!اهلاً و سهلاً أصدقائي و عائلتي

This is my blog for my semester abroad in Rabat, Morocco studying at the College of Letters and Humanities at Mohammed V University – Agdal in partnership with AMIDEAST. I'm studying Middle East and North African studies, Arabic, and bad puns about old Nickelodeon shows.
The Angry Leavers

The Angry Leavers

You can’t make me leave!!

Some­how, my time here is com­ing to an end. My back­pack is packed, my flights are booked, and tomor­row I start adven­ture #2. From Rabat, I go to Asi­lah and then to Seville to pick up Kyle and hang out in Spain. Then, we’re going to the Sahara desert, climb­ing the tallest moun­tain in North Africa, and head­ing to Agadir for one day of beach­ing before hit­ting up Europe. There, we plan to go to Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, and Barcelona, and after that, I’ll be head­ing to India for about a month doing a research/intern posi­tion with an orga­ni­za­tion called Group­shot.

Things are going to be a lit­tle dif­fer­ent on this blog; in fact, in a cul­mi­nat­ing slideshow my pro­gram put together to high­light our semester’s mishaps, my com­puter exploded in a burst of unzwee­ness and, well, hasn’t turned on since. So I’ll be updat­ing this from wher­ever I can, mean­ing no pic­tures until I get back in the States and hope­fully fig­ure out my computer’s sit­u­a­tion in 1.5 months. Oops. But enough about anger. Let’s reflect.

May 11, 2012 1 comment Read More
As Sold by Ginger

As Sold by Ginger

The Hajja, momma, real momma, andrew, Mar­wane, Eliot, Sufian, me, Lat­i­fah, baba

For my 21st birth­day, my mom (Norma Lerner, pedi­atric hema­tol­o­gist oncol­o­gist, red­head) and my brother (Andrew Schwartz, New York City-based stu­dio assis­tant and artist, reddish-colored beard) had planned to come visit me in Morocco. I orga­nized a whole trip that would go to Rabat; Essaouira and Agadir, two really awe­some beach-towns in Morocco; Mar­rakech, and Ourika, a Berber vil­lage about an hour’s drive away from there.

This trip was a cul­mi­na­tion of my entrance into offi­cial adult­hood and an offi­cial abil­ity to do every­thing within the law that my par­ents’ can do, the longest vaca­tion my brother has taken since grad­u­at­ing col­lege, and a week of relax­ation for mom, who’s turn­ing 35 on May 10, being pedestal­ized by Mother’s Day on May 13, and is cur­rently in the process of mov­ing to her new job at the National Insti­tute of Health in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

Need­less to say, it was so excit­ing to have them here, and all the while, as the title sug­gests, my mom, through my sand-covered iPod Touch, was sell­ing her Philadel­phia home.

May 8, 2012 1 comment Read More
The Secret World of Alex Mack

The Secret World of Alex Mack

Con­quer­ing Le Cascades.

This past week­end, I impromptu decided to explore my more mys­ti­cal and moun­taineery side by ven­tur­ing to a far-off vil­lage for some moun­tain hik­ing, or al-tasalaq (lit­er­ally: climb­ing). Along with three friends from my pro­gram, Sonja, Grace, and Tamar, I trav­eled to Mar­rakech on a four-hour train ride and then to Imlil via a two-hour, ter­ri­fy­ing car ride through a twisted moun­tain pass. Imlil is known for its hik­ing, how­ever; in fact, the second-highest moun­tain in Africa, Toubkal, is located there in the High Atlas Moun­tain Range.

Get­ting to Imlil, in hind­sight, was rel­a­tively easy save a few alter­ca­tions in Mar­rakech, a city that, I must admit, I am slowly warm­ing up to. Both lit­er­ally and fig­u­ra­tively. Land­locked and mountain-bordered, Mar­rakech is privy to a hot sun and incred­i­bly weather. It was a bless­ing in com­par­i­son to the recent rel­a­tive cool­ness of Rabat. The dri­ver of our taxi kabir ended up not only being reck­less, but he was also quite pos­si­bly involved in some sort of drug trade. He kept stop­ping along the road, talk­ing to peo­ple and exchang­ing the 200 dirhams we had paid him. What’s more is he kept ask­ing us if we knew “Alex.” (“Yes, we know an Alex, but there are a lot of Alexes in the world,” we explained.) Time would tell that it was not strange to hear this from the mouth of this Imlil-native, how­ever. We were vic­tims to the secret world of Alex Mac, now.

April 25, 2012 0 comments Read More
Nickilodeon

Nickilodeon

Kutubia and old friends.

