on the in-between rocks

From Marrakesh to the sea by bus!
Essaouira is the goal - the coastal town that done good in the 1st century BCE by providing the purple dye that was so sought after for the Imperial Roman Senatorial togas. This dye is created by processing the spiky snails and purple shells that live near the Essaouiran coast and the Iles Purpuraires. The authentic method of creating this specific shade of purple remains, to this day, a secret shared only between master and apprentice.

The snails and shells are also secretive in their location in the intertidal rocks. I was not quite sure what "intertidal rocks" were - finding out that they are a part of the littoral zone, the shifting space that appears at low tide and is underwater at high tide. (What the littoral zone is, however, has no single definition. Where it begins and ends and the subregions that it can include is argued over by Navy commanders and marine biologists.) But the littoral drift creates a microclimate for the snails who have adapted to their ever-moving home. Wikipedia goes on to share that this harsh environment "supports typically unique types of organisms."

It seems inspiring to me that these snails - these unique organisms who have managed to avoid overt commercialization after their Roman exploitation, have managed to survive throughout the centuries in such volatile conditions.

Essauouira is full of metaphors of what we do in order to survive. My favorite story is of the architect for Essaouira's city walls: Théodore Cornut, a French mathematician and military architect of the 18th century. He was captured and enslaved, obtaining his freedom only when he had finished designing and building, with the help of his fellow prisoners, the port walls commissioned by Sidi Mohamed ben Abdallah. Incidentally, in an interesting commentary on karmic colonialistic correlations, he used the same blueprints which he had used when building Saint-Malo, the walled port city of Brittany in Northern France.

Through these travels though - from bus to books to so many different places - I am hoping to shift from survival to joy.

the intangible nature of joy

The morning train brought me to Marrakesh. I was eager to finally arrive, mainly due to the word-of-mouth I heard that the person who has fully experienced the city is given the honorary Marrakeshi title of bahja, joyous one. Which led me to wondering: what does joy look like? what does a truly joyous person resemble? what does that even really feel like? I have been reading both the Lotus Sutra and the Yoga Sutra and feel that I have at least a theoretical appreciation for their differentiation between relative and absolute happiness, between pleasure and joy, but I feel a still petulant demanding of wanting to see the real thing. And so I was pointed in the direction of the square Djemaa el Fna, the heart of Marrakesh, in the center of the medina, the old town.

I was told that the best way to arrive at the square was through the Street of the Olive (derb al zitoun, derb meaning alley). The name of the square means Assembly of the Dead in Arabic and it is an area which is used equally by Marrakeshis and tourists. It has been listed as a UNESCO Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage. Local activists concerned about the preservation of their traditions achieved this international recognition in 2001 in order to preserve their cultural space. The idea of an intangible space being, first, recognized and even protected, is a powerful thing. UNESCO's Proclamation acknowledges the mysterious alchemy that is born from such intangibles as space and music and dance. In the dedication speech, Juan Goytisolo tried to concretize the invisible: "The spectacle of Djemaa el Fna is repeated daily and each day it is different. Everything changes – voices, sounds, gestures, the public which sees, listens, smells, tastes, touches. The oral tradition is framed by one much vaster – that we can call intangible. The Square, as a physical space, shelters a rich oral and intangible tradition."

To date, a total of 90 Masterpieces from 70 countries have been named, none of which are, interestingly, in the United States. But Italy has Sardinian Pastoral Songs and Sicilian Puppet Theatre. Costa Rica has oxherding and oxcart traditions. Both Uruguay and Argentina share the tango. India has the tradition of Vedic chanting and Croatia has two-part singing and playing in the Istrian scale.

For me, one of the most fascinating things about the square Djemaa el Fna is another intangible – its name: Assembly of the Dead. Walking amidst the stalls, in my head, a two-part chant began to create a steady rhythm; with a profound understanding of what death is, an answer of how joy feels can surely be found – everything changes, nothing remains the same, but the beauty is always there to be shared.

again and again

The last morning in Casablanca before the train to Marrakesh found us at our now-traditional café, The Casablanca (of course), for coffee and the freshly-squeezed mélange of orange, grapefruit and mango. Its walls are covered with the ubiquitous portraits of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, as well as an oddly-placed Edward Hopper print (Nighthawks, of course). The café has nothing to do with the film, with no piano in sight, only hawking gestures towards the idea of the film, as well as the strongest coffee in town.

