8/1/10 D'oh!

Homer Simpson made famous the staccato "D'oh!", the exclamation of surprise and embarrassment and recognition-of-one's-own-failings, often accompanied by a face-palm.

I've had a fair number of D'oh! moments in my months back in America.

Moments where my Moroccan expectations don't line up with my Western reality, and leave me feeling like I've got egg on my face.

Like the time I headed over to my favorite coffeeshop in Amherst, MA, USA. Starting my day in a cafe/coffeeshop feels entirely normal to me, since I started most Souqtown mornings in my favorite cafe there, sipping a cup of hleeb b shokolat (hot cocoa, or literally milk with chocolate). That cafe also had the cleanest bathrooms in all of Souqtown, so I often arranged my mornings such that I could take advantage of them. Of course, being the cleanest and best in a small rural town still didn't include such over-the-top, luxurious amenities as toilet paper or soap, so I was always careful to bring my own. This particular sunny day in Amherst, as I strode through town en route to a delicious hot beverage, I suddenly realized that I'd forgotten to put any tissues in my pocket. I stopped in the middle of the street and started to turn back. And then - D'oh! - I realized that American bathrooms HAVE their own toilet paper.

A month later, I made breakfast for my sister and her housemates in northern California. I made one of the staples of my Moroccan mornings, pancakes. In the past two years, I've made enough pancakes to have long since memorized the recipe (which I take disproportionate pride in). So this sunny California morning, I scooped out the floor, sprinkled in the baking powder, poured in the milk, cracked the egg, tossed in the salt and sugar, measured the oil, then dusted in my favorite sweet spices (cinnamon and nutmeg and cloves and ginger) and whisked it all together. Humming under my breath, I ladled the batter into the frying pan, grateful that my sister's house, like my Berberville home, has a gas-powered stove. At least *something* is familiar. Round about the fifth or sixth pancake, I poked a finger in the dough and took a taste. The instant wrinkling of my features must have been comic. The batter was almost inedibly salty. I ran through my mental list of ingredients and confirmed that yeah, I'd used the right proportions. So whence the Dead Sea saltiness? And then - D'oh! - I remembered how, when I first started cooking in my Berberville kitchen, I found that I had to put three to five times as much salt into everything as I was used to, because the kosher salt (halal salt, technically) available there is soooo much weaker than the American variety I'd grown up with. So my mental Moroccan recipe included over a tablespoon of salt for each cup of flour. A TABLESPOON. While the recipe, made with American ingredients, should have needed no more than a TEASPOON. ::sigh::

Another time, in the same kitchen, I was making spaghetti for two. My sister walked in and asked why I was boiling the water in a 10-gallon stockpot. I blinked, looked at the pot, looked at her, looked at the pot again, and said, "Because it was the pot on the drying rack." Sis pulled open the cupboard doors to reveal at least a dozen pans (with their lids!) of every shape and size. Speaking as slowly as I'd been thinking, I said, "I'm used to making do with whatever pan is around. Most of my PCV buddies only own one or two pans, and most Moroccan housewives only two or three. You just ... use what you've got." My sister stared at me, her expression a mix of bemusement and compassion. "It really never occurred to me that there might be another pan around," I concluded, sheepishly. D'oh!

I swear, I became a good cook in Morocco. But nearly every time I've tried to prepare food here, I've run into another D'oh! moment. The ingredients are different. The tools are different. I'm 7,000 feet lower in altitude, so even the air is different. I've gone from being a skilled cook to barely able to boil eggs. ::sigh::

Shweeya b shweeya, little Volunteer, shweeya b shweeya...

6/13/10 10 Words I'll Miss

Earlier, I handled a honeydew melon, and murmured, "Aftiikh...just one of the many words that I'll probably never use again."

I spent two years trying to learn a language that's not used outside of Morocco, and not understood by most of the folks there, either.

And while I don't mind letting go of shpulel (snail) or abkhosh (black), there are a few words that are just SO HANDY that I'm going to miss them. Or maybe stubbornly insist on using them, despite the confusion and communication FAIL that results...

1. Marhaba. Usually translated as welcome, marhaba means a wealth of things. Make yourself at home. What's mine is yours. Help yourself. Be my guest. Do what you will.

"Hey, can I get the last cupcake?"
"Marhaba."

"I'll be in your town next weekend."
"Marhaba!"

"Is this seat taken?"
"Marhaba."

2. Safi. This one short word (almost rhymes with "coffee", but the vowel is more of an ah than an aw) means enough, I'm all through, that's that, I'm done, that's all she wrote, etc.

"No more couchsurfing for me. Safi."

To a vicious pest (whether beggar child, harassing male, or overzealous clerk): "Safi! Safi-safi-safi."

"Hey, did you ever get that massive project finished?"
"Safi!"

3. Yalla. It's used in all the ways that "Let's go" is in English. We're leaving now. Hurry up. Hey, c'mon already. In Iron Man, the bad guy uses it with his minions, when they're not working fast enough to please him.

"Yalla-yalla-yalla!"

4. Kif-kif. Same thing. Same deal. Same difference. It's all the same. Whatever. I don't care.

"Do you want ice in your water, or not?"
"Kif-kif."

"Are you on Team Edward or Team Jacob?"
"Kif-kif."

5. Maashi kif-kif. NOT the same.

"Folks keep saying, 'Ooh, yes, I've been to Morocco. It's just so Westernized!' And I have to explain that the tourist cities and the rural villages are maashi kif-kif."

"When I left for Morocco, phones had *numbers* on them. Now they're shiny blank plastic things. It's not a phone anymore, it's a Star Trek tricorder-communicator thing. Phone. Computer. MAASHI KIF-KIF."

6. Zween. Fancy. Pretty. Chic. Attractive. Deluxe. Elaborate.

"Ooh, check you out! You're all zween!"

"The public areas are full of zween features like 2-foot-tall cushions and store-bought rugs, but the family rooms have one-inch cushions and (imho, prettier) hand-made rugs."

7. Shweeya. A little bit. Also used in the expression "shweeya b shweeya", meaning "a little at a time" or "bit by bit" or "step by step".

"Are you readjusting to life in America?"
"Shweeya b shweeya."

"Do you want some more cake?"
"Shweeya, thanks."

"All the grass and trees growing everywhere make the air so oxygen-laden that I feel shweeya loopy half the time."

8. Inshallah. If God wills. As God wills. Idiomatically, hopefully. In Arabic and Tam, you can't talk about the future without adding the specific caveat that all plans are subject to the will of God. After 27 months, I can't make absolute statements about the future anymore. In English, I use hedges like, "I'm planning to..." or "I hope to..." or "Hopefully..."

"See you tomorrow!"
"Inshallah!"

"Will you be in the Bay Area all summer?"
"Through August, inshallah."

"So Kauthar, you're going to go to America, find a man, and then bring your man back to Berberville so we can through you a big Berber wedding, right?"
"Inshallah."

9. Lhumdullah and al-humdulillah. Both meaning Thank God or Praise God, the former the more common, more informal version, the latter the more correct and more emphatic form.

"My father's cancer is in total remission!"
"Al-humdulillah!!"

"I found that thumb drive I borrowed from you."
"Oh, lhumdullah, that's great."

"How've you been?"
"Lhumdullah." [Shorthand for "Fine, thanks to God.]

