Lets Chat in Arabic

R A B AT,

M O R O C C O S C A P I TA L , had a great imperial history, de-

fended by an impressive fort, but its modern reputation was one of

dull bureaucracy. When I had told Yacine my travel plans, he flicked
his eyebrows up and huffed, Eh, Rabat.
I thought it was fantastic. I had three days in this new city, alone,
before meeting my family in Tangier. It was a relief to have no role
to play for anyone. Overnight, the last bit of enchantment that had
made me Btissam and Yacines daughter wore off, and I woke up a
plain old boarder. I was free, in my traveling clothes, in a city that, after subdued, inward-looking Fes, felt as anonymous and cosmopolitan as Paris. In the lobby of my hotel, businessmen with gold watches
huddled in negotiations, and intellectuals with sculpted hair pored
over the days French paper. I walked to the city tram, just to ride and
admire the scenery.
I had intended to wander around the neighborhood at the end of
the line, but when we arrived it was drizzling, the air was biting cold,
and the streets looked dull and sterile. I ducked back into the warm
tram, to go back the way I had come.
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A minute later, a young woman sat down across from me. She
stared pensively out the window, checked her phone, pulled her sheer
leopard-print scarf tighter at her ears, checked her phone again. It
was a natural extension of her fidgeting when she leaned over and
asked me something in French.
I studiously told her I did not speak French, and she answered,
Oh, good, you speak Arabic. Then she let loose a torrent of Darija.
As soon as I could get a word in, I explained my situation the time
in Egypt, the newness of Darija, the total failure in listening comprehension.
And when she answered me, I understood her perfectly. OK,
no problem, she said. My cousin is from Port Said, so I learned to
speak Ammiya. Now, yalla ndardish.
She used the very phrase that had been the title of my first
Egyptian-colloquial textbook, from my first visit to Cairo all the way
back in 1992: Lets Chat in Arabic.
Yalla ndardish, I said. It was the first time I had used the phrase
in a natural context. Yes, lets chat. The tram doors dinged, and the
train eased into motion.
Where are you from? Europe? she asked.
When I told her I was from New York, her eyes lit up. Oh! America! There are only two places in the world I want to go, Mecca and
America. She clapped her hands together. Forget Europe pfft.
She lived in Rabat, and she had been visiting her brother here on
the edge of Sal. He was recently married and had a new baby, born
not long after the wedding. They did things a little backwards, she
said with a conspiratorial laugh.
Her name was Houria freedom. With her long face and big, dark
eyes, she had looked serious when she sat down, but when she smiled
now, she lit up and looked ready for anything. As the tram zipped
along its route, Houria told me she worked at a fancy restaurant, but
her mother didnt approve because the place served alcohol. My

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mother would prefer that I just sit in the house until I get married,
she said.
But how are you supposed to get married if you dont leave the
house? Just wait around? I mimed looking bored, peering out the
window.
Right wait around. For my destiny! She did a fake swoon. I was
thrilled to get her joke.
As we neared the main train station in Rabat, we swapped phone
numbers. Lets meet tomorrow, she said. My day is empty every
day after three.
Cairo had plenty of men-only spaces, but these social conventions
had never chafed because I rarely wanted to be in their spit-andsawdust coffeehouses. There was always somewhere nicer and
more mixed to go. Morocco, though, was full of elegant old salons
de th and cheerful bargain restaurants where I could easily picture
myself until I saw the wall of men, smoking louchely and facing
the street, as if to defend their territory. On my first day in Rabat, I
felt a sudden surge of rage when I happened to walk past a chickenand-rice restaurant. The men out front all seemed to be glaring. I
glared right back.
Now, the next day, Houria was marching us right toward that same
restaurant, elbowing in among the men and sitting us down at the
sidewalk tables. She waved at the waiter, who smiled in recognition.
Inside, two women were chatting and nibbling chicken lunches. Apparently I had not looked closely enough at the clientele.
I love this place, Houria said, but for a long time I came here
every day after work, and I got so fat!
Picking up where wed left off on the tram, Houria told me that
in high school she had run track, traveling with her team Tunisia,
Libya, all around Morocco. Her grades hadnt been great, so she
didnt apply to college. Now, at age twenty-six, she was feeling stuck.

