Note: I just took part in animal sacrifice, but had been on the road for a while so I have some content locked up in the vaults. Details of slaughtering a helpless ram to follow soon. Happy Aid!
We were unsure. We were uneasy. We both had little spurts of Moroccan diarrhea throughout the day. These are the feelings my friend Luke and I shared before we had a scheduled dinner with a Moroccan artist named Mohammed Jraidi. My friend Luke was doing a project (he has since switched his topic) about Moroccan visual artists who use calligraphy in their paintings. We were to meet at 6 PM at his home in the Ville Nouvelle of Essaouira, a small coastal town in the south of Morocco. Essaouira is a haven for the arts; originally it was a trading town constructed for Jews. It is beautiful and clean and is a tourist hot spot for those looking to surf or to enjoy the pleasant coastal breezes and abundant restaurants.
Luke and I had come to love the cuisine options available in Essaouira. The choices were such a foreign option at this stage in our lives; we had been eating tajine each and every meal whilst at our home-stays. So when we hit Essaouira it was pseudo-Mexican one day, French-Moroccan fusion another night, pasta with argan oil the next. Anything that didn’t remind us of tajine was fair game. But now, to be invited to the home of a Moroccan artist, we knew exactly what we would be eating. In order for tajine to impress me at this point it has to be really delicious. And for me, since I speak no French and only a shwiya Darija, communication was going to exist solely through my friend. My stomach started cringing a bit more.
We walked out of the petit taxi and met a man of about forty-eight sporting a dusty Reebok hat, a suede brown jacket and a crutch to support his limp. His face beamed as he shook our hands, and we began to follow him to his self-described modest apartment. “It’s what’s on the inside that counts,” he uttered in French. We entered his home and were immediately struck by the studio space; pieces of avant garde art and beautiful paintings stacked to the ceiling. They lined the floor, were on shelves – works hidden behind other works. Collages, paintings, sculptures, Moroccan tiles. Almost all of them included creative usage of Arabic calligraphy, either sputtered on the canvas or as the main focus. It was like peering into the mind of the artist first hand, prying into his brain and seeing the history of a given thought process through a visual medium. I had no familiarity with sidi Jraidi’s work beforehand, and I was so glad I didn’t – the lovely surprise made my night.
We sat down at little round table in the studio to the classic Moroccan pre-dinner snack: mint tea, sponge cake, and assorted cookies (basically, everything your mother told you not to eat before dinner when you were a child). The conversation ensued without me in a mixture of French and Arabic. It was an exercise in listening comprehension. I tried to pick apart phrases and nodded my head like I wasn’t in my own world filled with paintings. I let my eyes glaze and hone into the art that surrounded me. When Luke translated for me, the man would look at me with cheerful eyes through his glasses, low on his nose bone and say ‘Fhemti?‘ They spoke of politics (he didn’t care for them), the meaning of art, his favorite artists (thinks Dali trumps Picasso without question), and life philosophies in general. He inhaled Marquise’s heavily, and during the entire conversation he painted Luke and I personal tablets with black ink on a piece of wood. He couldn’t pronounce my name, for the “-th” sound doesn’t exist in Moroccan Arabic, so I am always referred to (when I don’t call myself Ziad) as E-ten. It’s a cute novelty that I enjoy thoroughly.
Our food was finally brought out after roughly two hours of conversation. Fried anchovies that were lukewarm, and a mystery tajine that would soon be revealed as sardine kefta, or meatballs with fish instead of meat. It was shockingly delicious, and we scooped up the fish, bread in hand always, with fervor and excitement. We were eating early by Moroccan standards, so our host’s family did not join us. He offered me some Coke, and called me “un-American” for declining it. (I sometimes worry about my sugar intake in Morocco and have nightmares of returning to the states as a diabetic). More conversation ensued. We were merry, pleasantly surprised by this peculiar artist. At this point, the food had become such an afterthought, and I was certain that I would feel my stomach rupture later. I didn’t care; I was in another world – Mohammed Jraidi’s world.
It was such an interesting encounter that I found myself in. His artwork matched his personality – bustling with complexity yet warm and approachable, humble yet filled with dexterity, indebted to culture yet free spirited. I was so close to making an offer for a collage I fell in love with, but my friend deemed it inappropriate. I sadly agreed and made no motion. I would not have wanted to spoil such a great evening with capitalist intentions, anyhow. Luke and I walked out, clutching our new souvenirs and taking part in the merry-go-round of Moroccan farewells upon exiting a home. We were welcome back to his home anytime we were in Essaouira. That last part was the most thrilling, for he was the most genuine man we have met in Morocco thus far.
