The Search for Abdellah Pt. Deux
9/20/2009- We spent almost all day looking for M’Alem Abdellah El-Gourd’s Dar Gnawa, which, believe it or not, turned out to be right next door to our hostel! Personal Legend! The universe conspiring! Need I say more? When he opened the bronze door to his home we inquired as to weather he was the “bearded one”, to which he shot back: “I know who I am, but who are you?” Already I felt like I was in the presence of a Yoda-like master. Tangier is my Dagobah.
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Fulbright Jam at Café Detroit & The Search for Abdellah
9/20/2009 – The following morning (still Ramadan on account of a shy moon), the Fulbright crew put on a live concert for a thrilled audience of exactly 2 Spanish tourists. The venue? Café Detroit in the Kasbah. How it happened? I’m not sure, but like all great adventures it started by stopping to ask a man wearing a Fez for directions. We were looking for a Gnawa Master known as Abdellah El-Gourd, also known as Abdellah “the bearded one” by the locals. (You’ll never believe how we found him in the end). Anyhow, we were invited in, and after a quick demo in 6/4 time, Kendra Salois and Catherine “Second Wind” Skroch (both newly inducted members of Moroccappela) took us on a mint-tea induced musical journey.
PS – Before our quest for Abdellah El Gourd continues in future posts, I thought this might be an appropriate time for a quick primer on the Gnawa. Hence…
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in media res
Too Hip To Be Square With Huey Lewis
In his waking hours Mr. Carson rewrote the example sentences in our vocabulary books so that they provided context within the scope of 70’s pop culture. I learned that the word “avarice” is a synonym for “greed”, and that many consider Avarice Films Inc.’s undisputed masterpiece to be Debbie Does Dallas. I thought it was a Western, and my dad worshiped John Wayne, so I asked him if he’d heard of it. He had, but to the best of his knowledge it was not a John Wayne movie. We then had a father-son moment.
Mr. Carson also taught me that all epics begin in media res and that the adventures that shape our lives are no exception.
Karate Champions Get Special Massages
Before heading to a Synagogue in the New City of Fez for Rosh Hashanah services, Andrew and I visited the public bathhouse for a serious scrub down. My father and grandfather always described the hamam in Iran with smiles, sighs, and nostalgia. Now I can relate. I also now understand why they always frowned upon loofas as inferior scrubbing devices.
In the States, you soap, lather, and then rinse off under a shower. In the hamam you sit cross-legged on a tile floor as a mustachioed gentlemen in his 50’s pours scalding buckets of water on you and then proceeds to rub you down with saboon beldi (traditional old-fashioned soap that looks like black petroleum jelly). After a second rinse, he then slips his hand into a kis, which I would describe as an abrasive mitten that you would only use to clean the rust off of an old bike chain. While the purpose of the loofa is to lather soap all over your body, the kis is meant to remove your first (and sometimes second) layer of skin. As I held back tears, the man peeling off my summer tan asked if I was a student of karate. Apparently anyone in Morocco with well-defined pectorals is considered a fighter. I laughed. He then rocked my world.
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Rosh Hashanah Drama
Muhammad and Matt are asked to leave the men’s section of the Synagogue because they are not Jewish. Several of the congregants are unhappy with this decision, which was made without consultation. Alma, a Fulbrighter researching Jewish History in Morocco, had invited several friends to attend Rosh Hashanah services. Save for a young couple from Paris, the other dozen congregants are at least 60 and speak to each other exclusively in French. Most of them ignore us.
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2008 Grantees
