This year, First Call is excited to bring you contributions from around the globe. Each issue, a new Penn student studying abroad will write on location (be it Beijing, Berlin or Buenos Aires) about their unique experience. Every issue will bring a fresh perspective to a new corner of the world, so be sure to check back regularly.
Hearts pumping, backpacks bobbing, we rush at a breakneck pace up the deserted Fez street. The moonlight barely illuminates the inky-black Rue de Ahmed Hiba, and as we run, dark shapes materialize before us – parked cars, trash cans, stray cats – just in time to avoid collision. The only sound of our flight is that of our New Balance sneakers slapping the centuries-old cobblestone. I glance back - squinting into the darkness to see if we’re being followed - and I think to myself: My mother is going to kill me.
How can the best-laid plans of three Summer Abroad students go so awry? How can a group of upper middle class, college-educated Americans, respectable and responsible young men, fit in mind and body, ostensibly well-outfitted for travel, be reduced to this: fugitives, fleeing under the cover of night, the fear of the common criminal in their hearts? What is it in the Moroccan water or dust or atmosphere that corrupts the souls of those who, months earlier, were sitting with their parents on imported wooden stools at marble kitchen counters poring over tri-color pamphlets with titles like “How To Be A Good World Citizen” and “Dispelling American Stereotypes Abroad”?
The Arabic Language Institute is a throwback to the days when Fez was considered the intellectual capital of the Islamic world. For more than a century the city was a crossroads of learning in the empire, pulling scholars and professors from places as distant as Baghdad and Kabul to study not merely Islamic law and theology but also philosophy, mathematics, astrology, biology, poetry and many other didactic pursuits. The Institute’s promotional literature plays up this somewhat obsolete reputation, and it succeeds in attracting students of the ancient language from across the geopolitical spectrum: Dance majors, vacationing professionals, eager pre-cadets, war-wearied soldiers, British civil servants, Spanish stock brokers, and, of course, Ivy League college students all gather on the modest campus, aspiring together to improve their grasp on a most elusive foreign tongue. I arrived less than punctually in Fez, and maybe this was my downfall. The gruff program director informed me on arrival that the coveted “home-stays” in the Medina – a walled city at the heart of Fez – were filled and I would have to look for my own housing. But some combination of the ever-present sun, the easygoing pace of the city and the heady fumes of the lead-laden exhaust from the street traffic put off any initial feelings of disappointment or panic, and I threw in my lot with several similarly situated academics. Armed only with our Lonely Planet guides, our wits, and our arresting Western good looks, we set off to conquer the much-conquered city.
After nine days of fruitless searching, my two companions and I – a debonair young gentleman from Texas A&M and a clowning Princeton freshman – found ourselves crowded into the living room of a spacious three bedroom flat. Four Moroccans, all smiles and “no problems,” chatted away amiably with one another in Arabic. There was some talk about a lease to sign, but this was hushed away with hurt glances and a proverbial nod to the importance of oral contract in Moroccan society. Some final arrangements were made, dates were more or less carefully agreed to, and money exchanged hands. In a whirlwind, the men were gone. None of us were ever quite sure which was the landlord, which the building supervisor, which the rental agent and what on Allah’s green earth that fourth man was doing there at all – and we were left sitting on our baggage, wondering at our newfound good fortune.
It was a beautiful apartment: white tile floors, a sprawling Persian rug, a couch that was large and appealing to freeloaders, many large windows overlooking a quaint and popular little sidewalk café, a kitchen with the tiniest of cockroach infestations, and the company of Samir.
Samir was a friendly curly-headed Moroccan man who lived in the apartment downstairs and was apparently either our landlord or our super. He did not speak French or English, but he had a fair head for numbers and money and a penchant for asking for money more often than was welcome. He was always hanging around the apartment, although in the time he spent with us he never fixed the leaky sink, the gas-line to our stove, the refrigerator, or the hot water. He did manage to fix and bill us for several door handles that he assured us were on the verge of breaking, to change the locks on the apartment, and he claimed on one occasion to have fixed the air conditioner that, unfortunately, we didn’t actually have. In general, when he asked for more money, we thought it best to pay.
Paying is something you learn to do well in Morocco. By no means the poorest country in the region, Morocco nonetheless houses a depressingly visible degree of poverty. About a fifth of the population lives below the poverty line (compared to twelve percent in the U.S.) and the government reports that at least 500,000 children under the age of fifteen are known to make up part of the labor force. When a waiter at the café tries to charge you three times the menu price for a cup of coffee, or the taxi driver shows you the laminated sheet of “fixed” prices – one sheet for foreigners, one sheet for Moroccans – it’s easy enough to part with your dirham. You know a few extra dollars will go much further for these people than for you. These are not the fat landowners, the scheming politicians, the corrupt policemen this is the suffering, massive proletariat. And so, for the most part, we managed to make ourselves feel good, even about the money Samir extorted from us.
As the summer session wound to an end, finals came and went, and so did many of the students. On our final sweltering evening, the sun hanging low and orange-bright over the horizon, we bid a damp and somewhat teary farewell to the last of our friends while their taxi driver hovered impatiently in the street. Ready to take our own final leave of Morocco, we sat down at the corner café for a congratulatory round of coffee and sweet mint tea. A few moments into the meal, Samir approached, smiling toothily as he delivered us the previous week’s water and electricity bill – an issue we had thought long settled. Before we could answer he scuttled off, mentioning something about a refrigerator in need of repair.
Westerners visiting Morocco tend to find many things they aren’t looking for in the heart of the Arab markets, among the fine silver lamps, the dark leather and the cracked-tooth carpet sellers, and one of these unsought discoveries often turns out to be their limit in extortion tolerance. Sometimes it’s in falling victim to a hotel scam, sometimes it’s the assault of a woman with a henna pen, sometimes it’s in the relentless Moroccan desire to discuss Bush’s foreign policy. My roommates had found their limit in Samir’s final request. They exploded. They were dead set against paying. We had been milked already, they reasoned, nearly a third more than our neighbors next door, and this final bill was wholly insulting. It was the principle – not the sum – that they simply could not abide by. They proposed a final, triumphant stand followed by a quick and orderly retreat to the train station. I myself, however, am a coward of colossal proportions when it comes to conflict. I decided, much to their chagrin, that I could afford to pay the pittance – about 35 American dollars – to avoid what I knew would be a bitter battle.
That evening, my souvenirs from the Medina packed away with my clothes, roommates shaking their heads in disappointment, I set off to find Samir and settle the final account. Wearing my most stern and reproachful face to match his smug grin, I informed him that I was off to the bank and would return momentarily with his sum before taking our final leave of him. I glowered darkly as I set off, the last light of the setting sun still blindingly bright in my eyes. Arriving at the bank, I stepped briskly up to the ATM and inserted my card … to find a balance of exactly 300 dirham – or about $35. My mind raced. I did a quick calculation and realized I needed more than that just to get to the airport in Casablanca. How could I have spent this much? What happened to my careful budgeting? Where did it all go? I thought of Samir.
Moments later, we were running wildly up the street. Angry shouts from that foreign tongue pierced the heavy night air. Harsh, foreign words, words we understood and words we didn’t want to, their syllables following us into the darkness. We thought of Samir, standing in the entryway to our apartment, shaking his head sadly and pursing his lips in pain as he always did when we persecuted him with a refused payment. We thought of his friends, large fit men capable of slamming tables angrily over lost card games and hurling insults unhappily over undercooked meats and – probably – crushing skulls gleefully over unpaid debts. We thought of the police, fickle and bribable. We thought of our mothers.
We ran faster.
