sometimes adventure
is too juicy, and splits the 
skin of school-prose like

a ripe medlar, squeezed; 
but still, the dripping pieces
may all fit nicely

into one fruitbowl

When, on TV, that light-skinned woman pulls that ribbon or something out of her hair so that it tumbles down, shining like anything, I always look at my sister. She has hair like that, straight and long, and she's always tossing her head so that the sheen of it catches the light. Mine is kinky with curls from my father's side, and brown. I cut it short a couple of years ago, my best friend too, and now it's all different lengths, sticking out all over the place. After I take a shower, I pull it back tight into a little knot while it's still wet, and that draws some of the waves out of it. Or, I arrange it and put my head into a pair of panty hose, which smoothes it out too. Or, I make a paste out of red pepper and sesame, comb that through my hair, and wrap it up in a scarf-that takes all day, though. If I'm going to a party or something, I just have my sister straighten it with a blow dryer and a round brush, that works the best. Then, with hairspray and some barrettes, it's tamed into a stylish little bob.

Sometimes I wonder how they find those women for the shampoo commercials on TV. Is there some guy walking around the street just looking for pretty girls with really pretty hair, and when he sees one, he says "excuse me, but we'd like to pay you lots of money to advertise our shampoo?" Or does the company put an ad in magazines: "If you have pretty hair, come to our studio and audition!"-and then, why haven't I seen any of those ads? When I was little, I went to France to visit my uncle, and some guy saw me and, just like that, he wanted to put me in a commercial for yogurt or something. It was because I had a huge mane of curly hair, then. But my father absolutely refused. He said "No daughter of mine is going to be in a TV commercial." He died, two years ago.

It was like when she was serious and tiny and she furrowed her dark brow as she traversed the concrete, measuring her steps so that sneakerfalls marked numerical patterns between the cracks. Only she wasn't looking down, she was focused intently on the invisible straight-ahead, as if the coincidental emptiness of this cardinal point were covered with printing. But meanwhile, there were things moving at the periphery, humming in the air against her skin and at the white corners of her eyes where she computed and stored them. And always, afloat on this sea of concentration, was the unfailing rhythm of steps, suddenly mathematical. She felt greased, the equally undirected gazes of the people she was passing through sliding over her skin and dripping off, not penetrating. Over her skin and clothes and face, over her movements and the set of her hips, not penetrating the careful barrier.

It had started by watching. By opening one of the balcony doors halfway and standing just out of sight of the slice of window, leaning against the doorjamb and watching the street. It was beautiful, the hotel, with sunlight bathing it like dew, filtering through the iron to cast slanting patterns on the moldering tile. The kaleidoscopic colors of the street reflected off its white walls, or crept in between the bars guarding the window. It was a palette of chaos, down there, the vivid splotches batting each other aggressively, dancing against each other with ebullient heat, and it took her several days to learn to see one separate from the next. The binoculars helped. With them, she could narrow the field of her world to a single intimate circle, piercing in its mundanity: a woman throwing her head back and parting her ruby-painted lips as she laughed with her companion; a boy in yellow slippers bending to retrieve a fallen peanut; a married couple in matching djellabas frowning and waving their arms as they argued; a seller of sunglasses hawking in a tropical-print suit. She watched them so she could imitate them. Driven to intensity by the knowledge that all her ways of presenting herself were only a weakness, she scanned the female surfaces, taking in the shapes traced by eye makeup and the provocative cut of trousers. She practiced holding her arms at the precise angle that, with a quick flick of a bended wrist, projected a gay nonchalance. And she walked up and down in front of the bed putting one foot just a little closer to the other than usual, her torso leaning slightly forward so that she was magically enveloped in a grave air of confidence. She needed the shoes she'd bought, strappy and tall-heeled, for that. But, standing behind the acute vision of her binoculars and pressing herself into the eyepieces, she also tried to look beneath the veneer, fragmented by magnification, to discover the principles of collision and interaction, the meaning of the exchanges of energy. She slitted her eyelids in her fervor to discern the invisible gridlines that racked it all into coherence. She was too aware that, here, she'd find no geometry of her own.

