De Perros y Limones

Going Home*

The phone call came out of the blueย  – do you want to get a specially arranged ferry to Spain next Tuesday?ย ย  Yes!ย  Yes!

And so we are planningย  our trip home and trying to decide how to eat a fridge full of food before we leave.ย ย  The excitement of it is tempered somewhat by the thought that we will be leaving Bibi behind.ย  Weโ€™re going to miss her and we think she will miss us.ย  She has fully recovered from what must have been an awful time for her when she miscarried.ย ย  We are making arrangements for her to be fed and watered and given a safe place to hole up in our garden.ย 

There is no clue as to what will happen in the next few months.  Will school open?  Will the border still be shut to people outside Morocco?   Will we be reverting  to virtual school again?   Quite a few teachers have left on repatriation flights to America.   Quite how they will be allowed to re-enter Morocco in the next few months is anyoneโ€™s guess.   They knew the situation when they left, they were aware that they may be stuck in the US for some time.

But what can you do?  You have family back home that you are desperate to see.  You have issues with your house needing attention, issues with tax authorities โ€“ a common theme of living somewhere foreign โ€“ and a whole host of other things that you need to do.  And what is more important, sorting out your personal stuff or waiting around for your job that may or may not be on campus or not? 

The kitchen gets very crowded at food time

The end of lockdown here has meant that we, finally, after three months or so were allowed to go shopping at the posh supermarche.  The wonder!  The bright shiny lights!  The cheese!   It was all a bit overwhelming for the both of us โ€“ I had to have a lie down when I got home.

One of the negatives of the ending of lockdown is the packed beaches.  My God, it is intense.  Families start arriving at about 7.30 am to claim their spot on the beach.  Hundreds of kids take the 5 kilometre walk from their somewhat rough neighbourhoods from the other side of the motorway into the well-heeled beach areas of southern Rabat to spend the day just being free from the grinding poverty and restrictions of life during a pandemic. 

The King is still recuperating from his surgery so we still have an artillery unit overlooking the cliffs and mounted coppers getting everyone off the beach before dark โ€“ no beach parties for a while here.  It actually does us a huge favour as we arenโ€™t finding tons of garbage all over the beach in the mornings.

It is one of the difficulties with living in Morocco.  You hear patriotic comments and statements all the time from Moroccans, itโ€™s a thing here.  And then they just litter the country with their rubbish and without any thought at all.  It doesnโ€™t make any sense.  Mind you, neither does the driving and the blasรฉ approach of pedestrians that continues to make us throw our hands up in absolute disbelief as to their sheer fuckwittery.   You really do have to see it to believe just how bad it can be.  I promise that you will be continually surprised each time you go out driving somewhere.

So we will be leaving our beach home next week*.  We will be leaving behind a really nice house with nice landlords, a really nice beach walk each morning, really nice friends, really nice food and wine and what has been, thus far, a really nice country to live in.  We like Morocco.  We like it a lot.  People are friendly, curious without staring and generally helpful to us foreigners.   Weโ€™ve been lucky in our choice of African country to live in.

But it isnโ€™t home.  Home is where the lemon tree is.  I canโ€™t wait to see it, it represents all that I love about our little place in the middle of nowhere.  Tango is buried in the shade of it, breakfast with guests is taken underneath it and it forms the base for a ton of marmalade and limoncello.  It exudes a colour that brightens any day and that citron smell that pervades in the evenings.  It does, of course, also provide thorns that will rip clothing and skin with alarming sharpness any time you get a bit cocky.  

And Luna will be reunited with her campo*.  She has taken to finding, fighting and eating crabs very well and to chasing cats that seem to proliferate every week but we know here first love is hunting rabbits.  Rabbits donโ€™t tend to fight back, unlike Moroccan street cats who give as good as they get.   She hates it when they fight back, you can hear bark sounding like a complaint that these things have the temerity to give her a good pasting.  We suspect sheโ€™s a bit of a wuss when it comes down to it.

The school year isnโ€™t fully over for me yet.  I still have my postgrad course to complete, this time with a 4000 word essay due in three weeks.  It is hanging over me like a bad smell and I really canโ€™t wait to finish it.  I got a 60% for my last essay, which delighted me.   I was over the moon with that, seriously.  This has not been an easy undertaking at all.  At my age.  Being out of the loop of modern education for so long.  Not having studied for 25 years.   And finding myself working full-time, which was a real shock again just by itself.

Light

What to do?

Well, Iโ€™m going to finish it and then concentrate on the really important learning opportunities offered during a pandemic lockdown.  Facebook has been bombarding me with different courses to do so I am considering becoming a dog psychologist, a life coach, a student of yoga-influenced spiritual advice, a private detective and an expert in cryptozoology where I can assist with searching for aliens and the yeti!  The offer of a course price reduction to only 25 dollars that will only last one more day has been going on for about two months now so I know these places are serious in their endeavours.  

Dora needs to up her crabbing skills

But thatโ€™s all in the future.  For now we have to reconcile ourselves with this strange new world that we all find ourselves in.  It is a world of uncertainty.  And of a change in ourselves that will take a lot to eradicate โ€“ that slight pang of fear when you are close to someone you donโ€™t know or when you watch a film and see the characters hugging or kissing and realise that they arenโ€™t socially distancing.  

And what changes can we expect in our village when we get back*?  We have been assured that the village pool will open (and with it the bar and restaurant) which gives us hope that a semblance of normal life has asserted itself.  We know that the village square bar and Chicoโ€™s is open so that is reassuring.   We hope that Thomas the Philosophical Butcher has recovered from a heart attack and that our friends are well.    We hope that the various Antonios are just as engaging as they were before we left.  

We’re calling him Smudge. He likes to hang around for food and to really annoy the dogs

It is strange to think of that world of only one year ago.  We flew to Romania to be at the wedding of our friends from Sri Lanka. We hosted Maeve and sister Fidelma from Ireland, Matt and Rachel from Sri Lanka and Kate from Singapore and we thought nothing of it โ€“ this was normal, this was how it worked for us all.  And now, well now we are anxious about being able to cross a stretch of water only twenty miles wide.   

May you live in interesting times.

Hasta luego, inshallah

Ayubowan

Paul

PS:ย ย  Celebrating Canada Day.ย  And Pompeyโ€™s tilt at winning the playoffs to get promotion at last.ย ย  And a memory of The Man in Black at a Glastonbury Festival that is a reminder of what hero-worship is all about โ€“ I donโ€™t care if I do dah do dahย  do dah, do dah, do because this is Johnny Cash playing at one of what he said was one of his favourite ever gigs.ย ย  I was there, awestruck.ย ย  Itโ€™s Johnny Cash!ย ย  I mean, its Johnny Cash!ย 

*Hopefully

Paul

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