The man across from me jots some figures down on the newspaper as he discusses something with the woman next to him. I think she’s his wife. She listens silently as she nods every few moments. She’s beautiful. Her long, wavy hair rests softly behind her; she’s wearing a thin, black headband with a floral accent which props her hair slightly forward and up along her hair line. Her perfect almond shaped eyes are lined with charcoal black liner. That seems to be the only make up she’s wearing. She doesn’t need any. Her narrow, but not too narrow, nose...plump, soft, but not too plump, lips...high cheekbones and defined jaw line make her one of the most beautiful women I’ve seen. Her manner of dress serves to enhance her tender, feminine character. Her small waist is accentuated by a black leather belt, which is wrapped around a purple and gray plaid dress, under which she wears a tight black long-sleeve turtle neck and black tights, and on her feet neat, classic, black leather boots. She’s not a woman from the country.
I look down at my comparatively disheveled appearance. I’m wearing worn, patched-up jeans I bought at souk, grimy with desert dust; a gray long-sleeve shirt which I got from the Peace Corps Volunteer I replaced; and over that a Colorado flag T-shirt I got from Randy. On my feet I’m wearing mud-caked Chaco sneakers. My greasy hair is in a twist held up by a single clip. I say to myself, “as soon as I get to the hotel I’m taking a shower.”
Then my thoughts drift to this question: “Where do I fit in? The city or the country.” At this point in my service I am at home in my village where life is unhurried, work is done in day light and finished by sunset (whether or not the work is actually done), where the roosters wake us in the morning, where the dark, cold, and barking dogs keep us indoors at night.
But I’ve just spent the last couple days in Rabat. And I don’t like going to Rabat. Rabat is like another country: I can’t speak the language there (Arabic) and the cultural divide is palpable. It seems like the national capital should be familiar and comforting, since it has nearly all the amenities that an average city in the U.S. would have, yet I feel out of place. I feel like a walking contradiction , an embodiment of the rural and the urban, foreign and domestic, but mostly I feel like a country bumpkin bumbling around a city, a strange thought in itself since I’m from the suburbs.
The train rumbles on. I look out the window and sigh a breath of relief. I’m going back to site. I’m going back home… I rarely call my site home. I am grateful, however, for the villagers who accept me as one of their own; who call me sister, daughter, my baby (my host sister Laila likes to call me that), friend. They are the ones who make my site feel like home.
Yet, I am not from this village. And this, too, is palpable. I am a foreigner, but I’m not a tourist; I’m not Moroccan, yet I look like one; I’m American, but I don’t look it; I look Arab, but I speak Tashelheit. I speak Tashelheit well, yet I don’t understand. I wear a scarf on my head, but I’m not Muslim. I’m a woman, but I’m a foreign woman... I can almost hear their thoughts, “she’s a foreign girl so she has loose morals”... All these apparent contradictions, prejudices, and stereotypes surface almost daily in the locals’ minds, which leaves no question for them… She’s not from here.
I’m used to the feeling of not fitting in; of being the outcast. I know this well from my childhood in Japan and adolescence in the States. The difference now is that I have embraced the in-between.
I look again at the couple in front of me. The woman is talking now. Her husband listens intently, and silently… Amazing! They’re not talking over each other. I smile as I consider my reaction to their “civilized” conversation and egalitarian behavior. Have I really become so accustomed to the ways of village life that taking turns to speak seems so foreign? Maybe… But I don’t think I’m a good judge of how I’ve changed.
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