by Rolf Potts
Like most women married in 1955 she had given up her own work to be a wife and mother. It’s still not clear to me if it made her happy or if she ever stopped to consider what she was sacrificing, and if resentment simmered beneath her unadorned exterior. I don’t know what my mother questioned, if she ever questioned anything. I never asked her that either. I knew she loved us and that was all.
After her first trip to Morocco, it was clear that the country filled the great gaps that had opened in her life. She lunched with new friends. She devoured tagines swimming with candied lemon peel and tart black olives. She gazed up at the ramrod-straight palm trees crowned with sprays of leaves that burst like feather dusters. She reclined by the pool in the hard sunlight, savored the warm breeze that blew across her face at nightfall, and loved to divert for a spontaneous meal of fresh fish and chilled wine on the beach in Essouaria. She trod her sandals over the rich green tiles and past the bougainvillea that grew in dense thickets along ramparts. She marveled at the oversized crowns of roses, two feet high and two feet wide, that His Majesty left in my parents’ hotel room on each visit. She was dazzled by the mottled ochre walls and the lyrical disarray in the souks.
She was delighted that she, that daughter of a quarryman, could visit the palace (or palaces . . . there was one in every city) of the king she was invited by, but her real exhilaration came from how effortlessly she could transpose herself onto this strange and beautiful place, and freely seek adventure there. Sometimes she stayed on after my father’s medical work was done, even for a few days—still attended to by minders from her royal hosts of course, but unscheduled and on her own. My mother was entirely and happily liberated for the first time in her life and hungry to explore the country where she felt embraced and at ease. She was always my father’s spouse there, but more than just a doctor’s wife. Morocco dictated the flowing words of her second chapter.
And she wanted to share this new passion with me. As the youngest of the girls, though not the favorite by any stretch, I was often the lucky beneficiary of my parent’s generosity. I was the last one at home, suddenly an only child, so during those two years after my next-oldest sister left, I cleaned up on travel. My parents took me along when they could: to London, Greece, the Soviet Union, and elsewhere. Maybe also they felt guilty about all the hand-me-down clothes I had to wear, the incessant teasing, or the cropped haircut my mother, grown weary of three older girls in braids, inflicted on me. They certainly made it up to me. That year, in 1985, while I stewed over changes both professional and in love, I was invited to Morocco.
My mother and I explored while my father met with the medical team, but more often the three of us were together, in Marrakech or on the road. We drove to the Atlas Mountains, to Meknès and the great Roman ruins of Volubilis. In the photographs, often there are others alongside me and my father, strangers who were in my life too briefly to remember their names: Moroccan physicians, their wives perhaps, the driver who always joined us for lunch. But in almost every image in the album, I appear.
Here I stand behind my own bouquet of roses—hundreds of red, yellow, pink, and white blooms bursting over a vase—on the terrace of my room. I am wrapped in a robe and my eyes are puffy. I had been crying and though we hadn’t discussed it, my mother knew—how could she not? I had received a pleading telegram at the Mamounia from the man I had left for another and my face bore the stain of anguish.
In another, I am standing in front of a massive carved doorway.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she asks as she takes a picture of me. She is impossibly slim, in tan trousers and a light blue blouse. She snaps on the lens cap and stuffs the camera into her canvas tote. She hoists a bottle of water and takes a gulp.
“Are you thirsty, honey?” she asks. “Do you need sunscreen?”
Sometimes she photographed me doing business with the basketmakers in the souk, or buying a round of bread to nibble on, or ordering a glass of tea packed with mint leaves at the hotel restaurant. I am beside a donkey and my hand grazes the saddle. I seem intent while loading film into my own camera, or a tad awkward with a troupe of dancing girls in long brocaded caftans swaying behind me. Shoulders bared, I am in a sarong that is wrapped around me like a dress, seated on a mosaic fountain. In the pool behind me float thousands of roses cut from the stems. I look annoyed.
“Mom, please. All you do is take pictures,” I likely said to her. “Don’t you have enough?”
