THE ROAD FROM MOROCCO

by Wafa Faith Hallam

  I tried hard to keep an even tone of voice, not let my fright show. I was not about to panic so easily, especially when my mother and little sister were counting on me.

  I got out of the car.

  “Okay, Mom, get behind the wheel, Nezha and I are going to push you on the dirt shoulder,” I said assertively.

  Within seconds, a car appeared around the curve. I signaled the driver to stop. The old man in a brownish djellaba and white turban came out of his seat, an expression of surprise on his face. He kept shaking his head, speechless, as I told him our predicament.

  “The next gas station is not too far,” he finally said. “I can take you there and you can find someone to drive you back to your car.” He shrugged his shoulders as if to say, this is all I can do for you.

  It was pitch black by then. The thought of leaving Mom and Nezha alone in rough country gave me cold sweats.

  At the station, I quickly filled up an empty plastic container with gasoline, borrowed a small hose, and singled out a truck driver who was paying the young attendant.

  “Excuse me…” I scrutinized his wrinkled, sun-baked face, soft eyes, and graying mustache, and felt I could trust him. “I need a ride back to my car a couple of kilometers down on your way. Can you drop me off? I’ll pay you,” I offered hesitantly.

  He looked at my container and hose and shook his head smiling.

  “Run out of gas, huh?” He chortled revealing his brown teeth. “Sure, let’s go.” He pushed his ski hat back on his head and took the container from my hand. “You don’t have to pay me,” he mumbled starting his engine.

  “Not too fast, please,” I urged him as I anxiously, stared at the indistinct roadside. And then I noticed a small vehicle with blinkers on and flashing headlights coming straight at us.

  “Here they are!… stop, stop right here, please.”

  “Thank God you saw us,” said Mom, sticking her head out the window. “We were afraid you’d miss us.”

  I jumped out of the truck and thanked the driver. He insisted on lending us a hand and set out to transfer the gasoline from the container to the car himself. I was grateful to him. I couldn’t imagine having to draw the fuel with my mouth into the hose without swallowing a mouthful.

  “Just after you left, a car stopped and gave us a bit of gasoline that they pumped out of their tank with a tube,” Nezha explained smiling.

  “Great!” I sighted with relief. “These people are all really nice. The trucker refused cash.” Then it dawned on me. “I guess we missed the last ferry. We’ll have to spend the night in a hotel in Ceuta,” I said.

  No one cared at that point. We had passed our first test of the road.

  After a good dinner and a comfortable night’s sleep, we caught the early morning ferry to Algeciras and headed up north on the way to Marbella, Malaga, and Barcelona. We had just hit the first highway when my mother again suggested that we fill up the tank. Again, I looked at the gauge and reassured her that we would have enough to the next gas station. Thankfully, it was bright sunshine in a cloudless blue sky when, as we approached the next station, the car sputtered and stopped dead in its track yet again, this time just a few yards away from the gas pumps.

  “No way!” I said incredulous.

  “You’re so obstinate, a real mule,” sighed Mom in reprimand.

  “The gauge is not working,” I heard Nezha grumbling in my back. “Didn’t you get that last night?”

  “Okay, okay, okay… my mistake, my bad. Let’s not bicker,” I said lightheartedly. “The station is right here. You two just get out and push me to the pump.”

  “Next time, I’m driving,” said Mom as she stepped out of the car.

  “Why don’t you push?” Nezha retorted.

  “Because I am the boss, that’s why!” I said, laughing hard this time.

  “You both stay in the car, I’m pushing,” said Mom with fierce determination.

  Both my sister and I stared at her and together burst into laughter. We were still laughing when we noticed the gas attendant staring at us in disbelief, then grinning widely as he shouted something in Spanish in our direction, and walked over to help push the car to the pump. Needless to say, we never again run out of gas.

