Ali

Tags

Ali, Andrea Bocelli, Antonio Banderas, Billabong, Bob Marley, Coldplay, Essaouira, Fes, Medina, Morocco, Pau Gasol, Sarah Brightman

My friend Lilly is the traveling-est bug I know. Each year she travels to five continents, thirty cities not for business but out of relentless love for travel itself and unrelenting interest in other people’s cultures. Because she’s been doing this for the last two decades, she must have circumnavigated the world and visited every exotic island that appears as a speck on the map. I would, next time, suggest to her to enlist in Sir Richard Branson’s space travel for a change. Not only is she well traveled and intelligent, she’s very pretty too, having once modeled for a beauty soap but whose modeling career was side tracked by her strict parents.

Now she has homes in three cities and has four passports.

Most days in this humid Indian summer in the UK, I would be humming along the hum of whistling kettle in the kitchen while waiting for the tumble dryer alarm to implode. Then I would fix myself a cup of coffee before I embark on the monumental task of folding the wash while warm to spare me the trouble of ironing. The kid’s clothes at least. Mine I need to press because I am a neat-freak when it comes to clothes. I and wash and wear just wouldn’t go well in one sentence together.

Most days I would be on the top floor of this white two story house in Southampton. My  sister and her husband were off to work and I had already dropped off the kids to school. The house was all mine. So was the housework. I sorted my clothes from theirs and with the headset on my ears, ironed my clothes with passion to the music of Sarah Brightman’s Con Te Partiro, Andrea Bocelli’s ‘Nessun Dorma’. Then I would shuffle among Sarah MacLachlan, Coldplay, Bob Marley and Jack Johnson songs and tears would be streaming copiously down my face onto my clothes. I didn’t need to spray water or starch on them.

I was homesick.

I was in the UK for a mini-sabbatical. I came in the throes of two successive miscarriages and my nieces, whom I and hubby raised for three years had been matched to schools in Southampton. My sister and my brother in law finally synchronized their work schedules, it was time for the children to be reunited with their parents.

I was in the process of weaning myself off them. The nieces were just too happy to be with their real parents. My sister and my brother in law were ecstatic to be parents once again. My husband adored them but could only take too many re-reruns of Kangaroo Jack  and Power Puff Girls and was relieved to have control of the remote again.  But I, their Mama Eva was doomed. I loved them like my own.

I have been treating myself to unlimited rides to outer zones of Hampshire on First Bus.  I went to St. Boniface church every Sunday along with Catholics from Kerala, Cochin and Goa,  some Filipinos and a sprinkling of whites. After mass, I’d take the double decker  bus and take a random ride until I’ve seen my fill of Southampton and I would go home and have breakfast. I studied the handbook on the hiking trails  and had walks in the forests of Southampton. My sister would bake me rice cakes and shove them under the door if I did not feel like going out. They invited me to hot air balloon rides in Blackwell.  But always I longed for home.

It was again one of those mornings that I forced myself out of bed to move along the same daily  rhythm of cooking, washing clothes, bringing the kids to school and ogling at the garbage collectors when the phone rang.

It was Lilly!

‘OMG, it’s you! Wassup, Lilly?’  (Thank you God! This is going to be a lovely day. This is the day I won’t be talking to myself)

‘Bestest friends told me you were in the UK’

‘Yup. They threw me one big send off party before I left’  (With about seventy people in his condo I had this funny feeling they were all there to make sure I really was leaving for a long stretch, if not for good ‘)

‘What’s keeping you busy?’

‘Umm, I’m writing posts on my MSN’s My Space about my charmed life while on sabbatical to keep my friends updated and drooling. (Lord forgive me for I know not what I’m saying. Can I invoke temporary insanity?)

‘I’m in Uluru now but I’ll be in Rome in two days for the Pope’s installation. Wanna meet up?’

‘Ugh, huh’  (Dear God, I want to switch lives with this girl)

‘Is that a yes?’

