My Decision in Religion by Negina

As I sit up here on the roof of my Moroccan home, I look out into the night view of Marrakesh. I count eight mosques in the distance; I think that's more than the entire state of Oregon. The religion here is so powerful and the passion it sparks in its society has been really exciting for me to witness. As an Afghan-American, I grew up in a Muslim home; however, I had never seriously considered praying five times on a daily basis or wearing a hijab, until I came here. My host family is on the conservative side and I cannot help but look into the idea of me becoming more of a practicing Muslim for while I am here and for once I return back to America.

          This opportunity of living in an Islamic nation for such a long period of time has given me the chance to really get in touch with the religion. I sometimes wake up to the “Adhan,” or call to prayer, from the mosque a few blocks down from my house. I usually come home to one of my family members praying in the living room. I constantly hear my host mom preparing the day's food to Qur'an verses playing in the background. And every day, I get to look into peoples' lives here and learn about their different connections to Allah. I am so appreciative of the fact that I can walk over to the mosque whenever I feel like it, or that I can turn on the TV and find Qur'an recitation channels with English translations running on the bottom of the screen. Not that I have taken full advantage of all these resources around me; however, I have the utmost intentions to do so for the rest of my time here. I feel as though I have the support of not only my family back in Eugene, Oregon, but also the encouragement of an entire nation to find the religion within myself.

           While I have been on this religious exploration, I have experienced countless highs, but also several scarring lows. A few months ago, I felt an incredible amount of pressure and stress to become a "good" Muslim. In comparison to people in my Moroccan family and to the majority of society here, I didn't feel right to consider myself one of them. I felt that since I do not do what they do or act the way they do, then I am not a true Muslim. I know that a lot of the people I meet here, probably including members of my host family as well, judge my definition of Islam. Sometimes it is difficult to cope with the fact that I came from a place where most people considered me to be on the religious and conservative side and then I come here, where I seem like one of the least religious people.

           I have three months left here and two pages worth of items left to do on my “Marrakesh Bucketlist.” Many of my goals pertain to my personal relationship to Islam. Items include finishing the entire Qur'an translated into English, memorizing the art of prayer, becoming familiar with the basics to recitation, understanding the history and the meaning of the religion, and to finally be on the road to understanding what I believe and why I believe it. I feel like I am at that point in my life where I should choose for myself what I believe in and without educating myself, it is almost impossible to know what is out there. I know that not all of my questions will be answered once April twenty third comes around, but I want to leave Morocco with an adequate idea of my own faith in Islam. 

احبها الحفلة!!

            Beep Beep! Mopeds squeak by on the sides and cars wish they could pass. Bang Bang the heel of the passengers hand begging to be let off at the correct stop. Squeak of the breaks barely managing to pull the careening bus safely to its stop. Of course at major hours, the bus jams up to mere standing space and humidity of human bodies fogs the windows. But unlike the impersonal public transportation of the United States, Moroccan buses are a social experience unlike any other. I love riding the bus, although everyone seems surprised to hear that I would choose the dirty, crowded, slow bus over a taxi any day. On a regular basis, I see heartwarming acts of kindness and interesting human interactions that rarely catch my eye anywhere else. 

            In general I am usually completely alone while surrounded by a huge number of people. But, on the bus, I usually connect to people with little verbal communication. 

Commonly, young people and men give up their seats to elders, women with children, and the sick. They quickly help people who are struggling to board or get off the bus, greet people that they know, and hold back people when there is going to be a fight. 

            One morning, I rode the bus into school, later than usually. I sat next to a grandmother and her 2 year old granddaughter. The baby was so cute and she kept looking at me so I made faces at her and said "Salam". Her grandmother kept indicating to me and saying "Zweena" and I asked what her name was and spoke with her in my very limited darija. The grandmother and I bonded over the cute little girl and when it was time for me to get off the bus, little Khadija kissed me on the cheek. In the United States I didn't think anyone would let a stranger play with their child or have their kid kiss a stranger but I felt a great happiness from the whole experience. 

            I was riding the bus home one day and I was standing by the door of the bus. When it stops, the door opens inwards along the sides. Accidentally, I had my backpack hanging over in the path of the door and when it opened I was shoved to the side. Once I had moved, I noticed a young man who was laughing at me. I smiled about it and was a little embarrassed. But then, he came to his stop and the bus didn't stop so he started pushing the red "stop" buttons on the handrails. Of course, that didn't stop the bus but he kept trying. I knew what he was supposed to do because bus protocol is to slap your hand against the wall above the door and yell a little bit and the driver will open the door. It was my turn to laugh at him. Then people started telling him what he was supposed to do and everyone around started hitting the door until it eventually opened. 

