That being said, the longer I remain in Morocco, the more it saddens me that most Americans don't understand Islam or Muslims. I think that a lot of Americans are afraid of Muslims based on what we see on the news most days. But in reality, 99% of Muslims just want to be your friend, and especially here in Morocco, think it's really cool and exotic to be from America. Many Moroccans I have met here have been enthralled to discuss the differences between America and Morocco and why these differences prevail. Many students my age have expressed great desires to one day become American citizens. To many of them, America is the land of milk and honey. If they could just get to America, their lives would be perfect. Occasionally I feel like something of a movie star: the lauded "American" they have heard about on TV and on the internet but have never imagined meeting in real life. It makes me so happy to share my experiences with them, and confirm their beliefs that America is truly an amazing place. I love Morocco, but in fact every day here has made me even more proud to be an American. To be fluent in a language like English is a blessing, and to be an American citizen is all some of these people have ever dreamed of. While I have always loved my country, I believe my adventures this past weekend have truly redefined what it is to be an American for me.
This past weekend, the boys and I decided to go to Casablanca, yet another coastal Moroccan city and one that is quite famous. We toured the city the first night, always searching for the random hole-in-the-wall eatery with the "best" shawarma. To our dismay, the city was the dirtiest we had ever seen. Heaping piles of trash at every road, we found ourselves wondering why there didn't seem to be any system in place to clean the public areas. It seemed as though none of the Moroccans in Casa cared whether or not trash from the streets blew in and out of their windows. Even more disturbing was the sorry state of the architecture. I am no architect, but if I had to guess I would say the infrastructure remained from one of the many European occupations of Morocco, and had not been preserved since. The city design and building structure was reminiscent of those I'd seen in Vienna some years back, but the decayed state of the walls produced an eerie, movie set-like ambiance. I've posted pictures of this at the end of this post.
The next day, we traveled to the tallest mosque in the world, the mosque of Hassan II. Its minaret is more than 200 meters tall and it is stunning to behold. The mosque is right at the water's edge in Casablanca and children from the surrounding neighborhood would jump off the mosque's walls into the ocean below. It was here that I met one of the kindest most hospitable Moroccans yet, and that is saying a lot! Her name is Jihane and she was friends with one of the boys in my group from our trip to Morocco last June. She approached us speaking perfect fusHa (MSA) and we definitely appreciated the change away from the confusing Moroccan dialect. She had brought her company's car (she is a wedding planner; a VERY lucrative job in Morocco) to pick us up and drive us to the other side of the city to the largest mall in Morocco, aptly named Morocco Mall. As we walked around the mall, Jihane pulled me aside and said "we are girls, we stay together." And so we separated ourselves from the boys. She insisted on paying for me to ride several rides with her in the mall's mini amusement part and she spoke only fusHa to me and the boys so that we could understand her (fusHa is never spoken in normal arabic daily life, it is only written and spoken during official events and on the news). She was funny, happy, and generous--the perfect Moroccan woman. I enjoyed conversing with her in fusHa which seemed to come so naturally compared to the Moroccan dialect I had been struggling with recently. Funny, I never expected to have the thought, "oh thank God I get to speak MSA! It's so much easier this way!"
The next morning after travelling by train to the nearby city Mohammadia, Jihane picked us up from the train station took us to her studio where she had gotten us breakfast. She then drove us to a gorgeous beach near the studio where we set up camp to spend the day there. She returned to the beach a while later with drinks and meals for all of us, including a delicious potato tagine (Moroccan cuisine). We all played soccer and volleyball with some locals on the beach and had a great time in the fabulous sunny beach weather. After a very short 5 hours on the beach, it was time to catch the train home. It was very difficult for us to pull ourselves away from such a fantastic day, but we had to get back to our regular lives.
On the train, all I wanted to do was sleep. I had been in the sun for so many hours and all my energy was drained. So initially, I was very irritated when Sage insisted on striking up a conversation with our fellow passengers in our train compartment. However, it was in that compartment that I learned the most important lesson from this week. At first, the man next to Sage asked how long until the train stopped in Fez. The strange thing was that while he was clearly of Muslim descent, he was speaking perfect English to us with a British accent. He told us he was a businessman from England and was only in Morocco for about a month on a business trip. He spoke no arabic, so he wasn't able to ask anyone how to get to his destination. He told us his family was from Pakistan, but he had grown up in London and therefore only spoke English. We spoke with him for quite some time, before 2 Moroccan men in military uniforms entered the compartment. Sage asked them in arabic "are you in the military?" and they responded excitedly in broken English, wanting to practice English since they rarely were able to do so. Another Moroccan woman was also in the 6-person compartment with all of us and she spoke only Moroccan dialect. Between the 6 of us, we had enough translators to have a nice conversation the whole 3-hour ride back to Meknes.
The experience was enthralling and eye-opening. We soon discovered that the Pakistani man was Muslim and that he wanted to learn arabic so that he could read the original words of the Qur'an. He was elated when he discovered that we spoke arabic. It was at this point, while discussing the worldview of Islam, that the Pakistani man said this post's namesake. "It doesn't make any sense why Islam has gotten such a bad reputation due to all of these acts of violence from extremists," he said. "Don't the terrorists know that 'Islam' means peace? That's the Islam I know."
We were just two American students studying Arabic, two Moroccan military academy cadets, one old Moroccan woman, and a Pakistani man from England who only spoke English. But we all made connections that day, and I think in that simple meeting we figured out the key to peace. Peace is knowledge, peace is understanding. Peace is respect and most of all, peace is relationships. We can all learn something from someone different than us. And the more we know the more we can empathize. When we were about to disembark from the train, the Pakistani man told us how grateful he was that we got into his compartment. He told us he loved how friendly Americans were and he was so glad we were able to integrate the whole cabin together, since we spoke both languages. He made friends that day because of us. He learned something new that day because of us, and we learned new things because of him. I am so proud to say that I made America look good to 3 different countries in just a few hours. Whenever they hear the word "America" from now on, those 4 people will think about us and how we communicated effectively with them that day and showed interest in their lives and in their cultures. Those are not people who would ever want to hurt America because to them, Americans are their friends. They will tell others about their American friends. This is how peace starts, folks.
I challenge everyone who reads this to spread peace. Visit another country and learn about the culture. You learn more from listening than from speaking. Learn another language, and even if you aren't fluent, try speaking the language anyways. Learn how to ask questions in your new language, even if you don't completely understand the answer. People will appreciate that you tried.
بسلامة اصديقاء
No comments:
Post a Comment