446
M ARK MIRSKY
restaurant off the square I met some Dutch girls in the company of one
boy. Hard as I tried I could not inveigle myself into their evening but
they did tell me about a market in Rissani which I could reach by bus
and taxi. I tried to persuade them to go with me but the boy had almost
fainted from the heat on his way back the day before.
An American girl with frazzled blond hair bursts into the restau–
rant. A Moroccan boy is with her but instead of sitting down he turns
around and rushes out the door. I stare. A few minutes later an excited
throng of young Moroccan boys dressed in hip, modish clothes gathers
in the doorway all talking furiously, pointing at her. The boy I saw
with her before, detaches himself from the group and sits down.
"What's happening, man?" she asks.
Later, coming back to my hotel, after wandering through Ksar es
Souk in the dark, I find her at the door with a toothbrush in hand,
surrounded by the same knot of admirers. As I pass through the lintels
I can't avoid a long curious look. She gazes back with glassy eyes,
"Something wrong?"
"No, no," I mutter, shaking my head.
"Laughter covers all," that note is scribbled at the bottom of a
letter ,postmarked August 25th, that has just arrived from a friend last
seen in the back of a truck between jostling bullocks, rams, goats, veiled
daughters of his vill<;lge, a watermelon (homecoming gift) on his
shoulder, waving goodbye as my taxi diverged from his lorry headed
into deeper reaches of the Sahara.
Seeking directions to Rissani in the market place of Ksar el Souk, I
found myself in the midst of English speaking Berbers. They were rid–
ing on to Erfoud, students at the end of a school term, and boarding
the bus I found myself in the midst of questions about America. "And
how do they treat Blacks in America?" boomed behind my ear. I turned
around to face a laughing deep ebony next to companions olive and
nut brown. "Not so good, eh?"
I smiled . "How do they treat them here?" Sly glances among his
fe ll ow Berbers, contradictory answers, babbling among themselves in
Arabic, French, Berber, and we started talking about Blacks in Amer–
ica, progress, discrimination. When I came to mixed marriages, the
number of white girls who married blacks in the U. S., he seemed
astonished .
It
was difficult to get a clear sense of color lines in Morocco.
