The Volubilis Visitor Center was designed to leave a minimal imprint on visitors to the Roman ruins and UNESCO World Heritage site. The new buildings fold themselves into the hills and the ruins take center stage.

The project was completed by Kilo Architecture. I appreciate the intention of clean, considerate, and lovely architecture. If I were in Morocco, I would go to Volubilis to see the new as well as the old.

See the Achitecture Review article for more details on the project.

My mother in law is a helpful person, which is to say that she isn’t very good with people. She full of information on the right way of doing things; the right way to eat, the right way to clean, the right way to pray. She is there to remind you to turn off the light, air the bed linens, and say “Bismillah” before eating and “Hamdullah” after burping. Her knowledge of Islamic practices and Moroccan superstitions is vast, which is to say that she doesn’t know or care much about what people want to hear. She is the harbinger of “hashuma.”

Hashuma in Morocco means “shame.” Shame, it seems to me, can come from saying or doing almost anything; whistling inside the house, sitting with the sole of your foot pointed at someone, throwing away left-over food instead of laying it out in the garden for cats or ants. There is an endless supply of hashuma, which makes me thank God that I am an American and can’t be expected to understand it all. But, now that I am a mother, it seems hashuma has become more of my responsibility. My mother-in-law tells me “Your daughter rolls her eyes. Her eyes can get stuck and she will be cross-eyed from doing that. Perhaps you should take her to a doctor.” She doesn’t seem to know that the lessons she learned in childhood were lies used to coerce behavior. Neither does her mother seem to know, for she tells me excitedly that my daughter is blinking again.

“They used to tell us monsters would get us if we walked too far ahead. So, we’d follow closely, about to piss our pants” a Moroccan friend confesses. My father-in-law tells my girl “Don’t spit, or spiders may crawl into your mouth. I’m horrified by the way he tries to help me deal with her problematic behavior. Let’s not terrify the child. But, I must admit, it can be a very empowering to know/nurture your child’s fears and practice your ability to turn on/off. Not my style of parenting *at all* but a style many Moroccan parents identify, nurture, and manipulate.

My mother-in-law lives in a self-imposed state of isolation. Her mother, my grandmother-in-law, is much more extroverted, having raised three children with the help of a network of extended family/friends. One day, my grandmother-in-law asks me (somehow her and I always communicate despite a lack of common language), if I will take her back to her apartment. “Sarah, this house is making me crazy! I need to be back home. I need to see people walking around; at cafes; in the streets. I need to live!” She is speaking in Arabic. I agree to drive her back to her apartment, but want to check with my mother-in-law before taking her own mother off somewhere else. What if I don’t understand correctly (although I know I did)? I wait for her to wake up (this is afternoon, she woke early to pray and break fast). When I say I am going to take her mother home, she replies “I am so sorry Sarah. This isn’t your problem” and she keeps repeating the words “this isn’t your problem” in a way that makes me feel very uncomfortable. She is embarrassed that her husband isn’t on hand to do the driving. I understand her feelings about her husband’s behavior. I don’t understand her offense at my ability to help her.

My mother-in-law grew up in Algeria. Her Dad died when she was young was raised in the home of her maternal uncle. Her cousins became like sisters to her. He was wealthy, but lost everything trying to leave Algeria during the civil war. He was going to relocate the family to Oujda, on the Morocco side of the border. He sold all the family possessions in preparation. My mother-in-law left earlier than the rest of the family since her mother was already in Morocco. The night the rest of the family tried the crossing, they were stopped by a false police check-point and robbed. He died destitute, unable to reach the other half of his family; unable for them to reach back to him. My mother-in-law cried when remembering she couldn’t attend his funeral.

Why did I think I could live with her for two months? One, because I lived with her for nearly two years at the beginning of my marriage. I did my best to stay out of her way, in the basement, out of the kitchen. I respected that she had her own way of doing things, even if that way involved leaving sponges used for dishes soaking in dirty tepid water; leaving leftover food outside of the fridge for a day or two; leaving milk and black seeds in dishes by the sink as offerings to jinns. I learned not to question her by my sister-in-law’s example. Sister once threw away an old sponge and brought extra silverware to the house when my mother-in-law was on travel. There was a dramatic backlash for that overstepping of feminine boundaries, sponges, silverware, and all that could imply. I learned from that and thought I knew how to keep the peace with her.

