It’s early the next morning, and we’ve left heaven and are driving back to Nairobi with John. When we pull into town, at sunset, he joins us for dinner at a roadside diner, drops us off at Pamela’s for one final night, then heads home to care for his mother. We have another flight tomorrow.
I wake up in the middle of the night in Pamela’s bed, disoriented and overwhelmed with sensory overload. Her next-door neighbor’s sewers have flooded her yard, and the stench is so foul, it’s as if we’re wading in Nairobi’s sewage pipes. Kyle opens the front door and finds the yard impenetrable, with all but a few inches of Pamela’s walkway floating with raw sewage. We try, impossibly, to go back to sleep.
Pamela calls the house in the morning: “I am so, so very sorry. Please let me refund you your money.” We insist against it, and leave a small tip on the kitchen counter as an assurance, and as an offering for what chores must inevitably be on her horizon.
John arrives early this morning, and he and Kyle gingerly carry our luggage over their heads to his van, one piece at a time. Tate, Reed, and Finn each take turns aboard Kyle’s back, and I pray none of their shoes touch ground—I imagine the putrid smell on their soles lingering on our long-haul flight up to the top of the continent. I tiptoe across Pamela’s walkway, balancing between the few dry spots left, and pray for mercy for both me and her.
Several hours later, during our layover in Dubai, I receive a text message from the housing service we used to book Pamela’s place, letting me know we’ve received a refund of thirty-five dollars, the cost of one night’s stay at Pamela’s house. A few minutes later, I get a text from Pamela herself: “In case you are wondering, I moved to a new house today. I’m settling in well already, and tomorrow I think I’ll paint the walls purple. It was nice to meet you!”
14
MOROCCO
Casablanca is bone-chilling. From the feel of the moisture of the train cabin’s window, so is Fez. Our friends told us we might want to rethink our original plans of staying in a tent in the Sahara Desert this time of year; they said it’d be so cold we’d scarcely leave the tent. February in the desert is no joke, especially with thin windbreakers and no hats, gloves, or wool socks. We skipped the Sahara idea, and are now heading onward to our friends’ house in central Morocco after our flight into its largest city.
After an eighteen-hour serpentine flight to Morocco from Kenya via Dubai, our old friend Nick looks like a wavering mirage in the desert at the Fez train station tonight. He’s wearing a thick wool coat and winter hat, and we stand shivering in our paltry jackets. Nick graciously lets us sit in silence while he expertly drives us home through the city’s shadowy streets; then we walk through the door and in sleepy stupor, I hug Erin, another old friend. The five of us collapse in their beds, barely knowing where we are and quivering with chilled limbs and fatigue. I slide on my two pairs of socks under pajama pants. Normally I detest wearing socks to bed, but desperation has trumped the luxury of bare feet against sheets. It’s midnight, and we’ve been traveling for twenty-two hours.
I close my eyes, and one minute later, it’s the next morning. I wake to the smell of coffee and home, and sure enough, I pad sleepily downstairs and there’s my friend Erin, slicing fruit for her young boys and waiting on a French press. I haven’t seen her in the flesh in almost a decade. During these six months of travel, we’ve either known absolutely no one or been with friends we’ve made only in the past few years—even when we’re graced with companionship on the road, there are far more days when it’s been just the five of us. Now I am standing in the kitchen of one of my bridesmaids. We’ve known each other since high school, and Nick is an old friend of my brother’s. The four of us have all known one another since before we were married. I hug her again, much longer this time.
Nick and Erin now live in Morocco, and because we lived in Turkey before they moved, our paths haven’t crossed in a long time. They are a sight for sore eyes. They are part of our soil.
We’ve wanted to visit Morocco for years, but this morning we’re infected with a bad case of travel weariness. My muscles ache, my brain feels as if it’s running on autopilot, and the boys wake up happy to be in a regular house with childhood rooms and toys. Erin is a professional cookie decorator and she knows how to knit; Tate has wanted to learn how to do both. Kyle wants to just sit. It’s cold outside, coffee is ready, and Nick has started a fire. We’re in Morocco, but we could be anywhere.
We stay here in their house. All day.
We want to explore Fez, but we want to see old friends more, and so today we do what old friends do: we drink coffee, we drink gin and tonics, we order pizza, we watch questionably downloaded American television, we bake cookies, and we talk. We talk future plans and cultural frustrations, mutual friends and their whereabouts, work glories and woes, and of course, kids. We catch up on life from the past few years. We talk about Texas, how we’re all from there, and how it no longer feels like home.
Tonight, sleep comes like a tsunami. I wake the next morning in the same position that I drifted off to dreamless sleep, and I head back downstairs.
“Good morning! Ready to see Fez?” asks Erin.
I feel much more like myself after a day of lounging and another night of sleep, and for some reason, I woke up this morning hyperaware that in three months, we will be back in the United States. Heck yes, I want to see Morocco with old friends. I want to wander the old streets of Fez.
The Medina of Fez is yet another UNESCO World Heritage Site and was first built in the ninth century by refugees fleeing current Spain. Today the area has a population of more than 150,000 permanent residents, is home to the world’s oldest university, and is the largest car-free urban area on the planet. It is fortified by a five-mile diameter of thick walls that were originally built to withstand attacks, but now they serve as a border between ancient and modern.
We follow Nick and Erin through the medina’s blue-tiled entrance, an archway through the fortified sandstone walls pricked with tiny holes, like shortbread. White satellite dishes dot the tops of the ancient buildings beyond, and Arabic chatter murmurs in the background. Medina simply means city, and this was, literally, the city of Fez a thousand years ago. Men stand and chat outside their connected stores, showcasing piles of spices in burlap bags and displays of plastic toys in cellophane bags. A vendor sells a mound of conch shells from a moving cart; he yells his price as he passes by.