This past Pink Fri­day, AMIDEAST took us on our last offi­cial trip to the incred­i­bly touristy and land-locked Mar­rakech. The jour­ney, thank­fully, was enriched by the schizoid, wigged-out, and ludi­crous lyrics of our dear­est Nicki Minaj and her newest album, Pink Fri­day: Roman Reloaded. On the first lis­ten, I felt as if my brain had been scooped out and sat on by the rumpus-causing rump of the rap­per her­self (to be fair, this is all logged in a live-tweet ses­sion I did about the album instead of doing any home­work). But the more I lis­tened to the intox­i­cat­ing album perfectly-manicured-based-on-algorithms-of-popular-music-which-generally-disregard-artistic-intent, I real­ized that my Mar­rakech trip resem­bled Nicki’s own year-long effort with her sopho­more album. In fact, with my new skills at com­pre­hen­sion, the major­ity of Moroc­cans with whom I inter­acted actu­ally were quot­ing her! Unfor­tu­nately, I under­stand Dar­ija bet­ter than Nicki’s rap lyrics, so there were many misconceptions. This, my friends, is Mar­rakech, the hit new musisil brought to you by Nickilodeon.

April 11, 2012 1 comment Read More
All Flown Up!

All Flown Up!

Get the shot.

Sim­i­larly to one of the best tele­vi­sion shows ever cre­ated, I had one of the best spring breaks ever. You could think about this awtla as being equally joy­ous as watch­ing “A Rugrats Passover” or as equally nec­es­sary as Tommy’s sur­rep­ti­tious stash­ing of a screw­driver in his dia­per. I departed Morocco from Casablanca with Julia and flew to Lon­don where we stayed for about a week. After that, we jet­ted off to Dublin to cel­e­brate St. Patrick’s Day for two days and then returned on a day com­posed entirely of trav­el­ing. Trav­el­ing alone, being inde­pen­dent, and sur­viv­ing Ryan Air? You might as well call me all grown up.

We knew that spring break was off to a good start when we, after eat­ing a hash brown (lit­er­ally just one) from McDonald’s, in part­ner­ship with our friend Shane, real­ized that our $70 flight served free wine and the stew­ardesses were rel­a­tively for­get­ful. Fol­low­ing this came another moment of illu­mi­na­tion: you use the lifts in Lon­don to ascend from the sub­way, not the stairs. 350 stairs later with all my stuff, the les­son was learned.

March 27, 2012 0 comments Read More
Get the Picture

Get the Picture

Chefchaouen.

To be fair, I never saw this Nick show, but the title was per­fect. I’m headed off to Eng­land tomor­row to see some good friends with Julia but first wanted to keep you all updated on my trip to Tang­ier and Chefchaouen before leav­ing. I could ram­ble on using puns to hint at my slight frus­tra­tion at being in such touristy areas (“Ara­bic?” one shop-owner asked me, “Just speak in Eng­lish, please.”) or I could detail my ever-growing prob­lem of pur­chas­ing sneak­ers here (Moroc­cans have really small feet), but I decided that pic­tures, in this sit­u­a­tion, tell a thou­sand words. And so do after­thought captions.

March 8, 2012 1 comment Read More
Invader Jinn

Invader Jinn

Sto­ries and myths are woven into this Jewish-Berber rug.

I really like whistling. It’s easy to do, males have a con­sid­er­ably higher range than singing, and it’s a per­fect sub­sti­tute if you don’t know the words to the song. This is par­tic­u­larly help­ful here, as when you ask some­one how to say some­thing in Ara­bic, he’ll say the word as fast as humanly pos­si­ble and then when you ask him to repeat it he’ll say it twice as fast as that. Need­less to say, my lyri­cal knowl­edge of the Ara­bic songs I hear on the radio needs work.

But I digress. The point of this brief anec­dote is that there are lit­tle cul­tural things here that remind me that I’m Some­where Else just when I’m start­ing to get com­fort­able. At first, they were weird and strange, but now, they’re endear­ing. My friend Kyle study­ing abroad in Seville men­tioned how a buxom sect of Span­ish babes whis­tled to him across a road. I replied by telling him how I am repeat­edly rep­ri­manded for whistling in the house because my dad tells me I’m sum­mon­ing the jinn.

March 1, 2012 0 comments Read More
Salute Your Schwartz

Salute Your Schwartz

Schwartzes meet Seddikis.

This past week­end, two mem­bers of the Schwartz fam­ily vis­ited Al-Maghreb: Dr. George Schwartz (role: father) and Ms. Mar­i­lyn Schwartz (role: grand­mother, gen­eral famil­ial fig­ure­head). They arrived Fri­day morn­ing, beat jet lag, and together we had an excit­ing nihayat alisbua’ah of Raba­t­ian tourism and Fez­ian trav­els. And thank­fully, unlike the hit show of my child­hood, no one’s box­ers got hoisted up on any flag­poles because that would be hashooma now wouldn’t it?

February 23, 2012 4 comments Read More
David the Explorer

David the Explorer

Do Azrou please.

