From the Vault: Morocco 2024, In Which I Show Up on My Daughter's Study Abroad, All Like, "Oh, Hey, Was Just in the Neighborhood"
I recently found several finished blog posts in my drafts folder. Somewhat bizarrely, and for reasons I do not know, and which may not exist, I never posted them. This one is from November 2024. I wrote it after I visited my daughter on her study abroad in Morocco.
Ifrane, Morocco; November 2024
My plane lands in Casablanca, closer to midnight than I’m comfortable with. I’m unashamed that, when it’s at all possible, and frequently when it’s not, I go to bed at nine o’ clock. And when I say “I’m unashamed,” I use the phrase in a manner intended to portray myself as a dashing, devil-may-care sort who does edgy, reckless things like go to bed at the same time as 70 year-olds and grade school children with chicken pox and does not care one whit what you think about it, but actually does, in fact, care a few whits what you think about it.
Nevertheless, air travel respects nobody’s personal space, sanitation standards, or basic dignity, let alone their sleep schedule. So I touch down in Morocco after not sleeping at all on an eleven hour flight from San Salvador to Madrid, nor during a layover that exists outside of time in my recollection but that chewed up all daylight hours and a few dark hours too, nor again on an allegedly two hour flight from Spain that somehow lasted two years.
I'm here to see Susu, my curious, scholarly daughter. She's been in Morocco for three months on a study abroad. I've never been here before. My phone finds no service and the ATM denies me Moroccoan dirhams. But my rusty Arabic — slurred with what I estimate is a French-ish accent — secures me a credit card-accepting taxi driver with a scarf wrapped around his head to ward off the chill of the deep November night. On the way into town, beneath streetlights and stars, I think how the middle of the night is like a dream whether you’re sleeping or not.
Ifrane, Morocco; November 2024
The next morning I catch a train from Casablanca to Rabat, where I meet my daughter in the sunshine. She steps out of the tired-looking building where her homestay family lives, looking as alive as a daydream. So much life vibrating between her bones that I can hear her humming like a power line.
Susu was seven months old when she rode my and Shannon’s shoulders to Syria for my own field study. That was my first trip overseas. I haven’t been anywhere without Susu. Not really. There have been work trips, side trips, diversions. But once you create a child, you never again go anywhere without carrying them in your arms, or on your shoulders, or in your head or in your heart. It’s a commitment but not a burden. It’s the kind of weight you want to carry, the kind that makes it worth it to weigh anything at all.
Susu’s study abroad group rides a bus into the low foothills of the Atlas mountains to a place called Ifrane. Her professor invites me along. We bounce in a bus past citrus orchards and dusty lots and ghost tails of fog. I sit next to Susu, listening to her tell me the future, like a pretty young prophetess. The prophetess of her own tomorrow. Her friends are making human noise all around us. You can feel it even more than you can hear it. It feels like kinetic energy, the crackle in the air the instant before a lightning strike. The essence of youth is the wonder that something is happening right now, and still more is going to happen. The tragedy of age is that we let the wonder decay into perfunctory acknowledgment of each moment. To the aged and jaded, each moment is, at best, expected. At worst, dreaded.
Tangier, Morocco; November 2024
Now I’m on a train rolling north, away from Rabat. I’ll catch a plane tomorrow out of Tangiers. Today though, I am here in this train beside the sea, and the sky is gray paper with blue holes. It rained a half hour ago, a short sob that soaked the sidewalks, the concrete, the crabgrass. The sky has already forgotten the water, but the earth will remember it for a long time. As I move northward, I watch the map on my phone. There’s a little icon with Susu’s picture on it, marking the place she’s at. The pulsing blue dot attached to my location is moving away from her. I’m leaving again. I have to leave again. This motion that makes my life what it is has a cost. The cost is blue holes in my red heart.