10. Bismillah. Technically, In the name of God, but idiomatically, it's more, OK, let's begin. When you start anything - a meal, a car engine, a journey, a new book - you invoke God's name, to establish that every action you take is done for God.

Climbing into a car: "Bismillah."
Taking the first bite of a meal: "Bismillah."
Taking the first bite of a really fabulous looking dessert: "Bis-miiiii-laaah!"

It's no coincidence that several of these are "God phrases". I *like* the God phrases, even more than most other PCVs. In America, at least in the major metropolitan centers where I've spent the past weeks, God's name isn't part of the educated white vernacular. In English, I feel like I'm taking God's name in vain if I say, "Oh, thank God!" or "God willing" or a half-dozen other expressions that I can routinely use in Arabic. And I *like* thanking God for all good things, and acknowledging that I'm submitting my will to God's, and all the other things that I can do in Arabic without a second thought, but can't do in English without feeling like I'm coming across as a "Bible-thumping Jesus freak," as one friend would say. (Yeah, you know who you are.)

Part of me wants to keep using these ten words/expressions, because they're just so handy...but the point of words, handy or cumbersome, is communication. And if nobody understands me, I'm not communicating anything.

Safi.

4/28/10 The Law of the Mikka

As you may remember, mikka means plastic. In any context. Plastic bags, plastic bottles, plastic chairs - I don't think it has the metaphorical meaning that "plastic" can in English, but otherwise, the words are identical.

If mikka is paired with another word, it's an adjective. But if it stands alone - Do you have a mikka? - it refers to a plastic grocery bag.

Mikkas are everywhere around here. They don't break down, don't burn well, and blow away with the faintest breeze. They're one of the commonest forms of litter in Morocco.

And people use them for everything. Every vegetable you buy comes home in a mikka. Everything from the dry-goods hanut. Flour and rice and spices are all sold in bulk, so they're put into small mikkas (plastic bags about the size of a ziplock sandwich bag), knotted, and put into your big mikka (grocery bag).

During the government's Earth Day extravaganza, they pledged to phase out / ban mikkas. I look forward to seeing this...

But what is The Law Of The Mikka?

Because they're so ubiquitous, they've developed uses beyond their original intent. In addition to bagging groceries, they're used to wrap henna'd hands, as emesis basins, and as seat-reservers. And that's what we're talking about today.

If you're planning to ride a transit, but it won't be leaving for a while, you can leave anything - anything - to reserve your seat. I usually leave a scarf or a book, but most folks leave a mikka. It's often filled with whatever they bought in souq that day, but even more often just empty. A regular empty plastic bag, sitting on a transit seat, is a universally-understood sign for This is my seat, so back off.

One day, I'd climbed aboard the transit early - like many women, I'd rather sit inside than wait at a nearby cafe, as most male passengers do - and I got to see this scene play out:

I'm sitting across from a bench seat with two clearly-laid-out mikkas. Obviously, both seats are claimed. A heavyset woman climbs aboard, moves one mikka to the side, and sits down - filling the whole seat. As she shifts around, I realize that some of her bulk is a small child strapped to her back, which she now moves to her lap.

I mentally shrug - apparently the two reserved seats were for her and her kid. Whatever. I go back to my book.

A few minutes later, a man walks up to the door of the transit, takes one look at this, and starts shouting. Though his Tam is too angry and rushed for me to pick out many words, it's clear from his gestures that the mikka she moved was reserving a seat for him. She tries to protest - she needs a seat, she has a baby, etc - but chivalry is not only dead, it never lived in Morocco, so he bullies her off the seat entirely.

His mikka was there first, and he therefore has immutable claim to the seat. A rumpled, crumpled plastic bag...and it gives him absolute dibs.

The Law of the Mikka.

(Don't worry - the jumper later found a seat for the woman and her baby. It turned out that she'd asked him to reserve them a seat, and he had, so when she moved the mikka, she thought it was from her own saved seat. She understands the Law of the Mikka, too.)

4/27/10 Word of the Day: Tezolt

Tezolt is the Tamazight name for what Arabic speakers (and ancient Egyptians) call(ed) kohl. It's used where most American girls would use eyeliner or mascara, ie to darken the eyelashes and/or the area immediately around the eyes.

Traditionally made from galena (PbS, aka lead sulfide), it's now usually made from charcoal or other carbon sources. Well, in countries that regulate health issues and lead poisoning.

Here in Morocco, it's still made from galena.

In souq, I've watched artisans grind up the shiny grey metal cubes, shredding them into a very fine black powder that's mixed with a secret liquid and poured into a small container shaped more or less like a perfume bottle. Check out the illustrations here (and, for that matter, the text, most of which is relevant to Morocco).

I'm on a one-Volunteer campaign to reduce tezolt use. I know it's a Sisyphean battle, given the power of tradition, but I'm working on it. Lead poisoning is serious, especially in children, and it's common here to put tezolt on babies' eyes. In their eyes! It's bad enough in the eyes of adult women, where its soft-tissue access gives it carte blanche into the bloodstream. But in babies?! In America, parents are required to strip and repaint entire houses that have old, lead-based paint in them, just in case your kid decides to lick the wall. And here, parents rub a 50% lead goo into their newborns' eyes.

With a stick.

About 50% longer than a toothpick, and about as big around as the bottom part of a golf tee, the tezolt applicator is a wooden stick that you coat with tezolt - lead - and then jab into your eye. With practice, women become adept at it, and learn to do it without making themselves cry. The lead still stings, of course, but they've accustomed themselves to that.

So I explain to my American friends that yes, tezolt is made from galena, which, yes, is 50% pure lead (Pb), and that's usually enough to keep *them* from using it. And we're all trying to explain it to the women in our communities, but... Tradition is a hard one to fight. People here still rub mud into babies' umbilical cords, to "help them heal". In a land where handwashing is ritualized to basically wetting the fingers, and where mud is viewed as antiseptic, yeah, we've got our work cut out for us. But this is one battle I'm not giving up.

3/11/10 Smallboy (and yes, that’s one word)

Among PCVs in my region, “smallboy” has become a verb.

Webster’s might define it as follows:

to smallboy: to send a small male child in search of whatever is desired: food, beverage, another person, etc.

Up here in my mountain village – and in the villages of my friends throughout Morocco – girls are nearly always either in school or at home, but boys are generally only home for meals. If they’re not in school – which they aren’t for half the day, thanks to the crazy school schedule the French left behind as a legacy of colonization – they’re running around town.

Literally running, for the most part. Teenage boys and men will stroll, saunter, walk, stride, or mosey, but young boys are nearly always hustling somewhere.

If you see one dashing by, you can grab him (verbally, usually, but physically works, too) and ask him to run any errand for you, and he nearly always will. Give him 5 dh and ask him to get you a soda. Give him 1dh and ask him to scrounge up a loaf of bread. Ask him to find somebody for you. Whatever. I don’t use the smallboy network too much, but it’s never failed me when I have, and friends who make more use of it than I do, positively swear by it.

The other day, I was supposed to meet with several men at 8:30, in the office of a Very Important Person.. I didn’t show up till 8:45am, and was still the first one there (to the VIP’s surprise, though after reminding him, he did recall that there was supposed to be a meeting). Ten awkward minutes later, I stepped out to try to round up some of the others.

I went to the café one owns, and where he therefore spends most of his time. The door stood bolted shut. I grimaced for a minute, then looked around. A nearby shop was open, so I asked that shopkeeper if he knew where his neighbor was.

