A Crazy Good Snack

     The walk home from school today started off on a terrible note. My roommate, two of our friends, and I vehemently discussed something as we strolled down the sidewalk, avoiding the litter and squeezing past fruit and ghaif vendors. Suddenly, we heard an incoherent and loud garble approaching quickly from behind. “Obama! Michael Jackson!” We turned to see that we were being pursued by a crazy Moroccan man, eyes rolling yet somehow simultaneously focused on us. He knew just enough English to be creepy, and was gesticulating wildly in my friend’s direction. My roommate and I were slightly ahead of our friends, so we started walking faster and said back to them, “Let’s cross the street!”

     “Cross! Cross!” said the crazy man, uncomfortably close to our friends. He followed us as we dodged cars and motorcycles. Spotting a café up ahead, we came up with a quick plan B.

     “We’re going into that restaurant,” we called back, and made a sharp turn towards the door.

     “Resto! Resto!” echoed the crazy man. “Michael Jackson! Obama!”

     As the four of us regrouped inside the establishment, I turned to the woman behind the cash register. “This man…” I tried to explain in Arabic. She didn’t need more than those two words to catch on, since his creepy grin soon appeared at the window as he turned down a side street and waved as he walked away. A man came out to serve us, but the kind woman explained that we weren’t customers, just refugees. “Ah,” he said. “Gliss, gliss!” Sit, sit!

     In the first few days, we had been told that we should exercise caution when walking outside, even in the daytime. But we didn’t need to be scared, they assured us, since the Moroccan people were incredibly kind and friendly, and would rush to protect us if they saw any of us in trouble. The evidence showed itself in small moments: the woman who sat next to me on the tram and told me when it was my stop; the woman who gave my friend a tissue when she started crying on the long, hot ride home from Rabat. And now these two café employees, reminding us that the crazy man was an aberration, and that this country is mostly a safe and friendly place.

     It’s also a delicious place, when you know where to look. The lunch my host family had packed was heavy on potatoes and mayonnaise – I can only take so much mayo before I can’t take any more. So I was a little hungry by the time we were walking through the medina towards our house.

     “Want to stop by the food street?” my roommate proposed.

     “We turn here,” was my eager answer as we followed our noses to the street lined with fresh strawberries and clementines, cauliflowers and artichokes, rainbow piles of olives, live chickens behind butchers’ blocks, sausages frying on miniature grills next to stacks of round bread waiting to be stuffed with the meaty filling. And cats – so many stray cats licking discarded yogurt containers and trickles of unidentifiable liquid originating at the ground meat stall. We continued to a Moroccan pancake vendor, a stout woman shaping the dough into thin squares and slapping them onto the griddle. After exchanging pleasantries, my roommate exchanged 2 dirhams for a piping hot flaky malawi.

     My sweet tooth begged to be satiated so we turned back towards the doughnut man. He stood behind a giant vat of oil and a large dish of sugar, squeezing off fist-sized knobs of dough and poking a hole with his thumb in one swift motion.

     “One, please,” I said, and he tore off a piece of newspaper to hand me a freshly fried and sugar-coated doughnut the size of my face. “Bshal?” “Wahed wa nusf,” he replied, one and a half dirham, or about 20 cents, for the best doughnut of my life.

     I almost burnt my tongue as I took my first bite, sugar coating my lips. The dough was chewy and rich, crispy on the outside and like a pillow on the inside. Each bite was better than the last, until the last bite came with a wave of sadness that the doughnut was gone.

     Until I realized that the doughnut man was only 5 minutes out of the way. And I’d be walking home that way every day for the next six weeks. And one and a half dirham is totally reasonable for a daily dose of bliss.