Mindy Woodhead
 
 
 
Sitting in my apartment at my desk, I hear the call to prayer! I had unintentionally tuned it out lately, and am pleased to be conscious of the melodic lull of a ritual from which I am disengaged, but not disinterested. It is just after six in the evening and I lean out the window to watch the sun rest atop the horizon, strewn with date palms dancing along the river’s edge. I hear my name, and see Mohammed waving from a nearby roof. Then I look down and see Hassan walking by, he looks up at Mohammed’s call and seeing me, waves. My little community. I spent the earlier part of this week helping four men write resumés, then helping them post on international job sites. I met each at an internet café and helped them in twenty or thirty minutes each. It is fun to have the time to help people with anything they need. I am having less luck on the recipient end, and am still trying to get screens up on my windows. I have relinquished my paranoia over the carnivorous fairies that lay wait outside, as my carbon monoxide detector keeps telling me to open my windows. To cook or heat water for a shower, I have to open large tanks of gas and there just always seems to be some gas looming, though I can’t find leaks anywhere. Tomorrow is a new day and more might come of my screen task. It takes longer to accomplish everything here because the only stores are tiny nooks, stocked with whatever the owner happened upon that week and open at the discretion of management. Tuesdays nothing is open because the market comes to town, which is the main location where the tiny store owners find their stock (the stores being tiny, not the owners). Mondays everything is slow to open, Fridays are a long shot, and everyday everything closes for three or four hours for lunch and siesta. I think they all stay open late, but I am required to be inside by sunset. Who, you may ask, makes such a decree? The mayor, the police, and any man who may see me walking as the sun is setting. I have managed to dart home from the internet café a little later than is proper without too much scandal, but the evening’s atmosphere is spooky. In this very conservative country prostitution is legal. It strangely protects the sanctity of marriage and is just a part of Moroccan life, it reminds me of 17th century courtesans. A common warning of my organization is that these women dress like western women, so don’t give any opportunity for confusion and you should be fine. My organization has done well to keep us just on this side of scared about a great many issues. If I were to just be in Morocco on my own, I am sure I would not be aware of much that confines me now. But I am not here on my own, I am here for work, as a representative, and as a guest. So now I will continue an evening routine that I have come to very much enjoy. It is a world of my own and it feels sacred, and safe, and is filled with everything I enjoy doing! I cook new recipes, eating dinner by candlelight, read, sometimes watch a movie, every night I do an hour of pilates or yoga, then read some more, and write before I go to sleep. It’s really a lovely time!! There is a place on my roof I hope to dress with a table and chair that will afford me a comfortable vantage of the rising and setting sun. Then my secret, solitary world will be complete.
It Is a Virtue
Friday, February 8, 2008