“He hasn’t been around yet this morning. He’s probably up at his house, up there,” he said, gesturing.

I twisted my lips and said, “Hmm.” The thought of wandering in that direction, asking various folks to point me to his house, seemed decidedly unappealing.

“Want to smallboy it?” he offered. (Literally, he said, “Do you want a small boy?”)

I grinned. “Yeah, maybe.” I held up my phone to see if I could call him instead, but it had no signal, for the nth hour in a row.

“Yeah, there’s no rizzo,” he said, nodding at my reception-less phone, “but the smallboy network is still dependable.”

I grinned again. Unfortunately, no children happened to be on the street just then. I’m guessing that the half who weren’t currently in school were still home, getting breakfast.

Fortunately, my missing compatriot chose that moment to walk up, and we headed off to our meeting. Moments later, the VIP pulled a small boy out of his classroom to send him scampering off in search of the other meeting attendees.

It’s a proverb for the 21^st century: Msh ur illi rizzo, st3ml l-rizzo n l-3ail. If there’s no cellphone network coverage, use the smallboy network.

3/10/10 Word of the Day: rizzo

As has been the pattern for the past few weeks, I never get to have all three connectivity keys – electricity, internet rizzo, and cell phone rizzo – at the same time. Right now, I have electricity but neither network, so I’m typing this entry into my laptop in hopes that I’ll be able to post it sometime soon. Soonish. Well, whenever, really. =/

So what is this “rizzo”?

It’s actually one of the many words that Tam has borrowed from Darija (Moroccan Arabic), which in turn stole it outright from French.

Originally, the word was réseau, meaning network. But as wireless technology has leapfrogged landline technology out here, as it has in so many third-world countries, rizzo has taken on new shades of meaning. Moroccans will ask if there is rizzo the way an American would ask a friend if they have “signal” or “coverage” – that is, if there are any bars of connectivity visible on their cell phone.

Is illa rizzo? Is there rizzo?

Eyyah, illa shwiya. Yeah, there’s a little. (ie, I have two or three bars out of five)

My internet connection runs through a dialup connection, but I don’t actually have a phone line. I have a small phone that’s not plugged into anything (well, except the wall, for electricity). It has a built-in antenna that sends a signal to the radio tower perched next to the cell phone company’s tower, on the hill just east of town. If the antenna from my “landline” (now there’s a misnomer) can see the radio tower, and if the radio tower itself has electricity, then that tower sends a signal up to a satellite, and just like that, my little lappy can talk to the outside world. I have “internet rizzo”.

Similarly, if my cell phone can talk to the cell tower, and the cell tower has enough electricity to talk to its satellite, my little snickers bar cell phone can talk to the outside world. (Or even to the cell phone of my friends next door.) I have cellphone rizzo.

Both towers have power generators, so sometimes they work even when there’s no electricity. And my phone, laptop, and cell all have their own batteries, so sometimes I can still be in communication when the power is out.

But this past few weeks, possibly because of the incessant wind/snow/wind/rain storms (and yes, I put wind in there twice – the winds have been at least twice as powerful and twice as common as precipitation in any form), none of the three – electricity, cell rizzo, or internet rizzo – have been dependable.

Oh, and the cycling of the powerouts appears to have zapped my laptop’s battery for once and for all. My lappy is now insisting that it doesn’t *have* a battery, which is a worrying sign, to say the least…

Ooh, hey, cell rizzo just came back! OK, I’m off to shoot a message to a buddy… Bye!

2/28/10 Word of the day: aHandir

As I've said before, "Berberville" gets its sobriquet from its standing as the heart of Berber - Imazighn/Amazigh - culture. Of course, there are many flavors of Amazigh culture, just as there are several dialects of the overall Tamazight language: Tarifit, Tamazight, Tashelheit, Tasusit, and whatever crazy blend they speak in Marmoucha (Tamarmouchit?).

But Berberville sits deep, deep in the High Atlas mountains, pretty much at the middle of a blank spot in most maps. It's the biggest village (town?) around, and is home to the Ait Hadidou tribe. There's a wonderful story I'll tell sometime, about our tribe's origins, but the short version is that it's a combination of Ait Brahim and Ait Yaza. Ama is Ait Brahim. Baba is Ait Yaza. Many families, like mine, are a hybrid. Generally speaking, girls keep their mothers' tribe, while boys keep their fathers'. The logical implication is that all of Ait Hadidu are probably genetic mutts, despite people continuing to identify by either Ait Brahim or Ait Yaza.

Women show their tribal affiliation/heritage on their faces, with chin and/or forehead tattoos, as well as on their backs, with traditional capes.

These capes are called aHandir (the big H represents a sound like a sharp exhalation; if you say ah! an deer! you'll be pronouncing it reasonably accurately), but cape is only a half-translation, at best. The word aHandir includes the full sense that these are the traditional, striped, capes, made in precisely the same way and following precisely the tribal design. (Each of the half-dozen tribes in the region has their own traditional aHandir design.)

Here are some performers from this year's summer festival:

The two women in the center are wearing the aHandirs of Ait Brahim, but the mostly-hidden woman behind them is in the zebra-striped Ait Yaza cape. Ait Brahim's design features broad swaths of blue and red and black, with some white accents. Ait Yaza's is black and white striped, though a closer look reveals some red as well.

Here's a group of Ait Yaza women, awaiting the long-promised arrival of the king. (For the record, he finally reached us about 5 hours later. But the cheering, singing, and ululating didn't let up. These folks *love* their king.)

As you see, the Ait Yaza aHandir features black and white stripes, with red piping. Two women in the middle of the group aren't wearing their aHandirs, but are instead wrapped in lighter-weight outer garments. The one on the left is a bedsheet, which is common here (since aHandirs, when not being worn, look exactly like blankets to the uneducated eye, I suppose the logical extension is that in warmer weather, you should wear a sheet). The one on the right is wearing the traditional wrap of the southern region. You see them around here from time to time, as increased ease of transportation leads to more and more cultural exchanges. Speaking of cultural exchanges...

These two women, standing across the street from the line of Ait Yaza-dressed women, are wearing taHruyts, which aren't actually an Ait Hadidou tradition at all. These white, decorated capes are traditional to a tribe several mountain ranges away. However, a long time ago - exactly when is lost in the mists of memory - a woman came from that valley to Berberville with her taHruyt, and the women found it so beautiful (and sparkly!) that one copied the design for her own marriage, and then another did too, and now you're more likely to find taHruyts at weddings than aHandirs. Every woman still weaves herself an aHandir, of course - some things go without saying - but she might also make herself a taHruyt or two for her wedding day. Or, more likely, she'll borrow one from each of the two or three cousins that have one, and thus have them on her wedding day. (Property ownership is clear, here in Berberville, but property use is very nearly communal, especially within families.)

1/24/10 So How's My Laptop?

My oldest sister is visiting.

She attends university down in "Springfield", so I rarely see her, but she's back in town right now.

A few months ago, she came over to look at pictures I'd taken of her friend's wedding. (NTS: I should post those.) As we looked through the pictures, she asked, "So, when you leave, can I have your computer?"

