But, of course, sex is a topic that everyone thinks about but no one talks about. And no one admits there is Aids here, because of the political implications. There are no social programs here at all. The only plan to make a good life anyone has is to marry a European, especially a rich one.
I have learned a great deal about the importance of love and family here. They have next to nothing, but they share everything so generously. I know that is a clichè, but, still, it is clear what matters is love.

This morning there was an eruption, and screaming, and I recognized that sound. A woman in terror of her husband. They were having a fight abut money.Later we encounter her on the stairs, her shirt bloody, her eyes both black and bloody. I tell her in Canada, the man would be in jail. I wish that were true. I say there is nothing more important than peace, and that money is not worth fighting about. They tell me that this happens all the time, and it is always about money. The men work in an abbatoire all night, slaughtering cows, and come home to discontent anxious wives, and three, four, five kids to feed.

The other day I woke from a nap to see the children playing with what I thought was a toy lamb. In fact it was a baby calf, found in the womb of the mother cow that their father had slaughtered the night before.

They have no toys. I bought the small boy some plastic animals, and he loved them. They live on 500 dirham, or fifty Euros or 80 dollars a month!
After this, if and when they let me leave (they want me to stay here with them forever) I will go to the Sahara, ride a camel, and sleep under the stars, as I have always dreamed. If you do not hear from me, it is because I have been taken prisoner. Morroco has won my heart.
Here I am learning what really matters, and living full out!

As a man in the Medina responded when I asked him about the peace, "What is peace, exactly? Then he pointed to his heart, and we understood one another completely. That man had lived in NewYork for a year.

Everyone asks me what I do, and I tell them I am a teacher. I tell them that I am a psychologist. And sometimes, after a long and deep conversation, I tell them I am a teacher of of God! I tell them that I bleieve all the pain and suffering in the world is because we have separated ourselves from God, which is all there is, and that the Universe and all of creation is Gods, and his will for us is that we be happy and peaceful and love one another. I tell them I believe that the peace we all pray for is an interior job. The peace of God is more important than anything this world has to offer. And I tell them that there is only One god, and it is all of us, it is inside of us, greater than anything we can comprehend, in the DNA of every cell of our being, in Hebrew; Greek, Aramaic, and Arabic, is written the words, "God, eternal, within the body."

So, here, in a Muslim country; I am learning to remain calm and grounded in the midst of poverty, violence, and sickness. I think constantly of how I can help them. I talk business with them. They do my eyes Morrocan style, with Kohl, and dry my hair for me, and bring me gifts of food and drink.

Tonight I will meet the man that wants to marry Assia, a friend of her ex husband's, and a Morrocan rock star. We will go together to a small Morrocan village. Everyone is coming to meet me. I am some sort of star here with my blonde hair and my Canadian accent in Arabic! What a trip!

As my dear friend; Yussef Marzouk Mohamed or Abou Ahmed, the Palestinian, said, "This is a trip you will never forget" Thanks be to God!