In the fall, Sophia entered tenth grade at the Rabat American School. As I had predicted, before long, her overall disposition changed entirely. She made new friends and participated in several sports, joining various teams from swimming to basketball to volleyball and cheerleading.
But, even as she felt better about her life in Morocco, I was going the other way. My thoughts were marred by yet another challenging aspect of life in my native land. I was plagued by resurging doubts, a mixed bag of enduring misgivings I thought I had long left behind. No longer was I happy to just watch the sun set over the ocean and feel complete. As I had often in the past, I was drowning in my old fears and negative thinking, closing myself to life’s simple pleasures.
Could I really accept, and adapt to, the reality of life in Morocco? As much as I wished for our business to succeed, could I reconcile my desire to make money with the guilt of doing so to the detriment of so many who lived in abject destitution? Would I be able now, almost a quarter century after I had left this country behind and it became but a distant memory, return to a make-believe existence denigrated and reviled in my youth? Could I hide in a bubble of privilege with once-rejected compromises because the young rebel in me was now a tamed, middle-aged woman?
Undeniably, there were advantages to living in Morocco, but they were largely due to the country’s unbroken state of backwardness and social inequalities. In that respect Morocco was not much better than the rest of the non-oil producing, Arab states. Labor remained so very cheap relative to everything else that it was difficult to believe in the trickle-down argument that a new enterprise would help build the nation’s economy, create new jobs, and thus feed more families. Since independence, there had been very little trickling down.
Some say that labor was cheap because the work force was mostly either uneducated or undereducated. True, but why was that still the case? In thirty years, the country’s elites had only looked after their own self-interest, not renouncing an inch of their excessive privileges or backing any reform to combat illiteracy, and that had had repercussions on all other social and economic indicators. According to United Nations data, the kingdom’s literacy rate was still only fifty-six percent, a percentage much higher among women and girls.
Moreover, to my chagrin, the status of women in the cities seemed to have gone backward instead of forward. The use of the hijab was now ubiquitous even among well-educated middle-class professional women, who often contended to my face that their hijab was their own choice. But was it really? Like the habit and veil of Christian nuns, is the hijab a simple uniform worn to show renunciation of ego and earthly desires as well as identification with the Almighty? If such is the case, then I was ready to salute them. But what to make of the many women wearing the hijab with elaborate face make-up and other embellishments, oftentimes without any religious principle? Was that mimicry, fear, or subtle intimidation born from a new wave of religious sentiment?
The spread of Islamic fundamentalism had not spared Morocco even as the government led an aggressive campaign against Islamic extremism. And its insinuation into the social fabric had an impact on all kinds of civil liberties, which made me feel a lot less free than I had in my youth. To be fair, the young King Mohammed VI, who succeeded his father in 1999, had shown a great deal of resolve in advancing women’s rights, but forces beyond his control had infiltrated the social psyche regardless of his wishes.
Suffice it to say that, in my mind, I was back where I had been three decades earlier, only worse. Not only was I struggling with the same long-standing issues of inequality and social justice, torn between my selfish need to indulge in cozy materialism and the blatant poverty at the periphery, I also found myself met on a religious plane by a social disconnect within my own stratum I had never encountered in the past.
And finally, I became concerned about the type of influence Sophia was being exposed to. In the American School, she associated with the children of American expatriates but also, and mostly, with those of the very rich and influential Moroccan bourgeoisie. I could witness in her the subtle and not-so-subtle signs of a spoiled teenage girl, unaffected by the social disparities around her.
Within a year of Mom’s death, I had come full circle. My initial enthusiasm was dampened by mourning and personal reservations regarding Moroccan society.
By the spring of 2005, I was ready to go back home. Ironically, this time, Sophia did not. As I had predicted, she had fallen in love with her school and friends. Beyond all my other qualms, I felt I had no choice, my apartment—hanging like an albatross around my neck—had still not found any taker, and tuition only increased my burden. I could hardly wait for the school year to end.
At the end of April, I wrote Marie, a dear friend of mine,
I have been battling with an overwhelming feeling of loneliness since Mom passed away, and neither my sister nor my daughter have been able to fill the void inside. I feel like a stray, lost in the wilderness, looking for a new meaning to her life.
At the end of May, just as I was ready to reconsider the whole thing, I got a decent buy-offer and a contract on my apartment. It had taken two long years, an eternity. By then I had made up my mind to return home. Since December my sister and I had been struggling to get a second venture off the ground and the prospects that once seemed encouraging had again been quashed. On June 25, as my sister and Sami began exploring yet another promising project, our third, Sophia and I flew back to America permanently.
During the summer of 2005, I kept busy with the sale of my home of eighteen years, the move to a rental apartment in a town with a good public school, and Sophia’s enrollment in junior year. In September, the question of what to do with myself was again facing me. Since the spring I had been discussing with Marie the prospect of returning to university to complete my Ph.D.