I'd goggled a bit. She was just so matter-of-fact about it. But...this is my laptop. This laptop has traveled thousands of miles with me, from when I bought it on the east coast of the US to vacations on the west coast, to my parents' house in the middle of the country, back to the east coast, and now to Morocco. This laptop has been my connection to the outside world. On it, I Skype-talk to my family and friends, I gchat and Facebookchat with loved ones, I download TV and movies, I **BLOG** (as y'all may have noticed)... I've used this laptop, not every day, but most days of the past several years. It's mine in every sense of the word. I've spent thousands of hours on it.

So for her to so cavalierly ask if it could be hers...

I laughed.

She was serious.

I stopped laughing. "No, it's mine."

"Right, but when you leave, it can be mine." I blinked at her. "So many of the other students at school have computers, and I don't. I really need one. So when you leave, why not leave it here?"

Because it's MINE, crazy girl.

"Um, it was a present from my parents in America. I'll have to talk to them." And I suddenly remember that, not very long before, I'd *been* talking to my parents in America - via this very same computer - and Dad had mentioned that, thanks to the rough life it has led here, and the rapid obsolescence of computers, it would probably make sense to get a new one when I go back. He'd sort of implied that he and Mom would give me one, actually, though I'm gift-resistant enough that I didn't plan to take them up on the offer.

But my sister accepts the authority of The Parents...but she also knows just how proud they are of *her*.

See, when my American family came to visit me here in Morocco, over the summer, they were here in Berberville just in time to attend my sister's Congratulations! You Passed Your IB Exam And Officially Graduated High School! party. I conveyed to her their congratulations, and they all - mom, dad, and sister - gave her some congratulatory cash (as is typical here, and entirely appropriate).

So she just nodded, smugly confident that my parents' generosity and respect for her accomplishments would result in her getting the computer.

A few months passed, and I mostly forgot about the conversation. When it did cross my mind, for whatever reason, I remembered laughing about it, and finding the whole thing rather ridiculous.

Turns out she remembered it differently.

Today, after we got past the greetings and were just chatting, she looked up and said, "Hey, how's my laptop doing?" I burst out laughing - genuine bellylaughs. "It's at your house, right?"

"Yeah, the laptop is at my house," I answered. "It's fine."

I quickly changed the subject. A few minutes later, at a lull in the conversation - during which I was chuckling about something else - she said, "You laugh a lot." I smiled, acknowledging the obvious truth of that. (Also, the same word - Ts - is used for laugh and smile - my tutor says, "Because they're really the same, anyway," - so I was still Tsing to confirm that yes, I Ts a lot.)

She continued, "You laughed hard when I asked about my laptop."

With a slightly forced chuckle, I said, "Because it's MY laptop."

"But when you leave, it's mine, right?"

I didn't answer, repeating, with a smile, "It's mine."

"OK, fine, it's ours," she said, pleased with her compromise.

I laughed some more. (Laughter is used here - and not just by me - to lubricate nearly every social interaction. I guess it's a survival technique; if you're going to survive in an isolated valley in the heart of impenetrable mountains, you have to stay on good terms with everybody, and if everything is a joke, that's easier to do.)

About that time, lunch was served, and matters of PC-ownership fell by the wayside, as truly important matters, like who gets the rib - it went to my little sister, who loves to suck out the marrow - came to the fore.

[Oh, and just 'cause it's funny: the word that I have variously translated as computer and laptop is actually pee-see. Sometimes folks use kompyutoar, sometimes the French ordinateur, but my sister was saying PC. I guess some words just don't need to be translated. :) ]

1/12/10 Home again

I made it back to Berberville a few days ago, actually, but have been catching up on things - from social obligations like tea visits to responding to emails - till now.

I'm sorry I left some of you with the impression that I was ETing (or had already). I was angry about a few things, to be sure, but not enough to quit Peace Corps. My blog absence over the past couple weeks has been for a much happier reason: I've been on vacation!

Some friends and I wandered around Europe for the holidays. I'll be posting pictures and stories for quite a while to come, I suspect.

But now, I'm back in my village, drinking lots of tea and chatting in Tamazight for the first time in a while. My Tam is rusty - not surprisingly - but it has come back readily, to my delight. In SouqTown, which I had to pass through on my way home from the airport, I chatted about my vacation to several friends (ie my favorite veggie saleslady and my favorite sandwich guy), answered their questions, and successfully ran all my SouqTown errands.

At the sandwich shop, after the round of greetings and oh-where-have-you-beens:

Sandwich Dude: So, what would you like?

Me: I'll have a sandwich of makoda [[potato latke-like things]] and eggs. Wait, do you have makoda today?

SD: Over here [pointing to the other side of his display case]. Two eggs?

Me: Yup, two eggs and two makodas.

SD's assistant: Soup?

Me: [frozen]

He'd offered me harira, which sounds a lot like hrra, which is hot sauce. And for a second, I couldn't remember whether harira was soup or hot sauce. Because soup sounded like a fabulous idea, but I'm not a big fan of heavily spiced food.

SD's assistant: La soupe [in French]

SD: [laughing] She knows what "soup" is.

Me: [laughing, to SD, indicating SD's assistant with my head] He thinks I don't know anything. Hahaha...

So, still a few bumps in the road.

Like "donut". Morocco has great donuts, usually only available on souq days. I was thinking about those Moroccan donuts as I rode home from the airport, and realized that I couldn't remember the word for them. Sss...sh... I was pretty sure it started with a sh... I visualized the donuts, sh'd inside my head...nothing. It was gone.

And then when we pulled through a town having their souq (which lines the main road, as well as extending into a big open space), I saw a guy carrying a string of sfinj and the word was just *there*.

So, yeah, I'm still knocking the rust off my Tamazight vocab, but it's comforting to know that I haven't actually forgotten it, despite not using it for the better part of a month. The words are there when I need them. :)

Welcome back to Berberville, Kauthar!

11/6 I will zayd...

Today's Quote Of The Day:

"I will zayd and return."

(Tip: zayd is the Arabic and Tamazight word for add, and like most Tam words, has broad idiomatic meanings beyond its obvious literal one.)

It was said by a buddy of mine as he stood up to leave. A group of us had been hanging out for quite a while, and my buddy had drunk everything he'd brought to drink, and now wanted to return to his nearby accomodations and pick up a refill.

It's common enough for us (PCVs) to drop words of Arabic and Tam into our English conversation. We mostly hang out with Volunteers from our own regions, who are therefore likely to understand the words we use. When I was a newbie, I found it helpful, actually, because it gave me a context for learning new vocab words.

So it's common for one Volunteer to say to another, "Yeah, I do that mrra mrra," (sometimes), or, "Hey, can you nuqs the volume a little?" (reduce, lower, subtract), or "It's so cold riding afla the transit!" (on top of), etc.

But this time, the speaker caught himself, and realized that not only had he swapped out an English word for an Arabic one, but that he'd actually used Arabic syntax.

"'I will zayd and return'??" he echoed to himself, as dismayed as Baby's echoing her own, "'I carried a watermelon'?!?"

"Whoa... I not only can't speak English anymore, I can't even use English structures in my sentences," he muttered to himself.

I thought about it. How would most Americans say what he'd meant? Something like I'm going to grab a refill and be back, maybe, or I'll go bring more, a little more formally. But his structure made perfect sense to my ear. Ad-dugh ad-zaydgh. Ad-3aydgh is how I'd express it in Tam: "I will go. I will add more. I will return." Three future-tense verbs, lined up and conjugated in neat parallelism. "I'll go get more and return" is a more idiomatic translation, but it loses the tidy construction of the Tamazight.