Finally, she'd prepared her body. Stripping herself naked, spreading around her the carefully researched agents of her transformation, she watched with a detached fascination as the glinting blade of a razor shucked the dark hairs away from the skin of her legs. With the heat of the blow-dryer singing her ears, she arrayed her hair precisely around the shape of her face, and filled in the appropriate features with rich brown colors. Then, she shimmied into lycra and leather, sleek and typical. She didn't pause in the motions, restive with her hand warming her hip-bone, to till again the why of her performance. It was one of those ideas that begins as a tiny electric seed tucked between the puckers of the cerebellum, which, fed by the impulses of ambition and insecurity stirred up in academic islands, grows imperceptibly into a decision, a project that is funded beyond any reconsideration. So she didn't have to interrogate, for example, what anxiety and loneliness might prod her to this offensive secrecy, to infiltrate before she could be invaded. She looked at herself in the mirror-full-length, the one chance luxury her spartan budget afforded her-and saw a different self. A different-colored self, buzzing with an unfamiliar aura of brown-orange-black. A different-cultured self: Moroccan. She was ready, now, to test herself, to go out and walk in the street she'd stored behind her eyes, this time not as a piece that jarred against the others and swirled up noise with its angles that just didn't match. Then, with her movements in and out made buttery by disguise, she could get to work.

next

"My god, look at the bougainvillea spilling over that wall!"

The luscious plant was exuberantly attempting to render the entryway of the bus station impassable. It dripped down so low that it brushed the top of Tyler's hat, and he reached up and broke off the end of one of the branches, tucking it behind Maia's ear.

"Sultana..." and he swept his arm out gallantly, motioning her ahead of him.

"Don't let on that we don't know what we're doing, because there are hustlers everywhere, but where do you think we go in here?" She frowned, logistics rendering her impervious to his banter for the moment, and waved her hand vaguely, indicating the chaotic interior of the terminus.

"Well, we could go with the red and yellow sign, the green sign painted on plywood, the lit up pink sign, or that one with the name of the place we want to go printed on it in latin script."

"Good point. I knew there was a reason I brought you along."

The pair made their way to the counter, stepping over several beggars on the way, and joined a small milling group of people.

"I suppose this is what passes for a line."

"Are we just supposed to push our way to the front?"

"Hmm, consider this an experiment."

There was some jostling, but no discernible protests.

"Sidi, c'est quand le prochain bus à Chefchaouen, 'affeck?"

"A quatorze heures. Two o'clock."

"Oua b'shehel?"

"Trente-cinq dirhams."

"That's so cheap!"

"Jooj, 'affeck."

"Pardon?"

"Deux billets."

Tickets in hand, they strolled toward a vacant section in the scraggly ranks of metal benches that occupied the center of the floor, painted a chipping blue.

"You know what strikes me most about Morocco, Ty?"

"The spicy Eastern fragrances wafting through the air? The maze-like bazaars that beckon you backward into history? The exotic sensuality of the women?" He waggled his eyebrows at her and she punched him in the arm.

"No, smart-ass, the colors. There are more of them-orange, and lime green, and magenta. And they're brighter too, more saturated. Half the people are wearing djellabas and half of them look like they're straight out of a fashion magazine, but all of them are hued in these colliding blocks that make you feel like your vision is sharper."

"Everything at home is grey right now."

They sat in silence for a moment, grinning and drinking the unfamiliar patterns of movement around them like sunlight.

"So where do you think we catch our bus?"

There were times when she had to get out of the clothes, when they grated against her skin like an allergen, a foreign agent raising rebellious bumps. Back in the sanctum of her room, she would peel them away from her, and feel herself deflate like a punctured balloon. Then, she would collapse on the rough surface of the blanket, nude, and shiver. She loved this nakedness, when the shimmering veneer evaporated off her skin, and she breathed into her own lungs. That was how she ended up going to the hammam.