‘No. I can’t apply for a Schengen visa from here’ (I really want to switch lives with this girl)

‘My bad. Never thought of that getting in the way. From Rome I’ll be flying in to Barcelona and Madrid’

‘A-ha. I’m listening’ (God, are you listening? I want to live her life)

‘But if you’re really up to it, I can take a train from Madrid to Tangiers and we can meet in Fes. You don’t need a visa for Morocco. Let’s take it from there. Just book  a room in an Ibis hotel near the train station. I’ll e-mail you my itinerary. See you in a week.’

Click!

‘Ok!’ ( Dear Lord, life isn’t fair! Sigh!)

After having stayed in Fes for three days exploring  the Medina, the tannery, the souks, mosques, madrasah, climbing up inner city houses of Berber carpet weavers and the ancient nooks of Fes,  and after a lunch of couscous and chicken tajine while listening to the music of Mali singer Sangare, Lilly and I decided to call it a day and plan our itinerary. But first, we must slake off our thirst in this al fresco garden cafe that was recommended by Lonely Planet.

It was a pricey cafe but many people, mostly Europeans were there. We must have been reading the same travel guide. Either that or the place must really be exceptional.

Lilly and I waited for a uniformed waiter to come to us. Between her and me, she was the French-y one while I have limited mine to ‘Parlez vous anglais’ while tapping the shoulder of an unsuspecting English or French tourist and ‘Pardon’ or ‘Excusez moi’ to save my life.

I could see waiters were busy and we were prepared to wait. Until a vision came upon us, both Lilly and I were not prepared for.

He was wearing a loose gray cotton Billabong shirt and jeans. Something was telling me he was an anachronism in a place like Fes. He looked like he belonged in a runway. Or NBA court. Or Hollywood.

He apologized for keeping us waiting. He explained that it was a holiday so many people were in the garden. He came home from Rabat where he worked as a financial analyst, to visit his Dad, and help out in the family business. He was mixing drinks in the kitchen when he saw us.

‘So ladies, may I have your order?’  he said in an impeccable English with undecipherable accent. not a drawl, not a twang but did not sound bad either.

‘You’ve been to Australia?’ Lilly asked.

 

(God, give me some of Lilly’s charm and her guts)

 

‘Yeah, I was there last year. You noticed? I love to surf! I also love Bondi beach.’

‘It’s your shirt. I’m from Sydney’ Lilly said

‘That’s cool!’

(You’re Chicago based now, Lilly!)

‘We’re cooling our heels actually. We’re leaving for Marrakech tomorrrow’ Lilly confessed.

‘Oh, no, no, no. Tourists. You’re always reading those travel guides. You should ask from the locals. Why would you like to go to Marrakech when everybody is there. It’s a desert. It’s a jungle. Give me your book’

He pored over the appendix and scanned the page and when he found what he was looking for, pointed to a chapter on Essaouira.

‘This is where you want to go! That is Morocco’s version of the French Riviera!’

‘Wait, I didn’t get your name?’ I asked.

(Thank you God for giving me the guts, but why not  include Lilly’s French and charm?)

‘Oh sorry Miss. I got carried away. I am Ali.’ He replied, clutching  me  the guide book on his chest.

‘I’m Lilly. And she’s Eva’. Lilly said coyly.

‘I am pleased to meet you ladies. Now, like I said, if you should decide to go to this place, this is a new experience for you because all of Morocco you’ve seen desert. And hot places. This is by the sea. It’s the most beautiful seaside place in Morocco’

‘Actually Ali, that’s not part of our itinerary’ I said.

‘Actually, it is now.’ Lilly said grinning.

(I really really want to have all of her guts dear God)

‘Oh, that’s good. Here’s what you do.’

And Ali, while leaning on our table, went on to explain to Lilly  how to get to Essaouira from Fes while I sat there motionless and unbelieving that I would be this close to a creature this handsome, good looking, stupendously good looking he’s almost beautiful. If he were a chemistry equation, he would be

Antonio Banderas face +  Pau Gasol hair =  Ali

He had this long, curly dark brown hair, square jaw and nice teeth, captivating smile that infected his large, dark brown eyes. His skin was flawless and his shoulders were broad, his arms muscular and he was neat.  I regretted the fact that we met in Fes and not in Bondi beach.

Ali convinced Lilly that Essaouira was way better than Marrakech. How could we not trust a face like that?