But "I will zayd and return," though it falls easily from Arabic-speaking lips, lands oddly on American ears.

Ever since this conversation - and I'm typing this up over a month after the fact - I've been more conscious of the way my speaking patterns have changed since coming here. I read enough English and talk enough to other PCVs that the changes are minor, but they're real. My habit of sprinkling my conversation with Tam and Arabic words is one of the most obvious. (I can't even tell you how many times I've stopped myself from peppering my blog with them.)

But in five months, I'll end my service here in Morocco, inshallah [oh, yeah, that's another one - I can't make declarative statements about the future without saying inshallah], and move to a community where Tamazight is not the dominant language.

Walayni, dghi, makain l-mushkil. Iwa, ur nni ad iqim digi. But it's not a problem now, so I won't worry about it. (Literally: But now, there's no problem. Therefore, I won't let it sit in me. <--See, Tam is fun!)

11/13/09 Word of the Day: Dua

Dua is how I mentally spell the word pronounced doo-wa.

In training, I learned that it meant medicine, but its usage is broader than that. It probably translates best as chemical.

People use dua to mean drugs (medicinal and recreational), medicinal herbs, plus, I recently learned, herbicides and/or pesticides. A friend's host auntie offered us apples, and when we hesitated, she assured us that they were bla dua. Free from ... dua. Organic, in other words.

Whenever I would cough or have stomach challenges, my host mom would worriedly ask me, "Do you have dua?" Birth control pills are also dua. So are painkillers, antibiotics, and pretty much anything else taken orally.

Injected vaccines, though, get their own name: tesarut. Which is usually translated as "key". More on that another time...

Today we're focusing on dua.

If you put shiba (absinthe) into your tea, that's dua, because it's medicinal: it's good to "raise your temperature". Adding luisa (verbena) isn't dua, because it just makes it tasty.

Z3tr (oregano) is good for upset stomachs, I'm told, but people are more likely to use it as a flavoring than brew it as tea to make it dua.

...and so on.

Tamazight has a small vocabulary, in comparison to most modern languages, so Tam speakers either borrow words from Darija (Moroccan Arabic) or adapt existing words to fill newly discovered language gaps. Are you treating sick crops? Clearly, the chemicals you're applying to the soil serve the same purpose as the chemicals you apply to sick people, hence...dua.

And now I have an old song stuck in my head:

There she was, just a-walkin' down the street,

Singin' "DUA-ditty ditty dum ditty doo."

11/11/09 "So What Do You *Dislike* about Morocco?"

In my recent travels, I struck up a conversation with a young Moroccan who lives in Germany, where he works as a nurse, and where he recently married a young German woman. His family lives near Merzouga, in southeastern Morocco, and our travel paths overlapped briefly.

We talked about all kinds of things, from Secretary Clinton's imminent visit to the weather similarities between Hamburg and the High Atlas Mountains. Oh, and we met when he startled me into spilling my soda all over myself and my lap. After a "meet cute" like that, we were destined by all the laws of cheezy movies to become friends. :)

At one point, he asked me, "So what do you dislike about Morocco?"

I mis-heard him (or maybe misunderstood him - his Tam is somewhat different from mine), and thought he'd asked what I *like* about Morocco, and answered, "The people."

His eyebrows went up. "The people!?"

Nodding, I repeated, "Definitely the people. And the mountains - I love the landscape here." He looked puzzled. "Yeah, the people are so friendly, the mountains are great--"

He cut me off. "No, I asked what you *dislike* about Morocco."

I laughingly apologized, "Definitely not the people! Sorry!" He laughed, too, while I searched for an answer that could be honest without hurting his pride in his mother country.

After a minute, I said, "Well, I like tagine, but having it day after day, meal after meal...it's too much."

He agreed. "I love tagine, I love couscous," he began, "but there are other foods out there, people! That are better for you!"

We swapped food stories for a bit, and then I turned it around on him. "What do *you* dislike about our country?"

He promptly answered, "Relationships between men and women. I hate it that men and women can't be *friends* in Morocco."

I chimed in so enthusiastically, I might have actually shouted. "I know! Exactly! It makes me crazy! I have so many friends-who-are-men (amdukal), but even to use the word is to make people assume that they're my boyfriends!"

We riffed on this for quite a while.

I shared this story, which I don't think I put on my blog before:

While I was in homestay, a male friend came to visit me. I spent the week before his visit explaining to my host mom, host sister, host cousin, and all female friends that he was a ***friend***, not a boyfriend. I even insisted on using the Arabic word sadiq, in hopes that it had a more platonic connotation than the Tamazight asmun or amdakul.

I don't think they believed me, but they agreed to refer to him as my sadiq.

And then he arrived, my host mom locked me in for the night.

See, in homestay, I lived in a semi-detached part of my host family's house. The guest house, more or less. But ain't no way I could stay semi-detached from my family with a man under the same roof. So my sadiq stayed in another house they own, on the far side of town. And for the first time since I stayed with them, my host mom locked the door to my part of the house.

She literally locked me in.

(But she forgot about the back door to the "guesthouse", which leads out to an enclosed courtyard with its own easily-unlatched door. So I slipped out to join my buddy for breakfast.)

Additionally, Moroccans aren't fans of cross-gendered public displays of affection. Contact between men or between women is always fine, but men and women shouldn't even hold hands when walking down a street, let alone hug in public. So I may well travel 14 hours to visit a guy friend, and when I get there, I run up to him and ... shake his hand.

Unless I'm in a big enough city that I can assume some cosmopolitan westernism, in which case I go ahead and hug my buddy. :)

...So with these and other stories to share, I cheerfully passed a several-hour conversation with my new friend. My new male Moroccan friend. Guess it's time to dust sadiq off and bring it back into my daily conversation...

10/23 The Dumma

A month or two ago, during our period of heavy rains, I found myself walking across town, swinging my umbrella on its short looped cord. A little boy came up to me.

"Dumma!" he said, pointing to the umbrella.

I'd never learned the word for "umbrella", and was happy to rectify that. I hunkered down to his level. "This is a 'dumma'?" I asked, for clarification. He just pointed again, and repeated the word.

"In English, it's an 'umbrella'," I explained, continuing to swing it between us. "In Tamazight, it's a 'dumma', and in French it's a 'parapluie'," I said, the word floating up to me from the depths of middle school French class.

He reached for it. "Dumma!" he said, this time almost angrily.

I repeated my short language lesson.

And he repeated himself one more time, this time speaking slowly: "Dunn-ma."

And then I got it.

He wasn't giving me the word for umbrella. This wasn't a language moment. He was saying - mis-pronouncing - "Donne-moi," the French equivalent to "Gimme." I suppose my middle school French teacher would have pointed out that he'd left out the definite article: "Give it to me" should be "Donne-le-moi." But we have gimme and apparently, in Moroccan French, they have donnemoi.

I laughed, scolded him gently, pointed out that it was *my* umbrella, not *his*, and that I intended for it to stay that way, and then stood back up and continued on my way across town.

So there, friends, is an illustration of begging in Morocco. There's no associated shame, as some middle-class Americans might imagine. Just an expectation that anyone with fair skin has more than they need, and should cheerfully hand it off whenever requested.

