Houssam Boudaghia | The Other Moroccans

An old man is sitting quietly next to me. His thin body feels so delicate against the side of my arm. In his eyes, I see a thousand stories, most of them untold.

We are both listening to the Taxi driver complain about the weather, the government, the roads, the other drivers, the cost of living, foreign governments, our culture, and more. “Those officials aren’t doing anything for us,” he says, referring to the politicians. “They sleep in their fancy chairs for years, receive their hefty salaries, and enjoy a lifelong retirement plan. Everything is expensive. France still owns more than half of the country’s assets, and Moroccan stubbornness is unmatchable.” But of course, none of the people in the taxi is stubborn. He’s not talking about us. He’s talking about the other Moroccans.

We let the taxi driver continue his rant because it’s one of the few rights some people still have in this world. I stare out the window at the trees, the fields, the roads, and the birds flying away, and think of the trash. No one likes trash. Why is it everywhere? Is it because of the politicians, foreign governments, or the other Moroccans? I wonder. The passengers refuse to engage with the taxi driver. They just nod in agreement. The old man next to me is calm. It almost feels like he can’t hear him talk. His bushy eyebrows hide most of his eyes. A mix of confusion and disinterest is all I get from his occasional scanning of the taxi interior. Sometimes, he takes out a tissue and coughs into it. His dark brown Djellaba smells of the natural odor of his old, decaying body. Its hood is on his head. It covers some parts of his face. I have my earphones hanging over my neck, but why would I listen to music when I can listen to the predictable political rant of the taxi driver?

I like this old man. He reminds me of something I have never known. He reminds me of something I wish I knew. Wrinkles draw a map on his face for others to find his sunken eyes. Out of all the other passengers, he is the most alert. I am squeezed with him in the back of this old blue Mercedes-Benz. Who would have thought it would be carrying five passengers somewhere in northern Morocco more than thirty years after it was made? Certainly not the people who created it.

The taxi driver moves his head now and then to talk to the person next to him as he speeds across the national road. He speeds as if the old car isn’t going to collapse at any point. I beg him in my mind to stay focused on the road. He is wearing a red cap that has lost its color to the sun that’s always creeping through the window. The passenger in the front seat is wearing black sunglasses. His face is completely inaccessible. The sun is blazing. When the road curves, my face is often struck with its rays piercing through my eyes. I move my face uncomfortably to the other side, squeezing my facial expressions until the car moves away. This is how I dance with the sun. If only I had sunglasses like his, but I don’t enjoy wearing them. I prefer to confront the world with my eyes visible to the rest of the people.

The old man is still staring out the window. Restful, or perhaps like me, enjoying the other ride in his train of thought.

“Which road do you like better? The new one or the old one?” Asks the man with the glasses in the front seat, out of nowhere, or perhaps in connection to something I missed.

“This new one is a lot faster, more practical,” the driver says. Then, he stops for a moment. “I have driven on the other road for fifteen years,” he finally adds, and a certain discomfort immediately invades his eyes. I can see them in the mirror. “It has its good things,” he concludes.

“This car,” the driver continues, now bragging with a smirk on his face, “has been driven on the old road for so long. She could make the trip on her own.”

“I remember the steep, winding roads and sudden turns. Everyone used to complain about them,” the passenger points out. I cannot tell whether he is annoyed, frustrated, or just curious–I can’t see his eyes.

“I didn’t!” Says the driver firmly. “The curves kept the drivers alert.”

“Did they?” Asks the passenger.

I watch them as they consider each other’s points. Is the old road better than the new one? For me, the new one is better. The old one took longer to take me home. Without mentioning the accidents that the man with the glasses is alluding to. The driver and the passenger stare at each other. The driver looks away. He is most likely thinking of his memories. The villages he used to drive through. The ones he has no reason to visit anymore. The friends he made in each of them. The gas stations. The breakfast place where he used to stop every morning. The cafe where he used to get his afternoon dose to keep him going. The soccer matches he sacrificed his work time to watch for a chance to share pure joy with his friends upon their team winning. The mosque where he used to pray and listen to the Friday sermon. The people he carried back home free of charge because they had no money. The spiritual satisfaction he felt after doing that. The fellow driver who passed away in an accident, and the few times he almost did.

