The boys and I had decided a few days back to go to Assila because it was known for its beautiful beaches. We are college kids after all, we figured we should enjoy the beautiful August weather while it persisted. So we hopped on the train after classes on Friday for the 4 hour ride to Assila. We arrived sometime past 10 pm and spent the next hour or so randomly strolling around the city, convinced that we could find our apartment without asking for directions. Eventually we found a taxi driver who knew the place, and we piled into a "grand taxi" and headed into an especially seedy part of town. I wondered what we had gotten ourselves into when we entered the decaying neighborhood, with entire vacant lots full of trash and hardly a soul in sight (Moroccans usually are nocturnal, so to see no one around at 11 pm is very rare). When we got to our apartment I was encouraged by its cleanliness and appealing interior design, it seemed like I might survive this trip after all.
We had heard about horse carts as a means for transportation from previous semester abroad students and we knew we wanted to give it a try. So after a few hours wandering around the صوق ("sook" means market) we flagged down a very skinny very tan horse cart driver. The horse cart was simply one gaunt looking horse strapped to a large flat wooden platform on wheels. Hesitant, I hopped onto one side of the platform and hung onto the edge for dear life. The horse took off at a speed that surprised all of us, given that its load was 7 fully grown adults. The ride was incredibly bumpy, given that Moroccan road really aren't paved. Several times I felt like I was millimeters away from falling off the cart, but I had no idea what was to come. About 20 minutes into the trip we leave the city where our apartment was and get on what appears to be a highway.
There we were, 7 people sitting on a platform with no seat belts or anything to hold onto other than the platform itself and each other, right next to speeding semi trucks. I don't know if I was ever as scared in my entire life as when we saw an 18 wheeler speeding up to us with another horse cart to our left on the road. We effectively had no escape route. Thankfully, the truck and the horse cart moved at just the right moment so that we all had space on the road and the truck blew by us and I pretty much wet my pants.
Our driver began singing in spanish (Assila uses spanish just as frequently as arabic) and John brought out his speakers and began playing popular arabic and spanish tunes from his phone. We began all singing loudly and yelling at all the cars and fellow horse carts that passed us. One group on a horse cart next to us spoke english and we yelled at them "why are we doing this?? We are such idiots! We're going to die!" and we all laughed. It was extremely scary, but somehow exhilarating at the same time and I don't regret the decision one bit.
That near-death situation definitely paid off once we got to the beach. As our horse cart neared the edge of the cliff, we could see how beautiful paradise beach really was. Perfect blue ocean, soft sand, and not much crowding at all. The beach was lined with little shady areas with beach chairs that you could rent for the equivalent of about $3, which we did. Strangely, we saw a bunch of Moroccans had painted themselves with green clay. We thought it might be some sort of natural sun screen, as we saw these green people walking around with just as much consistency as the people with natural skin pigmentation. I enjoyed the role of "mom" for a while while I waited with the stuff under the shade. I read my book for a while and fell asleep, warm and content watching the green Moroccans play beach soccer.
I awoke to Sage and Wasim's return. Wasim asked if I wanted to go exploring with them along the beach towards a grouping of rocks that looked like it might be fun to climb. After we had conquered the rocks along the shore, we came to a small cove that was overflowing with these strange green Moroccans. They were all centered around a large rock covered in green clay. Some Moroccans were busily collecting clay along the cliff and others were mixing the clay with water from the ocean. Still others were painting themselves with this clay mixture and helping to paint their friends. Tentatively, we approached one group of Moroccans and attempted to propose the obvious question to them in broken Moroccan dialect, "Why are you doing this?" They responded by saying something about the clay being a natural benefit for the skin. Without warning, one Moroccan girl grabbed my hand and pulled me into the swarm of moroccans centered around the clay rock. Before I knew what was going on, I felt the hands of 5 Moroccans painting me with this green clay. I began to laugh as I saw Wasim and Sage in a similar situation, with undoubtedly the same shocked expression on their faces as was on mine.
It was at this moment that Sage made his mysterious comment. "نفس اللون" (pronounced "nufs al-loun") is such a simple concept but reaches far deeper than expected. Sage realized the lesson first, but we were all learning. Even though the language barrier was steep and even though our backgrounds were as different as night and day, by painting each other with this mud we were doing more than just changing the color of our skin. We were sharing an experience with these Moroccans that was so fundamentally part of their culture, part of their way of life. I don't know of any place in the US were a bunch of people would come exfoliate your skin without you paying a hefty price. We didn't ask them to do this for us, and they expected nothing in return. They just wanted our friendship, and to share a moment with us, something that was valuable in and of itself. So while we all laughed when Sage said this, the comment stuck with me and that is why I have named this post in honor of the green mud that made my skin soft, and my heart soft as well.
That's Assila for you, folks.
No comments:
Post a Comment