Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change

I woke the next morning excited about our plans to tour the country, only to learn that Pamela had been given an urgent assignment. She mentioned that Ahmed El Houmaidi, a driver at the embassy, wanted to visit his aunt in Marrakech and she suggested that I go with him; we set off by bus the next day. Ahmed’s aunt lived on the outskirts of town in a cinder-block house built around a courtyard with a pomegranate tree. She treated a foreigner’s arrival as a great occasion and vacated her room to accommodate me.

Every evening that week, the men of the household would walk to the Djemaa el-Fna, the big square in Marrakech, which is a tourist clot by day and the hub of local social life by night. Some of Ahmed’s cousins worked there, so we would all hang out with the magicians, storytellers, and dancers as twilight deepened. When we returned to the house, a tagine dinner would be awaiting us. The women, always veiled, would have spent all day cleaning and cooking. Now, they would pour water over the men’s hands, then withdraw, returning after we were finished to eat what remained. The house had no running water and no electricity. Ahmed’s aunt’s one prized possession was a battery-operated radio. Our last day there, she told Ahmed that she wanted to know the words to her favorite song, and since Ahmed’s English was unequal to discerning the lyrics, he asked me. “Your aunt may have a tough time understanding this song,” I replied. “It’s called ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun.’ ”

Two years later, because my brother was studying evolutionary biology in college, our family planned a trip to the Galápagos Islands. Included with our boat tickets was a tour of Ecuador. My parents were not interested—and neither were any of the other people joining the cruise. So my brother and I had a guide to ourselves. After touring Quito, we proceeded to Cuenca to explore the Inca ruins at Ingapirca. Our guide warned us of unrest in the area but said he’d be game if we wanted to go. The road was almost empty and we had the ruins to ourselves, interrupted only by the occasional llama. On the way back, we had to stop abruptly because a large boulder was in the middle of the steep road. Seconds later, a bunch of agitated people sprang out from behind a shrub and rushed the car. One slit the tires; one smashed the windshield; one brandished a gun. The guide suggested we get out, pronto. We were locked inside a shack with our guide while the driver negotiated with the revolutionaries, who had declared their independence because they didn’t want to pay taxes. We explained via the driver that, coincidentally, we didn’t much like paying taxes, either. The driver apparently told them that the US military could bomb their village and poison their crops, and after about two hours we were released. We shuffled down the mountain until we were able to hitchhike back to Cuenca. I was already a different person from who I had been in Morocco, much less unnerved by a much more alarming incident.

Living in another country is entirely different from traveling through it. I went to graduate school in England and found that even England was a place of unnervingly foreign habits—my fantasies of a spiritual homecoming notwithstanding. Adopting the accent and learning a smattering of different vocabulary was not cultural fluency. I had to master new rules of intimacy and conversation, of dress and comportment, of humor and reverence.

I had been assigned to a college-owned house I was to share with other Americans and a few Australians. The tutor for rooms explained that I would “certainly feel more comfortable” with my “own kind.” But I hadn’t crossed the ocean to cohabit with my countrymen. My pleas to move were politely but firmly denied; when I persisted, the denial became less polite and more firm. Two weeks into term, I developed a nasty cold and went to see the college nurse, Sister George, who volunteered that the newly laid synthetic carpeting in my house was full of toxins. “Perhaps you have developed an allergy to your room?” she suggested. Seizing the opportunity, I asked her to mention that implausible likelihood to the tutor for rooms. He called me into his office the next day and said, with an exasperated sigh, “All right, Mr. Solomon. You’ve won. I’ve found you a room in college.”