Tuesday, July 27, 2010
A salad Henry made
This was entirely Henry's idea, though the leftover cucumber slices were lying around in the kitchen.
Chez Laila and Maya
More relatively new people: Maya was born in early March.
Already seems very social. She looks a lot like Laila did at her age - very cute.
A book on the most interesting subject in the world.
Joint teething session.
Henry following instructions from Laila, who got her face painted at day camp.
Slightly doctored photo of Henry and Laila. How lovely that he, like us, has actual friends to come back to!
Already seems very social. She looks a lot like Laila did at her age - very cute.
A book on the most interesting subject in the world.
Joint teething session.
Henry following instructions from Laila, who got her face painted at day camp.
Slightly doctored photo of Henry and Laila. How lovely that he, like us, has actual friends to come back to!
Walden Pond
Last Friday. Back to the New England routine: Walden Pond with friends from Deb's house.
Castles, moats, et cetera.
Was the whole Morocco thing just a dream?
Castles, moats, et cetera.
Was the whole Morocco thing just a dream?
Amahl and Nidal with baby Zaha
And some people have created whole new people in our absence.
This is Zaha, born July 1.
Mabrouk! Isn't she beautiful?
And look at all that hair.
Even better... we saw her again on Sunday, this time with her eyes open!
This is Zaha, born July 1.
Mabrouk! Isn't she beautiful?
And look at all that hair.
Even better... we saw her again on Sunday, this time with her eyes open!
At Ebru's house
In Rabat we got pretty proficient at feeding Esti without a high chair - comes in handy sometimes.
Telling stories.
Eating peas (she can pick them up whole using the pincer grip, just can't quite digest them yet).
Watching and learning.
Telling stories.
Eating peas (she can pick them up whole using the pincer grip, just can't quite digest them yet).
Watching and learning.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Back... weekend in New York
Funny to get back and see how everyone's been growing in our absence. We dropped off Henry in Andover and went to New York; stayed with Ebru and David, whose son Daniel is four months old now. 
Seems to want to crawl.
Oh yes, and there was a very elegant evening wedding.
Esti fell asleep, we stayed awake, so really the jet lag went as well as possible.
Seems to want to crawl.
Oh yes, and there was a very elegant evening wedding.
Esti fell asleep, we stayed awake, so really the jet lag went as well as possible.
Saying goodbye to the Hamdouchis
Ken's former landlords: have I mentioned them yet? We visited them in the Oudaias one night, in the house where Ken and Elias used to live upstairs. Then on our last day in town they very sweetly stopped by to visit us in Agdal.
Layla is a French teacher; Mohammad (SiMo) is an engineer of some kind. In the years since Ken lived with them they've redone their house, integrated the upstairs and stopped taking boarders. Their three sons (the middle one, Hafid, is pictured here) are avid surfers and sound like ambitious students: English classes, driving lessons, internships, etc. They are really nice people.
And there's my son under the table. With his embarrassing manners. I would say that this was pretty typical of our attempts to socialize with Moroccans. The Hamdouchis didn't mind, but I wish he could have been more gracious sometimes.
I guess I wish we all could have been.
Layla is a French teacher; Mohammad (SiMo) is an engineer of some kind. In the years since Ken lived with them they've redone their house, integrated the upstairs and stopped taking boarders. Their three sons (the middle one, Hafid, is pictured here) are avid surfers and sound like ambitious students: English classes, driving lessons, internships, etc. They are really nice people.
And there's my son under the table. With his embarrassing manners. I would say that this was pretty typical of our attempts to socialize with Moroccans. The Hamdouchis didn't mind, but I wish he could have been more gracious sometimes.
I guess I wish we all could have been.
Saying goodbye to Nezha
This is Nezha, who cooked for us and cleaned up after us for about six weeks. Took Esti to the park, took me to the hammam, with equal good humor.
She had worked for a German lady before, stayed with her for 16 years till the lady and her Algerian dentist husband moved back to Germany (the dental practice failed). Don't ask me how they communicated, because the German lady spoke no Arabic and Nezha's French is really rudimentary. By the way, she showed me pictures of herself in those days -- young, glamorous, same smile but a big mane of flouncy hair instead of the hijab; that came in the past four years, after the German lady left. Then she worked for an American colleague of mine, which is how we met her.
We resisted her warmth at first (Henry especially)...
but by the end she was an almost indispensible part of our lives.
Even if we didn't always feel like eating the tagines she cooked (it's very heavy food for summer -- don't I sound like such a typical Western lady? you would think I was watching my figure!) she was great with Esti (after the initial stranger anxiety thing wore off) and very good with me, really smart (despite her illiteracy) and skilled at speaking darija in a way that I could understand.
We'll miss her.
She had worked for a German lady before, stayed with her for 16 years till the lady and her Algerian dentist husband moved back to Germany (the dental practice failed). Don't ask me how they communicated, because the German lady spoke no Arabic and Nezha's French is really rudimentary. By the way, she showed me pictures of herself in those days -- young, glamorous, same smile but a big mane of flouncy hair instead of the hijab; that came in the past four years, after the German lady left. Then she worked for an American colleague of mine, which is how we met her.
We resisted her warmth at first (Henry especially)...
but by the end she was an almost indispensible part of our lives.
Even if we didn't always feel like eating the tagines she cooked (it's very heavy food for summer -- don't I sound like such a typical Western lady? you would think I was watching my figure!) she was great with Esti (after the initial stranger anxiety thing wore off) and very good with me, really smart (despite her illiteracy) and skilled at speaking darija in a way that I could understand.
We'll miss her.
Last bath in Rabat
Did I mention that I let Nezha take me to the hammam one Friday?
We went to the place in the Medina where she usually goes. Clean, fairly nice, but not upscale at all. It's for women only, though an adjoining facility has showers for men.
I did it because, in my spring 1001 Nights class, one of my students who had spent a semester in Rabat had objected to Fatima Mernissi's characterization (see p. 101) of the hammam experience as essentially narcissistic and unerotic and her comment that in the Rabat baths no one looks at anyone else. But in my experience it was true.
As Mernissi said, the women just sat there surrounded by buckets of water of various temperatures, applying various beauty products and scrubbing off dead skin with an exfoliating glove. Too dim to read, too loud because of the water pipes to converse, totally boring if you ask me. Checking out someone else's body seemed as taboo -- more taboo! -- than in the locker room at my women-only gym in Cambridge. I did let Nezha scrub me, as some of the women were scrubbed by the professional bath attendant: ouch! In Morocco you're not considered to be getting clean unless there's skin coming off.
But Mernissi is right: not a social experience. From now on, I'm bathing at home.
We went to the place in the Medina where she usually goes. Clean, fairly nice, but not upscale at all. It's for women only, though an adjoining facility has showers for men.
I did it because, in my spring 1001 Nights class, one of my students who had spent a semester in Rabat had objected to Fatima Mernissi's characterization (see p. 101) of the hammam experience as essentially narcissistic and unerotic and her comment that in the Rabat baths no one looks at anyone else. But in my experience it was true.
As Mernissi said, the women just sat there surrounded by buckets of water of various temperatures, applying various beauty products and scrubbing off dead skin with an exfoliating glove. Too dim to read, too loud because of the water pipes to converse, totally boring if you ask me. Checking out someone else's body seemed as taboo -- more taboo! -- than in the locker room at my women-only gym in Cambridge. I did let Nezha scrub me, as some of the women were scrubbed by the professional bath attendant: ouch! In Morocco you're not considered to be getting clean unless there's skin coming off.
But Mernissi is right: not a social experience. From now on, I'm bathing at home.
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