A Pilgrimage of Sorts

I recently read about a retired Chechen man who rode his bike to Mecca. The story, as I took it, seemed to illustrate a particularly curious way of fulfilling an already curious phenomenon - the pilgrimage. I'm not sure that I could define what constitutes a pilgrimage without resorting to obvious examples. Catholics go where there were saints; everyone goes where their prophet received or delivered the message. Unitarians, if they were to formalize such a thing - which would go against their religion - might go to Cambridge to worship at the Temple of Well-Educated Open-Mindedness.

Last week I went to Khouribga. Readers of this blog (i.e.: those burdened by filial obligation) might recall previous mention of the City of Phosphates from a description Al Akhawayn University's 2006 Ramadan soccer tournament. In fact, the actual Khouribgui soccer team, L'Olympique Club de Khouribga, is undefeated atop the Moroccan First Division, thanks to the well-considered financing it receives from L'Office Chérifienne des Phosphates.

My excuse for going to Khouribga came from the opportunity to meet with members of AFVIC, an NGO working with illegal immigrants deported from Italy, and not because of anything soccer- (or phosphate-)related. Since my 'field research' over five months had amounted to three cups of coffee in Beni Mellal and a couple of bus rides around Fes, it seemed fortuitous that my first opportunity to use an expensive digital voice recorder would be in a city that I had fetishized over months and even years for its nothingness.

It turns out that much of Khouribga lives in, depends on, or wishes to be in Italy, usually around Turin. The connection probably derives from the fact that sometime in the 80's Fiat management chose to follow the example of Renault and Volkswagen and recruit 'main d'oeuvre' from a specific region of Morocco. Khouribga and the surrounding area was, apparently, as yet unclaimed. Like colonial spheres of influence, however, this decision would have unforeseen consequences, as (EU) Schengen visa requirements could not cut the social ties already established between Khouribgui's in Italy and the community in Morocco and the now-illegal immigration that followed such ties.

In any case, I set out for Khouribga without much reliable information on it. Anyone to whom I mentioned my destination would invariably ask why I would want to go there. Some people fortify themselves by reading tea leaves, or palms or Tarot cards. I first believed that Khouribga would live up to my baseless expectations when, after arriving by train well after dark, I bought some peanuts. They came wrapped in an off-white, letter stock sheet of paper with the typewritten following:

Page 3

- ne pas donner à boire (augmente la débit circulatoire d'où augmente l'hémorragie)
- évacuation d'exrême urgence à l'hôpital

C - HEMORRAGIE EXTERIORISEES
1°) Saignement de nez: compression avec le doigt, de la narine qui saigne en appuyant su la cloison nasale. Si le saignement persiste voir le médecin.

2°) Vomissements et crachements de sang.
- mettre le malade en position horizontale
- tourné sur le côté, immobile
- pas de boisson
- appeler le médecin ou transport à l'hopital

3°) Autres hémorragies extériorisées:
- hémorragie rectale ) pas du ressort du secouriste
- hémorragie urinaire

Khouribga has the markings of a city conceived and developed under French colonialism. It's monument, as such, is a clock tower that resembles a large paper-weight hoisted in the air. It stands at the center of four, long, straight, wide boulevards. The neighborhood marked 'old medina' looks a lot like the others. And there is a far-reaching 'administrative district' literally on the other side of the tracks that evokes Levittown without any building code updates or sidewalk improvements since 1956. It is in this neighborhood where the Italian-financed, twice-vandalized AFVIC offices are located. People read whatever they want into silence, and after looking through the profiles of some of the Khouribgui's deported from Italy, I sensed the absent presence of immigration in Khouribga's flat, tree-lined stillness.

Khouribgui's tell relatives that Turin is fantastic, even if they're sharing a room with other grown men, working for low wages as a mason. Not unlike other 'belated travelers' I seek fulfillment in the authenticity of the non-authentic (Khouribga, peanuts, argyle sweaters). Just as religion is an irrefutable ideology to its believers, the pilgrimage is inevitably inspiring because it is imagined even as it is experienced. In other words, Khouribga did not disappoint.



