30/5/18: Sacrifice Music

Another long day of class. Four hours of Arabic a day is certainly helpful (I can tell I’m getting better already), but it’s exhausting. Luckily, in part because there’s nothing else to do, Ramadan has a rich culture of long daytime naps. Alhamdulillah.

Iftar included some sort of green, spiny vegetable that tasted like bitter artichokes. I’ve never seen one in the U.S., and my host mom didn’t know the English name, so it will remain forever a mystery. It also included a very tasty lamb dish. I haven’t eaten mammals in eight years though (I’m resuming temporary so as not to be a hassle to the host family), so we’ll see how my stomach holds up…

Also during iftar, my cinnamon-rice-chimichanga started to slide towards the tajiin sauce while I wasn’t paying attention, and my host mom reached across the table to stop my foods from touching for me, so I think I may have found my real mother.

Tonight, the ALIF Riad had a group of Sufi musicians from Granada playing traditional music (Sufism is kind of like hippy Islam). It was a very interesting blend of middle eastern and Spanish styles, and the guitarist in particular was very talented. The musicians were supposed to start at 9:30, so I arrived at 9:20, giving myself a little extra time to update my blog on the riad wifi. When I arrived, however, I was the only person in the whole building. There were about a hundred empty chairs around me, and I started to worry that the musicians would be offended that no one came to see them. Then, at 9:40, ten minutes after the event was supposed to start, people began to arrive. By 9:50, it was standing room only. The musicians began at 10. It seems I have a lot to learn about time in Morocco.

As a sat down to write, my host mom began telling me about the world religious music festival that takes place in Fez every summer. It’s the largest festival of religious music in the world and it will be happening while I am here. She called it “Sacrifice Music”. I’m really hoping she meant “Sacred”. Or maybe the death metal scene in Fes is bigger than I thought.