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From Abroad

TIM. This is Morocco. We expatriates say that quite often, whether in complaint or astonishment.

Today was one of those days that it was the latter. Neri and I were walking out of campus towards the marche to work on his economics paper and Majid, a friend of ours, saw us and offered to give us a ride. In his Renault, we sped out of the gate and flew past the marche. “Do you guys have 15 minutes?” he asked. We started driving down a wooded road, further away from Ifrane and to a place to which I had never journeyed. Passing the Source Vittel, Majid, having lived in Ifrane for many years after coming here from Riyadh, described his experiences in traveling throughout Morocco. We stopped the car beside three Moroccan men, all dressed in toboggans and heavy coats, who Majid claimed to know. In a field adjacent to his car, there were three horses all galloping around and kicking their front ends up into the air. “Let’s go!” Majid exclaimed. The next thing I know, we are racing three ostensibly wild horses through the woods of Ifrane. I had never ran a horse?let alone raced one?and it was a thrilling experience. After riding through the woods, Neri and I exchanged one of those commonplace ‘whaaat?’ sort-of looks and then drove back to the marche.

Later in the afternoon, I decided to get another Arabic lesson in the guise of a haircut?there is a reason why my hair has been gradually cut down to nothing. Neri and I walked around the marche to search for an open barbershop. Keep in mind that I just had a haircut three weeks ago and honestly did not need one, but just felt like I ought to get one before Dec. 16?my airport rendez-vous. Sitting in the chair, the barber asked me what I wanted and I said “khamsa hanaa wa arb’a hanaa, afak,” referring to the length of the clipper guards. A middle-aged gentleman sat behind us and spoke nothing but Arabic to us. “Limaatha toorido halaqa ash’r, hal anta ahmaq?” Why do you want a haircut, are you crazy? He questioned. “Lanaa sara habiibitii fii ahd ‘ashra yawma!” Because I will see my girlfriend in 11 days! We spoke a little in French and in between cutting single hairs he would write out various words and phrases on a piece of paper. We taught him some haircutting terminology in English and he described the English phrases he already knew: “Mi name is Muhammad. Niyce to meet hyou.” Towards the end, he took out a straight blade, doused it in alcohol, and then caught it on fire to sanitize it. I cringed as he scraped it along the back of my neck. It took more than an hour to clip my hair as it essentially was more of an Arabic lesson than a haircut.

When a few of us traveled to nearby Azrou for a couple hours, we walked through the marche and the residential areas to chat with Azrouians and purchase carpets. Sanny, in the market for a carpet that he could drape over himself to look like Alexander the Great, began negotiations while the merchant’s son ran and bought us some cafe au laits. The shop owner started tearing all of the carpets off the shelves and displaying them for Sanny to see. I was buried in the process. Of course, the merchant overpriced the carpets to a ridiculous amount and we thought about a multitude of methods to bring it down to the normal market price. We could have:

A) said udarras al iqtisaid fii al jamiyat al akhwayan wa huwa talibii ‘I teach economics at the university and he is my student’ while negotiating the price quote, so as to mess with him psychologically and counter his own stretches about the ‘Berber quality’ of the rugs
B) had Sanny yell ‘I am Alexander the Great’, pound his chest, and then literally jump on the man with such a bear hug that he couldn’t possibly resist to lower the price by 50%, so as to mess with him physically
C) passed the notepad with the price quote on it back and forth thirty times until we settled on a price, so as to bombard him with numbers

Of course, we performed all three methods and the price split in half. I think that the bear hug was the most effective as it was performed the most. Thus, Sanny walked away with three rugs and I bought a small wooden camel. While negotiating, it seems as if one can always see a supply/demand curve equalizing until the price is just right. Or maybe I am a dork. But I will truly miss negotiations when I return to the US. I have a bad feeling I’ll walk into a Wal-Mart and say “Five dollars for a pack of pens? Come on, I am a student. Give me a student price! Hatha bezzef!“