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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Promenading in Tangier (Sam is Exiled from Hotel Batha)
With only one or two days left in Ramadan (depending on how bold the new moon is feeling), we decided to celebrate Eid in Tangier. Partway through our train ride I learned that the word cabina does not mean a 6-person compartment, but rather a 1-person toilet. After asking a young lady if there was room for me in her bathroom, I was kindly shoved into the lavatory at the end of the car by her livid husband. What I encountered might have once been a bathroom facility between the years 1975 and 1976, but its current state should only be assessed by the Center for Disease Control’s bio-terrorism unit.
FLASHBACK TO FEZ: Meanwhile, in a 5-star hotel bathroom 350 kilometers away, a Fulbrighter named Sam is being asked to leave the premises, permanently. Sam has avoided his host family’s Turkish toilet for over a week now. Instead, he strolls unceremoniously into Hotel Batha each morning as if he were meeting an old friend for coffee. A casual bystander would note that Sam even glances around the lobby with a slightly raised unibrow, in hopes of spotting said acquaintance. On this particular day Sam has no time for theatrics. His dinner has been plotting its escape all night.
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McDonald’s aka MACDO’S
During Ramadan the door to McDonald’s in the New City reads: No Muslims Allowed. We visited one afternoon in hopes of satisfying a sudden desire for Oreo McFlurrys. I spent perhaps 6 or 7 minutes studying the menu. They had steak fries and a sandwich called the McArabia: a lamb meat patty served in a pocket pita with vegetable stew dressing. But, what really perplexed me was the Chicken Mythic. It looked exactly like the McChicken but cost 20 Dirhams more. Andrew bought one and I got the other. The difference? A slice of cheese! I ask you, does cheese really make a sandwich Mythic?
Aissaoua Jam Session (Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop)
It took me 2 days to track down a drum set in the Medina. It belonged to the local muscle, aka Driss, aka Big D, aka Boss of the NBT (Nice Boys Team). Driss is also the lead singer of an Issawa music group and is an expert in several hand-drum instruments. I won his respect after playing the beat from “Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems” and now have his protection in the Arsat-Lamdelsi neighborhood. After googling “Rod Solaimani” and finding a clip from a live show, Driss now insists on calling me Rodness, which is short for His Rodness, which was the stage name I was christened with when I drummed for the instrumental hip-hop group Epiphany back in Atlanta.
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