It wasn't far, a stroll, only, skirting the beggars splayed on the pavement and crossing under the shade of the high-arching red earth, the ramparts that mark an obsolete frontier between old and new. She passed it almost every day, on her way to the commercial district, and felt the steam creeping out from the interior to warm her cheeks. Those times, when she was dissolved into the city around her while still carrying a secret shield between herself and other humans, she coveted the communion of bodies only, with no costumes buffering them. Finally, the solitude overcame her, and she gathered her things into a plastic bag and went.

There was no passing here. The moment she put one bare foot in front of the other she betrayed the truth: that the knowledge of where she was walking wasn't a near-instinct, worn into her muscles weekly since childhood. But the wet heat resting palpably on her shoulders protected her like a blanket, and the women around her smiled indulgently, touching the olive skin of her arms and querying "maghribia?" in voices colored by mirth. It was a community of nudity, and she found floor-space within it, assisted by hands ferrying buckets and imperiously insisting on scrubbing her back. She leaned back against the tile and closed her eyes, regaled by the rhythms and harmonies of echoing voices. The unruly laughter of children drifted fractionally closer, and she looked, finding a large toddler with a mop of black curls fixing her with a rather uncomfortable degree of scrutiny. She squinted back, and waved tentatively, and the opposing face lit with a smile. Small fingers reached for her, tangling in the single gold chain that spilled across her collarbones and tugging with alarming force, so that they had to be immediately untangled and fended off. This brought delighted laughter, as the girl danced away, circling her, mirroring her expressions, meant as a diversion, as if she were some fascinating new toy. When it became clear that this large and different person wouldn't allow her to clamber over her like a jungle gym, the child turned to the unfamiliar array of bottles and containers littered to one side, her curiosity seizing on a bubble-like vessel of transparent plastic, filled with a luminous green gel. With impish suddenness, before its proprietor could stop her, she'd overturned it, and was watching the sweet-smelling liquid drip between her fingers as if it were some great secret. The creature's mother chose this moment to come and heft her under her arm, overflowing with "smehili" and a clattering scolding. The foreigner's scowl went unnoticed. Sitting, sweating, and looking at the slick pool of shampoo smearing the tile, she felt an anger rise in her. What was this togetherness of skin? She'd come here to expose herself where she could still keep company around her, to have one moment stripped to sameness. But, even here, she was assaulted, and things that were hers were spilled out to flow inexorably toward the drain.

She stalked home, under the colonnaded arcades, and pushed the clothes off her again, revealing waterlogged and softened flesh. But she didn't stop there: she dug her own clothes out of a duffel bag, a baggy pair of jeans beaten until their surface was velvety and a t-shirt that kissed her shoulders like silk, and put them on, her last line of defense. And she cried in them, bitterly, cursing the tyranny of her own choice.

next

The street is like my playground. I know its layout like my father still knows the geography of the mountain where he grew up, so that he can close his eyes and scratch out a map in the dirt. But I'm better than a map, because I can tell you much more than where every little thing is: I know which particular corner will accept the weight of your back with the warmth of a salon; the cafe with just the right arrangement of chairs, service, and conversation for a restless mood, a jovial mood, or a discontented mood; the one restaurant of all of them that makes a decent couscous for under 50dh. But even better than this is the fact that I can navigate the street with a kind of instinct, like a cat finding food by the smell, so that somehow my feet always carry me to where my friend is, or to the block which, today, holds out the greatest possibility of amusement. Needless to say, when she walked into the street, she stirred up all the invisible landmarks in the air, leaving a swirling wake to trail behind her. The disturbance was so obvious, and its new mixture of flavors tasted so good on my tongue, that of course I had to follow it.