Yesterday found us at the Jewish Museum, the only museum in Casablanca, which is also the only Jewish museum in the Islamic world. It is an exploration of the balance that does not always come from tolerance, survival and oppression. The museum is committed to salvaging the monuments and synagogues which are the vestigal testaments to the 2,000 years of Moroccan Jewish history. It follows the fluctuations in history of Jews in Morocco, from a once-thriving population in the hundreds of thousands to less than 12,000 today. It gives voice to the Jews who were first welcomed in Morocco after they were driven out of Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1496, through the period of Moulay Rashid, the Moroccan leader united the separate parts of Morocco into a single state, but tore down the synagogues in the 17th century. It documents the mass exodus of Moroccan Jews who left for Israel after its creation, fleeing the after-effects of the colonialist Nazi-controlled French Vichy government. The museum speaks of tragedy, but it also speaks of the richness and hybridity of the Rabbinic and Talmudic literatures, philosophy and poetry in so many languages: Arabic, Berber, Spanish, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Spanish, French, and English.

The museum is on the outskirts of town, the liminal edges of the city. The only way of reaching it is with a taxi, the driver asking us why we would want to go there. Even the voyage of getting there, the short twenty minutes through the various neighborhoods which serve as Morocco's economic and business hubs, was almost as informative as the museum itself. The layers of the changing town were echoed in the ornamental birds that sat on the edges of the ancient, traditional Moroccan Hannukah candles that through the years have now morphed into crescent moons.

nightflight to casablanca

We landed after midnight. The heat of the April night was as disorienting as the vision of the mythic Casablancan runways. The first sight out of the palm-fronded airport was the minaret of the Hassan II Mosque - the tallest building in the country and the highest minaret in the world. King Hassan wanted the mosque to be built on the rocky Casablancan coast, citing the Quranic verse that God's throne is built on the water. In tonight's moonlight, it emerges from the Atlantic Ocean a marbled and glorious vision. The $800 million building is built with all local Moroccan materials, except for the glass chandeliers which are from Venice, another spiritual city also built on water.

At night, a green laser shines a beam from the top of the minaret towards Mecca, to point the way to God. The precision of that light leaves little room for doubt of a spiritual home.

Seeing that green light from the airport made me remember reading about a different green light shining from the end of another dock. My favorite book growing up in Florida had been The Great Gatsby. The first copy I ever had was my Dad's. The only physical souvenirs we have of our father is his library; every book of his was stamped with his name and his Army number. I remember the first summer I read it, fueled by the Floridian heat to an even stronger loathing of peninsula's the sandy coast. I had never felt at home amid the shifting sands of sinkholes (Florida has more sinkholes than any other state in the country) or unstable water tables. I had never felt that stability which comes from a sure sense of home. I had always wanted to ask my Dad if he had felt the same sort of drifting feeling as Nick Carraway, if that is what made him hitchhike across America before volunteering to fight in Europe in WWII, or go work in Korea or move to Lebanon where I would later be born.

The next day, as I felt the Mosque's heated floor made of glass beneath my knees, providing a perfect view of the sea below, I knew that I was experiencing the Atlantic Ocean from the other side. The only prayer I could repeat to myself, over and over: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

On Anticipation

In his book The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton writes: "If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest - in all its ardor and paradoxes - than our travels. They express, however inarticulately, an understanding of what life might be about, outside of the constraints of work and of the struggle for survival."

I am leaving for Casablanca tonight, and then the desert. It is cold here in Paris, on this first morning of April, and it is hard to imagine the radical change in location that is about to happen. Maybe it is our Icarian fears that allow us to be distracted by the pragmatics of travel (where and when and for how long) instead of facing the why of going. The enormity of our hubris, of flying so close to the sun, forces our gaze downward to the glow of the computer screen as we hunt and type for the cheapest fares and fewest connections. The magic of being rekindled is delayed as we plan for the car park. But what would happen if we were required to answer questions beyond the practical? What if Easy Jet, in addition to asking for my passport number, asked me what I was hoping for by walking off into the desert? Did I think that their orange plastic seats would help guide me to a transformation? Would they provide a refund if I returned no wiser?

But first, I have to run to class to read Life After God with my Sorbonne students and finish packing and then get my glasses fixed before buying some French wine for our nostalgic Parisian host who has moved to the medina.