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She didnt like her job at the restaurant, and she hadnt met any good
men.
She showed me photos of her friends at her restaurant job the
hostesses in their tight-fitting, knee-length dresses, the bathroom attendant in her white smock, and Houria herself in black-and-whitecheck kitchen trousers and a white snap-front top. Morocco was
filled with women in such uniforms, mopping hallways and pushing
carts of cleaning supplies. I had been looking right past them, just
as I had glossed over women in niqabs in the Gulf, not bothering to
imagine them with any other life.
Houria asked if I had any children. I told her no, and I probably
wouldnt.
Oh, but you have to! she said.
Families were different in America, I explained. We lived spread
out across the country, without aunts and uncles and cousins and
grandparents (I used all the words Id learned in class) around to help
raise the kids.
I have the solution, she declared with her brilliant, up-foranything smile. I will come to New York and be the nanny. Now, tell
me what the weather is like there, so I can prepare.
In that moment, in which I understood both Hourias joke and the
personality behind it, I knew I had made a friend.
When we finished eating, Houria proposed we go to her grandmothers house not far, and a nice place to kill time until her evening
work shift. Walking to the corner, we passed two other cafs, and I
noticed a handful of women at each one. At Hourias side, Morocco
looked different.
When we get to the house, she said as we climbed into a cab,
Ill give you a beejama, and we can take a little nap. New cognate
vocabulary, and an afternoon snooze! This was turning into an excellent date.
Grannys place was in a middle-class subdivision, and pajamas
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turned out to be a yellow cotton nightie. Houria handed it to me,

along with plastic sandals, as soon as we arrived, and gestured for
me to change in the side salon. Having finally grasped the importance of loungewear with my host family in Fes, I wasnt going to
resist. I wanted to make a good, properly relaxed impression with
this new family. Still, it was awkward there was Granny and the
housekeeper, and no real wall between the salons, much less a door
to close. Houria strode in and stripped down to her bra and underwear.
If it seemed intimate to change clothes with someone Id just met,
it also seemed a bit intimate to lie down and take a nap in the same
room with her. But Moroccan salon sofas are firm and wide, ideal for
napping, and even the arrival of Hourias two-year-old nephew didnt
keep me from sleep.
When I woke up an hour later, Hourias grandmother, clad in a big
stretchy housedress with a hole in the armpit, had laid out a tray of
sweets and tea. Houria was already dressed in her street clothes. Go
ahead and eat while I pray, she told me as she arranged a prayer rug
in the farthest sitting area.
Over tea, we talked or rather, Houria and her grandmother
talked, and occasionally Houria translated to Ammiya for me. Our
one-on-one lunch conversation had taken a lot out of me, and postnap, I was having a hard time tuning in. I slumped back on the pillows, watching a dubbed Bollywood movie on TV, a swirl of color
and syllables I couldnt piece together.
Oh, Lalla Zora, youre tired. Houria patted my knee affectionately. And its time for me to go to work. Yalla, habibti.
I smiled up at her. One afternoon, and I was not just her friend,
but her habeeba, her darling.

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Sweet Sensation

AT

W H AT P O I N T had I agreed to go home with Houria? I re-

wound the day in my head, trying to find the turn in the conversation. We had met that morning, the day after napping at Grans, and
strolled around Rabat together, stopping to admire the silvery sea
from the ramparts of the casbah. We had nibbled almond cookies in
a caf, sheltered from the rain. Just after that, in a garden crawling
with cats, we had definitely discussed going to her house but with
inconclusive results, I had thought.
Then I had followed her across lanes of traffic, her arm firmly
looped through mine, and into the front seat of one white Mercedes
taxi, then another. And then we were walking down a poorly lit street
in a part of the city that I could only identify as uphill from the cemetery.
At the entrance to her apartment building, in a pool of dark
where the streetlights didnt reach, Houria had fumbled with her
keys in the lock, and I had suddenly seen my situation from outside
and thought, Have I done something very stupid? The door had

