I Return to So-called "Civilization" in Spain

You are DARLINGS! It is SO good to hear from you.

I have not been near an internet cafe since returning to Spain a few days ago. I had so much to integrate during this return trip that I went into seclusion, so I could hear myself think, and process what has happened in the last month.

 

I went into culture shock returning from Morroco. On the last part of the trip, in Tanger, I returned to the place where I bought a "Kilim" which turned out not to be a Kilim, but to be machine-made in Europe, and not silk, but cotton, and FAR too expensive. I am ashamed to admit thatI was taken there by an "official guide" who, of course, turned out to be not official at all.He was one of the famous thieves who prey on gullible women like me. But, having spent three weeks in Morroco, almost a month, actually, and having been educated by the rug salesman in Marrakech who invited me home, I went to the police in Tanger, and then to the place where the guide had taken me.

 

The owner, a Berber gentleman, said that he was not there at the time, and it would not have happened if he were there, naturally. They would have thrown him out in the street, because their establishment is known all over the world. Wisely, knowing that I had already gone to the police, he gave me back most of my money.He said that the guide had told them that he had taken care of me, taken me to stay with his family, etc. and therefore he had received 250 Euros for his "work". I got 350 Euros back, and I get to keep the "kilim" That 350 Euros is what I am living on.

 

On the ferry-boat I met an American woman who had just married a Morrocan man fourteen years her junior. She was 37, from Illinois, and the boy was 23. This followed a two year courtship that began on a holiday in Turkey, during which she became convinced that he loved her for herself, and not for sex, because, of course, they don't have sex until they are married. She was weeping in the ferry terminal, because she had to go back to America for four months. It turned out she has fourth stage breast cancer, and had to go back to finish her radiation treatment. She had no money at all, and so I fed her, and adopted her. Turns out she also had no idea of the bus schedule, so when we arrived in Algeciras in Spain, at two o'clock in the morning, she had a six o'clock flight to catch in Malaga and the bus station was closed.

 

So I thumbed for an hour to find someone who would driver her there. Being a blonde at the moment seems to have advantages. A Morrocan man stopped and picked her up for me, an answer to prayer. The men on the sidewalk who had been watching the whole affair said, "You are an angel!" I have had so much generosity in this trip that it was easy to give back.

 

Howver, the ultimate highlight of the Morrocan trip was the Sahara. On the second day in the desert on camel back, alone with my guide, M'Barach, we arrived at a Berber Oasis, with a dark tent, made of blankets draped over a structure built of bamboo sticks, a kitchen, couches, mattresses, rugs, blankets, and a well.

 

The place was deserted.There were pots and kettles and blankets, etc, but the well was completely dry. The temperature was 50 degrees centigrade. I was wearing the cotton caftan I had sewn for me in Erfoud, white cotton, but I was dripping with sweat. So M' barach went out into the desert to find water. He came back with a big can full of water which he playfully splashed on my legs, and soaked my cotton scarf that I had been using to protect myself from the sun. This is called a Morrocan shower! He had dug two wells in the sand with his own hands! I can tell you I have a new appreciation of water!  

 

Thank God for my wonderful guide, M'Barach. He knew the secrets of the Sahara so well that he knew how to find water, both for himself, and me, and mark it for his fellow Berbers.This is the life of a nomad.He took such good  care of me. He knew the desert so well that he showed me a fox, and a lizard, which they call the "fish of the sea."

 

On the last night we reached the Oasis at Merssougah, where Caravans have gathered for thousands of years. Everyone from all over the world was there, primarily rowdy Italians. I did not feel like joining in the party, prefering to remain with the blessings of the solitude I had been experiencing, listening to the slap of M'barachs slippers in the sand, a meditation in rythym with the camels footsteps, sleeping under the stars, talking with the Berber children, learning a few simple words of Arabic from them, like "itrene," which means "the stars."

 

At one moment, perched side-saddle on the camel, watching the sun set over the dunes, as my shadow stretched longer across the sand, I broke into a song of praise of the magnificnece of the desert in a language I do not know. I found myself pouring out all the love of God that I have been experiencing so profoundly and yet so simply. I was filled with pure rejoicing and the words  just poured out of me, sweet, flowing, musical, like Hebrew and Greek and Arabic all combined into one.

Later, I realized that I think I must have been speaking in what they call "tongues," like Paulo Cohelo did in The Pilgrmage. When I was finished, M'Barach said, in English, That was a good song! 