Author's note:
(Though in reality undetermined, I may well have betrayed a potential future as a post-whatever cultural anthropologist with that second-to-last sentence)

Comparative Living in Fes

I had a coffee for breakfast the other morning at a crémerie that took me right back to my homestay in Rabat in 2001. This coffee differs substantially from the nisf-nisf, consisting of warm milk flavored with Nescafé and sugar. On this particular morning, with the television tuned to Quranic recitations and a variation of grilled dough as accompaniment, the breakfast coffee triggered a strong memory. Each morning in Rabat, with the television on and before going to class, I would drink sugar/coffee/milk and eat some form of semi- or non-leavened dough (baked or grilled), along with the three boys before we all headed off to our different schools (primary, secondary, high school, university). A daily and ordinary occurrence that returned in a pang of nostalgia brought about by this narrowly physical sensation, as if the sweeter the coffee the stronger the memory.

I knew before returning to Morocco that in my mind I had constructed my previous stay as a halcyon time in my life, full of love and learning. Wary of this mental artifact, too carefully wrapped in the shiny packaging of nostalgia, I realize that I have been both seeking out and avoiding the places and experiences that left the most enduring impressions from that time. When I return to Rabat, as I plan to do for the fifth or sixth time this weekend, I am both pleased to visit the family, and slightly ill at ease. Each time I stay with them, this connection is renewed. They talk to each other, shout at each other, watch television, eat, have neighbors over, and go about their ways. I return to my semi-domestic standing, helping with women’s work, talking to the grandmother, sometimes getting invited on son-errands, which include going to buy a forgotten ingredient needed for cooking, or on son-excursions, which include watching or sometimes playing soccer. The rest of the time, I sit in their midst with my face compressed by mental effort and incomprehension, trying to follow conversation or whatever is showing on the ever-present television. And I eat when told to eat.

At the same time, I am glad that I only revisit this place and these particular sensations on occasion. I have now been in Morocco for a longer period of time this year than during my semester exchange in 2001 yet, clearly, I am living in inescapable comparison with my memories. For that reason, I sense that I evaluate Fes by and through Rabat, never mind the vastly different circumstances this time around, (alone, apartment, Ville Nouvelle, 2007).

Still, the bilan:

Fes is lacking for street food. Maybe it’s my neighborhood, but the only thing regularly offered is snail soup, served in a bowl with a safety pin for ease in removing the escargo from its shell. Among the absent ambulatory eating opportunities: steamed chickpeas or fava beans with salt and cumin, macaroons, fresh-squeezed orange juice, toothbreaking brittle candy, and more. This may all be a function of not living near the medina. However, the wide avenues and sidewalks in Rabat’s Ville Nouvelle, particularly rendered to convey colonial pomp and power, now make for excellent street-newspaper kiosks. Men stand in rows, reflecting the overlapped newspapers which are arranged in a comfortably wide arc, and bend forward slightly at the waist usually with hands held behind their back, reading, it seems, each paper from the centerfold up, for five, ten, fifteen minutes. Lastly, and probably, least uniquely, I enjoy the way that, in Rabat, roasted peanuts come wrapped in a page from some student’s notebook. As with the newspapers and street food, this phenomenon is by no means unique to the capital city, but somehow I attribute the prevalence of schoolwork-cum-peanut packaging to a particularly well-educated and sophisticated metropolis.

What Fes does have, however, are 53 bus lines administered by the municipal transportation agency. I know this because I went, by bus, to their administrative office, out by the Coke bottling plant, and asked for a map. A standing, window-sized, display map that once lit up to show various stops stood in the waiting room of the building. There were no portable maps available, but I was given a chart furnished with each line’s total distance and termini. I’ve used it to visit two neighborhoods I wouldn’t have otherwise stumbled upon. In Sidi Boujida, I watched Al Jazeera coverage of the anti-war protest in Washington while clutches of men on the sunny slope opposite the café played cards and checkers. In Ben debbab, I ate an extraordinary potato-pancake sandwich in a very small eatery, a young man next to me making conversation as he stirred a big pot of soup. Both comparatively and unto themselves, these were good experiences.