It's very different from American materialism. Americans always want more things, it sometimes seems, but it's never enough. Americans have created an entire consumer culture out of the idea that if you buy enough things, you'll achieve ... peace. Nirvana. Happiness. Contentment. And so there's marketing, and advertising, and suggesting, all to create the illusion that if you buy *this* thing, it'll satisfy your inner craving. And yet it never does. It never can, really, because what we crave isn't anything material.

Here in Morocco, or more accurately, here in Berberville, I don't see that inner craving. That anxiety so familiar in America, the desperate need to do more, buy more, try more, in hopes of achieving ... whatever it is you want.

Some foreigners see the cheerful begging - the constant stream of "Give me a dirham!" or "Give me candy!" that children babble in butchered French - and conclude that Moroccans are greedy.

I disagree. There's an innocence to the desire that reminds me of crows reaching for car keys. Sure, it's shiny, it'd be nice to have. Can I have it? It bears no resemblance to the driving American acquisitiveness that feels like greed to me.

PS: Later that day, I told my sitemate the story. I didn't get far before she said, "No, wait, the word for umbrella isn't dumma, it's mddla." I grinned and told her the punchline was coming. But at least now I know what to ask for if I'm caught out in the next round of fall rains...or are we heading straight for late fall snows?

10/1/09 Recipe: Pumpkin Spice Muffins

I know fall officially begins with the equinox, but October just *feels* like fall. September is all about Indian summer afternoons and school starting, November is really getting seriously cold...October dwells between them, crisp and cool and crystalline. October is about crunching leaves underfoot and smelling woodsmoke from chimneys and picking out pumpkins.

Mmmmm...pumpkins.

In the States, I loved cooking pumpkiny foods. Pumpkin pies, of course, but also pumpkin breads, pumpkin muffins, even pumpkin soups. The taste of pumpkins is the taste of October.

Here in Morocco, there's no canned pumpkin. (OK, it might exist at Marjane, but since the nearest one takes a full day of travel each way to get to, I don't go to Marjane all that often.) Nor do they have the big, chubby orange vegetable (gourd? yeah, gourd), endemic to North America, that we all know and love from pumpkin patches and jack'o'lanterns. What they do have, though, is the taghsayat, also known as the gr3a (the former is Tam, the latter Arabic).

Taghsayat covers every variety of squash, from zucchinis to butternut squashes to these large, green or yellow round gourds that are shaped sort of like a cross between a butternut squash and a pumpkin, but which have orange meat on the inside that tastes just like pumpkin. It must be the Eurasian/North African cousin of the American pumpkin. For obvious reasons, I refer to it as pumpkin.

Last year, I made pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. It was the Very First Time I ever attempted to cook pumpkin without having a can in my hand. I was nervous, anxious, worried that I'd somehow botch the whole thing...but, with lots of help from my lovely sitemate Fatima, I managed to stew a stringy, pumpkiny mess that we successfully turned into three pumpkin pies. :) Victory! Yummy pumpkin goodness!

This year, having faced the fear of the unknown, I marched into Pumpkin Season with my chin up and my smile bright.

I found pumpkins (and sweet potatoes!! which I'll rhapsodize about another time) in the souq in SouqTown. Pumpkins have actually been in season for several weeks, but I've been running around so much lately that I couldn't take advantage of it till now. After all, it's October. Regardless of the growing and harvesting seasons, October is Pumpkin Time, right? Right.

So I bought half a kilo of pumpkin flesh in SouqTown a few days ago. I imagine they'd sell a whole pumpkin if you really begged for one, but generally, people just tell their buxodart (vegetable stand guy) how much they want, and he hacks off an appropriately-sized chunk of pumpkin. My half kilo - over a pound - constituted a small fraction of the whole giant gourd leaning against the buxodart's stand.

Then I brought it home to Berberville and inaugurated Pumpkin Cooking Season.

I poked around recipezaar.com and epicurious.com until I found a pumpkin recipe I liked, and then I adapted it. Because one of the many, many lessons I've learned from my time in Morocco is that cooking is an art, as well as a science, and that improvisation and adaptation are the keys to freedom. :)

So here's *my* Pumpkin Spice Muffin Recipe, with thanks to hers.

1/2 kilo pumpkin (reduces to about 1 1/4 cup)
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 very heaping tablespoon cinnamon
half a nutmeg, grated (about 1/2 teaspoon)
1 heaping teaspoon ginger
25 cloves, ground (about 1/2 teaspoon) (To crush cloves, pull the small round head off the hard stalk. The stalks feel like twigs, but the heads crush surprisingly easily - just pinch them between your fingers.)

Directions

1. Cut rind off of pumpkin. Chop pumpkin flesh into 1" cubes and put into boiling water. When the pumpkin is completely tender, about 15 minutes, pour everything into a colander. Mash the flesh. (This part is a lot like making mashed potatoes. I used a fork, but if you have a potato masher, go nuts.) Leave the pumpkin in the colander for another half hour or so, to let as much moisture as possible drip out.
2. In a large bowl, whisk 2 eggs.
   
3. Add pumpkin mash and vegetable oil to eggs. Whisk together.
4. Sift together dry ingredients.
5. Add them to the pumpkin mixture, whisking steadily to keep the batter airy.
6. Grease and flour muffin tins. (Or use muffin/cupcake cups.)
7. Ladle pumpkin batter carefully into the tins; fill the cups ~2/3 full.
8. Light the oven and keep an eye on them. Americans, try 30 minutes at a 350 degree oven. Moroccans, try 20 minutes on a low flame.
9. The pumpkin muffins are done when they pull away from the edges of the pan, or when a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
10. Serve the 18 Pumpkin Spice Muffins to loved ones, and listen for the mmmmm sound of pumpkin-inspired happiness. Alternatively, serve 12 to loved ones and eat the other six yourself. You deserve it. ;)

Total number of times pumpkin appears in this blog post: 42. ;)

PS: I also tried to roast the seeds, but left them in waaay too long and ended up with a sad charred mess. Note to self: Seeds only need a few minutes to roast.

9/15/09 Word of the Day: Abrid

Abrid translates best as path, and works both literally and metaphorically (as path does in English). Most newbie Tam speakers are taught that it means road, which it does, but it means so much more than that.

If someone asks, “Is tsnt l-abrid?” – Do you know the path? – they mean, do you know how to get to/from here?

“Ida abrid-ns” – He went his path – means he left his wife. “Tda abrid-ns” is the equivalent – she left her husband.

The plural - “Ida ibrdan-ns” – He went his paths – means he hit the road. Left. Done gone. It can also be used as a command: “Du ibrdansh!” – Go your own roads – Get out of here!

The last week or two, I’ve heard the word most commonly in the phrase, “Ibbi l-abrid.” The path is cut. In American English, we’d say, “The road is closed.” Interestingly, though they don’t use closed when the road is impassable, they do use open – anf – when the obstacle/flood/landslide/meters of snow are removed and the road is again available to use.

Lately, the roads have been closed – cut – due to flooding. As discussed before, the heavy rains have raised the rivers, and since the roads generally follow the rivers – in mountains as steep as these, river-cut valley floors are really the only places you could put a road – the roads are frequently buried under flooding water.

Places where the river twists but the road goes straight, or vice versa, are the most easily flooded. The bridges are never built very high, so rising water pours across them with little provocation.

