WALKING ON THIN ICE

THURSDAY AFTERNOON

Spent much of the afternoon on the rooftop of Hamid’s house while his wife cooked dinner in a little room next to me. I sat there under the meditative sky blue and the surrounding white and salmon buildings, totally relaxed in his home while Smith and Hamid smoked some hash downstairs.

I had a gist of what the rooftops were like, but this is an entire world of air and birds and sun and stars. I closed my eyes and basked in blue sun until Hamid’s son greeted me, “Salaam.”

“ça va?” I asked.

“ça va bien,” and he held his heart with his right hand.

He bade me come downstairs with the rest of the party, and we ate from a common bowl, couscous topped with lamb stew. Hamid tried to get us to eat all the meat in the bowl, pushing it towards our side.

Afterwards he gave me a lesson in Arabic. We practiced counting 1 to 10.

* * *

THURSDAY NIGHT (at the riad)

A bird comes in, says hello, looks around.

“Hello,” Smith says.

The bird leaves.

“Hmm. He didn’t answer me. He looked around and left.”

“We gotta buy some water,” Smith comments, surprised. “We don’t have any water.”

And I think about how I am intimidated by going on the street to find my water. It feels so cozy to be in here. On the street feels cozy, human, when we have our guide. But other times, it seems alien. And tonight we’ll be out on the streets when it’s DARK, but we’ll be with our guide.

“I feel like we’re at sea,” I say. “And I feel like we’re on boats. And going on the road is like going into water. It’s that close.”

* * *

FRIDAY

Smith sharpens the needle for our hash. Hash leaves black residual on the needle. It’s hard to push through the paper.

“Reminds me of when I used to shoot up with needles,” he says.

“Oh yeah?”

“Well, see, I didn’t know you could go to a drug store and buy needles as long as you signed a piece of paper. The needles I had were all from Masumi. She was a diabetic. Shot up morning and night. Ass cheek, ass cheek, arm, arm. And I kept all her needles because I’m a found object assemblage person/maker. After a while of using them over and over and over again, some got dull, some broke, some got bent, some malfunctioned.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, so, you know, for some of them I used a little nail file to clean the needles to make them a wee bit sharper and smoother.”

We smoke, then eat rich buttery cakes from a nearby patisserie.

“You want anything atoll?” Smith asks.

“Huh? atoll?”

“You want anything at all, I said. You want face wipes? You want hand wipes? Web wipes?”

“Web wipes?”

“You want rat wipes?”

“Hmm…” I ponder. By *rat* he refers to my vagina. Tonight is all a matter of decision making. Like do I want my vagina rubbed now, which will make me zonk out so that I’ll have less of an opportunity to write. Or will I smoke more and be more creative now, which will mean I’m too tired to have sex later? Ah, decisions, decisions.

“Yr mah woman,” he says. “I can just reach over here and put mah hand on an intimate part of yr thigh…”

“Yes, you can,” I daphne.

“You know it’s a quarter to eight. We can get a good night’s sleep. That is if the universe and us are in agreement. Who knows, you might get up at four in the morn and start typing away.”

* * *

SATURDAY MORNING

It is now our fourth day in Marrakech, and I feel so grateful that Smith and I decided to come to Morocco. The overall feeling I have is that of making contact with an ancient civilization. It’s strange but familiar. I am simultaneously an alien and at ease. I feel that by being here I’m experiencing something that is at the roots of human history, some essential experience that says “home” to me.

We were lucky our first day here. We met a wonderful friendly guide — Hamid — and he’s helped us every day. He helped us find an apartment for a month. The apartment is expensive but I understand we are paying a fair price for it. Our second day here we had dinner with his family. We ate couscous out of a common bowl. Another really really good thing about Hamid is that he doesn’t speak English. So I’m making a lot of progress with French. He’s taught me the proper pronunciation of some Arabic words as well.

I find it awkward to have someone help me, but I know that he needs the money. And he provides a valuable service to us. Much of the medina area of Marrakech is completely unmarked. It’s a total maze and it goes on and on and on.

I sit on some Middle-eastern style couch which runs along the border of the room. I face the window, the balcony. It’s framed by gauzy shimmery curtains. There are plants on the balcony. One of them reminds me of an orchid. It is lush with magenta-colored flowers. Past the balcony, I see another apartment building which is painted the ubiquitous color here in Marrakech, salmon/orange. Laundry hangs from a line on the building’s roof underneath a cluster of satellite dishes. The sky is bright blue.

If I watch the street below there are people in Western dress and traditional dress. I love the traditional dress. It’s romantic to see men and women in robes.

My favorite view is up on the rooftop. Our host provided a mattress for us. If the nights get warmer, we can sleep on the roof under the stars.

We see mountains all around the horizon from there. and before the mountains we see the medina. And before the medina, there is an expanse of sand with plentiful palm trees cocking this way and that.

I feel as though I could stay here much longer than a month.

My thoughts return to Hamid. It’s awkward for us to have a guide, but I’m rolling with it. I constantly worry about whether I’m being disrespectful to him.

He’s missing half a finger on his right hand. He used to be a carpenter but he can’t do this work right now. Thursday morning I saw that blood had soaked through part of the dressing. It must have been a recent accident. I know it’s painful for him. I wonder if he’s received medical treatment.

Yesterday we paid him 300 dirhams over the course of the day. It’s the equivalent of 35 dollars. We’ve read different things about tipping here, that just a couple dirhams for a simple service suffices. But he’d spent most of the day with us, and he fed us at his home. I worried about being too ostentatious with overtipping or that I might offend him by tipping him for things offered out of friendship.

I read that the average salary in Morocco is some 1400 dirhams per month, so I’m hoping that 300 for a day in Marrakech is sufficient. The median salary for the country of Morocco may not be on par with the median salary for Marrakech.

It’s a bit awkward for us because we are perceived to be rich Americans. I know that in comparison we are rich, but we are not here for just a couple days. I’m worried that Hamid will try to offer us a service every day. It will add up quickly and it’s way out of our budget. Just the rent here in Marrakech is over our budget. We could have paid much less for a simple room, but we need to be able to create and cook and live. An apartment was necessary.

I’m wondering how to inquire about how much medical care costs in Marrakech. I don’t know how to approach the subject with Hamid without being disrespectful or making promises I cannot keep. I don’t know if he has taken adequate care of his hand. It would be nice to have some assurance that we’re paying Hamid enough so that he can get treatment and also have a nice amount for his living expenses.

I am not accustomed to paying someone every day for services. We feel he’s worth much more than we’ve given him, but we cannot maintain this pace of spending.