my moroccan friend

During the day of my last post I had a very strange encounter with a young moroccan in a sandwich shop. He started talking to me in semi-understandable english and invited me to hang out at his house later. I thought it was a scam or something and told him maybe, but when I returned to my hotel room the next morning there was a mysterious piece of paper with a phone number and a name waiting for me. I had no idea what was going on, I kind of suspected it was some kind of spy thing and I was about to be asked to go on a mission to defeat terrorism or something, but I called it and, after a lot of confused arabic on their end and me repeating the name written on the paper, I finally got to talk to my sandwich friend.

I had nothing to do (and was kind of curious) so i met up with him and two of his friends infront of the big mosque in the centre of town. One of his friends, Achmed, was kind of weird and wearing a suit that was too big for him, and the other guy, whose name I cannot now remember, introduced himself to me as having been a cook in a moroccan restaurant in fez. These guys were all from Fez and occasionally had some sort of beef with the locals because in Morocco the north hates the south. I asked if there were arabic rappers representing both areas but the guys didn't understand me.

We went back to their house which wasn't too far away, and my main friend Jalalie put on a terrible american movie to make me feel comfortable in his home. I don't know the name or any of the actors, but it was about this rich couple who went on a fishing cruise in the carribean but the husband was rude to the mexican cabin boy (or first mate, it wasn't clear), so the mexican guy might have burned down the boat on purpose (or he might not have, that was also not clear) to get revenge. Then the mexican guy and the rich wife ended up washed up on the beach together and they thought everyone else was dead but then the husband turns up and things get weird because the mexican guy is totally jealous (there was a scene where the americans were doin' it and the mexican guy was listening through the thin boat wall with a pained expression on his face) and so nothing goes right and the woman leaves her husband for the mexican, but then her husband finds a boat and seems to repair it so the woman and the mexican steal the boat but it starts leaking and somehow the woman KNOWS that her husband rigged it to sink or something. The husband then kills the mexican, but a year later help comes and only rescues the woman because the husband is off fishing for both of them and the woman steals his lighter. There was also a bizarre voodoo sublot/series of unrelated cutscenes that might have helped the rich guy kill the mexican (I was explaining the movie to my friends but even I had trouble with this part). It was weird because every time there was nudity (frequently) I'd start laughing my face off because it was so incredibly corny but the people I was with would get super embarassed and fast forward. Who were they trying to fool?

After that they started showing me their empty liquor bottles and pictures of the three of them getting drunk in that house like that would impress the hell out of me because they are totally wild party badasses, but it just made me think I was hanging out with the biggest dorks in Morocco.

Jalalie would also tell me all these bullshit stories about talking his way out of trouble with the police and having family all over europe, and then he started talking about his Japanese girlfriend. I didn't believe any of it, but he told me about the problems they were having and showed me text messages they'd sent (both in terrible english, I have no idea why they didn't pick an easier language), and then videos and pictures of them hanging out. After this I really started to feel sad for the little guy and I offered to help him write a love letter to his girlfriend. I think it was a pretty good letter, and I was very happy to do it because he seemed like a very nice dork and i didn't buy carbon offsets for any of my flights so this was the least I could do.

He (or the cook friend) then made a chicken tajine (which is like a stew and usually pretty good) and we mowed down. It was pretty great. After that we played this weird card game that was like crazy 8s, except the suits were Swords, Vegetables, Pies, and Weird Shield Things, while listening to moroccan and algerian music.

The next day I bumped into him at the same sandwich shop and he invited me to hang again. I had some shopping to do and a local is always good for telling me when i'm being cheated (which is always) so i invited him to come along. I was having pretty decent success and even bought a blanket, although i suspect Jalalie or his family profited from my purchase in some way, but I can't prove it. After that we went and hung out at his house with the same friends.

We were watching this bizarre bollywood movie that was a rip off the matrix, james bond, and crouching tiger/hidden dragon but was kind of a comedy about a rich uncle who couldn't decide which nephew to give his money to when he died. Moroccan people love indian movies. I noticed that the empty liquor bottles were still displayed artfully on top of his DVD player so everyone could see they were dealing with a wild child party boy or something and not a strait laced muslim school boy.

We hung out for a long time, but it got really weird because Jalalie's friends started whispering shit to him and then they started asking me strange questions about my job and how much money I make. They were surprised at how little I earn (I know, Moroccans think I'm poor -or maybe they don't and it was just an act, you can never be sure) and started being really shady about how much I'd like to earn and stuff without telling me what kind of work I'd be doing. Jalalie even tried to get me to shake his hand to making 20 000Dirhams ($2400ish) a month while avoiding my questions about what the job was. They had wanted me to drink with them and were really dissapointed that I wouldn't and now I knew why - they wanted to trick me somehow!!!

Eventually they came out and told me that I could make 20 000 dirhams a month plus free room and board if I would work for them as a carpet salesman. Moroccans have the most annoying sense of humour so I thought for sure he was messing with me and I started laughing, but they all got kind of offended and demanded to know why I thought selling carpets was not an honourable profession. I couldn't tell them that I didn't believe in the product and couldn't imagine staying in morocco for a long time and working in a dusty ass carpet shop trying to trick english speaking retards into dropping $150 on a small rug, and then no doubt being guilted into buying lots of the product so i could "resell it in canada" (which has been a big theme with carpet salesmen here) and probably being asked to help smuggle drugs or people into europe. They pestered me for like half an hour and only stopped when I told them I wanted to follow my dreams in canada or something. This worked because Moroccan education in english generally involves learning lots of rhymes (wine makes you fine but whisky makes you frisky) and retarded idioms, like "follow your dream."

After that it was kind of awkward and I wanted to leave, but I had already paid money for half the tajine so it was either maintain my sanity or lose my money. I've lost enough money in this country. I ate and it was good, but the next day I had terrible food poisoning. Do I think they did it on purpose because I turned down their scam? Not with any certainty, but we haven't talked since.