“You look so pretty, honey,” she would have said and then sat beside me on the tiled ledge, listening to the splash of water into the basin.
There are many shots of my father, the driver and me at a restaurant, sitting around a table with her chair empty after she jumped up to chronicle these moments, too. As I look at the album now, I imagine her seated the second before the snapshot, opening our bottle of Sidi Ali water, mothering me to smithereens, asking if I like the stewed pumpkin or the lamb couscous I’d ordered for lunch. I wish it was she who had turned to face the camera once in a while, but I am comforted with the assurance that when I smiled into the lens, I was really smiling at her.
She loved to take pictures when I wasn’t looking, as I do now with my own children. She was fascinated by this living entity she gave life to, and the sight of me seemed to never bore or tire her. In one shot, I lean over to inhale the scent of a pile of oranges. She snapped me with my eyes closed on a bench in the Majorelle Gardens. She captured me time after time with my face tilted up to catch the sun. I appear entranced, as if in meditation, but I was only grabbing a moment to turn myself a deeper shade of brown.
My mother was always there.
My mother is always there.
I returned to Morocco many times, several with my parents. I went to weddings and New Year’s parties, but they were more rushed affairs, never with the desultory pace of my first trip with them. Occasionally I flew down from Paris, where I was living, with the man I married. My parents returned countless times to Morocco until King Hassan II died in Rabat in 1999. They had seen everything by then and still had never seen enough. My mother shot rolls and rolls of film on her voyages there, but it was only during that first, perfect visit that she documented me with such persistence, as if she suspected I’d reach for these photos as an anchor thirty years later. Those photographs are aging much slower than we are and in them, I feel not just the presence of the woman who loved me. More intensely, I sense a woman I knew, someone exactly the age I am now, who was tackling her hard-earned freedom with wonder, openness, and a sense of abandon. She hurled herself upon the big, open landscape of Morocco and found her place in the world.
Twenty-five years passed since she had first landed in Casablanca, and she was well into her seventies when she realized she wouldn’t return. In truth, these cross-ocean voyages were trying, even in first class. Even so, she mourned the end of her travels there with enough grief and nostalgia to make it clear that the sense of loss was for something more than just Morocco and a maybe a decent couscous (something that never quite made its way to Boston).
Then came her decline. It was slow, but inevitable. These days, my mother’s sweet little room at her Alzheimer’s home is decorated with a few things, now relics, from the souks she roamed so freely. Over the years, she amassed a lot of stuff, most of all carpets that seemed to be delivered to my parents’ home with stunning frequency, as if my mother could not resist another tactile remembrance of the place she loved and belonged. There is a small woven basket, a little silver tea pitcher with a long spout. On the wall is a framed menu from one of the king’s New Year’s parties, engraved with gold and royal blue script, all in French. When I visit her there, I like to chat about her travels to Casablanca, Marrakech, or Fez, as if mention of them might dislodge a secret door to a clear, bright place.
“How many times did you go, about a hundred?” I ask.
“That first trip with you and Dad was one of the best times of my life. Remember how happy you were to show me the Jemaa el Fna?” I
ask.
“There must have been a million roses in those bouquets at the Mamounia,” I say.
“I hated the bones in pigeon pie,” I say. “Didn’t you?”
Last time I went to see her, I brought a photograph. It’s impossible to know what an Alzheimer’s patient is seeing, and least of all remembering. “My favorite picture of me ever is from Morocco,” I say. “You took it.”
I open my purse and remove an envelope, which contains the shot of me on that great open terrace, under brilliant slice of sky with the clay slopes behind me. Like all the others from that year, the picture is tinged a slight rusty brown.
She looks at it. “Yes,” she says.
“You can’t see yourself, but you are there,” I say.
She nods.
“You took this picture. You were wearing a gray flare skirt, a navy short-sleeved blouse, and little blue flats that day.”
She stares.
“In this picture, I am looking at you. You are younger and you are beautiful. You are my age, the age I am now. And you are looking at me,” I say.
She stares.