The lowest of these bridges is only half an hour outside of Souqtown, which means that my road home gets cut off pretty regularly in inclement weather. I intended to come into Souqtown yesterday, but couldn’t, because the road had been cut (ibbi) early in the day, so no Souqtown transits drove up to Berberville, which meant that I had no way to go down from Berberville back (on their return loop). Then the rain stopped, the floodwaters receded, and the road reopened, but too late for me to have a ride down. So I came down on the earliest transit today, leaving at 4:30am (just after the dawn call to prayer). We made it through, but the driver slowed many, many times, cautiously inching the oversized van across slurries of mud, rubble, and larger stones. Once, we scraped the undercarriage of the transit on some flood-deposited boulders. The shallow bridge, right outside Souqtown, was underwater. Floodwaters poured across it, rushing and splashing, but we pushed over the 3-4 inches of water safely, and made it into town, lhumdullah.

It rained again today, though, so imkin l-abrid ad-ibbi eska – the road might be closed tomorrow. Tomorrow is the first day of our Project Design and Management Workshop; I hope our workshop attendees will be able to make it down the mountain…

August 22, 2009 Ramadan Day 1 – Berberville

I woke up this morning when I heard the water come on. I started the usual oh-hey-the-water’s-running chores – washing yesterday’s dishes, boiling water for tea, scrubbing another load of laundry – but stopped halfway through, when I realized that Ramadan may have started, and thus there’d be no need for tea.

May have started. Or may not have. It all depended on whether or not the local imams had seen a sliver of a crescent of the newborn moon last night. My friends and I had checked the skies ourselves, before turning in, but either the moon hadn’t yet risen or else it was still an invisible new moon. Not knowing which, I didn’t know whether or not we were supposed to fast today.

When in doubt – hit teh intarwebs. Blogspot may be iffy these days, but Google still works, so a quick check of Ramadan 2009 Morocco led to … a lot of speculation published earlier in the month. Eventually, I found an announcement from Abu Dhabi that Ramadan had begun. I found a blogger from Fes confirming it…and so it’s on!

No food.

Or water.

All day.

Until l-fdor, the breaking of the fast. Yes, like in English, fdor usually refers to breakfast, the morning meal of the day. But technically, it’s just the first meal of the day, ie the meal that breaks the fast of the previous hours…usually overnight hours, but for this month, the daytime fasting hours. Fdor is eaten after the moghreb, the sunset call to prayer. (All 5 prayers have their own names.) Just to make things even more confusing, this meal is sometimes known as the moghreb.

According to a handy website, this meal – our first meal since a midnight snack before turning in last night – will come at 7:07 tonight.

After a long, stomach-rumbling day, we baked chocolate chip cookies – a true test of our commitment to maintaining the fast – and brought the still-warm cookies over to my host family’s house. Ama had invited us to fdor yesterday, when we joined them for lunch.

She’d actually said, “If Ramadan starts tomorrow, come for fdor. If not, no problem.”

When we arrived, the main room was empty. Ama was sitting over a table covered in three kinds of bread and a tea pot, in the kitchen, and my little siblings were running around the compound. I wondered where fdor would be served – in the main room or one of the fancy entertaining rooms on the other side of the compound? – but we were ushered into the main room, so I assumed it’d be in there.

After helping Ama put the finishing touches on the preparations, and assuring her that the moghreb would be called in just a few minutes, I carried the bread-laden table into the room where my friends still sat. I brought out the tea set, too, and then the tea and coffee pots. Soon, Ama and Baba and the baby joined my friends and me at the table. We heard the first peals of the Allahu akbar – God is the greatest! – coming from Berberville’s only mosque, on the far side of town. One of us (who shall remain nameless) went ahead and broke fast with a date. The rest of us followed Ama’s example of waiting until the call to prayer had completed, then reaching for dates of our own. Mmm, dates.

After the date, I ate some bread with honey, then some olives, another date, a chocolate chip cookie (which Ama broke out and served), then some more bread, then a third kind of bread, then another date…

Once the day’s hunger had been sated, Ama served the harira, aka taharirt (love how Tamazight adapts Arabic words!), the traditional Ramadan soup. It’s a thick, creamy soup, with the texture of tomato soup but including rich additions like lentils and inch-long spaghetti noodles and chickpeas. Ama makes it with meat, but always scoops around the chunks of meat for me, her favorite vegetarian. :)

8/2/09 tbillclintont

Not long ago, I discovered that the American Secretary of State is known in Morocco not as Hillary Clinton, not as Secretary Clinton, not as Senator Clinton, not even as Mrs. Clinton.

Nope, this powerful woman is instead known as tbillclintont. [[For a truly excellent post on the subject, read my friend's blog about this - just scroll down a bit to find the relevant piece.]]

Faithful readers will recall that nearly any Tamazight word can be made feminine by adding t's to the beginning and end of it. A Berber man is an amazigh and his wife is a tamazight. A bull is an afunass and a cow is a tafunasst.

Tam speakers also tend to adopt Arabic words and render them Tam words by bookending them with t's. An Arab may wear a jelabba, known to the western world as "those hooded cloaks worn by Jedi knights and Jawas", but an Amazigh will wear a tejlabbit. If an Arab wants to dig a well, he gets a group together to dig an anu. His Berber neighbors will put their muscle into digging a tanut. This morning, I asked a shop owner for a mshtH to brush my hair with. He shook his head and said, "That's Arabic! But here, have a tamshtHit."

Etcetera.

So when the Secretary of State is rendered tbillclintont, I wonder to myself if they're simply feminizing her more-famous husband's name, or also claiming her as Berber. I've been told each of the following at least twice - that she (1) is herself Berber, (2) was born in "Springfield" [the capital of my Berber-dominated province], (3) has a Berber brother-in-law, (4) has a Berber sister-in-law, and (5) will definitely come to Morocco to give a speech next week/month/year. No, seriously, she is/does/will.

No, seriously. Seriously!

8/11/09 Word of the Day: "Berber"

You can't read this blog without encountering the word "Berber". A lot. I call my village Berberville, talk about my Berber neighbors, my Berber dialect, and my life as a Berber girl.

But some people would have you believe that "Berber" is an insulting word, a condescending, diminishing, cruel, derogatory, and offensive term.

I hear this more often from city folk who have a Berber grandma somewhere in a mountain village than from anyone I actually encounter in daily life.

They'll point out that Amazigh - Free People - is the term that these mountain folk use to refer to themselves. Put another way, amazigh is the Berber word for Berber. ;)

The etymology of "Berber" dates back a long, long way, and isn't crystal clear. Scholars have a chicken-and-egg discussion going as to its relationship to "barbarian" and "Barbary Pirate". The words are undoubtedly related, but which came first is hotly debated.

An alternate theory for the origin of the word "Berber" is "Barba Rossa", the most famous of these pirates, the red-bearded master of the seas. Some argue that his red hair illustrates his descent from those original navigational geniuses, the Phoenicians. There are definitely plenty of red-headed Amazighn around still today, though they're a minority.

What is clear is that several hundred years ago, sea-farers from the countries of the Maghreb - Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia - wreaked havoc on Atlantic trade. Most European sea powers found it easier to buy them off than defeat them at sea. (There's a whole side tangent about the origins of American naval power and Jefferson's arguments with Washington and Adams and the creation of our navy and even the drafting of the Constitution - and yes, there really is an important and story here - but I'll save that for another time.)

So whether Europeans called the Amazighn "Berbers" because they found them to be barbarous, or whether the word "Berber" already existed for these red-bearded sons of the Phoenicians, the fact remains that Europeans used the term to refer to folks they weren't happy with.

