culture – Page 2 – Eating Research

Thursday

pomegranates

I have moved to Thursday. When the taxi was going to the town I was going to, and was going to Thursday, I thought nothing of it. Then, on the first Thursday I was in my new flat, my landlady said that the landlord had gone to Thursday. Right. Then I heard my lovely new Moroccan friend here tell some people that no, I didn’t live in the city anymore, I’d rented a place here in Thusday. So, the case is settled, I live in Thursday.

What I had been told that helped me make sense of this was that in each of the towns there is a big market one day of the week, and in this town, that day of the week is Thursday. So although I didn’t realise I was moving to Thursday when I moved here, because the town has a proper name too, I was able to work out (and I’ve checked this with people) that the town is known as Thursday because the market is on Thursday. Needless to say that the market is a big deal.

So if you are outside of Thursday and you go to Thursday that means that you are going to my town. If you are in my town and you say you’re going to Thursday that means you’re going to the market. Everyone goes to the market. So everything seems to revolve around Thursdays, and the market. It’s the day that people get off work (if they work in agriculture which most people do), it’s the day that they buy their food for the rest of the week. I should say we. It’s the day we buy our food, because I live in Thursday now.

Food isn’t the only thing at the market, but I think it is the main event. You have to go through the clothes and the stationary and the pots and pans to get to the food and everyone is headed for the food. Let’s take fruit for example. At the moment you can get apples and bananas (grown in greenhouses too nearby), the last of the grapes, the odd melon, and oranges and pomegranates. The oranges are small and green so I would have thought they were limes if I hadn’t eaten one the other day. Very nice. My taste-buds feared the acid of a lime but got the sweetness of a small orange. Not even the bland taste of a nectarine. Orange it was called and orange it was.

What else do we need to know about Thursdays? Well, there is no water. I think this is quite an important detail. On my second day here last week I mentioned that the water had been off for several hours and my landlady said (you guessed it), “yes, that’s because it’s Thursday”. Whenever too many people are trying to use the water at once it cuts off, but on Thursdays it seems everyone higher up the water-chain is using the water because it doesn’t come back until about 10pm.

Things have changed now I’ve moved to Thursday. I am now the only foreigner in town and so getting extra special care and attention, in both good and annoying ways. Although I haven’t changed, the Morocco around me has, and that’s changed me in it. While the me in Morocco in Rabat was comfortable walking around with a modest pony-tail, and covering my hair would have made me feel like a fraud, the me here fits in a bit better with the pony-tail under a scarf. There doesn’t seem to be anything fraudulent about it. Apparently the baby downstairs was afraid of my hair. So covering it doesn’t feel like wearing a cross if you’re not a Christian any more. It feels more like taking your shoes off in someone’s house when that’s what they do. Things have shifted a little and I need to fit in a bit more here in order to be comfortable, and for others to be comfortable with me.

What was that I heard someone in some seminar say? Meaning is subjective. Maybe that’s the research moral I’m dragging out of this…. What does Thursday mean? Well it looks like it depends where you are, doesn’t it? And the headscarf? Well, right now for me it means I get a few less cat-calls and the baby downstairs looks slightly less frightened.

Couscous

We think we know couscous. In the Moroccan sense though, I’m not so sure. So let’s start with a quiz:

What day of the week is couscous eaten?
How is it cooked?
With what foods does it implicitly always come, when someone says, ‘we’re having couscous’.
What is the dairy product that is often used?

When I say we, really what I mean is, ‘I’, these are just some of the important things that I’ve learned about couscous since I’ve been learning and immersing myself in Moroccan culture over the last two years. So the answers are: a) mainly Fridays b) it’s steamed above the meat and vegetables c) usually there is always lamb (or another meat) squash, courgettes, carrots, sometimes a few chic-peas and a rich broth-like gravy to be poured on top, not to mention the herbs and spices! d) a salty fermented sheep-milk butter called ‘smen’ is often rubbed into the couscous as it is separated. Smen, now there is an easy name to remember!

Twice now has couscous lived up to its Moroccan reputation for me. The idea of couscous in Morocco is something far from the quick-boil stuff that we imagine elsewhere. It symbolises a labour of love to be shared and enjoyed with family, friends and guests. Perhaps like a roast dinner, but maybe with fewer implications of stress. It is also a lot tastier than any couscous I’ve eaten in Europe. When it’s steamed the couscous itself takes on all the flavour of the meat, vegetables and spices.