Any man can spot a Western woman. You do it by the colors she wears, which are all the waffling half-tones in between our forceful ones. She can walk along the wall with her head down, but those colors still blare out as loud as a chorus of honking cars. It takes a connoisseur, though, to discern other things: which country she's from, what her job is, whether she lives here or is a tourist. To do that, you have the taste the air in the rift she carves out for herself. This woman is a Frenchwoman. She married young, for money, and moved here a few years ago with her husband, who works for the embassy. They just moved into a bigger villa, which is how she happened to cross my path all of a sudden. All day long, she sits inside and talks on the phone, or spends a long time getting dressed, and then goes out and sits in fancy cafes with her friends. I've seen her do this, often. Her husband doesn't mind it if she talks to men, as long as they're French men. I know she spends a long time dressing because she always sports the perfect, striking combination of clinging clothes and bare shoulders, light makeup and swept-up hair. The first time I followed her, falling into the path these shoulders cleared, she was on her way to an upscale beauty salon. I tried to talk to her. I said:

She went out in them, too. More and more, she went out in her own clothes, wearing her difference like an assault. She dissolved into the densening current of bodies being funneled into the old medina through a narrowing inlet, and watched as people changed the way they approached her territory. Dirty boys attached themselves to her Levi's with demanding fascination, and women turned their eyes away from her with a more suspicious curiosity. But inside her own skin, she was better at loving her imperfections. As she shouldered through the crowd, she found herself interesting, sociologically, and she observed herself shuffling her feet and scoping the cluttered closet interiors of streetside shops. It helped that the medina churns on an engine of variance, its polarities held together by a ductile web of barriers, so that energy spikes back and forth. She veered left through a 500-year-old doorway and almost collided with a pyramid of Clairol.

A countertop bisected the cubicle, and a man with leather-colored skin stood behind it and watched her without speaking. He let his eyes rest on her like they rested on the dye that comes from the North to turn hair Northern colors, his pupils undialated with any concern. Taken aback by the stillness of his shoulders, she checked her own motion in response, and stood fixed, one hand resting on the edge of a shelf of bottles. Experimentally, she squinted, slitting her eyelids until the dim interior was grainy with hidden colors, and then within the dancing patterns she saw the golden and serpentine brocade of a curtain that fell shimmering through the air around her. For one moment, she watched the liquid sheet snake its way into the walls and flex through the doorway into the street, but the shopkeeper shifted on his stool and she was stirred back to her place next to the rack of beauty products.

Disturbed at being marked for sameness, she tumbled back into the street, sluggishly lifting legs that felt ponderous with the great weight of an entire category. She forgot her errand until a zealous retailer called to her: "Madame, shampooing!" Turning her head, it was the pattern that caught her eye. The folded O-tops of a profusion of sacs yawned at her, each one offering up a heap of some tantalizing and mysterious powder, a riot of colors contained in this commercial symmetry. The spice merchant was indicating his stock of ghrasul, and smiling at her. Not bothering to breach the question of language, he took her hand, and rained a few dirt-brown shards into it, and then pointed to her hair, with mirth dancing into the fine wrinkles around his eyes. He made the sign for "pretty," and surprising herself, she laughed at him—or with him, since he kept up with the amusement rising in her like sap. He bounced a little, with the elasticity that creeps up with age, and made scrubbing motions, preening in his imitation of a woman, which made her laugh again. He patted her arm indulgently, and piled some ghrasul onto his scales, nodding knowingly. So she cocked her head at him, and asked for henna as well. She walked away with the black plastic bag held against her chest in the crook of one arm, and knew it was not of her. These things were as foreign to her body as the Moroccan clothes that made her skin itch. But they belonged to her by invitation, and she communicated with them across a permeable frontier that made meaning out of difference. If she couldn't slip unnoticed into what lay on the other side, she could at least weave herself to the bindings that gird a provisional integrity, letting its provinces talk through the spaces between them, and love the conversation from the outside. It was only then that she appreciated the poised beauty of the perimeter she had crossed.

END