Hence all the negative associations.

But language is complicated, and words evolve over time. I have no problem with calling the Lakota peoples by their own name for themselves instead of the French-designated Sioux (which apparently meant "smelly", I've heard??), but if I'm talking to folks who go blank-eyed at the name Lakota, I'll switch back to the more familiar expression. When I'm discussing something I learned about African-American history, I'll probably switch off between that seven-syllable mouthful and the one-syllable "Black".

But we're talking about the Free Peoples of my mountains. Who are referred to as les berberes in French, l-shlua in Arabic, and Amazighn in Tamazight. So what should I call them when speaking English?

If I believed that "Berber" were offensive, I'd stop using it. But I don't. To draw from an example my readers will relate to, it's equivalent to "Black", not the n-bomb. It's descriptive, not derogatory. In my opinion, words become offensive when they're used to offend. When they become weapons, barbed [[hey, wonder if that's etymologically relevant?]] to cause pain.

I couldn't imagine referring to my friends, neighbors, and family with anything but love and respect. OK, and sometimes frustration or impatience, but never with an intent to harm, let alone wound.

So I'll keep using the innocuous-to-me-and-to-all-the-Amazighn-I-know "Berber", mixing it up with "Amazighn" as it seems appropriate, and will trust that y'all are giving me the benefit of the doubt.

:)

One other thing, for the grammar hounds out there - because Tamazight is fraught with conjugations, Amazighn gets its own trip through the wringer. That form is the masculine plural, and refers to "them" - the collective. A group of females would be "Tamazightn", and a single man is an "Amazigh" or single female "Tamazight". And if you think that the feminine singular bears a striking similarity to the name of the language, you're right. Because Tam (as I usually call it) is a contraction of awal Tamazight - the language of the Free People - and since awal, language, is a feminine singular noun, the modifying adjective is conjugated in the feminine singular form. Because Amazigh is both a noun and an adjective - didn't I mention that before? Ah, fun with Tam. ;)

8/3/09 What’s up with the 3?

A few of you have asked about the letter I represent with the number 3 when I’m transliterating Tamazight or Arabic words. And since today is the 3rd, it seemed timely to answer.

Quick background: Arabic, like English, has about two dozen consonants and a handful of vowels. The specific numbers of each aren’t the same, but they’re close. The vast majority of the letters correspond pretty directly to English/French/Latin letters. The “taa” sounds and acts just like our T, the “mim” just like our M, etc. There are a few letters that represent sounds that don’t exist in English. Most of these sounds are found in French or German, though, so if you’ve studied any of these, you’ve at least encountered them before. The “raa” is like an R, rolled Spanish-style. Then there’s the “ghain”, which I transliterate with a “gh”, which is a sort of gargly sound that’s almost identical to the R at the end of “Louvre” or “Favre” (if Brett hadn’t gone and switched to Fav-err), and there are a couple of others.

But there’s one sound that’s unique. OK, I don’t speak Chinese or Russian or any of the Indonesian languages, so I can't say for sure that it's unique to Arabic and Tam. But it’s a sound I’ve never encountered before I started studying Arabic: the “3in”. See, you can’t even say the name of the letter without using it. (But then, you can’t say T – “tee” – without a T, so I guess this shouldn’t be surprising.) In Arabic script, it’s written like a big soft cursive capital E, or like a backwards number 3. Since it doesn’t correspond to any letter in English, it makes sense to me to write it with a 3.

To pronounce an “3in”, you flatten your tongue against the bottom of your mouth, tense your throat, and say an A. I’ve heard it described this as the doctor’s-office-tongue-depressor-sound. One of my Arabic books calls it the sound of someone being strangled.

OK, enough background. The point is: it’s tricky to pronounce.

After a couple years of practice, I’m doing OK – people know what I mean when I try to say it – but it still doesn’t sound right.

This wouldn’t be as annoying if it didn’t show up in so many words. It’s in many, many Arabic words – in fact, the easiest way to tell in a second if someone is speaking Arabic or just differently-accented Tam is to listen for the sound of lots of 3ins – but since lots of Arabic words have been incorporated into Tam, I still have to say it.

And the single most common greeting phrase – llah y 3awn – May God help you – has one. I say that to every woman (and some men) I walk past, unless I have time to stop and run through the whole set of greetings with her. So I have to pronounce an 3in several times a day.

And then there are all the other words.

3awn – help
3id – Festival
w3sher – Holiday
3ayd – return
3wm – swim
3wd – arrive
3shera – 10 (ten)
rb3a – 4 (four)
rb3 – ¼ (one-fourth)
seb3a – 7 (seven)
sib3 – baby-naming feast on the 8th day of a newborn’s life (like a bris, but without the circumcision)
3arabiya – Arabic
3iraq – Iraq

…and so many more. Not a single one of which I pronounce correctly. Yet…

7/30/09 Well, that's the world

During lunch, my host mom and I were sharing the problems that we've both run into this week. I got my backpack stolen off a transit. Her oldest son was in a bike accident and shredded big patches of skin. I'm being condemned by neighbors for involving the widely-shunned gendarmes in my efforts to get my stuff back. Her second son poked a finger in a flour mill to "see what would happen" and lost part of said finger, plus refuses to go to the doctor. Etc. It's been a rough week.

After lunch, she rattled off our mutual lists of misfortune while nursing Baby M'Barak. At the end, she murmur, "Problems, problems..."

I chimed in, "There are always problems." (I know, this doesn't sound like me - and it isn't like me. I'm just feeling disheartened lately.)

She shook her head. "No. Not always. Sometimes, everything is going well, and then other times, there are problems. Sometimes, people laugh; sometimes, people cry." I suddenly remembered Ecclesiastes 3 (or The Byrds, depending on your frame of reference): To every thing there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven...a time to laugh, a time to cry...

She continued, "That's dunit. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. Sometimes happy, sometimes sad. It's not all just one thing. It's dunit."

I sat there nodding, feigning comprehension, spinning through possible meanings of dunit. I remembered learning the word...but what did it mean?? A near-homonym, d-dunnit, means they will come to it, but obviously that's not what she meant. Dunit, dunit, dunit...I tried to joggle the memory out of whatever crevice it was wedged into, in my cluttered attic of a memory, but without luck.

I grumpily (but silently) reflected that one of the things in my backpack was my Tamazight notebook. Every word of Tam I've learned or studied is in there...wherever that may be. Dunit is in there, I'm sure of it. But what does it mean???

When I got home, I dug out my Tam-English Dictionary. It's not comprehensive and includes lots of words from Tasuseit, the southern variation of the Tashelheit dialect, so I rarely use it...but it's all I've got at the moment. Flipping it open, I remembered why I'd let it fall into disuse: because Tam is an oral language, not a written one, there are a dozen possible "spellings" for any word. I looked for dunit, dnt [since short vowels are often dropped], dunnit, doont...I finally found it as ddunit - world; Earth; planet; universe.

That was the piece it took to dislodge my stuck memory. World! Of course! I'd learned the word when preparing for Earth Day last year. I usually use the Arabic word 3lm instead of the Tam word dunit, which is why I'd let myself forget it, but they mean the same.

Reflecting back on my conversation with Ama, I realized that I've just discovered the equivalent idiom for English's "That's life" - It's the world.