On a trip with Mehdi to Asilah, a small town known for its arts and culture festival which occurs during the summer each year.

Nearly every afternoon I stumble out of the stifling Moroccan heat into the cool lobby of Residence Tarik, take the elevator up five floors, and ring the doorbell of apartment number 38. And nearly every afternoon I am greeted by the smiling face of my surrogate mother, Fatima*, and exclamations of “I missed you!” and “Where were you?” before being ushered inside for a cozy chat over a sumptuous lunch.

Though I’ve been in Morocco for only a year, this ritual of three-hour lunches with Fatima and her family now seems like something I’ve been doing my whole life.

Coming here was one of the biggest decisions I’ve ever made. Though I’d traveled a bit by myself, and had the support of my parents, choosing to move 3,000 miles from my beloved New England home—where I’d spent most of my life—was not easy. I wasn’t so much afraid of what I’d find upon arriving, but of what I could be giving up by not staying in Vermont. Nevertheless, I decided to pursue my ultimate adventure.

What I’d been most anxious about was making friends. I’d spent a few months studying Arabic in Morocco earlier and had no real trouble meeting people, but that was at a progressive, English-language university in the mountain village of Ifrane, where the students spend their weekends much like American college kids. Meknes—where I’d be teaching English at the American Language Center—was a totally different cultural environment. Located in the heart of the Middle Atlas Mountains with a population of 650,000, it’s a city full of tradition and paternalism. And unlike its big sisters Rabat and Casablanca, there isn’t much of a foreign community.

Fatima’s main salon where the family gathers for food and conversation as well as television watching and larger  events.

An invitation home

In the beginning, though, making friends was easy. I’d meet someone while exploring the city and quickly receive an invitation to coffee or Friday couscous. It all seemed simple enough, but after a while I noticed that many of these “friends” were more interested in either showing off their newfound American acquaintance or trying to turn me into a Moroccan, rather than enjoying me for who I was.

By the time the holy month of Ramadan rolled around, I was trying to decide between the many invitations I’d received from my female students with trepidition. Ramadan, the month of sawm (or fasting), is one of the five critical pillars of Islam and carries with it important traditions in Morocco. Each day at the sound of the muezzin, families gather to pray, and then break the fast that they’ve been observing all day. Piles of dates, glasses of fresh milk, harira soup and plenty of other goodies are laid out, with the choicest picks placed in front of guests. As the new young American teacher, all my students wanted the distinction of my visiting their homes for lftour, the “break-fast.”

I was still weighing my options when Mehdi, one of my male students, invited me to his family’s home for this special event. He was the first boy to do so. Intrigued, I said yes. And that was how I first met Fatima.

Posing for a photograph with Mehdi on a trip to the coast of Tangier, a major port of Morocco and the country’s closest link to Europe.

Breaking the fast

On the Sunday of my rendezvous with Mehdi, I was nervous.

In a country where the unemployment rate lingers at around 20 percent, many young Moroccan men have a habit of “chasing after passports,” so to speak. And though Mehdi wasn’t one of my best students, he was a charming one. He would often make off-color jokes during class using vocabulary my other students didn’t yet know––generally words I would never dream of teaching them—providing me with a bit of inside laughter during a difficult first semester dealing with teenagers more interested in flirting than learning English.

Searching through my closet for nearly thirty minutes, I finally decided on jeans and a pink sweater. After all, I wanted to be myself, and dressing up wasn’t going to win me any true friendships. I tied my hair back and wrapped a pink scarf over the front of my hair like a headband. At four o’clock in the afternoon, I headed out the door to meet Mehdi near the school.

When I found him leaning against an old Volkswagen, dressed head to toe in Adidas sportswear, I breathed a small sigh of relief that I’d chosen casual clothes. He greeted me with a kiss on each cheek, the traditional Moroccan greeting usually reserved for same-sex friends, but adopted by the younger, more Westernized generation as a greeting for all friends, regardless of gender. I let out another breath.