If there was ever anyone who knew about these things, it was Marie. After a long career with Exxon, she had returned to college for a master’s and, at fifty, completed a doctorate. A teacher and dissertation counselor at Colombia’s Teachers College, she was the most accomplished, knowledgeable and supportive woman I had ever known. Her optimistic and heartening communication with me was priceless when all else failed me.
After exploring the possible avenues open to me, I found that if the resumption of an incomplete doctorate appeared simple from the outset, the reality was far more daunting. Without elaborating on the matter, it turned out that, few if any of my hard-earned past credits would be accepted by any institution after such a long absence from academics—twenty years. The graduate advisors at New York University, my old school, were the least encouraging. They contended that the program had fundamentally changed, and that they only considered students who committed to the entire four or five-year Ph.D. program directly after the completion of their undergraduate degrees. In other words, a student with an existing master’s degree or beyond would not be welcome in the program.
I ended up registering at Rutgers University, whose rules were less stringent. The dean of the Politics Department assured me they might take a few of my Ph.D. course credits that correspond to the current curriculum, but that I had to take more quantitative-research-related classes. Moreover, nearly two-thirds of the required courses had to be taken at Rutgers to merit the university’s certification.
It was agreed that I would start immediately by registering for one core course called “Research Design in Political Science.” The topic was really a euphemism for “Introduction to Advanced Statistics,” which I labored through and completed with a “B” despite its tediousness. Clearly, this was not what I had anticipated, and by the end of 2005 I was in as much disarray about my future as ever.
All of 2006, and the first four months of 2007, witnessed my rise and fall as an aspiring independent stock-option trader—a half-baked idea I had after watching one of those extravagant infomercials promising easy fortune on TV one Sunday morning. After the initial euphoria of quick gains and fast money, I proceeded to
lose all of my investment and much more, while feeling all the debilitating obsessiveness of an addicted gambler whose moods fluctuate with her gains or losses of the day.
For months, my daily routine consisted of staying glued to my computer, watching the up-and-down ticks of stocks being traded on the various exchanges with CNBC talking heads in the background. Before long I was hooked, always on edge, and depressed, and yet I continued to maintain the irrational conviction that it was only a matter of time before I mastered the tricks of the game. Despite the odds against me, I would in effect control my trades to such a degree that I would be able to minimize my losses while maximizing my gains with the assistance of sophisticated technical graphs and fool-proof methods taught in seminars by professional traders.
My qualified take on that stint—which I have since determined was nothing more than a well-oiled scam to sell expensive seminars and trading products—is that, like thousands of other ambitious wannabe traders, I had to concede that I’d been a total chump. Most depressing was the sad realization that I had yet again hit bottom in mental distress and muddled perception. The stock option trading was a pathetic attempt at finding an easy way out of my financial predicament. It was providential that it had failed so miserably.
34
Overcoming Fear
March 2008
The sun was high up in the sky. Spring was in the air even as the budding trees had yet to blossom. I was fixing my second cup of coffee since my cottage-cheese-and-fresh-fruit breakfast that late morning. My laptop was left open, waiting, on the coffee table in the living room. I had just re-read my previous chapter, tweaking at it at the margins, when the shrill tone of my house line pulled me away from my thoughts.
“Wafa, the reason for my call is to tell you about a fascinating book I’m reading,” began my friend Naziha as soon as I answered the phone and we’d asked each other about our kids.
I had met her twelve years earlier at an Englewood Cliff’s gym. A gorgeous young brunette from Morocco, she’d been looking for a new place to live and my mother had offered her second bedroom for rent. For the next two years, she shared our lives, becoming a cherished member of the family, until she met the man who became her husband and then the father of her two children.
“I don’t know why,” said Naziha, “But I immediately thought of you. I’m sure you’d love it.”
“Really? What is it called?” I asked, intrigued.
“It’s called A New Earth. It’s by Eckhart Tolle. You need to get it right now!” she said emphatically.
“A New Earth,” I repeated. “What is it about?”
“In short, it’s about finding your life’s purpose, living in the present,” she explained. “But it’s much more than that. I’ve been engrossed by it! It’s truly amazing, Wafa. Oprah’s been conducting a free weekly web-seminar to discuss the book with the author and answer readers’ questions since the beginning of March, one chapter a week, for ten weeks. You can still download and watch the episodes you missed. I’m hooked, I swear. At the risk of sounding corny, it helped me find peace and happiness.”
She was so enthusiastic I had no doubt I would follow her advice.
“Wow, that sounds great! It’s weird you called me, you know. It’s been so hard for me to write lately. I can’t concentrate due to an incessant stream of negative thoughts and I’m always struggling with anxiety! I started taking yoga classes and trying meditation again since December. It’s helping, but I definitely need something else…”
After the New Year I had resumed my writing, but it remained a sluggish, painstaking process, fraught with procrastinating schemes. Every little distraction was causing me to lose my focus, and remorse had become a habitual prowler. Meanwhile, I had not made any further attempt at looking for employment. I was stuck in a rut that felt tiresome even to me.
“Yeah, I know what you mean!” said Naziha. “Please get this book right away. My heart tells me you’re ready for it. We’ll talk again soon, and you’ll tell me what you think.”