“I am Marcia, your youngest daughter, and you showed me Morocco.”
She tilts her head.
“Here,” I say. “This is me, and I’m looking right at you.”
She turns her face to me. Her hair is unruly, and though she is usually tidy, there are drops of soup on her sweater. She grasps my hand. Her skin is smooth and her touch is feathery, like the drape of a filmy scarf.
“Except I have no idea where this is. Near Marrakech? I just don’t remember,” I laugh.
She fixates on the photo again.
“Do you know where this is?” I ask. “You know Morocco better than anyone.”
She turns her face up to me and a smile unfolds like a handkerchief across her face. The gray creases brighten, her mouth unfreezes, her whole aspect alters in a millisecond from moribund to dewy and bright. Her eyes a shattering blue.
“Yes!” she shouts, startling me. She shakes her head vigorously as if to say, “Of course I do!” My mother takes the photograph from my hand, sets it on the table beside her and closes her eyes. Her lips are still turned upward in a smile, but within seconds her face is glazed with tears. I reach over her and take the photograph, slip it back into the envelope.
She grasps my hand again and squeezes gently. Her fingers graze mine with a light sound, soft as the rustle of mimosa blossoms, yellow as the morning, on a warm night in Marrakech.
Marcia DeSanctis is a New York Times bestselling author of 100 Places In France Every Woman Should Go. She is a former television news producer who has worked for Barbara Walters, ABC, CBS, and NBC News. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including Vogue, Marie Claire, Town & Country, O the Oprah Magazine, National Geographic Traveler, More, Tin House, and The New York Times. Her travel essays have been widely anthologized, including four consecutive years in Best Woman’s Travel Writing and Best Travel Writing volumes. She is the recipient of four Lowell Thomas Awards for excellence in travel journalism, including Travel Journalist of the Year in 2012 for her essays from Rwanda, Russia, Haiti and France, and two Solas Awards for Best Travel Writing. She grew up in Winchester, Massachusetts and holds a degree from Princeton University in Slavic Languages and Literature as well as a Masters in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She lives in Bethlehem year-round with her husband, sculptor Mark Mennin, and her two children Ray, 19 and Ava, 16.
MICHAEL SANO
Honey Colored Lies
Secrets surround a romance between a visitor and local in the mountains of Nicaragua.
The music at the discoteca is so loud that I have to shout to be heard. I’m nodding my head, pretending to listen to one of my co-workers, while searching the green slices of light on the dance floor for a particular pair of calves. We are sitting around a group of white plastic tables taking turns on the concrete pista de baile. The tabletops buzz with each beat of the bass causing a mob of empty bottles to clamor out its own shaky melodies. One fall could bring the whole clan down.
A hand lands on my shoulder and I stretch my neck back to meet his eyes but he’s not looking at me. His fingers tighten on my muscles as he reaches with his other hand for one of my female co-workers. They sweep onto the dance floor and disappear among the sweaty midriffs undulating to the tempos of reggateon. I imagine myself out there, watching the rhythm of his feet, feeling his hand on my hips, his knuckle under my chin. But he hasn’t danced with me all night because he doesn’t dance with me in public. Tonight he spins my co-worker and sidesteps her thighs. I salsa with his friend’s sister; she’s good at pretending I’m leading.
When we leave the club to walk back into town, I lag behind the others and he joins me. We walk side-by-side, shoulders touching, fingers and forearms teasing here and there. He talks to me through his touches. As our groups split, I nod my head, motioning for him to stay, to meet me, something. But he backs away with one last look and that coy, familiar turn of his lips.
We met last summer on my first night in Jinotega, a small town in the mountains of Nicaragua. My co-workers and I were walking its dark streets in search of dinner. The air, so thick during the day, runs away at night, up the mountains at the edges of town, leaving a cool emptiness I had not expected. Jinotega’s central blocks are lined with cement homes painted in pastels and stenciled over in graffiti that reveals a bit of Nicaraguan politics. The symbols, similar to those from the 1979 Sandanista revolution, looked stamped, like the pretenses of the president, Daniel Ortega. Once a popular war hero, he has grown into a controversial oligarch. My co-worker, Alyson, who had worked here the previous summer, told us about the province as we walked. Its verdant ranges are dotted with coffee fincas and stained with the blood of guerrilla warfare.
