Berkley Center

It began as a weekend trip to Marrakech—it was the first few days that we had free, and we wanted to go exploring. I was on the train with four other girls; we would meet six of our friends, who had taken an earlier train, at the hotel. There was not much room to sit, but we eventually managed to find a space in a compartment with a woman and her fifteen–year–old daughter. We inevitably began to chat, and one of my more friendly companions exchanged contact information with the woman, who lives in Salé—only ten minutes from our flat in Rabat. “Maybe one day we can have lunch together, or something.”

I expected never to hear from the woman again—or, at the very least, for there to be a bit of follow up before the lunch plans fell through. What actually happened was my first lesson in Moroccan hospitality. The woman somehow managed to find us the next day in the crowded Marrakech medina (marketplace), and insisted on showing us where to eat lunch. “You are American, and you do not know these things.” Fair enough. When she heard that my friend’s mom would be coming to visit Morocco a few months later, she insisted that the two of them stay with her, and told my friend to cancel the hotel reservation she had already made. At one point she slipped her arm through mine, and whispered, “I am your Moroccan mother now.” She proceeded to follow us as we shopped, chiding us for not bargaining well and complaining that we were taking too long looking around. We finally managed to escape, but she called the friend to whom she had given her contact information no less than fourteen times over the course of that week. “You must come to lunch. You must come to my home. What do you mean, you need to go to class?”

When I told a family friend that I was spending the semester in Morocco, she told me to expect French food and Arab hospitality. It’s definitely true that the level of generosity is staggeringly high in this country—at one point, when a friend and I ducked into a shop to avoid some people who seemed to be following us through the crowded medina, the shopkeeper insisted that we stay with him long enough for a cup of tea. Or, as my host mother stated at dinner one night, “If you see someone who is hungry, you feed them. If you see someone who needs to go somewhere, you drive them—or, at the very least, you give them enough money to reach their destination.” Although this is the ethical code with which I, too, was raised, Moroccans seem to take it to the extreme. One woman explained to us that were someone to come visit her in her one bedroom apartment, she would not think twice about giving letting him or her sleep in her bed, while she slept on a mat on the floor. The level of hospitality that I have encountered cannot be overstated.

Sometimes, though, the hospitality borders on aggressive, as with the woman in Marrakech. So far, my time in Morocco has been a tricky balance between politeness and independence. Because Morocco has such a collective culture, it’s extremely uncommon for a 20 year old woman to travel, shop, or even walk around alone. Most of the people who offer me tea or companionship do so out of kindness, but my requests for solitude are definitely not normal, and therefore are often interpreted as impolite. Where lies the ideal point between culturally appropriate appreciation of hospitality and my own introverted desire to spend some time alone, on my own terms? Hopefully I’ll begin to find the answer during the second half of my semester here.