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opened, into further pitch-black, and Houria grabbed my hand and

pulled me in. Perhaps.
But I had not been jumped and robbed and knifed in a dark stairwell. Hourias mother, a Berber woman with skin so pale and papery
she resembled a Walker Evans portrait, had greeted me at the apartment door, squeezed me, and kissed me, tak, tik-tik.
Now Houria and I were the picture of Moroccan domesticity,
lounging on the banquettes in the central salon in our beejama (this
time, mine was a floral-print nylon caftan with red-and-gold brocade
trim). It was 9:30 p.m., and I was yawning.
We dont usually go to sleep this early, my new friend said, her
fair brow wrinkling. Maybe well have a little snack, but we wont eat
dinner until my dad gets home, about midnight. Then we can sleep.
Oh. Well. That was funny. I had been thinking her dads arrival
was imminent, and then hed drive me back down the hill, to a part
of Rabat I vaguely recognized, in his taxi. That was, however, only a
story Id made up in my head, Dr. Badawi style, after we had arrived at
Hourias. I had taken a few language clues father, taxi, dinner and
strung them together in a story. I couldnt possibly be spending the
night here, could I? Somewhere else in the city, my hotel room sat
empty.
Hourias mother was in the kitchen, rattling pots and pans, and
her brother, a skinny sixteen-year-old who looked about twelve, was
flopped on the floor, studiously ignoring us. On the Arabic version
of The Voice, a coach clambered up on his red chair and applauded,
crowing theatrically, Allahu akbar!
Come to the roof with me, Zora, Houria said, standing up from
the sofa. She could see I was about to doze off. I have to put my laundry out to dry.
We ventured into the dark stairwell again, Houria lighting the way
with her phone screen. The apartment building was new, still unfinished, and we climbed over broken bags of cement. From the roof,

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I saw we were at the very edge of the city to one side stood more
housing blocks like this one, stretching down a hill toward a dense
glow of light; to the other side was darkness.
Hourias family had moved here not long after she finished high
school. She liked it; they had more room. Although they didnt have
a room for her, precisely. To change into our caftans, we first had to
shoo her brother out of his bedroom, decorated with posters of Tupac and Bob Marley. Houria had folded her street clothes in a neat
stack, then brought them out and set them on a banquette in a side
salon, instructing me to do the same.
When I had asked where she slept, she indicated the same banquette. Her parents hadnt built her a separate bedroom, she explained, because they had been sure shed be married soon. Six years
had passed, and she was lobbying her father to wall off the side salon. It would be easy it would hardly cost anything! She bent to
smooth the folds in her blouse.
Up on the roof, Houria pinned her work uniform to the laundry
line. Lalla Zora, come here, she said. I need to tell you my problem. She pulled me past another pile of construction materials, into
the shadows, and we squatted by the roof s perimeter wall. She was
saying something about a man, a difficult situation, a test. My energy
was flagging my brain could no longer process euphemism, or perhaps Houria had lapsed out of Ammiya and back into Darija.
Im sorry, Houria, but I dont understand. What did you say? I
asked her. Breathe, relax. Just listen.
I. Lost. My. Virginity, she said.
She had met a man at the restaurant where she worked, and they
went on a few dates. He was older, and married, and a bit fat. But he
was very nice to her, and one time he invited her to his apartment.
I felt a hass hilu sweet sensation with him, Houria said meaningfully. But I paid a very high price.
There had been some blood. Afterward, she had gone to two doc-

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tors to confirm what she feared: there was not enough of her hymen left for her to bleed on her wedding night. This had happened
months ago, but she couldnt stop thinking about it. She was saving
up money to have an operation. For now, she tried to pray and keep
busy, to keep her mind off it.
I muttered and stammered. Not, for once, because I couldnt find
the Arabic words, but because I had no counsel, in any language.
Well, at least you enjoyed yourself? I finally said, lamely.
Oh, no, it wasnt that good. Houria pursed her lips. But the
man who was calling me today she had borrowed my phone a few
times that afternoon, to talk to a second man she knew from the
restaurant he has made me feel, you know . . . ishq and muta and
everything.
These were juicy words: ishq was passion; muta, gratification. Far
juicier than the hass hilu, the sweet sensation she had described with
the fat man. She had already told me that the man shed spoken with
today was terrible, untrustworthy, also old and married. I was glad it
was dark she couldnt see me gaping at her revelations.
What about with your boyfriend? I asked. In high school? How
did he make you feel?
She had told me about this boyfriend earlier that day, when she
pointed out a dark-skinned tourist in the caf. See that black one?
I had a boyfriend like that, she had said wistfully. He had been her
first love. They had wanted to get married, but her father had said no;
at sixteen, she was too young. After school had ended, the boyfriend
went to work in Spain, where he met someone else. She still thought
of him all the time, had even dreamed of him the night before: he had
been wearing white and had taken her in his arms.
That was different too, she explained. With him, I felt hubb and
farha love and joy. We did things, but we had certain positions,
you know, so I didnt have to worry about my virginity. But I didnt
feel muta.

