Ramadan in Rabat

Arriving in the midst of a quiet, hot summer afternoon at Casablanca Airport, I wondered around with a sign I had fashioned in Paris reading MOHAMMED AMYN. In my first hours on the great continent of Africa I could not find my local contact, a mobile connection, nor a scrap of toilet paper.

By 18:00 I found all three and landed happily in the company of Mohammed, his wife Siham, and their friends Fatiha, Asmaa and her 5-year old son Aymam. Soothed by the sweetest, mintiest pot of tea (quintessential Morocco I have come to learn) and more plates of breads (is this heaven or what?!), chick peas, lentil soup, fromage and various sesame and honey desserts than I could even taste in one sitting, we broke the Ramadan fast together in their home.

Mohammed speaks decent English so he translated for all of us. That is, until he went to the mosque for prayer, at which point we women did our best through a combination of the five languages we spoke between us. For example, when asking to use their shower I said in a barbaric combination of French, Spanish and Arabic -

S'il vous plaît, necesito maa' (water) por mi cuerpo, shokuran (thank you) - all as I gestured a spigget of water falling above my head onto my body.

Later, during our Arabic and English lessons, little Ayman got in the spirit of thinigs and began practicing his handwriting in a Spiderman composition book (see photo). An eager student with just 6 days into school, this was the only time he seemed interested in something beside turning cartwheels and falling out of handstands around us!

After about 24 hours of travel since I said goodbye to Hilda at SFO, I fought sleep in order to drive into town to attend an impromptu gathering in the parking lot of the central market (outside what can only be described as a K-Mart crossed with a gourmet food store...Barbie backpacks hung near cookbooks in French, 12-inch wide open wooden bowls overflowing with spices the color of the desert rested near jugs of Tide detergent and fresh fish fillets on ice).

Young women in flowing cloaks and older men with children on their laps sat under a large white tent (think revival meeting in the old south) while teenage boys and twenty-somethings in billabongs and football/soccer jerseys competed in out-tricking each other(think Péle meets the globetrotters) under the bright lights of the parking lot. Music of Algeria and the Moroccan Berbers played behind the cheers of the one-hundred or so gathered.

Back in Temera, the neighborhood outside of Rabat where my gracious host live, we climbed into our pajamas (a universally understood word, it seems) and before going to sleep, I asked the former Olympian where he recommended I run in the morning, hoping he wouldn't offer to run with me at my slow pace. As he generously drove me to the beach and the forest, to show me a route he likes to run, he apologized that he would not be running during my visit - Ramadan is his only vacation from training because of the fast from food and water. Relief for my pride! He said all Muslim runners finish their season for these holy days and I would have the streets, beach and trail to myself in the morning.

Indeed, the city slept off their late night (last meal served at 2AM and prayers at 4) and the only people I saw (not counting the raggedy pups wandering around at the beach) as the sun rose were the national guardsmen stationed outside the walls of the royal palace.

Next dispatch most likely from Marrakech. Ciao

View from the apartment in Temera near Rabat...Atlantic in the distance