            I was waiting for the bus the other day with my giant backpack. It was rather late at night and the man next to me started talking to me. That's not unusual but in most cases it's safest to ignore any advance. Ignoring people makes me sad because I wish that I knew everyone had good intentions. However, I paid attention to what he was saying and saw that he wasn't acting creepy and he just warned me that I should hold my backpack in front so that no one stole anything. When the bus finally came, everyone piled up to climb onboard. A young girl indicated that I could go in front of her and I said, "No, it's fine. You go" and we went back and forth before she went in and said, "Thank You". We stood on the crowded bus, pushed up against each other for a long while and we just acknowledged each other and spoke a little but I felt very comfortable around her. 

            Last week, I was going to ride the bus with some of my Moroccan friends. Usually, when the bus comes and the rush for the doors begins, no one steps back to hesitate and pay attention to others. However, the boys I was with saw an elderly man in a wheelchair, accompanied by his frail wife. They helped carry him in through the backdoors so he did not have to stand and climb the stairs. When we reached his stop, without speaking agreement, they both headed for the doors and risked being left behind to assist him to the safety of the sidewalk. 

            Yesterday, I got on the bus and a young girl was standing by the window, the most advantageous position because you are supported from behind and the side. When an elderly woman got on, the young girl asked her to take over the more comfortable spot. They started talking and asking each other the typical greetings of "la bes aleik?" "la bes". I could understand some of there conversation and smiled at them. The older woman said she couldn't sit in the empty seat because it faced backwards. Then, suddenly, some men in the back started yelling. One of them was possibly mentally ill and yelling at a man he didn't know. The man being screamed at was getting frustrated and tried to retaliate and a number of other men on the bus jumped in and held both men back, speaking words of reassurance in their ears. 

            In Morocco, the bus is not solely a capsule with individuals spaced out, listening to iPods, and pretending that they are the only one's on the bus. Instead, it is a living and interconnected environment where people see familiar faces, help out those who need it, and intervene in issues in which they have no personal interest. احبها الحفلة.

Discussion Club

By. Kaylah Cruz-Herrera

The Center for Language and Culture, the school that all NSLI-Y students attend, holds different clubs every term. These clubs are designed to help Moroccan students practice their English in a creative way. They are also great for cultural dialogue.
Last semester, NSLI-Y students hosted Basketball Club and Chinese Club. This semester, Hamza, our program director, approached me about hosting Discussion Club. Discussion Club is a time when Moroccan students can talk and, sometimes, argue about a variety of topics. I agreed to host the club with Oumayma, a CLC student who majors in English at the university in Marrakesh.
The first meeting was fun, but uneventful. Since Oumayma and I had only announced the club two days before, only five CLC students attended. In the meeting, we talked about friendship and what it meant to us. The second meeting was another story.
Oumayma and I had wanted to discuss a more controversial topic: Spinsterhood. We had designed the club to start with a general discussion about marriage, and afterwards we would discuss women who choose not to get married. On the day of the second Discussion Club, the room filled quickly. We had originally arranged the chairs in a circle. So, as more people came, the circle kept growing until it reached the door. We ran out of chairs, so Oumayma and I ended up having to stand throughout the meeting. 
Oumayma and I wanted to make sure that everyone in attendance had a chance to speak, so it’s not surprising that we never got off the topic of marriage. But, what was surprising was that we didn’t need to get off of the subject. Marriage was a very complicated issue for all of the participants. Morocco does not have the same ethnic and religious diversity as the United States, but that doesn’t mean that Moroccans aren’t divided on certain issues. In the meeting, we discussed the qualities of a good partner, love, independence, family responsibility, Westernization, and more. As the club’s leaders, Oumayma and I weren’t challenged at keeping the discussion interesting and full- the students themselves did that.
I was very happy to have learned more about Moroccans and their culture and I look forward to Discussion Club every Saturday.