‘Okay, Eva darling, we better get going’  Lilly said as she got up from her chair.

‘Well, I’m not doing anything now. I can bring you to your hotel and drive you to the bus station so you’ll save time. Is that OK?’

(I also want some of  Ali’s guts Lord?)

I have always trusted Lilly’s instincts. Between her and me, she’s the traveler and I was the bug.

Ali asked us to follow him to the garage where he emptied the backseat of his folders and books.

He drove a one year old BMW, a glistening black one.

When we got to the hotel, we hurriedly packed our stuff and checked out while Ali waited in lobby and helped us carry our stuff.

Then he drove us to the bus station. Lilly rode in the front seat where they talked about Sydney and Lyons and Grenoble and Serengeti and Rio de Janeiro and the world. I was eavesdropping but most of the time the talk was unintelligible as they conveniently would shift from French to English, English to French.

At the bus station, drivers and conductors were waving at him and he waved back, smiling. He seemed like a local celebrity. Maybe his family owned the bus company. Or maybe his family owned Essaouira.

He told the driver of the 6PM bus to ‘Take care of my  friends’. Lilly and I took our assigned seats. From the window I could see Ali waiting for the bus to leave and when it did, he smiled and waved at us.We waved back. Even in the afterglow, his dark brown hair and the contour of his lovely face were perfectly outlined. The last I remembered of Ali was his smile, a luscious, delectable smile. Lilly was humming a French canson, her eyes closed. She was smiling. I asked her what she was smiling about.

‘He asked for my phone number!’ she whispered and continued humming until the humming became more and more faint as she went to sleep smiling.

(God Almight, I really want to switch lives with Lilly even for just a day).

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Peter

Tags

Aston Martin, Belgium, Casablanca, Casablanca Airport, CasaVoyageurs, Fes, Meknes, Mohamed V, Morocco, Rabat, Solo Travel, Wall of Water

I stood on the platform of the train station in Casablanca, huffing and puffing like a climber running out of water on a long trek. My Oakley backpack on which I had suspended ten days of my life  suddenly was heavier as I expended more air catching my breath  than carrying my bag.  I had  made the mad dash to get out from the Mohamed V  after I saw several Moroccan police grab a matronly woman garbed in black  djelaba and hijab right across from the Wall of Water. I was disturbed by the sight of four burly policemen grabbing her by the arm, dragging her. I had heard her while I was at the immigration counter,  her caterwauling reverberated in the walls of the high ceiling airport I was scared all the glass there would break or the echoes of her cry would send the water from the wall into one big swoosh and splash. I asked randomly some locals what her gibberish was all about and a young lady replied ‘Looking for son, lost son’.

At the train station, I saw only one other man standing on the platform. He was wearing taupe leather jacket  that had seen better days,  scuffed at the elbows, over a white shirt  and light faded denim. Although he was wearing loafers, ruck sack worn on one shoulder, he looked distinguished and dignified. He was tall, about 6’4,  in his late forties and wore a Tom Selleck beard but thinned out reddish brown hair. I surmised he was one of those few Europeans who detested the sun as he was deathly pale. He had some wrinkles on his forehead but that too went well with his mien and countenance.

‘Are you taking the 4 o’clock train’, he asked as he inched closer to me.

I nodded.

‘Then you better have something like this’, he showed me a train ticket that he scooped out of the inner pocket of his jacket.

I had none. That sent me into panic. I thought I would pay in the train just like the Shinkansen in Hiroshima and Osaka as I remembered doing.

He pointed to the ticket booth in a far corner and yelled ‘You have four minutes’.

I sprinted to the ticket booth. I must have looked like one of those contestants in Amazing Race on tenth place desperately trying to be first.

When I traced my steps back to the station, the train from Sidi-al-Kacem was on coming.

The man chose to sit beside me. ‘I hope you don’t mind’ he whispered, his mouth was too close to my ear it was discomfiting and I could see his nicotine stained teeth. But I had to be polite. If anything, my jeans and sneakers would allow me for a mean roundhouse kick and a nasty counter in the groin or a punch in the solar plexus.  ‘It is unusual for a young lady like you to be traveling alone.’