We rounded a corner and came chest to chest with three young men. Feet scraped to a stop in the dirt. They looked us over. They were completely silent. One of the men held my stare longer than the others. His eyes were the color of honey and in them I saw a longing, an ache familiar to my youth. It was cloying.
Suddenly the air was full of nervous laughter and moving hands. The men embraced Alyson and began to speak to her in sign language. They fluttered their fingers in front of us telling a story on palms, on arms, in the air. They touched Alyson’s shoulder lightly when they wanted her attention, taking turns with it. Though I was surprised and impressed with her fluency, their sign language was more expressive than hers; it evoked space and time and ownership. I watched, trying to translate this language I didn’t know.
Laughter erupted and the young men’s arms flew up in the air. They were spinning in giggles. Alyson’s cheeks spread red like berries.
“I meant to say we have to go because we’re hungry,” she said, grinding her fists in front of her stomach. “But I said we have to go because we’re horny.” The boys were still laughing as they backed away and waved goodbye. Before they turned, I met the honeyed eyes again. They yearned for recognition, and in that yearning I saw my own reflected. As he faded into the darkness I felt as though I were watching a ghost slip into hiding.
My co-workers and I spent the next few days readying our house, cramming it with plastic furniture and creating walls with sheets. Steel pickaxes and shovels, caked with mud from years past, piled up in the backyard. We assembled wobbly bunk beds and lined them with mattresses stuffed with recycled clothes. Every surface we bleached. On the walls we hung up colorful signs. We killed the ants again and again and again. Then we taped over the holes they streamed from. The trick, we knew, was to convince ourselves this was home. If we believed it, so would the teenagers who were about to arrive and join us.
“In Nicaragua,” I often said, “we dig.” In Peru they build classrooms, in Ecuador homes for the elderly. The crews in the Caribbean have constructed houses, medical clinics, and community centers. We do some construction in Nicaragua too, but mostly we dig. For almost a decade our or
ganization had been assisting a local NGO install potable water systems in rural communities around Jinotega. Since the end of civil war in 1990, Nicaragua has become one of the most peaceful nations in the Americas. The coffee production that has replaced guerilla warfare in Jinotega, however, is a battle in its own right. Nicaragua struggles to prosper in a globalized economy; it is the second poorest country in the Western hemisphere. The impact our teens have through our work here is large, but they contribute shovelful by shovelful in thick, muddy clay-dirt.
On our last night before the teenagers arrived, the three deaf men came over for dinner. Though we lacked a shared language, we conversed through the night. The boy with the honey colored eyes sat next to me. “Willem” he wrote on a notepad, pointing to it and to his chest. Then he made a W with three fingers and bounced it under each of his eyes. When he handed me the pencil I wrote “Miguel.” Willem placed his finger on my name as he gripped my arm. He ran a hand along his smooth chin, stroking an imaginary beard and then pointed at me. After he repeated the sequence, I understood: I had just been given a sign name. Head bobbing and lips broad, Willem seemed pleased with his baptism.
As we ate I could feel the heat of his leg approaching mine under the table and then the skin between his sparse hairs as he pressed his knee into mine, his calf, his thigh. On the table I moved my hand closer to his, but he backed it away.
A cake came out, the rum disappeared, and when someone turned the stereo on we all started dancing. My feet pretended to find a rhythm in the salsa steps and I shook my hips when the merengue horns blared. I was a bit dizzy by the time we were saying our goodbyes. As female cheeks were kissed and male shoulders patted, Willem caught my eye and wandered outside. I waited a moment and then followed. In the dark, he pushed me against the wall. His breath was hot and short as his mouth approached me. He kissed me hard, his lips like soft fists rapping on mine. He pushed himself into my groin.