  In France, we spent our first night in Toulouse, where we paid a short visit to Larbi, then a freshman at the Université de Toulouse. He was lonely and homesick. We found him living in a tiny studio in an apartment building occupied mostly by prostitutes. They were all pretty friendly, according to him. We took him out to dinner and to Superman: the Movie. I wanted to leave the next day, but Mom would not set off until she made sure she did Larbi’s laundry and cleaned up his place.

  Eventually, we started off for Paris, driving four hundred and fifty miles in one day, stopping only for food and gas. We arrived in Paris at around 7:00PM and checked in a small hotel in the heart of the 6th arrondissement, between Boulevards St Germain and St Michel. We were dead tired. Still, we were so excited to be in Paris that my sister and I decided to drive around the city by night, even catch a movie on the Champs Elysees if possible. Mom chose to call it a night.

  We were waiting for the light to turn at the corner of rue Dauphine when suddenly a group of loud youngsters surrounded our car and one of them yanked my door wide open.

  “Where are you two babes going? Wanna give us a ride?”

  He snickered stupidly, showing his crooked teeth, and gestured at his friends as if to demonstrate his boldness.

  “What’s the matter with you, dim-wit?” I yelled, startled. “Are you crazy? Let go of the door now!”

  Thinking fast I tried to drive off. But pedestrians were still crossing the street in front of the car, so I just stood there ready to hit back if he touched me. I heard Nezha shouting at them to quit their stupid games. Some gawkers stopped and briefly observed the scene, wondering what the commotion was about. After a few minutes of hesitation, the thugs finally wandered off.

  “Shit, can you believe this?” I looked at my sister, visibly startled. “From now on, we better keep our doors locked,” I said.

  She touched my hand gently and smiled.

  “Yes,” she said, “But let’s not get too upset because of these jerks. Let’s have fun!”

  We had a particularly good time in Paris. Most importantly, Abdu was in good spirit and on his way to recovery. To his delight, we took him, first in a wheelchair then on crutches, for short releases out of the hospital. One of his favorite expeditions was a late evening to the Lido for an unforgettable dinner and show. With his forehead still bearing large fresh scars and bizarre-looking hardware sticking out of his pants, he was quite a sight indeed. The long metal pins and nails protruding out of his thighs and legs held his fractured bones firmly in place. Even though the poor fellow looked like a young Frankenstein, he wouldn’t stop cracking jokes at his own expense, and beaming so happy he was to enjoy some fun time.

  He had survived countless operations, battled frightening infections, persisted through agonizing hours of physical therapy, and endured sleepless nights, confined to a depressing hospital wing far away from home for an entire year. Yet the experience had somehow made him a different person, a compassionate, eminently friendly young man, enormously popular with hospital staff and fellow patients alike. Mom, Nezha, and I returned to Rabat relieved and optimistic about his condition and future prospects.

  14

  The Way to America

  In mid-June 1979, I passed my high school exam, the dreaded Bac, with flying colors at long last. That summer, my sister and I planned to drive to Paris again and bring Abdu back home. Only when I signed him out of the hospital, I decided we had to celebrate both his recovery and my belated graduation. What better way to do that than by visiting Italy again for a couple of weeks? Since our first time in Venice in 1975, I had wished to go back and also explore further south, to Florence, and Rome. My sister and her boyfriend decided to come along as well.

  The following summer and fall I went back
to work selling books in Rabat and Casablanca with the idea of making some money before enrolling to university in France the next year. Only as fate will have it, a different path was awaiting me.

  “How would you like to go to New York, Tokyo and Hong Kong with me next week, Wafa?” announced Moulay one evening in late November 1979.

  Taken aback, I took the drink he was handing me before quipping: “Are you kidding me? God, I’d love to!” I looked him straight in the eyes, and sighed. “But I don’t think I can afford it, unfortunately!”

  “I know that, that’s why I’m inviting you all expenses paid,” he retorted casually.

  “Wow, how about me?” interjected his friend Jackie as she extinguished her cigarette in the ashtray on the coffee table.

  “You’re welcome as well, of course,” replied Moulay.

  “I wish I didn’t have to work,” said Jackie. She pointed at me. “But you can. You’re a sales rep, free to work when you please, right?”

