I’d like to tell you where I’m going soon, but I’m not sure I can find the words. Sure, I could tell you that it’s Marrakech, but that doesn’t give us much. I could add that my mother was born and bred there, and I still have relatives living in the city, but that wouldn’t do us a lot of good either.
I suppose I could explain that I’ve spent a lot of time in Marrakech, with my first stay there taking place before I was even a year old. My brother and I spent a number of our summers in Morocco, and some of our winter holidays too. We’d usually stay at our grandparents’ house in Semlalia, near the city’s many universities.
The house had an upstairs and a basement, but no ground floor. Instead, large family meals were usually eaten in the garden, under the orange and lemon trees. Near our outdoor living room was a long stone staircase, which my cousins and I would slide down as children, using an upturned plastic table as our vessel. We got caught once and I was punished, seeing as I was the eldest, and should have been the responsible one.
That’s all in the past now but, technically, the house still belongs to us. It’s just that both my grandparents are gone, and so it lies empty. The trees are still there, clinging on, but no longer bear any fruit. The house isn’t where I’ll be staying this time. Instead, my temporary home will be the flat my mother bought for her retirement, and plans to move into in a few years.
In the meantime, my brother and I are welcome to use it as our own. Last year, we held a Ceremony of the Keys, where we both knelt on the kitchen floor and she gently tapped the keys on each of our shoulders, like a sword, before making us stand and solemnly handing them to us. My brother’s girlfriend watched on, amused and slightly bewildered by the odd family she’d decided to join.
We’d all gone to stay together at the flat, to celebrate it being furnished, but this time I’m going alone. In fact, it will be my first time going to Marrakech without any family members. It excites and terrifies me, but mostly leaves me quite confused. That’s what I meant at the beginning: I both know where I’m going, because I can read my plane ticket, yet couldn’t tell you what the place means to me.
In many of the ways that matter, Marrakech is home. I remember going to the Diamant Vert cafe with my grandad before dinner as a child – I’d have a hot chocolate and he’d order a glass of warm milk. We would share some snacks, then guiltily lie when my grandma asked, later, why we weren’t hungry.
I remember being a teenager and rolling my eyes at everyone and everything, and sitting on the windowsill chain-smoking through the warm nights. The call to prayer at dawn would tell me that I really needed to get some sleep.
In other ways, however, I don’t know it at all. I can barely speak the language, and the vagaries of genetics mean that, looks wise, I’m all Normandy and no Mediterranean. I know my way around Semlalia – where to get a good lunch and which cobblers to avoid – but the rest of the city eludes me. For my sins, I really can’t stand couscous, and barely tolerate méchoui.
I’ve spent a lot of time in Morocco but all of it, even as an adult, made me feel like an overly sheltered child. I’d go mad waiting for a lunch that would seemingly never materialise and, often, the only outing of the day would involve accompanying my grandmother to the market. Marrakech is a place I know but not one in which I belong, at least not yet, as I have no idea who I am when I am there.
In this respect, cities aren’t unlike people. The only way to know if you get along with someone is by offering at least some of yourself to them, and seeing how they react. Soon, I will be able to offer some of myself to Marrakech, for the very first time, and it worries me to think about how it will react.
My Arabness, though deeply felt, occasionally seems flimsy, because I don’t look and can’t speak the part. What would happen to my sense of self if I felt out of place in the city where my own mother grew up? If I can’t belong there, where can I? London was once a stranger then I turned it into a home, and France will always be a place I can return to, but there are roots in Marrakech that I would feel lost without.
That I am about to dig underneath the soil, and try to immerse myself in it, feels daunting. That doesn’t mean I’m not happy to be doing it; I hope, from the bottom of my heart, that it goes well. Soon, perhaps, I’ll be able to write to you again, from a place which has ceased to be half a stranger.
