On the ferry from Spain to Morocco, I had my ear bent for several hours by a friendly Moroccan bloke, as they tend to be. It was either that, or coming out of stealth mode and joining the Americans listening to an Aussie English teacher yap nonstop for four hours. The job selects for strong lungs. Between broken English, a smattering of French and German, and long phrases in Mime, the fellow now residing in Germany kept the ferry crossing lively.
‘You… sing?’ he ventured cautiously. ‘Uh… not really,’ I replied. ‘I two Indian friend. They sing,’ he said. ‘Qawwali?’ I asked. The universal gesture of ‘WTF are you talking about?,’ palms upturned. ‘North Indian, they sing,’ he told me. Why yes, I suppose we do. ‘Prime minister sing. First time!’ he said. Ahhh… got it. Singh. Turban, not pipes. His ululatory fixation now made a lot more sense. He proceeded to tell me about his friends in Germany. ‘Sing crazy for whiskey!’ Yeah, yeah, Ustad Walker and his famous school of blended malt scotch. He told me with no small admiration that he’d seen a grown man down a full liter of whiskey and show up the next morning with no ill effect. He said that Germany is recruiting Indians because they are the computer caste. We compared the etymologies of words from Arabic and Farsi which show up in Turkish and Hindu/Urdu, such as kitap (book), maidaan (plaza) and duniya (world). He said he wasn’t religious, ‘religion politics, only makes trouble,’ but was visiting his family for Eid-ul-Adha. He mimed ram horns, slitting the beast’s throat, and asked how you translate Lucifere from French.The rest of the encounter got weird.
He called Dubya a marionette controlled by unseen hands, and I felt a sudden, unexpected wave of dirty-laundry-stays-in-the-family. He said in Germany there’s a popular book by an author who claims to have predicted 9/11 several years ago, the U.S. is omnipotent via near-magical technology, and the reason why the Iraqi military didn’t stand and fight is the CIA used its mind-control satellite to make them go home. He seemed to sincerely believe this. One theory he dismissed but said was popular was that bin Laden must be a U.S. puppet, because his act created so many problems for the Muslim world. The argument was, how could the U.S., with its advanced airspace defense systems, have allowed 9/11 to happen if not deliberately?
Another theory he disbelieved: Vietnam was nothing more than training for the U.S. military, which is so advanced it must be kept sharp by training in different climates at all times. He warned about globalization— unemployment is high in both Germany and Morocco, and popular talk blames outsourcing and German robots. He then turned his pack of Marlboros upside down and expounded on the KKK theory:
The inverted triangle that is characteristic of the Marlboro packaging is representing the letter K, and it is repeated three times on the pack, thus being a reference to the group in question. In addition, if one turns the pack upside down, the Marlboro logo itself says something resembling orobl Jew. According the the myth, “Orobl” is a phonetic transcription of horrible… [Link]We were deep into the heart of Tin Foil Hattitude, and the more I pushed back the more he insisted he was right. But throughout he was friendly, saying he has no problem with any religion, only with the U.S.’ money-centric foreign policy. I have no idea whether this guy’s views are representative, or that he’s just another example of the nuts being more outspoken. But Morocco is friendly with the U.S.:
Morocco was the first nation to recognize the fledgling United States in 1777 and has the oldest non-broken friendship treaty with the country, the Moroccan-American Treaty of Friendship, which has been in effect since 1783. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were the American signatories. The United States legation (consulate) in Tangier is the first property the U.S. owned abroad… Morocco was granted Major Non-NATO Ally status in June 2004 and signed free trade agreements with the United States and the European Union.
In 2003, Morocco’s largest city, Casablanca, was attacked in the Casablanca terrorist attacks. The attacks left 33 civilians dead and more than 100 people injured. [Link]
Overall I got the sense of the U.S. being viewed as so powerful as to be an alien country, a la Arthur C. Clarke’s maxim, ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ Meanwhile I type this on a Dell PC in a Net cafe in Fez. Non-hijabi teen girls are giggling as they video chat. There are Pantera, Tupac, Guns ‘n Roses, Bob Marley, Harley and Dark Side of the Moon paintings on the wall.
Fez feels a bit like a Delhi suburb, mostly paved, but much less crowded. The road signs are in Arabic and French, old men wear pointy-headed cloaks (now I know what to bring back for Ennis), and people are carting around Eid sheep in wheelbarrows. Plenty seem to speak Spanish here, and all the Spanish-Arabic music mashups suddenly make sense. There’s an Arabic song playing softly which sounds like a straight Bollywood ripoff.
I’m busy memorizing phrases like ‘végétarien’ and ‘sans viande ou poissons.’ My atrocious French ‘nunciation defeats me at every turn.
