Finally another one. I know, I know. Gimme another chance.

Sunday, March 08, 2009

So, the amount of time that has passed since my last post has been pretty inexcusable. Part of it was lack of motivation, and part of it was not knowing where to start. After today though, I think I have a decent jumping off point to introduce Morocco and the everything in it. I therefore hope to keep pretty regular posts, henceforth.

I slept late today, and woke up at around 11:30 to screaming and war drums.
My room is on the 6th floor of a building in the Ville Noveulle. The Ville Noveulle (The New City) is the part of town built by French colonists in the early 1900's, and, as a result, is far less fascinating than the rest of the city.

My room, however, does have a balcony, which overlooks Hamria (downtown) one way and the train tracks and a soccer field another.

The FCM Football field is a battleground for Meknes football clubs of all ages. Since today was the first nice day in a week, and the older clubs were playing, I decided to go join the rest of the crowd, who seemed to follow that same line of reasoning.

The stands of the stadium look like one solid piece of concrete. They are built right into the prison style 14-foot walls that surround the place. When the sun shines like it did today, the broken glass bottles that line the walls give the place a thin green halo. If I hadn’t seen it from my balcony, I might have thought it really was a prison.

The field itself was as bi-polar as the crowd. It was dry and dusty and grassless, save for the low points which had become swampy ball-traps.

When I got there, two older men were leading cheers on a jembe and what looked like a combination between a snare drum and a tambourine.

I picked a spot in the stands, just down the bench from a man who was selling cigarettes, some sort of seed, and lolli-pops, out of a big wicker basket. The stands were completely littered with the remains of his stock: seed shells, butts, and the neon green straws from the pops. As soon as I sat down, a thin tall man walked by and, without really stopping, or even looking at me, gave me a huge welcoming pat/slam on the back.

Packs of boys of all ages hovered around the back when the game lulled, and ran to the fence, crowding and screaming when they sensed an impending goal. The older men sat in the shade, unmoving but always yelling critiques and insults.

My recognition of their cheers was a testament to my grasp of the Arabic language: apart from names that ranged from the estatic: “Driss! Driss!” to the furious: “Hassan! Hassan!” I picked out a couple phrasing containing

“Yel’la!” (“go!”)
and the ever popular “Q’lahwee!” (“ my balls!”)

When one team scored, the anger of the fans of the suffering team vastly outweighed the cheers of the victorious. This anger was completely negated, however, by the losers’ tendency to spike there lollipops on the stands at their feet. Nothing says you’re pissed of like the shattering of hard candy.

An old man in a beat baby-blue Adidas jogging suit and a hood was keeping the crowd roaring with what we in America call “talking smack.” Every time a ref would come by, all the young boys were in stitches.

I actually thought that he was a little kid, by the shape of his body, until the leaned back to reveal the most wrinkled yellow-taloned feet I’d ever seen. His own personal pattern of tooth-loss had left him with a pair of tusks that stuck out the sides of his mouth.

The first game ended with a fight. When a high punt came rocketing down and smacked a red player with a serious depth perception deficiency in the face, naturally, he blamed it on the blue player closest to him. One ref was violently separating them when the end-whistle blew. The ref immediately walked away, and the two players collapsed into an embrace, and walked off the field arm in arm.

As the teams of the second game warmed up, the crowds changed. One group, despite the ample room in the stadium, crammed in next to me, on both sides. I wasn’t even there: their full attention was on the game, and if I were to guess, I had just taken their regular seats. They were relatively well dressed and increasingly angry as the red team began to lose, and pretty soon it was a bit uncomfortable sitting shoulder to shoulder with them as they cursed and jumped up and down.

After a long break, the drummers picked up again, much to the dismay of the tusked baby-blue Adidas who was fast losing fans’ attention. He redirected his trash-talk to the drummers. One of them, a grey-bearded, small but solid looking man, put down his Jembe and addressed the crowd directly regarding Baby-Blue’s bad attitude. They all laughed (except for my well-dressed discontents)

Baby Blue was furious, and started yelling and advancing, but, as is the Moroccan custom, was lead off to the side to cool off by the two men nearest to him.

The drums stopped again. I thought it was because of the complaints, but as Baby Blue was standing off to the side, cursing, Jembe snuck around the stands, in accords to street-fighting stratagem.

He rushed him, and soon old wrinkly fists were flying. Jembe literally picked Baby Blue up by the back of his jogging suit and threw him to the ground, giving him a few kicks to the ribs for good measure.

The two men who had been working to prevent the fight before, counted their duties fulfilled and stood back to watch.

Jembe walked back up into the stands, made a comment that was met with more laughter, and sat back down to his instrument. The game had slowed down significantly during the fight, but now players were directing their attention again to the ball and field.

With some help, Baby Blue climbed to his feet. He put on his own show for fifteen minutes, limping back and forth, flailing his arms for balance, and glaring at the Jembe player.

He looked and me, and realizing I was the only one giving him any attention, he stumbled over, cursed his adversary one last time, and in one fluid motion, picked up a nearby bike, jumped onto it, and sped out the stadium gate.

Behind him the game was ending. Green was winning to the degree that their enormous goalie had run out to half field and started blatantly chasing the ball, barreling over anyone in his way. One red player went down, and waved to the ref in agony, but the game was almost over, and he was ignored. The whistle blew, and he jumped to his feet to hug some green players as they all filed off the field.

The crowds changed. The next game began. Morocco!

Moroccan insult of the day: “Q’lahwee fii Ainik!” (“fi Ainik” means “in your eyes”)

Something I remembered today: A long time ago, when my brother was real little, 6 or something, he used to always fall asleep for long car rides by sucking his thumb with one hand, and holding my ear with the other. Even with watching TV or doing something else semi-stationary, if sucking his thumb was his cigarette, holding my ear was his coffee. We asked him once why he liked holding my ear so much, and he said, “because it talks to me.” Now that still makes me smile.