The first time couscous lived up to symbolising Moroccan hospitality and good-will was in my friend’s flat in Rabat. We were invited to have couscous with the family living upstairs, but we’d already arranged to eat lunch with friends. Later that evening when I came back after a mini-mission around Rabat, the daughter-in-law came and said that they still wanted us to have some couscous. I said that they shouldn’t have, but thank you very, very much (or something to that effect in imperfect French). I was not expecting the small feast that descended from the big house above. It was about 9pm and I was presented with a steaming hot plate of couscous. The size of the gesture was quite literally far larger than what we knew what to do with. I carried the plate over to the fridge and sized it up against the width of the fridge – the plate was far too big for any shelf of the normal size stand-up fridge-freezer. We ate what we could and enjoyed it before the flies of the summer heat got to what wouldn’t fit in the fridge. That seems to be the kind of gesture that turns neighbours into friends, which is really what those neighbours are to my friend.

The second time the couscous really came as a welcome relief from the sometimes intensely stressful nature of travelling to do research. This was the picture above. This was couscous at the house of the academics that are helping me out here. I took quite a long path arriving to the place of my fieldwork and in a way I still haven’t arrived. The couscous at their house, rather than a sultry coffee in a meeting room, felt like a big hug of welcome. And like in Spain, following the meal, you aren’t shooed out the door, but invited to relax, perhaps to watch something that happens to be on a nearby TV, perhaps to sit back and have a tea.

So what can couscous tell me about research? It can tell me that it is personal. In Morocco this means that it doesn’t happen in meeting rooms and hotels. Real sharing of information happens where people are most comfortable, which is in their own homes. How I might repay all these cups of tea and meals of couscous? I’m not yet sure. I try to arrive with the small sweet biscuits that seem to be the European social equivalent of a bottle of wine. It isn’t always possible though. I think that I will be present shopping for more than just friends and family at the end of this trip.

Spryte

spryte

My trip to Morocco begins with, ahem, Spryte. I’ve obviously changed a letter but it will get us used to the interchangeable y/i in Arabic. Of course in fact it is actually known the same here as everywhere else. So we start with sameness rather than difference.

Having arrived at Gatwick airport hot and thirsty I am confronted with the choice of paying £2 for either water, Spryte or a whole host of other fizzy drinks. Beyond the x-ray border where bottles are headed for the bin, if I want hydration, it’s this or drinking from the tap, and (this time) I don’t have time for that. A big lady in a fantastically purple dress and matching headscarf says £2 is too much and I agree. However, I also know how fast I dry out on the plane so this time I hold onto my health and just compromise on price. Although I’m not happy, water should be free! Didn’t some friendly international lawyers establish somewhere that we should always have access to water?

On the plane we have the same choice of water, sugary juice or fizziness. Furthermore, the lack of alcohol marks the transition into a slightly different culture. The woman in the seat next to me foresaw this and has a small bottle of gin in her bag in one of those containers designed for shampoo. She’s lovely, headed with her son straight to Agadir for a holiday in the sun after a year working in a hospice without a break.

I think the idea of going to another country usually comes from the desire to encounter difference. Different weather perhaps, a different culture, different people, something, some difference that has motivated us to go through passport control and risk losing our luggage for a few days. Yet, perhaps the airport administration and the-businesses-that-be know better than we do. When we arrive, a little wary and weary, what we want is something we recognize, something we understand, not yet ready to navigate the difference we came to see. Thirsty, and tired, I see what I need…. Spryte. Of course I don’t really ‘need’ it, but it seemed like I did. For the same ransom of 20 Dirhams, or just under £2. My token of homogenized sugary water this time bought me the time and the permission to sit in the airport train station café and gain the role of ‘consumer’ rather than ‘lone female looking lost’. Of course I would have preferred a home-made tea and cake, but in lack of it, I have to recognize that the sugar water was my friend.

Over-priced sugar-water is actually quite an apt introduction to Morocco. With the high temperatures that can make you light-headed with low blood pressure, sugar is welcome. Usually it comes as tea, or maybe as orange juice with added sweetness, but either way, the size of the cubes are testimony to the size of the popularity of sugar, with or without the tea.

So what does Spryte say about being at both ends of the journey to Morocco? Well, it says everything you want to hear, it says, no worries, I’m recyclable (with the little symbol for those of us who care); it says, what’s the problem? I’m just lemonade, with the symbol of a lemon on the front but no lemon in the ingredients, and then it talks to us in three languages. It has two prices, the one I paid and the one written on the bottle. It says, you can see what you want to see, but you’ll never understand it all.