“Salam alaykum, Fatima,” came his words every day as I walked out the door and into the street. ’He’ is Mokhtar, the street guardian who doubles as a parking attendant and my guardian angel. I think Mokhtar is one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. He’s there every morning, scarf wrapped around his neck and his blue coat showing remnants of yesterdays harira down its front (harira is a most comforting soup that all Moroccan people eat as a daily staple, I’m hooked). Mokhtar called me Fatima for a long time, I could never quite work out why and I did remind him on many occasions that my name is, indeed, Virginia.
These days, with a proper office three blocks away, I walk out the door just before 9am. Mokhtar staggers towards me (he has a life long limp which gives him extra swagger) hand out held, before blessing me and my family and all those associated with me. I cannot get away with dashing around the corner if I’m in a rush, there is no room in this country for being in a rush, I’ll always hear the call ‘Fatima!’ and as I turn around there he is, hand’s in the air, perplexed that Fatima is in a hurry. To where? He must think.
I love the morning ritual. On my seven minute walk to the office each morning, I say ‘god bless you’ (barak-allahfik) and ‘god willing’ (inshallah) at least four hundred times before I’ve had a chance to put the key in the door and the coffee on the stove. In Morocco, street life is everything, and it is indeed on the street where I have learned so many of the clumsy phrases I can now put together in a childlike sentence. It is also on the street where those who watch your every move (oh, and they do!) can string together the puzzle of what it might be that I do, in the absence of being able to sit around for hours and have a proper conversation – I do miss that from time to time- hence making their own version of events of what it is that Fatima actually does.
Where does she go each day?
In recent weeks, I’ve gone over some of my writing here and laughed out loud at some of the things I’ve written in the past, and almost shed a tear at other pieces. From the beginning – a daily journal written in my Parisian rooftop loft, where I touched on themes such as language (and lack there of), love and life – it wasn’t meant to be that way, I suppose that was just where I was at, I did also manage to touch on other themes and a huge part of that was finding myself here, in Morocco.
People so often ask how it was that I came to be here, and why would I do this? I find the answer to that question quite simple really. I came for a weekend to visit an old friend of our family, loved the place and wasn’t loving the idea of returning to Paris for another year (although the wheels were in motion at that stage for a visa renewal with a very cross woman in the Commissariat on the Left Bank). Once I’d made my mind up, I then started to plot about ways that I could combine all of my interests and make a business of living here. It’s not as if it was that simple, but things just evolved, people were incredibly generous and supportive, and six years later, I feel quite content, might you ask, and one step closer to understanding my age and my stage in life – both of which I’ve written about in previous years on this very blog.
One morning recently I was on the phone to one of my favourite people, we chat most mornings in that precious hour where I plan the day, go over emails and become filled with dread at what is ahead – all while I process what I’ve just been listening to on the BBC World Service (the morning wake up call), which is never much fun these days. On that particular morning I was filling a glass with water, ‘are you peeing or is that a tap?’ he asked, to which I replied, the latter of course, before going on to explain that I’d been out for a lovely thirty minute stroll in my matching tracksuit that I bought for my recent flight back to Australia. On my way home from my walk, I’d popped into the baqal (a small corner store) to buy loo roll, coffee and milk, had said my good mornings and god bless you’s to the men in the ‘other’ street where the early morning baqal is always open from about 7.30am. I explained that I’d also (on that particular morning) paid my chit in the shop where they keep a little list of what I buy when I go out and haven’t been to the bank the day before (do love living in a cash society). ”Oh, you need to write again” he said, adding “these are the little ditties that make me smile.”
It’s those little things that bring a smile to my face, too.
“Fin, Madame” came the shout of a taxi driver, hands in the air as I powered purposefully out of the train station in Rabat midway through last year, ‘fin?’ (where?) he repeated, his eyes creased as he squinted at me, “L’ambassade d’Australie” I responded which set off a chain reaction of chat throughout the entire taxi stand, the shouts (I suppose) loosely translated as “She’s Australian, take her to the Embassy! Yallah!” which then saw a flurry of doors fly open in every taxi, only one of which I hopped into, the first one. The driver turned the song ‘Hotel California’ up to full dial as we whizzed around corners and the song then played on repeat, the Medina walls whooshed past, followed by the Kings palace lined with handsome guards, then turning left at the polo field – it’s boundary fence lined with eucalyptus trees, before the windmill at the Canadian Embassy came into sight followed by the fluttering of that very familiar blue, red and white flag, my own.