I smiled smugly. I could almost hear my husband say ‘I told you so’ or how stubborn I could be to be traveling alone for the hundredth time. Hubby could be a nag but he was right about so many things most of the time.

I knew the man had been helpful and I had already thanked him profusely.  But that was not enough to warm me up to him.

Until he started telling me what made him keep coming back to Morocco.

‘I came to visit my wife. She lives in the outskirts of Fes’

‘I see’.

I had always wanted my train rides to be quiet so I could immerse myself in the silence that allowed me to paint a picture of what or how my itinerary would be like.  But I cannot be rude to a chatty stranger in the two or three hours of the  ride. Besides, he had been helpful. And the people in the seats across from us were smiling although unsure of what we might have been talking about. They even thought we were a couple.

‘Guess how old I am’ he said.

‘Ummm, I dunno. Maybe 45?’

‘I’m fifty years old. And here,’ he continued as he fished a picture from his wallet. ‘here is a picture of my wife. She is twenty’

The woman in the picture was wearing a paisley printed brown and gold kaftan, with long blonde hair, brown eyes and a tentative but sweet smile. She looked like a model before having been scouted and glamorized or ruined by joints and booze fed them by Albanian mafia.

‘Very pretty’ I said.

‘You know how I met her? ‘

‘No’

‘The internet. We were chatting. You see after my divorce, I became so lonely. I don’t want anymore Belgian wife. I came to Morocco three times before I met her’

‘How come?’ I asked

‘Because there were fifteen of them in Rabat. Casablanca. Agadir. Marrakech. Fes. Safi. All fourteen of them, when they see me for the first time, all would be screaming ‘Marry me. Marry me. Bring me with you. Take me with you. Even if I am back in the car they would run after me. It would break my heart but I don’t want to be a ticket for a visa.’

‘That’s a sad story’, I said

‘But you know, girl number thirteen I promised her I would come back, also number fourteen sent me the wrong picture. She turned out to be very fat.  And then something inside of me was telling me to go visit number fifteen, go for number fifteen even if it was already dark at night and I was already very tired of all the bullshit.’

‘And?’

Even I myself was amazed that I would be hanging on to every word of a total stranger whose only demographics I happened to know were that he’s from Belgium, he’s 50 years old and married to a 20 year old Moroccan girl from Fes.

‘And you know what, she was the only girl among the fifteen who did not say ‘Marry me’. She told me how much she enjoyed talking to me on the phone and was very happy to see me in person. She knows there were other girls but she said I come back only if I am sure about my feelings for her’

‘And what did you say?’

‘I almost cried. She was the sweetest girl of them all and how lucky I was. I could not stay long that night as I have to be back in my hotel. I promised to come back the following day’

‘And you did’

‘Of course! I could not wait to see her again. She was even lovelier by day. My heart went out to the family. They lived in a thatched house with dirt floor. No wood, no cement. Just soil’

‘Aw. I see. That’s a sad story’

‘So that day I shopped for the family and bought them lamp, bought them a stove and things for hygiene because they don’t even have toilet paper’

‘Really?’

‘That’s true. I fell in love with her ways, her simplicity. She did not go to college but she was helping her family raise her younger brothers and sisters. She sells things in the market. Do you know that the toilet paper I bought, she kept  only for me to use?. Can you believe that?’

‘Yes I can. That’s a beautiful story Mister?’

‘Peter. Call me Peter’

‘I’m Eva. And I’m pleased to hear your story.’

‘Pleased to meet you Eva. What’s your story?’

I chuckled. The truth was I rued the idea of spilling my life story to a man I knew only an hour ago.

‘Peter, you should go on with your story. Mine is not half as interesting as yours’

By the time the train arrived in Sidi-al-Kacem I learned that he was mechanic in a town an hour away from Brussels specializing in fixing and selling Aston Martins.

‘Looks like you’re one of the older James Bond assistants’ I said.

‘Yeah. Exactly!’ he erupted in delight that an Asian would know James Bond.

‘Fastest car in the world at the time’ he added.