But this time was different. This time I was in her house without my husband. This time I took up two rooms in her house, one for my petulant child and one for me. I tried to stay out of her way. I tried to obey rules about not opening the door for anyone, not answering the phone, not turning on and off the lights, not playing with the garden hose, not doing a number of things that came natural to a woman of 33 and, much more importantly, natural to a three-year-old girl. “The gardener can use the hose, but not me, right? Mima doesn’t yell at him, but she yells at me if I do it, right?” my daughter was sincere in trying to understand the rules, but there was no lesson for her. The expectations didn’t make sense. The demands conflicted. During our visit, my mother-in-law slept in the basement; my daughter and I had taken over her space. Her husband refused to sleep in the same room for her because of her snoring. But I suspect his refusal also had to do with her tendency to watch religious television and wake up at odd hours to pray or break fast. On TV, the men who all wore white clothing and headdresses that contrasted with long dark beards, appeared in slow motion, their mouths half smiling and oddly gapping as they slowly spoke silently repeated words. Orchestrated music played as the credits rolled. I felt I knew what they were saying, but I didn’t want to know. I wanted to keep the peace.

I thought I could stay with her because I loved and respected her. I always defended her. When my sister-in-laws complained about food poisoning at her house because of her unsanitary cleaning practices, I acknowledged that I had food poisoning from eating her food before too. But, what can you expect? She is an old woman. Those are the ways she understands. She has her own rituals. She makes an effort based on her understanding. When my brother-in-laws complained about her inability to throw anything away, about how she hordes useless things, like empty margarine containers and lightly used paper towels, I said she must find use in those things if she keeps them and she keeps them in her own house.

Had she changed since the early days of my marriage? Beyond wearing the hijab, had she herself really changed?

Even though she lived in self-imposed isolation remaining mainly inside her house, she kept her hair hidden. “Oh, the gardener’s here!” She said excitedly, “I must go cover my hair.” She fell-out with the friend who did the pilgrimage with her. I suspect the issue was style. “The Quran tells you to dress modestly. I had this shirt made for me” her friend had explained to me years before as she pointed out the breast pocket and tab details on her lose fitting button-up shirt. “You don’t have to wear a jellaba to dress modestly. You can still be stylish” My mother-in-law only wore jellabas outside the house. Her hijab was either black or white. No colorful scarf around her hair, but a fixed thing with lace detailing around the edges. No possibility of it being more than a head covering.

An intellectual man who liked talking about books, my father-in-law worked in Washington, DC, on topics of international development for nearly twenty years, a time during which he enjoyed dinners with colleagues and walks around the city smoking cigars. Now, back in Morocco, he had no friends with which he could debate intellectually. My mother in law would only talk from the perspective of religion, feeling, and personality. She tried to appear rational. She thought she was being witty. As my father-in-law discussed real estate prices in Morocco and the United States, she interrupted our conversation “What do you want, Sarah?!” I had heard this question, always presented as an accusation, several times in the past few weeks. I knew that I could not answer it correctly. But I miscalculated the response and went with honest instead of correct/proper, a bad habit that has plagued me all my life and caused much suffering for me and those around me. I should have said something like “I don’t want anything. I am happy here with you.” or “May God help me to know that.” or “I have everything I want already. Hamdullah.” But instead I said with deadly honestly “I don’t want to talk about what I want.”

Still, I was shocked to find her angry and pointing at me “You are the problem. You!” she screamed red faced with her finger assaulting the air between us as she jabbed it towards me. I had laundry in both the wash and the dryer. My child was watching TV upstairs and I came down to put olives in the fridge. I packed our bags helter-skelter and went to a friend’s house, which is where I sat wondering how I will pay for this…how I will pay for honesty this time.