Grammar! by SB

            Though there are, by far, too many things to explain about Modern Standard Arabic's grammatical rules, I want to discuss what I, personally, have recently learned.
It's called al-i3raab (the three represents a sort of gagging noise) and it's relatively simple, once you've practiced it a few times. To give you some background, pronouncing every sound in a word is only for being extremely formal. These rules are mostly used in the Holy Qu'ran and in poems.
             To begin, there are three main cases of al-i3raab. The first, called al-ism al-majroor, is the case where you pronounce the end of  words with an "ee" sound. This happens when you have "an object (and its modifiers) of a preposition, or in a possessive relationship of one noun to another in an iDaafa (*something* of *something*) except the first of the two words" (Al-Kitaab fii Ta3allum al-3Arabiyya).
             This case is awesome because it's really easy to identify. When ever you see a preposition, the next word and its modifiers are pronounced with an "ee" sound called kasra. Or, if the word is indefinite, it takes an "een" sound.
             The next case is al-ism al-marfoo3. The word/s proceeding either a subject in a sentence that starts with a verb or the subject or predicate in a sentence that starts with a noun (Al-Kitaab fii Ta3allum al-3Arabiyya). This case is less seeable because you have to look at the sentence structure. The sound that follows is "oo" or, for indefinite "oon" called damma.
The final case is called al-ism al-monsoob. It is either preceded by "a direct object of sentence that starts with a verb or an adverb" which makes it relatively easy to spot. Also, al-ism al-majroor overrides this iDaafa and any prepositional phrase it might contradict (Al-Kitaab fii Ta3allum al-3Arabiyya). The vowel sound that follows is that of "ah" or, for indefinite, "ah-n" and is called fatHa.
             I hope this isn't all too difficult to follow! I love it and it makes Arabic make so much more sense to me!
             For example, in class, my classmates and I read out our homework answers to our teacher. As we start in, we awkwardly stumble across words and phrases, not knowing how we're supposed to pronounce the ends of words. It was not until now that we learned the rules. After months of feeling horrible about our pronunciation, wondering if we missed something in the book from before that might have explained these kinds of things, it all became clear.
             Class has become such a breeze. In the beginning, we were often frustrated with our oral comprehension. There are lots of examples of times when one word, when correctly pronounced, sounds so similar to another word, which caused us all great confusion. For example, "ibna" means daughter; "ibnatayn" means two daughters. When correctly pronounced, "ibna" becomes "ibnatan" if it's indefinite (like if they're somebody else's two daughters). So, with just a slight pronunciation difference ("tayn" verses "tan"), it sounds like he's saying two daughters instead of one. Naturally, in the beginning, I thought that was what he was saying. It would cause me minor errors in my oral comprehension that were frustrating.
             So that's why al-i3rab is so awesome!
             Hope you learned something!

Q&A; French & Arabic by Sarah

In the next couple of blogs, we'll be answering questions posted on Exchanges Connect (http://connect.state.gov/group/nsliy/forum/topics/morocco-q-a?commentId=2118480%3AComment%3A766290&xg_source=msg_com_gr_forum). Bismillah...

QUESTION:

Is your main focus Arabic or an even mix of that and French? --orange rhubarb

I was also wondering about the French; I speak French, and was wondering if that's as widely spoke as Arabic there, or if you felt like it was getting in the way of learning Arabic? - Diana

ANSWER:

                The NSLI-Y program focuses solely on Arabic, but if you want to improve your French while you’re here, it’s a great opportunity.   

                The vast majority of people here in Marrakech speak Darija (Moroccan Arabic) as their first language. Most people you meet will also have learned Fusha (classical Arabic—the language you’ll study) and French, with more or less proficiency and comfort. It varies a lot; my host mom, for example, speaks lovely Fusha, but only a bit of French. But I’ve met several people who say their French is better than their Fusha.  In my experience, quite a few people in Marrakech speak English, and a handful speaks Spanish.

As a white foreigner, I am usually addressed first in French. People are quite excited to find out that I study Arabic, but many are shy about their Fusha, which can make it hard to practice. For example, today we visited my host aunt. She talked to me me in Darija, and I answered in Fusha. When I couldn’t understand her Darija (it’s difficult since I don’t study it formally), my host dad translated into Fusha for me. Another time, I visited a friend of my host mom’s. Even though we explained that I didn’t know French, her automatic behavior was to talk to me in French. She would turn to me, begin a sentence in French, and then realize her mistake and switch to Arabic, time and time again.

Does French get in the way of learning Arabic? I’m sure it can, but I would worry more about English getting in the way. Because of the way the program is set up, the majority of people you meet will speak English. We study at a language center which primarily teaches English to Moroccans, and the host families all have at least one member studying there. The program is really terrific, and you’ll learn a lot (in sha allah) but it’s a far cry from immersion in Arabic. If you want to speak a lot Arabic outside the classroom, you’ll have to be pretty insistent—you’ll rarely be forced. I don’t speak French, so that hasn’t been a problem for me, but English certainly has. But if you’re clear about your language preferences, it should be fine. Just say, “I really want to learn Arabic, so I prefer that we speak it,” or something like that, and people are usually excited to help you.

I hope that was helpful; feel free to ask for any clarification. :)