He takes a deep breath. I can see the heaviness of the topic displayed in his mournful looks. “They were dangerous. You’re right,” he admits, “and the new one is safer.” He hesitates and then spits it out; “But where’s the fun in that?” The passenger with the glasses keeps stealing looks at him. His eyes are revealed a little now that the sun is shining on them. The driver is waiting for a reaction, his eyes fixed on the passenger’s glasses. When he looks back at the road, he finds himself so close to hitting a truck. He dodges it swiftly and pushes his arm outside the window, letting out a complaining scream as if this wasn’t his fault. We all let out a sigh of relief like a chorus of accident survivors. The passenger with the glasses now chuckles. The driver does the same. He keeps his eyes fixed on the road, tasting the irony as they awkwardly abandon the conversation.

While everyone is still processing what just happened, I try to find a more comfortable position. The old man isn’t moving. He sits like a mountain. Unshakable. I am annoyed at the space he isn’t allowing me, although I know I shouldn’t be. It’s too trivial for me to care. Maybe it’s the sun on my face that’s bothering me. There’s also a woman on my other side. I am self-conscious about how our bodies touch, as I know she is as well. My movement is limited. The old man isn’t cooperative. So, I sit awkwardly, trying to narrow my shoulders at times and push my body forward at others. I assume the girl sitting next to her is her daughter. She is consumed by her phone while her mother’s eyes have been staring at the same spot for a long time. Perhaps the back of this car wasn’t meant to be shared by four people. The taxi driver is still speeding even after the disaster that almost happened to us.

Now fed up, the woman chooses to speak up, “Take it easy. We’re not in a hurry!” she says, urging the driver to slow down.

“There’s nothing to worry about, sister. I know this road like the back of my hand,” he responds.

“Well, the sea only takes the experienced swimmers,” she says back bitterly while looking away. Her worries are shared by everybody else, except for the old man, who doesn’t seem to care about the speed or anything but counting the trees.

The taxi driver ignores her, but slows down eventually. The car is making loud motor noises. They’re mixed with the sound of the wind in an oddly pleasurable cacophony. My eyelids are heavy. The sounds make up the ideal background for a pleasurable but disorienting accidental evening nap. I drift away into illogical thoughts. I see people walking in a hurry. I am at my parents’ house. I walk out of my room to find myself at university. The shop owner in my neighborhood is giving a lecture about the economy of the country. My thoughts get weirder and my eyelids heavier until I hear something so strange it startles me.

The old man lets out a sudden, alarming moan.

“What is it? Are you okay, sir?” the driver asks, peeping at us from the front mirror. He looks as worried as everybody else. I keep looking at the old man, his face is glued to the side window.

“Is this the sea?!” asks the old man in a muted, terrified voice without moving his eyes from the vast open blue space in front of us.

“Yes, sir. That is the sea,” answers the taxi driver, still confused about the question. The young girl stops looking at her phone. Alarmed by the noise the old man made, she is waiting for the mystery to unravel. We all wait for him to explain his shock. His mouth is wide open. The consecutive follow-up questions from the taxi driver are probably muted to him because he doesn’t seem to flinch. His eyes, no longer sunken in his face, express huge fascination. He moves his face to look at us as though he is about to explain, but then turns back to look at the sea. Just as we almost lose hope of hearing the reason behind his distress, pleasure, or whatever caused his moans, he drops the words: “I have never seen it before.”

For a moment, we all sit in silence, processing the idea. The eighty-year-old-looking man has never seen the sea before. There is a certain sorrow mixed with excitement floating within the taxi. The man with the glasses presses his lips together, showing his second emotion of the day. Perhaps he feels pitiful.