“Why did you tell your husband that I didn’t want you here!” She yelled.
“Because you did.”
“I never said that! How can you say that to my son…MY son!” she yelled and turned her assaulting finger toward herself.
“You’re a liar.” Why back down now? “You said it to me in the kitchen, by the sink. And if you say you didn’t, then you are a liar.” I was calm.
“When?”
“I don’t remember exactly. I don’t know if it was a Monday or Tuesday; since I’ve been here. I was talking to you about the girl, and you said ‘You know, this is a real problem for me. I don’t feel comfortable in my own house.’ You said it to me in English.”

My daughter had begun to scream when she saw her grandmother coming, no doubt because she didn’t want to eat the hashuma that was about to be dished out.

“You are the problem! You! You have problem with everybody. Why are you here and not Fatima? I have a problem with YOU! Not your daughter. Just YOU! YOU are the problem!”
“OK. I need my bags.”

And so, I packed them – all four oversized suitcases, all the toys, the wet laundry, all. And I packed my girl into the car I borrowed from my father-in-law. I smashed my sunglasses in the trunk door trying to get it to shut. I can’t believe this is happening. So against the rules. He helps me load the car sanely.

“Why are you going?” he asks dumbly.
“For the same reason you disappear for days at a time.” I replied

I would hear him start his car in the morning and then no one would see or hear from him for a few days later. When confronted with this behavior, he said nothing. His facial expressions had grown hard to read. He always looked slightly numb. Now and since I had arrived.

Car loaded, girl clipped in place, I found my way to alternate accommodations for the second time in four days.

We arrived at 11pm. Reda met us downstairs and walk along side our car as we navigated to the guarded parking lot. It was once we stopped that he realized we carried with us four full suitcases, one carry-on bag, two baskets – one of which was filled with plush toys, the other with beach toys – a back pack, a camera bag, and a tote bag. Of course, no one could expect him to know the inventory in the detail described. I had packed in a hurried and confused state of mind. I couldn’t find my daughter’s shoes. I didn’t know where I put her pull-ups. She peed on their couch a few weeks before, so I was particularly anxious about this last point. But, as any observer could have done, he noticed the chaos. “Wow, you packed everything!”

We went upstairs, figured out the shoes and pull-up situation with another escorted run to the car. We, my daughter and I, settled upstairs and were watching our laundry dry in the front-load machine. We rested on the couch that had been moved to the terrace in anticipation of coming guests. Fatimazohra had prepped the bed for us with only a few moments notice. Mr. Reda, as my daughter calls him, came to check on us. “Don’t leave your clothes too long, they are already close to dry.” His remark made me wince with reminder of my mother-in-law. My daughter chatted lightly with him, which put me at a welcome ease. She was wearing only a pull-up and t-shirt. I wondered when someone would ask me why she had no pants on. No one did. She had nestled under a soft blanket and murmured there-year-old thoughts . He paused to survey the situation. “Wait, you need the right light. This light is too bright.” He walked away and returned with a leather and wrought-iron lamp shade decorated with henna and blue dye. He put it over an exposed light bulb that had been shining in our eyes.

“Why did you do that Mr. Reada?”
“Because the light was shining in your eyes. It’s better this way.”
“Yeah its better.”

He reassessed the situation.

“Wait. I made a mistake. I put it on wrong. Sorry. Let me fix it. There. That’s better.”
“Why did you do it wrong?”
“I made a mistake.”
“Why did you make a mistake?”
“Because I did put it on here wrong. It should go this way.”
“Yeah, Mr. Reda, you did it wrong! You did it wrong, Mr. Reda.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Well, that’s OK, Mr. Reda. That’s OK.”

This gesture, Mr. Reda, perfecting the lighting for a few lost birds, meant worlds to me. And what a beautiful lesson for a 33/3 year-old girl to learn: it’s OK to make mistakes.