I did not hesitate. I went online and ordered the book, then downloaded the previous webinars. Naziha had been inspired to call me, and she was right; I was ripe for Tolle’s message. Lord, was I ready for it! Without any other material change in my life, it turned my outlook around almost overnight. And it became the spark that ignited a voracious appetite in me for all things of the spirit. With urgency and passion, I flung myself entirely into my new endeavor. Everything took second stage, while my snail-paced writing slowed down to a near standstill.
I proceeded to read dozens of tomes on spiritual awareness, some illuminating and others less so. Naziha and I had many more long and animated discussions on the phone about our readings, many of which she had recommended. Her command of English was impressive and the depth of her perception was invaluable to me in those early days. The only problem was that she did not live nearby and was rather busy with her school-age children and part-time work.
I realized I had to meet other like-minded individuals but had no idea where to start, until one night during a conversation about living in the moment with Elisa, my daughter’s best friend.
“Oh my God,” she laughed, shaking her long blond hair, “You sound just like my mom!”
I had known Elisa since she was a toddler. Her parents and older brother had been living in the Versailles before I moved in. Barely nineteen months older than Sophia, the two grew up together like sisters and spent a lot of time in each other’s company.
“Really? Yvonne’s into this kind of thing?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. You should call her. I’m sure you’ll find you share many of the same views. She’s also a member of a Qi-Kong group that meets weekly.”
I had no idea what Qi-Kong was then and although I had been vaguely aware of Yvonne’s spiritual interest over the past few years, I had never shown any curiosity and she had never talked about it to me. So it came as something of a surprise when I called and asked her to introduce me to her friends to help me along with my spiritual initiation.
“I’ll have to ask them first if you don’t mind, Wafa,” said Yvonne circumspectly. “But I’m sure it’ll probably be alright for you to join the group.”
Yvonne is as ostensibly different from me as can be, both in appearance and character. A red-haired, blue-eyed, Swiss-born, she is soft-spoken and reserved. Shy, almost timid, at first, she is capable of putting anyone in their place should she find it necessary. She speaks mostly French with me, though her accented English is impeccable and articulate. Although I felt she had viewed me with some degree of suspicion initially, she quickly realized that I was dead serious and from then on, gently coached me, suggesting her own reading and practices.
The first time she invited me to one of her group’s Monday nights meetings, I knew I had entered a new world construct, one guided by the light of consciousness. What a diverse and magnificent assembly! In addition to Yvonne, the group was composed of eight other members, each unique and brilliant in her own right.
Donna’s radiant face greeted me as soon as she opened her door. She took me by the shoulders as if I were an old friend and grinned. And, in that moment, I saw the glimmer of acknowledgment in her eyes as well as the depth of her compassion behind her smile, and my heart went out to her. A widowed single-mother of a young teenage boy, and an accomplished musician, she hosted most of the sisters’ gatherings in the comfortable basement of her Leonia home with grace and generosity.
Behind her was Loretta. A worldly and spirited Armenian-American, she was born and raised in the Middle East and was completely attuned to my Arabic heritage. Fluent in many languages and outspoken on matters of politics and society she quickly seduced me with her talent as a writer and spiritual disciple.
Soon, I fell under the spell of Queen Maya—as I like to think of her—a vivacious and generous Mexican goddess, full of joy and zest for life, who frequently opened her beautiful realm for some spectacular entertaining.
Whe
n I fell ill that summer with a frightening case of uveitis and some severe and undiagnosed knee and arm pain, it was Carmen who tended to me. She prepared some delicious Latin dishes to sustain me and she used her essential oils to massage and wheedle my aches away. Words are not enough to describe my gratitude and love for her gentle healing touch.
I must admit it took me longer to warm up to Pio’s guileless ways, perhaps because of my own often unwelcomed bluntness.
“It mustn’t be too bad if you’re still living in the Galaxy,” Pio scoffed when she first heard me complain about my financial situation.
I can still picture her trademark derisive smirk and smug little chuckle. And of course, she was right to be cynical; after all, she was only referring to the upscale complex I was still living in then. Still, I grew to love her dearly over time. At once resilient and vulnerable, aloof and devoted, Pio, the no-nonsense Chinese princess, is also the gate-keeper of the group and master of the art of dumpling making.
It was much easier with Anne. Considerate and insightful, she is a talented artist and a shamanic practitioner. I had never so closely felt the extraordinary vibrational effect of drumming until Anne invited the sisters to her home for a few entrancing gatherings. Her distinctive handmade drums will forever resonate in my heart and guide me throughout my journey.
And then there was Pat B., a Tolle’s devotee and tennis and swimming buff. Married to a lovable and hot-headed man, I enjoyed watching their interaction and her masterful, yet tactful, way of tempering his opinionated outbursts when inappropriate.
And last but not least, the reticent and thoughtful Pat D. who gave me a jar of honey on our very first encounter, an offering which signified her acceptance of me right there and then, even though she had not expected me to be there and had not planned for me in her gifting to her group.
THE ROAD FROM MOROCCO Page 31