  I nodded, eyes sparkling. “Moulay, come on, be serious now. It’ll cost a fortune, I can’t possibly…” I began.

  “I’m dead serious,” Moulay answered. “I have to go to New York for business, but I’ve wanted to visit Tokyo and Hong Kong for a long time and never got a chance. I have a little time off, and I’d like to take advantage of my trip to America. So what do you think?” he insisted.

  I hesitated.

  Moulay was a longtime family friend. I liked him very much and often met at his place, around the corner from our apartment, after work with other friends. His offer was very tempting though I was a little concerned about his ulterior motives, being well aware of his awkward attraction to me.

  “Look, you don’t need to worry,” he promptly reassured me. “I enjoy your company and I really don’t like to travel alone. Consider it your graduation gift, okay?” he winked.

  His frank speak did not really surprise me. Moulay was an intelligent and generous man. He had sensed my lack of romantic interest in him for some time and accepted my friendship without resentment, not seeing it as rejection and definitely not shunning me from his life.

  In the end, our journey further underscored his kindness, and I enjoyed his company without a trace of guilt. Not only was he a big-hearted person, he was also a real gentleman and a fun-loving companion with an enormous appetite for life, food, and drink. A plump man with dark skin and a jovial face, he laughed easily and wholeheartedly. He spoke fluent English and made friends effortlessly. In every city we visited he made sure to book two separate hotel rooms and never once tried to renege on our friendly arrangement.

  For almost a month, we spent time together sightseeing, shopping, dining, visiting his many friends and business associates, and attending local entertainment venues. Later, he often escorted me back to our hotel only to go back out, alone or with another friend, to a gentlemen’s club to indulge in more earthly pleasures and often excessive drinking. On such occasions, he would not reemerge until late morning. Luckily, I never was an early riser.

  Landing in New York City for the first time was an eye-popping experience. We stayed at the cavernous Hilton hotel on the Avenue of the Americas. My first steps into the shaded canyons of midtown Manhattan blew me away. I was dizzy with the sheer scale of it all: buildings, avenues, streets, cars, food portions, and people; it was a world unlike any I had seen before. I was thunderstruck, transported by the heightened pace, boundless energy, baffling diversity, infinite ambition, fearless vision, and voracious material appetite, and couldn’t help feeling small, foreign, awkward, and totally awed.

  There was but one cloud in that bright firmament of wonderment. Throughout our visit, my impressions were tainted by the frustration caused by my ignorance of the English language. I had to rely on Moulay to translate for me, explain to me, and speak for me. Suddenly, all my previous travel experience amounted to little or nothing, obliterated by sensory overload and my inability to understand the written or spoken message, and thus communicate freely.

  I nonetheless marveled at the extravagance of the holiday season in New York City, the dazzle of Broadway shows, the fabled Radio City Christmas Spectacular, even the release of Francis Ford Coppola’s formidable Apocalypse Now. I absorbed it all with astonishment, delighting in the sights and sounds, if not the deeper meanings that only familiarity with culture and language can provide. Later on, Tokyo and Hong Kong were further fascinating discoveries but none came close to the sheer fascination I felt in Manhattan.

  I returned home in the new year with one idea in mind—learn English—and without delay. Uncle Hak offered to pay for my school and lodging, and I set out to enroll in an intensive English course for foreign students at the International House of London, a language school on Piccadilly, directly across Green Park and a short walk away from Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace, and Piccadilly Circus. My first accommodation, however, booked from Rabat, was not as pleasant as I had hoped.

  I took off from Casablanca on a Sunday in early February 1980, and landed at Heathrow three hours later under a heavy sky and fast-falling darkness. I stepped out of the airport and hailed a London cab, armed with the address of the family providing me with housing. I remember it took a while driving down the poorly lit streets in an unwelcoming drizzle. I finally washed up on the outskirts of town far from Central London in what appeared to be a working-class neighborhood of dull attached houses without grace.