Mehdi and I spent the next couple of hours driving through parts of historic Meknes: the giant faux lake built by the tyrannical eighteenth century king Moulay Ismail, the dungeon where that same king kept his prisoners. Time passed quickly without any lingering awkwardness on my part, and soon I was being led to the door of his family’s fifth-floor apartment building in the French-built ville nouvelle of Meknes.

Upon entering, I drew in a quick breath. Most Moroccan homes I’d seen were decorated with plastic flowers, imported Chinese fabrics, and little glass trinkets and baubles. This one was quite different (which would later become a metaphor for the family itself). The rugs were luxurious, the lighting sublime. One section of the salon was furnished traditionally with oak banquettes and plush silk-covered cushions; the other section was a modern adaptation of a traditional Moroccan salon, with saffron-colored couches and a low round table. It had an airy yet cozy feel to it, as though it would be the perfect place to relax with a book. I was led into a smaller living room, more simply furnished, where Mehdi’s father was watching television. I was introduced and told to sit while we waited for the call to prayer that would signal the end of the day’s fast.

At the call, Mehdi, his brother and father excused themselves to go pray in the large salon while I waited alone. When the prayer ended after a few minutes, Mehdi returned and showed me to the kitchen where he introduced me to his mother, Fatima.

Fatima dressed me for a party in one of her finest caftans. Moroccan caftans are worn by women at weddings and other special ceremonies.

“You must eat!”

She was young-looking and plump, with rosy cheeks that gave her a sort of jolliness and betrayed her age (43). Her long hair was tied back and she wore an apron over her casual jeans and collared shirt. After kissing me warmly on both cheeks and uttering the requisite marhaba (welcome), she shuffled me to my seat, where she proceeded to pile my plate high with tiny pizzas, boiled eggs, traditional sweets, dates, and fruit.

I don’t know if it was the presence of Fatima or Mehdi, or the fact that this was the only Moroccan family I’d met that ate in their kitchen at a regular table and on chairs (as opposed to a salon of banquettes and a low, round table against which I’d always bump my knees), but I suddenly felt strangely at home, even as Fatima shouted “Eat! Eat!” and piled endless amounts of food onto my plate. I learned that she spoke English, but hadn’t practiced much since finishing her baccalaureate studies ten years earlier. She worked outside of the home as a French teacher in one of the poorest areas of Meknes, where I later learned she had spent the early years of her marriage.

After Ramadan ended and winter came around, I began spending more time with Fatima, and therefore more time at her home. At first, I found myself being invited to Friday couscous. Then, Tuesday paella. Soon, it was every day, whatever was being served, and I’d better have an excuse if I couldn’t make it. If I didn’t come, the next time I visited I’d be bombarded with questions from Mehdi’s father and brother, as well as Fatima, of course.

It wasn’t very long at all before lunch was just an excuse for having conversations with Fatima. I would come over before the meal, before her sons had returned home from school and her husband from work, and we would seat ourselves in the small living room, sometimes in front of the television, sometimes not. At first, our conversations centered around innocuous subjects—celebrities, music, Morocco, Arabic language—but it wasn’t long before we were discussing marriage, her children, and the subject I dreaded most: religion.

A Moroccan woman in hijab (traditional head covering worn by many Muslim women worldwide) and djellaba, a hooded Moroccan garment worn by both men and women, takes an afternoon stroll past Bab Mansour.

Home at last

During my time in Meknes, I have learned that many Moroccans—the older ones in particular—are fond of trying to make non-Muslim friends feel guilty about not converting to Islam. Even though Morocco is 99 percent Muslim, the government is fairly secular and there are bars aplenty, but most Moroccans still feel strongly about their religion and its traditions.

The parents of some of my students, my neighbors, even my co-workers, have lectured me on different aspects of Islam. I’m often asked why I don’t pray and how I can believe in God but not ascribe to one faith. I’ve even been told outright that I should just convert. I find it frustrating to be treated so patronizingly. I have read the Quran and have made a conscious decision about Islam rather than avoid it as I did Christianity in my youth.
Raised by two hippie parents who chose to reject their families’ Protestant faith, I spent most of my years growing up blissfully unaware of religion. Though I later found faith in God, I am secure in that faith alone rather than in any organized religion, and feel no need to join a formal practice.