 

I realized afterwards, when we arrived at the big Oasis at Merssougah,  that he wanted to show me off to his fellow guides, as we had become quite close during the trip. After all, it is a very intimate thing to be alone in the desert in such naked, burning heat. There is no room for pretense. Nature dominates.

 

But I chose to sleep in the dunes distant from the Oasis, and woke before sunrise to watch the sun rise in the desert. What an incredible trip! I will go back there some day, I hope, but this is definitely the trip of a lifetime, that I will never forget. 

 

You are right, now I am in Spain, in Granada, recuperating from Morroco. I am trying, without success so far, to change my ticket back to a later date. I am supposed to come home September 7th, but that is not going to happen. I may have to go stand by.  The phone communciation here is next to impossible. I have been trying for days to get through to them, without success.  I will try by internet.

 

Tell me which package has arrived? Is it from Tanger, or from Marrakech? I am slowly divisting myself of the non- essentials, because the experience in Morroco, after Fes, in the Sahara, was incredible and all the things I thought I needed dissolved. The simplicity and the beauty of that experience will remain with me forever. In fact, one night there was a sunset so magnificent that I told myself that I will remember that moment on my death-bed, and go straight to God.

 

Returning to Spain was a shock. Here I hear the sound of discontented, spoiled children crying, complaining, demanding. I see children driving Disney toy cars, and fighting over taking turns. I see that what people earn in one month in Morroco buys a pair of shoes here. I am ashamed of how I haggled over the price of things in Morroco. I never heard a child cry in a spoiled, whining, complaining way. I saw beautiful, peaceful, happy, healthy, if dirty, children. I see loving families, proud parents, laughter, sweet smiles of joy and pride.

 

Here, it is LOUD! Everyone smokes, yells, and fights. I see children feigning illness in the emergency ward where I went when I found myself because I was bleeding internally. I freaked out, of course, but it turns out that it was simply a hormone imbalance induced by the progesterone that I got from my doctor friend in Fes, the one who spent three years in L.A. and then started the institute for sexually transmitted diseases in Morroco. He was responsible for introducing the idea of sexual protection to Morrocans, for whom the subject is taboo, since sex outside of marriage only happens with prostitutes or divorcees! (who are considered tantamount to prostitutes, since they are no longer virgins.) He told me that the rate of Aids, based on his statistics in Fes, is one in a thousand.

 

Of course, this fact is not known, because it is completley politically incorrect, as is the statistic that 80 per cent of marriages end in divorce! This leaves women in a ridiculous position, as they no longer have value on the marriage market, and are forced to work endless hours for ridiculously low salaries, and put up with constant requests for sex from married men, and single alike, who consider them fair game. My Doctor friend paid his assistant 500 dirhams, or fifty dollars a MONTH, and on this she was suppose dto support her two children, but was forced to live with her mother at the age of thirty-six. And he claimed he was broke because he had to pay her! Meanwhile he spent every day after he worked in his clinic, at the hotel, drinking, playing cards, and dancing with his girlfriend. Because, of course, he is divorced!

 

I was overwhelmed by the poverty, and did not know what to do. I spent a night with Said, the musician son of the Fes family, that ended at four in the morning with the call to prayer. It was so beautiful that at that moment I felt that I was a Jew, a Christian, and a Muslim, all wrapped up into one, and that the solution was already available.

If only all the religions would realize that there is only one God, and that God is LOVE, and nothing else! For me, the Morrocans were closer to God than the so called civilized Spaniards. Here I turn on the television in my room in Granada, and I see the bull-fight, with blood dripping from the bull that is beef, completely depersonalized. I watch the poor bull, confused, controlled, manipulated, and finally brought to its knees in submission after a prolonged torture, only to serve the ego of the man who kills him to the sound of applause. 

 

But that I expected.

 

What I did NOT expect was the blatant pornography on five different television stations. Soft porn, yes, but it was so anti-erotic, all tied up with some thin plot line about gambling, and violence, the other vice of Spain. Everyone here plays the lottery or gambles. The other television stations all have psychics or tarot card readers who counsel depressed people about their "problems," while on the other side of the screen people make out, or there are advertisements for the lottery or phone sex.

 

NOT a happy people! It makes me sympathetic with the Muslims who say we are dorrupt!