  The cab driver immediately drove away leaving me standing nervously on the curve with my suitcase. I knocked on the door and was welcomed by a smiling red-faced lady in a tired house dress. She and her husband offered me tea and biscuits at the kitchen table and valiantly tried to make conversation. Their effort, made all the more difficult by their heavy cockney accent, was commendable but futile; I could not comprehend a word they said.

  “Sorry, I don’t understand. I don’t speak English,” I kept apologizing repeating the few words I knew.

  Actually, I was also famished and disappointed. I had expected something a little more “charming” and perhaps, too, a warm dinner. They showed me my tiny room upstairs, and I decided then that I would not bother unpack. I went to bed with an empty stomach and a firm determination to move out the next day.

  I woke up very early in the morning and somehow managed to get the directions to the train station for the commute to my school. Everything around me appeared, and felt, cold, grey, and damp—very much like the weather that day. I feverishly planned my next move. My first order of the day was to attend my school’s evaluation tests, scheduled for 9:30AM that Monday.

  Immediately after lunch, I went searching for a new place to live. A friend in Morocco had given me a few addresses where he had stayed when studying in London. First on the list was a house within walking distance of the school.

  Located on Chapel Street, a little street between Grosvenor Place and Belgrave Square, one of the most magnificent 19th-century squares in London, the house was owned by an old German woman who rented rooms to international students. Little did I know then that the Westminster neighborhood was none other than Belgravia, famous for its grand, white-stucco mansions, homes to many embassies. What a difference from where I had landed the night before! I instantly wanted to live there. It was picture perfect!

  When I knocked at Mrs. Furse’s door, I was praying she’d have a room for me. The short and grumpy, elderly woman who opened the door spoke various languages, including French. After inquiring who had referred me, she led me to a spacious, sparsely-furnished room with two scruffy single beds, an old desk, a chair, and a chest.

  “You’re lucky, I have a vacancy. You’ll have to share with another young woman, if you’re interested,” she said in heavily-accented French. “She’s Algerian and doesn’t speak much English herself.”

  She entered the room, pointing to one of the beds.

  Evidently the room, which featured an unused fireplace, had either been a study or sitting room in its heyday. It was musty and comfortless, but had
high ceilings and old-world appeal.

  “I’ll take it,” I said quickly.

  I was relieved she had space for me and unconcerned by the drabness of the place. She shook her head and walked past me to show me the rest of the house. The entire first floor was dark and in serious need of repair, quite a contrast to the sparkling white grandeur of its neighborhood.

  “I have half-a-dozen students from all over the world living in the house right now,” Mrs. Furse said, closing the door behind me. She paused and took a good look at me. Her grayish, frizzy hair was loosely tied back; her thick unibrow and thin lips conferred a severe appearance to her person.

  “Oh, really?” I smiled circumspectly.

  I was intimidated by her and mindful not to say or do anything that could get in the way of my renting a room. She pointed to the black phone hanging under the staircase in the corner of the hallway.

  “The telephone is only to receive calls.”

  Climbing the creaky stairs to the first floor, she added “Heat and hot water are on for two hours in the early morning and in the evening.”

  She stopped at the top of the stairs and opened the door of the single bathroom. I barely glanced at a large white bathtub and free-standing sink—all seemed fairly clean—and nodded.

  “Breakfast is included in the rent, and it’s served between 7:00 and 8:00AM—no later!—in the kitchen.”

  The fast, well-rehearsed presentation was drawing to an end. She clearly managed her house with an iron hand.

  I agreed to everything she stipulated, paid her the requested £20, and that very afternoon, returned to the suburb to fetch my luggage. I had paid a week’s rent for my housing but I did not care in the least. I was out of there and enchanted with my good fortune.

  I stayed in London for six frenzied months, taking five hours of English a day, five days a week, and enrolled in the Polytechnic of Central London for an additional two-hour Arabic class, three nights a week. And as if that was not enough, I also signed up for a weekly, two-hour jazz-dance class in Covent Garden.