I hated to admit it, but the idea that Fatima might try to convert me was often at the forefront of my mind during our initial months of getting to know each other. She was indeed devout, observing the five-times-a-day call to prayer and wearing the hijab. Although its necessity is a source of debate, the hijab is the headscarf worn by Muslimahs the world over in order to fulfill Islamic dress code, which states that only a woman’s hands and face should be visible. Fatima’s hijab—worn only outside the home and around male strangers—was stylishly tied under her chin and secured with a pin. During those first few months, I observed her wearing a variety of multicolored scarves, from leopard prints to orange silk.

One afternoon I was excitedly telling Fatima about an American Muslimah I’d met at a hip hop show the week before. I described how she wore her dress loose and comfortable, and her hijab loosely wrapped halfway back on her head, but fully covering her chest. I would often watch young Moroccan women, many of them walking around in tight jeans and tops, their faces covered in makeup, but hair and neck wrapped in a tight hijab, and shake my head at their hypocrisy.

As I explained to Fatima how the American wore her hijab, she told me that in her interpretation of the Quran, it is more important for the hijab to cover the chest (or “bosom”, as it is often translated from Arabic) and not so much the entire head. I was surprised to hear this, given the way it’s most frequently worn in Morocco, but she confessed that the manner in which the scarves are worn here is more cultural than religious. She informed me that despite the pressure many women place on each other to begin wearing the hijab at a young age, she didn’t start wearing one until recently. In other words, it had been an entirely personal decision. This, along with her opinion on how it should be worn, revealed her open-mindedness to me. And hearing those words from a Moroccan helped validate my own thoughts on the subject.

Another day, the television was tuned to Histoire, France’s answer to the History Channel. Fatima and I were watching a program on Israel. While I was trying to comprehend exactly what was being said—my French being almost nonexistent—Fatima began to talk about Israel and Palestine, a topic considered taboo in many circles and potentially controversial when discussed between a pious Muslim and a detached American agnostic.

But as she spoke, I soon began to realize once again that we had more in common than I had previously thought. Fatima told me that she disagreed with both sides of the dispute, and while I vigorously nodded my head, she added, “It is a land for everyone.”
It was an argument that was idealistic, utopian, and something I wholly believed in, but I had never found anyone—even during my liberal New York college days—who concurred with me in that belief.

These moments of harmony became more and more frequent. I would relate some piece of trivia or another, and we would share a laugh, or sometimes even a tear or two. In my life outside Fatima’s home, I still felt like an outsider—stared at on the street and shown off to people as “my friend the American.” But in Fatima’s house, I was now an insider. She began to teach me how to cook, asked me to help her with household tasks, and took me shopping. I was no longer a guest in the house, but a member of the family—complete with the familial duties of picking up after myself and coming home every day for lunch. Fatima even asked me to call her “mamati,” a word of affection which literally means “my mother” in Moroccan Arabic.

I also began to realize that my belief in God and my respect for her religion were enough for Fatima. She didn’t want to change me, to make me Moroccan or Muslim. She was satisfied with me being myself.

I still can’t say that I’m totally at home in Morocco. I still can’t get used to the way people drive. I find hypocrisy nearly everywhere; the fact that people sit around in cafés for hours complaining that the government isn’t doing anything to help blows my mind. But when I walk the two blocks every afternoon to Fatima’s house, take the elevator to the fifth floor and knock on her apartment door, I know that I am entering a sanctuary where I won’t be judged for what I do, say, think, or feel. And so it is that in a country where I am a distinct minority—ethnically, religiously, linguistically—I have found a family (and most importantly, a friend) that accepts me for exactly who I am.

*All names in this story have been changed at the request of those involved.

Jillian York