Married to Morocco (my 2nd wife)

Marrakech, Morocco

The travel

Culture Shock

Okay now it’s time to queue up some Miagi/90’s kung-fu advice clichés.  ‘You know nothing.’ ‘Your cup overfloweth.’ ‘Unlearn all that you have learned.’  You are no longer Drake and Hope, you are Mustafa and Fatima.  Strangers that don’t know you will now refer to you as brother and sister; not brotha, and certainly not brudda, just brother.  Also, if you’re a girl no one will ever look at, compliment, or talk to you but instead naturally turn all said commentary to your living proxy/possible master – the nearest man that is accompanying  taking you for your daily outside the kitchen/house time.

That’s a lot to unpack, but it’s all real.  Any man you do not know is a Mustafa and any woman is Fatima.  This isn’t an insult or me generalizing, this is literally something that Moroccans do to both foreigners and each other.  Once you’ve been ‘catcalled’ Mustafa into a tourist trap, you become a brother or sister. ‘Hey brother, how does this argon oil feel?’ – is a sentence you will probably hear more than once.  I made the mistake of calling my then fiancé ‘sister’ for fun for weeks after the trip.  It got weird.  More so if you say it in urbanized public areas where it could be misunderstood as it’s distant cousin ‘sistah’.

Speaking of fiancés.  Since we weren’t married we had to LIE on all of our lodging accommodations to share a room (similar to lying to all Christian relatives about living together prior to nuptials, whoops). 

On to my favorite part of the trip – reverse gender aesthetic emphasis.  What I mean by this is that in the States it is a competition amongst females to be the prettiest center of attention in the room.  When two couples go out, it’s like a race to the bottom with the dudes, we show up in sweats and look haggard, unkempt; almost on purpose to make the thing on our arm look even prettier.  We do not care about the game they play, only if it means we have to dress in uncomfortable clothes or take IG pictures in excess of what can be considered the normal ‘spousal duty’.  I’ve genuinely caught flak for getting a compliment when my wife didn’t.  It’s like Eric Cartman going to a kid’s birthday – whenever the birthday boy gets a present Eric’s mom gives him one too so there’s no tantrum.  Sometimes it’s easier to just not get complimented than to have to constantly pay it forward, hence the sweatpants.

Now that that’s been said.  It is the opposite in the patriarchal Islamic society in Islam, and it is fucking niceeeeeee.  Imagine my wife rolling out of bed two hours early to do make-up and wear one of the dresses she specifically ordered for that day on that trip.  Then imagine me rolling out five minutes before breakfast and being 20 minutes late cause I’m watching youtube on the toilet.  But then, we get down to breakfast and the first thing the waiter says is a compliment about my sweats without even looking at my wife.  TAKE THAT BISH!  God I loved it.  I need to move back.  No one would even look at her, so when you consider the effort and therefore the irony of that, it’s good enough to drink.  But also a nice change of pace.  We walk down the street and everyone just looks at me and pays me compliments -  is dis what it’s like to be big booty IG girl?  I like dis.  If there was a bar I feel like someone would buy me a drink.

Which leads me to my next point.  No alcohol in the culture.  WHAAAAAA?!  You walk down the street at night and see an open door gathering of about 40 dudes (their wives all locked back up for the night) with the game on AND… a big bucket of Gatorade.  Is that fun?  I feel like that would make for more violence and outbursts than if there was booze.  

Not being able to look at butts – manageable with high tint shades

Not being able to look at butts and be sober – count me out of that sausage fest

The problem with this model, is that no one wins, not even the gays get to capitalize because this Muslim culture is REALLY deep-south, back-country, so-homophobic-that-it -goes-full-circle-and-is-actually-gay, style homophobic.  Sorry my ‘brothers’, not even you get to benefit from this plight.

Chillin’ in the Suks