People smile at me as I walk with my daughter through the medina, my thumb and index finger wrapped around her billowy wrist. These standing witnesses seem like the collective soul of the world, yawning, like a baby awakened with a gentle rub on the back. When my daughter and I are together playful and chatty, we become a catalyst that causes a deep, dear memory to show itself as a smile on the face of strangers. This floating memory is so primal that it cannot enter the conscious mind as a coherent thought. Instead, it enters the semi-toothless mouth of a fruit seller who, in broken English, asks my daughter if she wants some melon. His words are difficult to understand. She appears confused when I tell her what he’s offering. I think she is more suprised that I understand him than she is put-off by him. His eyes shine upon her in search of the smile that decorates his face; a reflection of youth.

In the parking garage below the grocery store Aswak Aslam, I wander the lot with a cart full of bags and my daughter sitting in the fold-out shopping cart seat. A man wearing an orange vest showing him to be a parking attendant of sorts speaks to me something I don’t understand. He knows where my car is, but I doubt it. He takes the cart to push it in the right direction. I follow closely. He finds the truck where I left it. He talks in words I don’t understand as he unloads the bags from the cart and lifts my daughter from the seat. We both recoil at his familiarity and she grabs my legs once her feet hit the ground. Perhaps she is perceived as a sort of cargo and he is being chivalrous towards me, but I don’t think so. At Pizza Hut, the waitress kissed my daughter’s cheek as she greeted our table. A security guard in customs kissed her head, and a man in a café kissed his fingers and put them to the crown of her head as he walked past our table. She is something new here, something different than a toddler in America. She is a memory and a promise of life’s continued flow.

Moroccans love children: a love like warm sand at dusk. It is a love for the temporary nature of youth. In it is an awareness of youth as a precious gift that we all once had and that we all must eventually give away. But there is no glorification of youth. There is no equivalent to an American pop culture icon or the corresponding obsession with youthful sexuality. Beyond the radiant smile on the face of strangers, the kisses and candies, lies all the pain of an ordinary adulthood.

At Magic Park, an amusement park in Sale, I hold my daughter’s hand, anxiously trying to keep her from sitting on the dirty pavement while we wait impatiently in line to ride the Dragon Adventure. Children turn back and forth, calling to each other. Their smiles reveal rotting teeth; one’s happy eye is made heavy by a cyst. They push their way forcefully to the front of the line. I do not smile at them. Poverty has made them old by ten.

Leaving the park, our car is stopped by a traffic light. Music plays on the car radio. I encourage her to dance by bobbing my head and wiggling my elbows. She reluctantly complies. The men in the next truck smile widely at her and honk their horn and wave when the light turns green.

I found a park near my in-laws house in Hay Riad, an upper-middle class section surrounded by villas. It is a small structure holding two slides. It is secured in a pile of dirt that hides pieces of glass, used batteries, rusty bottle caps, and an ant colony. The park is frequented families that don’t look as if they live in the neighborhood; the adults are too comfortable sitting in the grass and the girls too happy playing simple games: making a candy wrapper jump on the cement by thumping their hand.

Each slide has a crack in it and the metal work that holds it has become rusty and jagged. I wonder, if I lived here, what part of the park I would work to fix first, or if I would instead build a private playground behind villa walls. A girl stands on the top of the slide, she stands out to an observer because she is older than the others and she wears a clean white party dress decorated with a large print of red flowers. She has taken her hair ribbon out and watches it blow in the wind. Her eyes have a melancholy look.

I don’t have the words to talk to her. I want to ask her what it is that she sees so far away. Somehow, it seems like a private moment for her. She is alone among us. I think of home. Perhaps there is still a reason to build your house in the fashion of a riad with the windows facing inward. More than the privacy it provides women, but for the privacy of family and the sanctuary of a child.

Can you see her?

There was a group of Americans at the tapas reastaurant where we I ate with two girl friends on a Saturday night. I had grown accustomed to not hearing my native language around me and gravitated towards their words. I knew they must be part of an organized group, perhaps a conference or fellowship of some sort. On my way back from the bathroom and after a second bottle of wine, I stopped by their table to ask. “Cultural solutions” they explained “volunteer work, education, outreach, that sort of thing.” I was homesick. One girl was clearly from the south “I want to marry a Moroccan” she explained with tales about some gardener. She was the most obviously drunk of a group that had shrunk down to about five.

