Neighbors

When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.

-                                                                                                                                                                 -       Ernest Hemingway

The other day my host sister and I were talking about our favorite songs. Her favorite: "What a Wonderful World." Her favorite part: "I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do." She joked that in Morocco, that's why they ask how you are so many times over the course of a conversation; they’re really saying I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you.

In greeting someone, you’ll get one kiss on one cheek and one on the other. After you see someone you've met before, you get one on one cheek and two on the other. As someone explained to me the other day, that second cheek on the second side is to say: Where have you been? Where did you go? You’ve been missing from me.

Now that I ride the train to and from Kenitra every day, I do a lot of people watching. I watch this daily exchange: the numerous questions, the kisses, the outburst of joy on people’s faces. I see this and I’m moved by it.

It’s no secret that the region is known for, prides itself on hospitality. But what sticks with me aren’t the grand gestures; it's the little, repeated acts that make up day-to-day life.

When I walk past my laundromat, Ahmed and Mohammed call out my name from the street. They ask me how my parents are. They ask me how work is going. They pour me coffee and show me a video of an American woman singing in Amazigh. I never leave within 30 minutes.

Maleka runs the hanut across the street from me. She teaches me Darija; I teach her English. We write lists of words we hear for the other to translate. We scribble drawings for each other on the edges of envelopes and make gestures to convey "garlic" or "cheating."

When I got back from Barcelona, Said ran across the street. Said is the security guard for the street that I live on. We had never talked apart from greeting each other each morning. “Is everything okay?" he asked. "I haven’t seen you in a while. I was worried!"

When my parents were visiting, I walked my mom through the neighborhood one evening and introduced her to everyone I knew, everyone I come across in my day to day life.

“I’ve never seen you so outgoing,” she said.

It's true that something in me has changed, but I think it's more than a personality trait. Living here has changed my idea of community.

Because language is culture (and culture is everything), learning another language gives you a different way to move through the world. Learning and using Darija in my day to day life has given me different grounds for relating to people. The words "loving concern" are an idea I spend my days circling. What do all these questions do"? What do answering them do? What does asking them do? 

I used to think of a community in terms of sharing something specific in common: an artist community, farming community, expat community. It was a rather foreign concept to me for a community of people to be bound to each other simply because they lived near one another, to look out for each other like brothers and sisters.

In the Williamsburg neighborhood I lived in as a child, I can remember one time that neighbors came out of their houses to interact. A tree had fallen during an ice storm, blocking the road leading out of the cult-de-sac so that no one could get to work. Other than that, people kept to themselves. To each his own.

In the here and now, I would describe my life as full. It's the kind of life I hoped for myself as a child, trying to fall asleep at night on that quiet cul-de-sac, wondering if anything would ever happen. The difference between fullness and busyness, I think, has to do with people. The makers and breakers of happiness, as Hemingway would say. The elevators of the mundane. The enrichers of routine.

Kif dayera? Labas? Bikher? Culshi mezyan? If the greetings and questions never went deeper than the surface, it could become tedious. But, what I’ve witnessed is that this gesture of care and emotion, over time, gives ways to genuine care and emotion. I feel invested in my neighbors lives; I feel as though they’re invested in mine. I know their children and brothers and sisters and husbands and wives. I genuinely care how they’re doing. The questions and cheek kisses have led to sharing our lives with each other.

When I arrive in the doorway of my old host family’s house, I’m greeted with a kiss on one side and about ten or fifteen on the other. This is repeated five to seven times over for each member of the family until I’m suspended in space and time. Of all the places to be in the world, it's one of my favorites.

What you get to keep

My airbnb in Barcelona was an apartment seven floors up in the middle of the Gothic Quarter. It was spacious, brimming with art, lined with books. The couple who lived there was equally as lovely. Luis, perhaps in his eighties, had a sunny smile and slicked back white hair. Pilar had bright blue eyes and never sat still for long. They glowed with grace and graciousness, and I longed to communicate with them.

I tried to introduce myself the first night, to thank the two for their hospitality. I reached for my Spanish, but in its place was Darija. I tried the basic phrases I knew from past Spanish classes, from my childhood, from general knowledge, but instead of Como esta and encantado, out came Labas and Mucharfin. I rummaged within myself. But no, eight months of language study and exhaustion, left me at a total blushing loss. Pilar and I could speak French with each other, but Luis and I were left with gestures and makeshift sign language. The MOST rudimentary Spanish on my part, a few words of English on his.

Luis knocked on my door the first night, asked how I was, asked what my name was, and checked to make sure I had the key for the front door. I assured him his son had given me the key. All was well. A few minutes passed and there was another knock on the door. Again, what was my name? Was I doing alright? Did I have the key? Lindsey, great, yes I had everything I needed, thank you! This time ten minutes passed before there was another knock and we confirmed the information of the last two conversations.

I woke up the next morning to the most beautiful piano music I’d ever heard. I assumed it to be coming from another guest or perhaps Pilar, who looked like an artist. Elegant and spry, it was easy to envision her at a music stand or easel. By the time I dressed and left my room, the foyer was empty and the piano had its cover on. Maybe it had been a record, I thought.

The next day I walked out of my room and there was Luis, focusing all his energy on putting one foot in front of the other. His walker was behind him. He smiled, seemed a little embarrassed, shuffled back a few steps.

“Paso y paso,” he said.

The next morning I woke again to the music and this time I followed the sound. I walked down the long hallway to find Luis hunched over the keyboard. His arms reached out to each side, his hands moved up and down, falling on the keys like a marionette’s. I sat down, transfixed; I had tears on my cheeks that I wouldn’t realize until later. It sounded like there was a thunderstorm in him. It felt like I’d never heard music before.

It had none of the uprightness of sheet music, nothing of the rigid form of a known concerto. It poured out of him and turned, changed streams, wound around stony bends. It followed the strength of its own flow, evolving and growing, breathing life and strength. He came to a conclusion and turned around, looking at me as though I’d walked in on him washing the dishes.

“Su nombre?” he asked. I told him.

He nodded and pointed to the piano, whose sound just a moment before had been tearing out my insides. “This song. Its name now… Lindy.”

I spent the rest of the mornings I was there on the couch by the piano, listening to his daily compositions.

“Since I was very small,” he said one morning in between songs, “music and I are friends.”

I made a sound that was part laugh-part sob. I thought to myself, you bought a plane ticket to sit on this couch, listening to this man to whom you can’t speak three words.

I’d spent the past year living in a city built around the business of selling songs. If I rub these two pennies together like this, maybe it’ll be a hit? But I couldn't believe that the aim of music is a business or that the height of expression is a competitive TV show. It has worth outside of money and acclaim. It's got to be the closest we can come to the soul.

And as for the music I made, had been making for years in fact... At best, I felt self-conscious about it. At worst, I worried it was a waste of my time, ceaselessly coming up with tunes in my bedroom, toiling over lyrics I’d sing for no one.

But wasn't this proof of its worth? That you can get to an age where nothing can be taken for granted. You can struggle to walk; you can forget your own name. You can lose your muscle, your memory; you don’t get to keep it all. But my friend Luis had music in him as a little boy and he had music in him now. He got to keep this.

Back in Rabat now, there are days when I can get by in Arabic. There are moments where I converse freely in French. Sometimes I’ll teach an English lesson that feels clear and exciting. But many days, the words I reach for aren’t there. Sometimes it feels like all my efforts have been for nothing. For having built a life out of words, there are some days when they fail me miserably. But every night, I come back home to my little apartment. I pick up my guitar and I play.

And every morning, seven floors up in the middle of the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona, there’s a man sitting at a piano, speaking a language I can understand.