This afternoon, I went out with three other people to go down to the aswaq around the Medina, as well as just to get out of the compound. It's kind of amazing how much cabin fever I get on a daily basis here, even though I'm on a fairly large campus with 28 other people with whom I can talk whenever I please. Despite this fact, I have found I have the compulsion to leave here at least once a day for a significant amount of time, most of which ends up being spent in the Medina, as it is my favorite part of Tangier. Anyhow, today, I went out with three people who haven't really been in the Medina much. This, in an odd sort of way, became a kind of pop quiz for me within the city: can I really navigate from the Petit Socco with its wafting marijuana smoke of old men to the tip of the Qasbah facing Gibraltar? Would any of the stores I visit periodically remember me?
Sometimes when learning a new language or studying somewhere far away, there are moments when you realize how far you still need to come, moments in which the progress that you've made is revealed to be as trivial as it actually is. There are moments when you realize learning one word won't really help you go too much farther than you could go before. I am happy to report that tonight was not one of those moments. Tonight was one of the brash and triumphant moments when you feel like you've conquered some unknown foe (perhaps a Phantom Tollbooth-styled demon of ignorance) and passed through some imposing gate into the land of milk and honey. Needless to say, tonight I feel inordinately proud. And while I know that such a feeling will pass, and in time I will realize once more how out-of-place I am here, I am trying to actually indulge my vanity and bask within this feeling. A little confidence one day goes a long way towards pushing through the more challenging ones. Hence the ego tonight.
Getting into the Medina, I realized how comfortable I've actually become in this city. Not only can I now twist through the alleys of the Medina and roughly know where they'll come out, but I actually know what's in each one. I'm no longer navigating by cardinal directions and the location of distant traffic noises; I'm walking past that store selling pastries, and this cage full of yellow parakeets. Most impressively, as we began to chat up two guys in a store, I realized that, despite all I don't know, I can hold a conversation. I can hold a conversation without saying, "I didn't get that." It doesn't even need to be a conversation taken straight from the book. We began talking about Tangier, and why I was here, what I thought of Morocco, whether or not I'd die of the heat, is Arabic hard?, had I seen this film from about 6 years ago where these kids are stuck in this haunted house and can leave the ghosts until they read this book and it's in a bunch of languages and Arabic's the last one but luckily one of them can read it and they all escape, no? well it's a good film, and where are you from by the way?
Which is were I've been going with this whole entry I suppose. Prior to today, I was answering this sort of thing with a "Where do you think I'm from?" trying to catch people off-guard for the Arabic-speaking American. Now I've learned a better word though. I am a مسكة (miska), which, in the bazaar-parlance of encoded sales drops, is how one signals an American customer. Literally, the gum-chewer.
As I said before, sometimes there are days when one extra word doesn't seem to make a difference, but today was not one of those days. Today, I liked not needing to apologetically explain I'm American, but rather jokingly own the stereotype, gesturing to my mouth and saying, I'm a gum-chewer. And for tonight at least, I feel like that one little word was opening some doors.
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