Moroccans are very curious beings.
Topics including religion, ethnicity, age, relationship status, family details,
etc. are things people commonly talk and ask freely about here. Some of these
subjects are not usual conversation starters in America, some even to the point
of being taboo. At first, I couldn’t help but feel as if I was being
interrogated every day and it was hard to judge who to tell what to. Taxi
drivers, store keepers, teachers, students, and family members alike are all
people I run into on a daily basis who are determined to find out my story.
The routine
usually goes like this:
1) The Curious Citizen (CC) realizes I
don’t speak Darija and my French accent is awful; therefore, I am an English
speaker. 2) The next
question he or she tries to answer is British or American? Usually CC
can pick out my American accent and that answers that. 3) Now for my skin color, where can a girl with tanner
skin and black hair (thanks to an intense henna session a month ago) be
from? Taking all my physical characteristics into consideration, CC derives
a couple of possibilities to explain my existence: either I am American-Indian (not Native
American), American-Pakistani, or of some Moroccan decent and I am here to
learn my native tongue since my parents never taught it to me. 4) At this point, I usually
answer, “American,” but that almost never flies with CC. 5) He or she is now unsatisfied
and wants to know why I look and talk the way I do and “American” just doesn’t exactly
explain any of that. 6) Here, I
start to talk about where my parents and all are from (except for the creepy
non-stop-look-in-the-rear-view-mirror taxi drivers) of my heritage and that
either just finished our conversation or it triggered more questions. 7) Follow-up questions will now
include Why are you here?, Are you a Muslim?, You are not married, are you?.
8) And this is when I try
to dodge and weave anything that may be on the too personal side.
Sometimes these conversations are all
in English or French or Arabic or a little bit of everything. Misinterpreting
things or just not understanding one another happens a lot, but it’s just one
more thing I feel like I’ve gotten used to. A good amount of these interactions
have been positive experiences for me. It’s refreshing to talk to people who
are genuinely interested in who I am and what brought me to Morocco. But there have
also been those times when I feel as though I’m being judged or mocked and the
feeling that I was being too nice or too honest. I guess living here for five
months already has made me accustomed to people being curious about me and in
most cases I know how to react. Now I am just worried that I will go back to
America wanting to know people’s origins and life stories at the get-go.
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