Of course, we like this blog. It has great pictures, interesting thoughts of a n expat living in Morocco, and well, let’s just say, that we have an intimate connection with it. We think you’ll like it too. Not to mention you can download what we think is a pretty great book for free: Liminal Travel by Vago Damitio.

Vagobond.com

I woke up on al-Eid and the Oued Aggai was running red with the blood of all the sheep that had already been killed upstream and we had to get ready to go to Hanane’s parents place where I met her two older brothers for the first time. To my surprise, I liked them both. Driss and Isau are nice guys and it’s hard to mesh that with the stories of Hanane’s youth where they stole her money, stole her phone, and beat her.

Bisahha’ (bih-saHA) means ‘to your health’ in Moroccan Arabic. It’s a wish Moroccans often extend to one another in daily conversation. My research examines how Moroccans pursue their own health – mental health, that is – and what it really means to be mentally ‘sahih’ (saHEEH).

In the name of that research I recently moved to North Africa for a two-year period of fieldwork. On this page I share some of my experiences as I try to integrate my blonde female self into this new cultural environment and get my research under way.

http://bisahha.blogspot.com/

Mr. Abbas is a thin, clean-shaven man in his fifties. He is well-spoken, but restless as he meets with his treating physician, a young petite woman in her second year of psychiatric residency. Sitting on the edge of his seat, he keeps getting up and walks around the room, as though he is acting out the story he is telling. He is beating around the bush, and the resident repeatedly calls him on it: you’re not answering my question, she tells him.

He isn’t providing the resident with the information she is looking for. Neither is he speaking her language: while she poses her questions in Moroccan Arabic, he insists on answering in French, and utters not a word in dialect throughout the meeting. At first I think he may be doing this for the benefit of the observers in the room: two master’s students in clinical psychology, a psychiatrist from France, and myself. Our presence probably did have something to do with his conduct. But there was more to Mr. Abbas’ very performative behavior.

Mr. Abbas is an alcoholic, and he has checked himself into the Clinic in order to conquer his addiction. When his doctor introduces us, the observers, during this particular consultation, Mr. Abbas responds with a polite and pleasant enchanté, and proceeds to introduce himself with a quite elaborate story. He is a successful lawyer, he tells us, well-educated and fluent in French. Over the course of the consultation he talks about his practice, his nice car, his wife – none of which the resident asked about. After he leaves, his doctor tells us that Mr. Abbas hasn’t worked in three years. His wife has left; in fact, the life he just described to us has been destroyed by his addiction. What emerges at that point is the sad picture of a man dethroned; a man who has lost everything he thought to validate his existence; a man who desperately tries to maintain an image he knows he has already lost.

And it made me wonder. What does alcoholism mean for a Moroccan man? Alcoholism is destructive to anyone, but in this country, where alcohol is forbidden by religious decree, what does it mean to be an alcoholic? What does it do to Mr. Abbas’ sense of who he is? To his identity as a man, as a Moroccan, as a Muslim?

Mr. Abbas is but one of the patients I met during my week of observation on the service de toxicomanie, the Clinic’s addiction ward. It was the inaugural week of my research project; though I will not actually be able to do anything I mention in my research proposal until I obtain authorization from a local ethics board, the Clinic’s director has given me permission to kick-start my research with a period of general observation. Dr. Rachidi and I designed a schedule that would put me on a different ward each week, and as of last Monday, I spend every weekday morning looking around, shadowing doctors and nurses, and sitting in on meetings and rounds.

Max’s Kitchen – Live and Active Cultures

A smell map of the medina:

Out and about in the morning, you are greeted with the wafting scents of
-the ferran, or communal bread oven, rotting vegetables, dirty dog, sheep bones, wet sidewalk, roof drippings, fog
damp leather, harcha, hot griddle, cats, tobacco, msemen, last night’s garbage, bleach and detergent, drying flowers, fresh fish, old oil, olives, deisel, rotted fish, carboard, croissants, nag champa incense, mint tea, goat, woven baskets, rubber

Like a fine wine, the medina’s complexity unfolds in silken layers and power chords. After decanting, the most incredible transformation takes place at night. Close your eyes and let your nostrils lead you through
-Cinnamon, drying laundry, putrid vegetables, roasted nuts and propane, kefta, cumin, brown butter, hot oil, fried fish, cow feet, raw meat, roasted chestnuts, hashish, fresh dates, not-so-fresh fish, nougat, kettle-cooked popcorn, sugarcane juice, burned plastic, persimmon and pomegranate, sweat, escargot soup, marjoram, hot khobz, coconut, fluorescent lights, chickpeas and fava beans, motorcycle exhaust, mint, sage, parsley, chebekia, charcoal from the canoun, baghir, caremelized onions, boiled cow and sheep’s heads, used clothes

If only we had time to visit the labyrinth of sidestreets and alcoves…