Always nice to be claimed
February 15, 2011
This afternoon I had a nice visit at my host family’s house after what felt like a long time of being away. Life’s been busy lately. I’m really glad to be back home for a good six-week stretch before I’m off again to other adventures.
There were two highlights from today’s tea break. The first came when my host brother Anwar was beating up on me for no apparent reason. In an attempt to get him to stop, my host mom said, “Aamoos at-kat talhindtinu, tiglint,” ”You better not hit my Hinde, the poor girl.” What a nice boost, to be claimed by someone! I love my host mom a lot and it was great to have her call me her “talhindt“ for the first time. Nice. (My local name is Hind/Hinde, and in order to put a possessive ending on it it’s necessary to add tal-Hind-t to it.)
Later on, as Anwar was beating up on me again (he has, it would seem, reached those so-called “Terrible Twos”), my host mom raised up the bamboo stick that she had confiscated from him earlier to back him up with a swipe in the air. Unfortunately, I put my hand out to nudge him away from me as the rod came down… and it broke the wooden ring I was wearing! I’m a little sad because I like the ring a lot and it’s a special souvenir from a trip to Essaouira up the coast. Thankfully I have a couple others, though, so if this one busts for good I can try out another. For now, there’s a fairly clean split through it. I imagine my hand would have been hurting quite a lot if the wood hadn’t caught the blow!
After our eventful tea, I ended up spending the rest of the time before sunset kicking and throwing a ball around with Hussein, the almost-six-year-old. He seems to have mellowed out quite a bit (at least so long as I’m playing some game with him). I enjoyed the exercise.
Finally, just now as I was about to force myself to decide what to eat for dinner, my neighbor knocked on my door to offer me a plate of abaddez, corn couscous. Perfect timing!
Overall a great evening to my first day back home after some long weeks of travel. And tomorrow should be fun too as it’s the day that Moroccans celebrate Muhammad’s birthday.