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I admired Hourias ability to identify what she felt. At her age, I

had hopelessly muddled love and passion. Arabic and its wealth of
synonyms was helpful here precision was encouraged. And Houria
hadnt even touched on so many other possible words: maram, craving; huyam, love like thirst; hawan, love that feels like falling; shahwa,
a greedy lust.
Sex is like food and water, Houria went on, a little indignant. Its
something everyone needs. She only felt bad that she had taken it too
far and ruined the evidence of her virginity, which created a problem
for her whole family. My parents would kill me if they found out,
she said. I was pretty sure she didnt mean this literally Morocco
wasnt known for its judgmental religious fanatics.
But as if on cue, Houria pointed over the parapet, down to the
street below. Look, its our neighbors, the Shoulds. She had used a
funny adjective for their nickname, multazimeen, which I remembered from Egypt, where it meant dedicated. Its root suggested being
morally obligated, but also a bit holier-than-thou. I peeked over the
edge of the roof. The Shoulds dressed as they should, he in a beard
and a just-above-the-ankles tunic and she in an all-encompassing
black robe. The whole time I had been in Morocco, I hadnt seen
anyone in this fundamentalist uniform.
Houria laughed. They have the apartment there, across from
ours. What they must think of my brother and his Tupac! She didnt
seem concerned with what they thought of her. Why should she? She
prayed five times a day, and she believed that Islam was the best religion, the one true path she had told me this earlier, during our
stroll around Rabat. She dressed modestly, though not as conservatively as her mother would have liked. Unfortunately, the very thing
her mother feared had already happened.
A cool breeze blew in the one small window in the salon. Did the
flies wake you? Houria asked as I sat up, bleary and disoriented.

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She was already dressed, her hair brushed back neatly. The flies
had woken me earlier, but I had pulled my sheet over my head and
dozed another hour.
At first they annoyed me, she said as she checked her outfit in a
mirror outside the bathroom, but now I think of them as my alarm
clock. They come at exactly the time I need to get up. She was like a
fairy-tale princess before the magic happened, so utterly good.
Hourias mother emerged from the kitchen with a tray of breads
and cheese and honey, a bowl of hearty beans, and thermoses of coffee and hot milk. As I ate and drank, I recalled brief flashes of the
night before: a beef tagine with cardoons for dinner, a short exchange
with Hourias tired father, then flopping down to sleep on a banquette
as the family chatted next to me. The feeling had reminded me of
nights as a kid, when colorful friends of my parents would show up
at the house, midroad trip or in between jobs. The grownups would
stay up late telling stories, and I would listen as long as I could stay
awake. Now I was both the overtired toddler and the exotic grownup
guest, and not since Id been a child had I given myself over to other
peoples whims for so long. My brain felt empty now, but the passivity
I felt in Hourias home had helped me to stretch myself in Arabic, to
really make a connection, as I had the previous night.
When Houria and I set out for the bus, I had a better look at her
neighborhood. The city had chewed up the countryside here, but not
yet digested it. Between four-story apartment blocks sat a vacant lot,
studded with neat rows of onion greens. Next to a goat pen stood a
cement mixer. As Houria and I rode into Rabat on the bus, the city
seemed to knit together in front of us, growing more whole. In her
smart khaki pants, tailored blouse with a bow at the neck, and sheer
headscarf, Houria had looked out of place dodging construction debris en route to the bus. Now she blended in with the morning commuters.
At the central station, Houria kissed me goodbye, tak, tik-tik. The

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whole morning I had barely spoken I was exhausted. Youll meet

a good man soon, I managed to say. I know it. It didnt begin to
convey all the good I wished for her.
I hope you are right, Zora. I pray to God you are right.
She walked into the crowd, and I lost sight of her among the other
young women.

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