“I’ve heard about it,” the old man says, shattering the silence. “I just never thought I’d ever see it.” The shocked eyes slowly diverge to ecstasy as his lips curve, forming a wide, excited smile. A couple of tears fall down his face, racing through his wrinkles, finally meeting his right cheek. The young girl puts her phone away. Unlike us, she cannot hide how moved she is. She stares at him with endearing eyes, as though he is a father, a neighbor, someone close, and not just a random passenger who happened to be traveling to the same place as her. She exchanges looks with her mom. They are communicating with their eyes as mothers and daughters often do.

“It’s so green!” the old man says, and his words take me aback. Wait a minute. Confused, I try to find similar reactions in the faces of the passengers. The taxi driver lets out a sympathetic laugh. “You mean blue!” he replies and explains, “In some villages, especially the ones far away, people call blue green. and green, blue. It’s confusing.” We all laugh.

The woman next to me keeps speaking to her daughter in a hushed, low voice. They are giggling. The man with the glasses removes them to get a better look at the sea without the heavy dark filter muting its colors. His eyes are green or blue, depending on the village, I mean, the lighting.

The old man has never seen the sea, and I have never seen it the way I am looking at it at the moment. It’s majestic. Incomprehensible. It’s a cosmic miracle. I struggle to remember the first time I saw it. The damn memory has been completely obliterated from my mind. How can I forget something as important as this? Seeing it for the first time in old age now feels more like a blessing than a curse. It’s a privilege.

“Now that you have seen the sea. What are you going to do? Would you like to cross to the other side?” the driver jokes, winking at the passenger next to him.

The old man looks at the driver, confused, and then turns back to look at the sea. “Why would I do that?” he says, still focused on the marvelous view.

“You could live in Europe, make good money, and travel around,” the driver says, smiling; “And even marry a beautiful blond woman. Who knows?” he adds jokingly.

“They used to come to our villages asking for money,” replies the old man calmly. “We have everything we need, right here.”

“The tables turned, and the world has changed,” responds the man with the glasses.

“The world is the same,” the old man says firmly, almost with a touch of anger in his thick countryside accent, which preserved something from the past that we all seem to have forgotten. It makes his words sound full of wisdom: “We are the ones that change.” He looks away, and the smile on the driver’s face slowly fades away as he continues, “We complain more than we work. We used to wake up in the morning and plow our land and eat what comes out of it, but now my sons want to sell it to some strangers and move to the city.” He sighs deeply, letting us into his very soul. “But the strangers don’t know anything about the land. They can’t listen to its needs,” he adds, “and we don’t know the city, we can’t handle its pace.”

“There’s nothing left in the villages. There used to be a time when we could make a good living, but now it’s different,” the woman says with her arm around her daughter now.

“Excuse me,” the old man says, moving his head towards her. He looks as though he just found out she is there. He makes her repeat her words. “So I heard,” he says after a moment of reflection. “People say there’s nothing left in there, but then, why…why do these strangers want to buy it from us?”

Everyone seems perplexed by his question. I feel dwarfed by his words.

“There will always be nothing left in our villages,” he says. “Not until we sell everything away. Then, roads, hospitals, and schools will appear. The same people telling us that there’s nothing there are the ones who are buying the land.” He shakes his head in disappointment.

The cars on the road slow down dramatically. We are now stuck in traffic. We keep moving slowly until we see a car upside down on the road. “God be merciful,” says the taxi driver. We all look out of the windows. We exchange looks, and without having to speak, we all share the thought: it could have been us. It just wasn’t our day. We continue our way in silence, meditating on the old man’s final words.

And it immediately hits me–we are the other Moroccans, the stubborn ones who love to complain, and now I am not sure how to answer the question anymore. What is better? Is it the old road or the new one?

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Image: ChatGPT remixed