Another girl was more level-headed, and another, who is the one I would like to imagine as myself: a sober-minded late-nighter, beautiful, tattooed, and intelligent. I kissed her head at some point for some observation, some remark I took as a sign of her intelligence and consequent loneliness. [This gesture (kissing someone on their head) is more normal in Morocco than America.]

One man in the group was Canadian “bring some hot girls with you next time.” I told him he didn’t want Moroccan women because they were too smart. When he quoted me back, I recanted: “Moroccan women are too complicated, I mean. American women are more accommodating than Moroccan women. You are better off with an American.” Perhaps he is destined to hook-up with the drunk Southerner in the group, who he made eye contact with as he repeated back my insult to her intelligence (I can’t help it. The passionate Moroccan gardener? Give me a break.). His trying to hurt her only confirms my point.

The other male, who looked Indian, told me he was from NJ when I asked. “What are you doing here?”
“Wasting time.”
“Don’t let him fool you” the Canadian chimed in “he’s a doctor.”
They said they would be in the same spot almost nightly for the next week or so. I told them my email address and said I would be back to see them, which I won’t.

I drive a home – a place we rented by the beach. I kept my eye on the KMs per hour and pulled haphazardly half way into the driveway, tired of myself and all the things I have to say.

The garden smelled like jasmine. I look for the plant of the smell, but I only find ivy. I’ve heard the smell is jasmine, but I have no reference in my American life, so to me the smell is nighttime in Morocco.

The stars are out…not desert stars…not DC stars either. Some compromise. I hear the ocean beating against the rocky coast of Harhoura. How is it that the rocks have remained?

In the day, it seems the horizon, the ocean, is above my head, that it will overtake me…overtake us all and the simple plastic furniture on the terraces of homes along the waterfront. I watch the waves when they seem higher than the rocks. But they break before them. At night, it must be high tide, when the pools form, cesspools as my husband calls them, where children play, guarded by cloaked women, where men fish.

The other night, I saw a man, fifty-ish, riding home on a motorbike, balancing a ridiculously long blue fishing pool between his legs. It seemed it should overtake him. He seemed content. “Moroccans love fishing” as if the love of fishing alone would protect him. These simple pleasures are why I love Morocco.

If you are lucky enough to travel to Morocco, don’t miss a visit to Chefchaouen. It isn’t an easy spot to travel to – there are no trains – but it is well worth the effort. When I think back on last summer in Morocco, I miss Chefchaouen the most.

And, if you are lucky enough to visit Chefchaouen, try the local goat cheese. It is fantastic. Get lost in the blue medina. Check out the local a carpet shops and apothecaries.

I wish I had bought a carpet in Chefchaouen. The sales people were convincing but gentle. I just didn’t have the money. The carpets in the picture reflect the unique style of carpets from Chefchaouen. But, the pictures I took in the local shop were dark and not worth of posting. A Chefchaouen carpet is blue like the city. I wish I had one in the my home – a bit of Chefchaouen to bring back with me.

Up river some boys rinsed gold tea pots with an acid finish. Down river, a group of men pound animal skins in the water. The river that runs through Fes serves many purposes. None smell or look particularly beautiful.

Maybe that will change soon.

Reading about top sustainable construction projects in From The Nation Business, I was happy to see mention of the river in the Fes medina, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

“A youthful and international project team led by architect Aziza Chaouni ( Morocco ) and urban planner Takako Tajima ( USA) are remediating the heavily-polluted river Fez to revitalize the ancient heart of the city. The approach includes a series of interventions to renovate traditional tanneries, create public spaces and pedestrian zones, and restore wetlands as well as biodiversity.

The jury applauded the scheme for creating a chain of recovery projects to enable future sub-projects to be added – and for addressing the economic and social life of the city together with the ecology of the river. “This is a multi-sited, multi-functional project organized around the recovery of the river. Core components rehabilitate the architecture of this historic Medina , creating a functional and viable urban precinct,” stated the jury report.