These past two week­ends have been a whirl­wind of travel, so apolo­gies for the lack of updates. I have pic­tures and sto­ries for you from Casablanca, Fez, Mek­nes, Azrou, and Ifrane, all of which are very, very dif­fer­ent areas in Morocco. In fact, it was remark­able how I could go from hav­ing a snow­ball fight to play­ing with mon­keys to sit­ting on Roman ruins all in one day. But that’s Morocco for you.

About ten days ago, I went to Casablanca with a large group of friends from my pro­gram on an unof­fi­cial adven­ture. We took the train there–it’s only an hour away and only thirty dirhams, so the whole process is pretty easy. We did the first log­i­cal thing to do once we arrived, which was to go to Pizza Hut. I would describe the cheese-filled crust and the cer­e­mo­ni­ous con­clu­sion of my pep­per­oni abstemious­ness in detail, but you would prob­a­bly be _____________. (Off-screen, David the Explorer shouts, Disturbed! Disgusted! Ashamed! in Spanish.)

February 16, 2012 5 comments Read More
Men In Briefs: The Series

Men In Briefs: The Series


Morocco’s been more or less the same since I last checked in. Dar­ija has been get­ting slightly eas­ier; I keep thank­ing my lucky stars that sim­ple pop songs like “Gimme More” exist so my friends and I here can keep prac­tic­ing the new words we learn (“Oh na na, wesh smitee?”).

I’ll start off and dif­fuse any tit­u­lar mys­tery: I went to the ham­mam this past week­end. For those who aren’t famil­iar, the ham­mam is a sort of a bathhouse/spa that is incred­i­bly impor­tant to Arab and Turk­ish cul­ture. Eliot’s and my host brother, Mar­wane took us there this past Sunday.

But first we went to get Marwane’s hair cut. The process took about two hours in a tiny room filled with men chat­ting. Though a mun­dane detail, I thought it sort of sym­bol­ized most of Moroc­can life: sched­ules are less impor­tant, things take more time; instead of stress­ing, peo­ple go some­where and relax and enjoy their com­pany. Mar­wane left pink and zween from his beard being threaded, but lit­tle did I know how zween we were actu­ally about to be.

February 2, 2012 0 comments Read More
“A” Ventura: Rabat Detective">“A” Ventura: Rabat Detective

“A” Ventura: Rabat Detective">“A” Ventura: Rabat Detective

I acci­den­tally told my mom she was an incred­i­ble kitchen instead of an incred­i­ble cook.

Everything’s been going well here. Except for the fact that it gets really cold at night (the build­ings are designed to keep the cold in which appar­ently is a bless­ing dur­ing the sum­mer). Thank­fully, I have a ques­tion­ably sheep­skin blan­ket and tra­di­tional Moroc­can slip­pers called babouche that are embla­zoned with two sabres. Day to day, I’ve been get­ting into my groove, doing Ara­bic and Eng­lish tongue twisters with Lat­ifa, and teach­ing my fam­ily about crockpots.

And in accor­dance with this article’s aspired accom­plish­ments as well as to assure this assignment’s avid and ardent analy­sis with an adept, arranged, and allo­cated ambiance all while avoid­ing appear­ing abecedar­ian, I have adjudged that this assay will abide as an amal­ga­ma­tion of affi­late affairs alone (and ancil­lary adden­dum), all ante­ceded by an A.

January 25, 2012 2 comments Read More
Hey Agdal!

Hey Agdal!

At last. Time to sit down and write. The past week I’ve been in Morocco has been non-stop sen­sory over­load. I’m talk­ing thing-after-thing-after-bread-after-thing-after-exhaustion-after-Arabic-after-being-touristy-after thing. There’s a lot to write about and a lot to tell you all, but there’s not a lot of inter­net nor is there a lot of time, so let’s see how this goes.

Like a brothel but with more women!

Arrival

This was my least favorite part of the trip so far. I arrived at the air­port, disheveled and filled with Swiss egg­plant parme­san, to find another stu­dent on my pro­gram named Sarah who is very funny and reminds me of my friend Rena. That was com­fort­ing, but after being dri­ven by a man bear­ing only a sign read­ing AMIDEAST and speak­ing in what I can only describe as parsel­tongue, we were deposited at a hotel. And I don’t mean just dropped off. I mean straight up deposited. As in no com­mu­ni­ca­tion with any­one save our room­mates until pro­gram­ming the next day… pro­gram­ming which took place at AMIDEAST’s loca­tion in Agdal, which we had to get to our­selves. Some­how. After this cul­ture shock and fend­ing for our­selves, I slowly began meet­ing every­one (all twenty!) and begin­ning ori­en­ta­tion week. I could describe the lat­ter more in detail, but most of it was exhaust­ing and exhaus­tive pro­gram­ming. Let’s just say I’m excited for classes to start. But more on that later.

January 21, 2012 2 comments Read More