Distance

Last month, I visited a high school in Kenitra to talk to the students about the US and my experiences in Morocco. Before my talk, I listened in on the first part of their class. The students were in tenth grade, between 14 and 15 years old. I sat in a desk like everyone else. The girl beside me pushed her textbook towards me to share. 

The lesson was on technology, and the class was discussing its advantages and disadvantages. The teacher spoke in a crisp English that the students imitated. She inserted bits of other languages to make sure everyone was following along, like in a sermon - Fhmti? D’accord? Am I lying to you? The class responded in unison – Eh, oui, no. 

Advantages first. And what are they? It makes far people close, one student said. Right, said the teacher, it shortens distance. And the disadvantages? It makes close people far, they determined. It shortens distance, but it also sets a distance. A couple in the same bed can be on their phones and, therefore, on different continents, in different worlds. 

She talked about how technology has played a hand in Morocco transitioning from a collectivist society to an individualist one. Instead of the singular TV room, each family member has their own personal screen.

The teacher put the book down.

“Why don’t your parents understand you?”

The class paused.

“Because they didn’t grow up with this. These are new issues. New problems. They didn’t have to deal with them at your age.”

It was interesting to hear an adult talk like that. When I was in high school I remember a lot of adults saying things like, “We were your age once too,” and “IIIII remember what it was like.” Instead here was an adult acknowledging that large factors have changed the child’s experience of youth from that of their parents’.

Young and old. Here and there. The world compresses and expands at once.

I wake up to texts from my family. I miss calls from my mom, who recently figured out international calling. I think how I miss my high school friend Kelsey, pick up my phone to send her an email, and have a response from her by the time I’ve put it back down.

We are in many places at once.

I’ve been in Morocco this year, but I’ve never been more aware of America in my life. I follow the news daily. I have conversations with strangers about the upcoming presidential election. In November I attended four Thanksgiving dinners. The introductory question isn’t, What do you do? but Where are you from?

I was talking to my friend Asmaa at the university the other day, a graduate student, who was telling me about her recent studies. There are two ways culture affects our lives, she said: culture as geography and culture as the map we carry within us.

She said that when I go back to the US, my own inner map of culture will have been changed by Morocco.

I’m writing from my room in Rabat, but I can so clearly picture my room in Virginia, the childhood trinkets, the window overlooking the stream, the world map on my wall whose Atlantic Ocean I traced with my finger to imagine what it would be like to cross it.

I’ll be home within the next two weeks, and what’s close to me now will once again be far, just as the far will be close. My inner map will have changed. And I imagine I’ll trace that same 6-inch paper, Atlantic Ocean on my bedroom wall – back and forth, back and forth – to make sense of where I’ve been, what I’ve seen, and what it could all possibly mean.