We were sitting on a wood bench by the platform on Sidi-al-Kacem, an interchange to bring me to Fes as it would also pick up passengers coming in from Tangiers from the west of Morocco. He looked at his watch and said it would be a wait of fifteen minutes. As it was close to six o’clock, I was feeling hungry. He must have heard my stomach grumbling as he offered me a sandwich which he took from the outer pocket of his ruck sack which I reluctantly received. He must have sensed my trepidation so he started eating the other sandwich with him, biting small pieces at a time. In between bites, he stared at me seeing me still with the unopened sandwich wrapped in Saran.

‘That’s goat cheese and wheat bread’ he said. ‘Finish it before the train comes’.

I had never had goat cheese in my life. Especially not from a stranger but I was hungry. Seeing that I was already eating the bread, he said ‘I’ve fresh milk here if you want’ as he lifted fresh milk in a tetra pack. I quashed the urge to ask if it was fresh  goat milk as I might throw up if it was. I had nothing against goats or their milk, I wasn’t just a goat milk person.

When I was finished he took the sandwich wrap and folded it into a small  square, not crumpling it like many would and threw it in a litter bin in a corner.

The train for Fes arrived and we scrambled into our seats as there were many others rushing to get into the train.

We were seated in front of many women and young men this time. Unlike the polite women from Casablanca, the women on the way to Fes were loquacious and warmed up to Peter especially when Peter greeted them ‘Assalam Alaikum’. During the ride to Fes, it was mostly the women that Peter talked with, in Arabic. Sometimes he would translate their conversations for me, the gentleman that he was. The one instance that he let out a hearty laugh intrigued me as the women were looking at me naughtily. I glared at Peter, demanding to know what it was all about. He said’ These women are telling me ‘Brother, your mission is to convert that young Miss to Islam by the time we get to Fes’.

When the women were talking among themselves about going to (or coming from) Meknes, the shopping  for clothes in Casablanca and following up documents in Fes, Peter would turn to me and told me the story how he learned Arabic, the kind that was taught in universities, eloquent, grammatically correct Arabic, not colloquial. His employer in Saudi Arabia during his younger years sent tutors to him to study the language which he mastered in five years. On top of that, he also spoke  French, Flemish and English. ‘It was the language, French and Arabic that made me choose a bride from Morocco and not from your country’.

I did not know how to react to that. But he was right. Some women back home who could only speak fractured English with fake accents would definitely consider him a good catch, a gold mine.

He went back to the chatter with the women in Arabic whom he must have regaled with his love story they were swooning and sighing at the same time.

Meanwhile, I was talking to a young man, the twenty year old Mohamed who came from Rabat for his English language class. He mistook me for a 21 year old. I was nearing forty at the time. Either I looked the part or he was being kind. Whatever, it made him a lot interesting to talk to.

He was hoping to get to a college in Santa Monica in California where his cousin was based. But after 9-11, his visa had since been denied thrice.

‘That’s a sad story ‘ I said.

‘How’s my English? I hope we can e-mail each other so you can see how I am doing with my English studies’ he enthused.

‘Sure’ I promised.

We got to the train station in Fes which was near a terminal and a market. The place was crowded with many people. I asked Mohamed for directions to my hotel which the guide book said to be a stone’s throw away from the station. Mohamed offered to walk me to the hotel but I said I needed to have supper first as it might take a while to order in a hotel. I wanted something ‘fast’ and asked him to have supper with me. While he offered to walk me to the restaurant, he declined the invitation to eat as his parents might be looking for him by now. We never got to exchange our e-mail address.

As to Peter, he was patiently waiting, never interrupting nor intruding,  for my conversation with young Mohamed to be over to say his good bye. He said he had a car waiting for him from the opposite side of the terminal. He gave me his business card and shook my hand very firmly. He wished me luck and I was to call him should I need anything, anything he might be of help. He would be in Morocco until the end of the month, he said as he and his wife will be working on her visa in the capital, Rabat.

‘Take care, you brave girl’ he said his hand on his forehead, doffing a hat he never had.

As he turned his back, I saw his silhouette, standing tall amidst a crowd of strangers, walking steadily with a gait and swagger of someone who knew he was loved, until he disappeared in the dark.