NYU Black Renaissance Noire Summer/Fall 2010 | Page 14

I walk toward the train station, a few blocks

away. It takes something like ?ve hours to get to Rabat.
The journey is a passage through cities and forest landscapes.
Favelas line the edges of many cities, self-made housing by
local people who have no other means, no running water, but
most of the dwellings have television antennas hanging on the
roofs, somehow connected to an electric grid. I hook up with
Amina in Rabat and she takes me over to Sale, the city across
the Burreggreg River, to meet her family. Her mother Fatnah
cannot conceive that I speak no Arabic. She directs her words
at me as if she is sure that I know what she was saying. In no
time some olives appear on the table, along with a dish of
olive oil and a couple of French baguettes from a bakery around
the corner. Amina’s brother, Younis, is quiet like a whisper of
air, but as they say in the Caribbean, he has the music inside.
Amina shows me to my sleeping area, once again a sofa that
runs across the entire wall.
The next morning I sprinkle water on my face and Amina
suggests that we take the bus number 14 back into Rabat.
We walk around the old medina of the capital, known as Sweka,
and she takes me by the mausoleum of King Hassan, a man
stationed eternally reading the Koran, guarding the whole place.
I keep asking the names of the many discoveries I make
everywhere I turn. Scents of jasmine and frankincense come
out of a Mosque. Amina suggests I buy some ?ne leather
crafted Moroccan shoes. It was the Jews and Moors, who
introduced the ?ne leather crafts to Andalusia, especially
Cordoba. I remember my father always purchasing the shoes
known to Americans as Cordovans and since I’ve not seen
them for a while, I wonder if they still make them. One pair
could last you forever — my father kept putting new soles
and heels on his pair and they lasted until the end of his walks.

BRN-ISSUE-2-3-2010.indd 13

BLACK RENAISSANCE NOIRE

I leave Mohammed and his family.

Amina and I talk of our families. Her mother comes from
the country-side, known as the arrobia, where most women
were not sent to school. Thus her mother cannot read or
write, reminding me of my own illiterate grandmother. Perhaps
the situation of the Caribbean mountain people is the same
as that of the Moroccan country folk, only generations earlier.
My mother and father completed high school diplomas and
were both lettered. My father went as far as doing a couple of
semesters in college whereas my mother was a lifelong reader
of books, magazines and newspapers in Spanish. It was through
reading the Spanish language newspaper, known as El Diario,
that I recuperated my own Spanish around the age of thirteen.
Amina is the ?rst woman in her family to acquire a University
education. I immediately admire her transition from Arabic
to French and her ease with both her local Arabic dialect and
classical Arabic. Writers from Arabic countries achieve a
higher circulation of their books when they write in classical
Arabic rather than their local dialects. As we talk and talk, it
dawns on me how much Amina looks like a woman from the
Caribbean. The Caribbean has the same hodge podge of genes
in a stew. I taste her and the food. She jumps as if advancing
in a chess move, wanting to know what I think about marriage.
I tell her jokingly that in my country, people always say that
you have to ?nd somebody to ?ght with. Our knees touch
below the table, our souls glow. I ask her about the Koranic
sura that proclaims that a man can have four wives. She quickly
shoots back, ‘maybe a few wealthy men still do it and some
families out in the country-side, the arrobia, but it would not
be accepted among the modern urban women. Neither she
nor any of her friends would accept it. I move the chess king,
asking her, ‘If we were married would you allow me a second
wife?’ She takes a sip of water. ‘You have to be able to a?ord
it, have enough money to keep up two households and to
love the two women equally, which is just about impossible’.
After a few spoons of yogurt she comes back to the question
with a check mate, ‘If I were your wife and you came up
with this other wife stu? I would kill you’. We laugh yogurtly
while the restaurant trembles with Arabic chatter.

13

2
In the morning

Later we ?nd a restaurant in the old medina where we order
frituras del mar. The waiters are fast. Moroccans generally
have swift movements, their velocity similar to what I saw in
Mexico City. Have you ever seen Cantin?as, the Mexican
comedian, who ?ies around in his many ?lms, with swift,
digital hand and leg movements? A basket of bread arrives in
an instant, followed by two salads; a bottle of water glides
from the traveling hands of another waiter and with the ?sh
come a mountain of French fries. After dinner, they bring
us two ban ?????????????????????Q??????????????????)???????????????????????????????$????????????????)????????????9??e???????????????????e?????????)????????????????????????????5??????????1????????)???????????((??????????????A4((