The project authors formed NGO Sauvons Oued Fez (Save the Fez River ) after winning the regional Holcim Awards Gold 2008 Africa Middle East. The NGO is a network to advance the sub-projects of the remediation and encourage community involvement. ”

Magharebia.com wrote an article on Morocco’s efforts to promote rural tourism. The article fails to mention USAID-funded efforts to identify and establish Moroccan rural tourism projects. The report which was completed by Chemonics for USAID has some lovely photos.

I wish I knew about the “double barrel mint nostril device” when I went to Fes. Luckily (?) each time I’ve been to Fes my sinuses were so congested that I couldn’t smell anything.

Note how the price of a lantern dropped from 80 euros (over $100 dollars) to 200 dirhams (closer to $20). In other words, shopping in Morocco takes time.

Now that I am safely at home I can confess that I locked my keys in the car at Chellah. And my cellphone. And my wallet. I had my camera bag with me which held a few dirhams, and my three year old daughter, who was wilting under the midday sun hovering a few thin inches above our heads. I had memorized only one local phone number, which rang a house where no one was home. This is the kind of moment that tests Moroccan hospitality.

Soon a group of men had surrounded our car. There was a policeman, a parking lot attendant, a taxi driver, and two delivery men who were helping set-up for the upcoming Mawazine concert. After the men finished banging on the car and double checking all the locks, one of the delivery men offered to jimmy the door open with what looked like an uncoiled metal hanger. My eyes opened wide when I saw him because that was exactly the solution I had in mind. But he was scolded and waved away by the policeman, who called him crazy for messing with a car that has automatic door locks.

The automatic locking mechanism on the car was already broken, but I didn’t have the language skills or energy to try to explain. I was petting my daughter’s sweating head wondering what solution would reveal it’s self.

The taxi man explained that he couldn’t drive me to Hay Riad. I didn’t understand his reasons, but he happily offered that his friend was on the way. I started to cry while petting my sweaty little girl. The taxi man told me not to worry: “This is normal,” he said to soothe me.

“Look, God is great. In Morocco, people have lots of problems. But we say ‘Inshallah’ and God provides a way. See! My friend was going to Casablanca, but I called him and now he is coming to get you. See! This is why we say ‘God is great.’”

On pronouncing the last words he turned his hands palm up, fingers stretch outwards, towards the thin sky that seemed to be losing its grip on the blazing sun.

“Ne pleur pas. It’s normal.”

His friend arrived and drove us to the empty house in Hay Riad. The keys I needed to get into the house to look for a spare car key were locked in the car at Chellah. I started to cry again, and this second taxi driver repeated “Ne pleur pas. It’s normal.” I wondered at his choice of words “normal.” Did he mean natural? “No. He meant that things like that happen. Things go wrong. It’s normal to lock your keys in the car” my Moroccan friend later explained.

Back in the air conditioned taxi, we began our drive around town looking for a locksmith. It was early afternoon which meant finding an open store was going to be a challenge. But we kept at it. An hour or so later and several fruitless stops later, my daughter and I waited in the taxi parked just outside the familiar orange medina walls. The driver went in search of a locksmith and returned about 20 minutes later. He came with a short, brown man wearing a black work apron, who jumped in the passenger’s side front seat.

We pulled into the parking lot of Chellah and parked next to our car and got out. The man in the apron pulled out what looked like an uncoiled coat hanger and jimmied open the side door. I grabbed my purse from the back seat of the car. While giving them all thanks I began paying the men who aided me. The driver got 150 dirhams, which was a bargain for the ride around town. Driving from Chellah to Hay Riad and back would have been 100 dirhams alone. I paid the locksmith another 150 for his help. And I tipped the parking lot attendant 30 dirhams for watching the car. On top of the 10 dirham entrance fee, I ended up spending about $50 USD on the visit.

A day spent chasing tadpoles in shallow puddles, counting cats, photographing 14th century zillij installations, and playing kitchen amongst Roman ruins was worth the money spent, even if it did include me crying and driving through city at midday. My daughter enjoyed her “projects” with wildflowers and dripping water, but the true lesson of the day is that trouble finds its way into our life’s design and even adds beauty (God is great) to the composition. The thing is to welcome your trouble, deal with and experience it as a community, and have faith that even trouble has a place in design.