 

In Morroco there was poverty, but there was a simple openess and joy in living, despite the poverty, that touched me deeply. And there was a deep spirituality.

 

I met an amazingly intelligent and cultivated man, Hussein, who moved me with his vision, a teacher, a GREAT teacher, whose English was astonishing, and who spoke fluent, brilliant French, English, and Arabic. A man who has dedicated his life to ensuring that the young Morrocans are well-educated and can raise themselves above poverty. Fighting the good fight, and doing good works, and making a real difference, I think.

 

I met one of his students, a young man named Muhammed, (they are all Muhammed) who astonished me with his fluency and the poetry of his language. But he too saw me as his way out of Morroco. As I waited for my bus in a cafe, he pleaded with me to let him see me naked, to hug me, to take me back with him, saying his teeth were white, his English was brilliant, and I would not regret it!

 

God help me! I do not want to marry a twenty-five year old Morrocan boy! Let alone let him see me naked! I try to tell them I am older than their mothers, but they will have none of it! Apparently it is common for eighteen year old boys to marry desperate women of two or three times their age.  My family in Fes begged me to find European husbands and wives for them. I cannot.

 

But, of course, I have compassion for them. They want to get out so badly, and Canada is one of their main destinations, because we speak French here, or at least in Quebec.

 

So, enough of that. I must put it behind me and move on.

 

Perhaps when I return to Canada there will be something I can do.I will definitely continue the contact with Hussein who is more interesting intellectually than any man I have met in Canada, or elsewhere. A devout Muslim, he agreed to read A Course in Miracles and consider translating it. That is a miracle in itself, and he wrote in my book  "God bless the woman who tries to learn and to comprehend, and God save those who want to bring spiritual life back to usual/ normal and natural." 

 

Moving on.

 

I have dealt with my medical problems, having been assured that it is nothing particularly serious that I was menstruating at sixty-three! I was having visions of flesh-eating disease, because I have broken out in hives all over my arms, legs, and even a little on my face. My legs are raw and dry where they rubbed against the camel. and then the blood came, and completely freaked me out. I thought I was doomed! That I had caught some rare parasitic disease and it was eating me from the inside out! What a Drama Queen I am!

 

But it gave me a chance to see the medical system here. It is nowhere near as hot here as it was in Morroco, and I am in the mountains. I will go and see El Alhambra tomorrow. I needed this time to recuperate, get my hair done, and re-enter s0-called civilization. The wonders of a clean toilet! The gratitude for a simple meal. I miss the mint tea and bread and jam in the morning. I am thinking of going to Turkey, where I hear it is equally cheap, and you are treated exceptionally well.

 

 I still have to go back to Mai Te (a compression of Maria and Teresa) in Barcelona, where my other suitcase is resting. I didn't need a THING in it, of course, and I will send everything in it home. She is a lovely woman, but does not speak a word of English. I must phone her again and let her know I am all right, and that I will return soon. Meanwhile, I am stuck here in Granada, attached to the everyday details of my life getting sorted out, and trying to become efficient again, after the fluid rythyms of Morroco, the waves of the desert, the heat in the afternoon, everyone sleeping, the wind, the music, the sounds of laughter and music, the sudden explosions of joy and recognition, the looks of love and sweetness, the young man in the line at the ferry singing the call to prayer for me, and everyone stopping and tears in their eyes from the love of God, even tears in the eyes of a Palestinian man sitting by the door of the hotel in Spain, when I embraced him.

 

They seem so much closer to God in Morroco than here. Every moment of every day someone is thanking God for everything that they have. I have learned a very important lesson, and I am very deeply grateful for this opportunity I have had to experience the other side of life that ninety per cent of the world lives every day.

 

Now I will deal with this problem with my ticket, and then I will go on. I have been re-reading Paulo Choelo's The Pilgrimage, and I feel that after Morroco I am ready to do the Pilgrimage to El Santiago in September. But first, I must change my ticket.

 

Thank you for your presence and open-heartedness. Your spirit is like that of the Morrocans, generous, and willing to help, no matter what. It is simple, and rare, this ordinary, simple humility.Pure souls, the two of you.

I cannot give you an address, however. I could give you the address of the woman in Barcelona, but she does not speak English and she does not know where I am. I am feeling more alone here in Spain than I ever did in Morroco, but I am adjusting, after a lot of reading and writing. It was very good to hear from you. I am o.k.

 

Shelora