A quick meeting in a glass box on ‘Australian’ turf saw a renewed passport arrive back in Morocco from Canberra within days, and as I stood on the pavement in Tangier weeks later (maybe months) waving down a taxi, I felt rather perplexed when I was reminded on a telephone call from the Embassy, as I hopped into the taxi with three complete strangers, that I’d quite simply never turned up to collect my shiny new passport. Another trip down to Rabat on the train ensued days later – an hour and ten on the TGV – with the turnaround so quick I was back in Tangier in for dinner.
The street aside, travelling in a little local taxis is where I also learn so much of what I now know about living here. I eavesdrop like a professional, picking up on things like the price hike of olive oil, or (for instance) how the woman sitting beside me is having crisis with her son, the driver is also having the same troubles with his son, I sometimes chime in when the conversation turns to the weather, or whether or not we might go left next, or perhaps right.
I don’t mind if they take me the long way and we drop the woman with her shopping first, by the time I am dropped where I want to be, I am usually one word more advanced in my ongoing pursuit to understand this language, or one step closer to understanding where I am, be it physically in a street, or in life.
Each Tuesday morning I travel up the old mountain road in a little taxi with four wheels and a driver with usually about as many teeth, to a beautiful house and garden that I keep an eye on for friends far away – here, orange tree’s line the courtyard, and hands appear in a wave from gardeners weeding around the weeds when I arrive. It is the most heavenly place where I find peace and solace from the daily grit that are the streets of the city.
In every corner of this city, there are pockets of beauty – whether it be a private garden, a man weaving on a loom, a woman selling bread in the souk – her face painted with a smile, to painterly walls showing their age crumbling on Medina street corners, or the striking Kasbah walls newly restored and proudly standing above this beautiful city. Then there is the inner city oasis that is the English Church of Tangier, the Church of St Andrew – a gift from Sultan Hassan I to Queen Victoria over 140 years ago – in those days, the ultimate act of solidarity from a Muslim man to an English woman. There are mosques in abundance from where we hear the cry of the ‘adhan’ (call to prayer) throughout the day (quite often coinciding with the Lords Prayer in the English Church on Sunday morning), and beautiful synagogues dotted through the streets of the Medina, and within their walls silver hands of Fatima woven into the Star of David glean throughout in a pertinent reminder of this country’s rich history.
Put simply, faith is part into our every day here.
In amongst the beauty, which I romanticise in my thoughts and writing, there is also crushing sadness. Plenty of it. There are dreams that may never be realised, it’s cultural and the world is only becoming more intolerant, therewith struggles and complexities which I try my hardest to understand in taxi trips and eavesdropping from cafe tables. Morocco has taught me so much, and for that I will always be incredibly thankful, particularly as I try and navigate my way through the news each morning.
In more recent times, a dear friend became my business partner, and together we formed The Tangier Bureau. Where I see beauty, Halima brings truth. When I arrive in the office each morning, brimming with ideas that need to be executed ‘now,’ Halima’s eyes twinkle as she gives me timeframes based on her knowledge of how things ‘really’ work – I’m a dreamer, she’s a problem solver, a professional, a Mum and a realist, and her deep understanding of her faith and her culture brings a welcome richness to my life here.
What I do see each day in Morocco is tolerance and kindness in abundance. Each morning as I step out the door, I want to ask Mokhtar why it is that he calls me Fatima, but can’t because in order to do that, I’d need to sit in a language course with a headset for at least a year. Having said that, I feel like I’m coming closer to understanding why, through making mistakes, taking risks and finding independence I may never have found had I not chosen to live here.
Almost two months ago, I returned from the most incredible trip home to Australia. Plagued with jet lag I woke early on my first morning back in Tangier, a Sunday. After discovering there was no gas in the bottle connected to the stove, hence no coffee at home that morning, I set off early to the English Church for coffee, met by Mokhtar as I bounded out the door, and whose eyes lit up when he saw me, shaking my hand in a crushing handshake and smatterings of blessings to the family, my friends and me, and the how are you’s and thanks to God went on for at least five minutes.
“Fin?” (where?) he asked, hands in the air to which I pointed down the road in the direction of the church “I’m going to pray” I responded, which made his eyes light up even more, leaving me with a huge pat of approval on my back.
Mokhtar doesn’t need to know I’m half witted in my faith (and many other areas of my life it would seem sometimes), he doesn’t need to know how frustrated I feel when I can’t control things through normal everyday conversations, as I wade through life in a culture I understand but then sometimes don’t; all Mokhtar see’s is purpose, a daily routine and a smile on my face.
And from that morning almost two months ago, he went back to calling me Virginia.
Photograph: the straw market of Tangier taken by Georgie Mann
The Tangier Bureau was co founded in 2023 by Pin Affleck and Halima Daoudi by means of formalising all the things we love, most importantly people and places of which there are so many variations in this wonderful country. Contact us for more information about bespoke experiences in Tangier and Morocco as a whole.