Going Solo: I Can Do This

It happened this weekend that my desire to attend an out-of-town event exceeded my fear of going alone.  Here’s the story of my first solo excursion outside Casablanca to attend the Visa for Music showcase in Rabat.

Going Solo: Part 1

It is 1:25 pm (or 13:25, as they say around here), and I am triumphant. I have skillfully and cheerfully accomplished the first of the many daunting feats before me today: I have boarded a train.

This particular triumph was the culmination of a multitude of small quests, any one of which could have resulted in untold disaster and distress.  Do you think I’m exaggerating? I’m not. Move here. You’ll understand.

First, despite my best intentions, I did not board a grand taxi to get into the city.  I caught a ride with someone who showed up on the side of the road at just the right time.  This, while appearing to be a cop-out, is actually a grand accomplishment. It means that I know people in this land of strangers, and that they like me enough to let me in their car.

Second, I caught a red taxi right away, and told the driver exactly where I wanted to go.  And he went there.  Immediately.  I recognized the landmarks I needed, and exited the vehicle exactly where I intended to. And I was not overcharged.

Third, I walked to my choir rehearsal with admirable self-assurance. Like I said, I knew my landmarks.  I walked in ten minutes late, which is really twenty minutes early in this universe.  I sang my heart out in pseudo-Arabic, because there were notes and words on paper, and sheet music brings out the genius in me.  In fact, at one point the entire choir turned to me for the correct pronunciation of the English word “walk.”  I don’t know what these people would do without me. I have acquired hero status.  Until they start singing without sheet music.  Then I become an idiot again.

Next, I bought a tram ticket and boarded the correct tram, going in the correct direction, to get to the correct train station.  I asked someone if I was going the right way, just to be sure.  I call it travel insurance.

I got off the tram at the appointed location. I read the signs, and I knew my landmarks.  I intuitively started heading in the right direction to get to the train station, but asked for directions, just to be sure.  Women, I have learned, are not scary at all here, and are always willing to help.  They smile at me, and it doesn’t mean, “I want your body, your money and your passport.”  It just means, “hi!” — as it should.

On the way, I bought a jus d’orange, freshly squeezed, because that’s the way juice is here.  As it should be everywhere. Morocco has ruined me for other countries’ juice.

I entered the station.  I bought my ticket.  I headed toward the platform.  Every ten feet I stopped and asked if this was the correct train.  After boarding, I asked a passenger, just to be sure.  One would not want to end up in the wrong city.  As one has done in the past.  Did I write about that yet? I must. I will. I have recovered sufficiently to be able to talk about it without retraumatizing myself.  I think.

So now I am sitting peacefully on the train to Rabat (in second class, because it’s time I start behaving as the frugal woman I once knew myself to be; that $2 difference could make or break my year, you know).  In half an hour I’ll disembark in the correct city.  I will walk to a theatre and find a hotel room.  I will attend a concert.  And I will repeat all of these victories, in reverse order, in the morning.  Because I’m awesome like that.  I go places. I do things.  I roam the world fearlessly.  I am, more or less, a superhero.

Going Solo: Part 2

I am cozied up in my wee hotel room, 95 steps above street level, where wifi is more of a concept than a reality.  It’s a budget hotel –one star, I believe– but as in any Moroccan establishment, fancy tilework covers a multitude of sins. The defining features of this room are an olive green rotary phone that rings incessantly, a super-creepy painting of a miserable lute-player, and a housefly. I try not to enter the washroom unnecessarily. I’ll leave it at that.

My post-train adventure was a breeze. My phone (my iPhone, that is… not the aforementioned olive green monstrosity) kindly guided me to the theatre, where I met up with a Turkish musician who told me all about how he had to go to America to find out he liked Turkish music.  His childhood music teacher had tormented him with endless years of recorder lessons.  To this day, he says, he gets dizzy when he sees sheet music.  But now he plays in a band, runs a music festival, and comes to places like Morocco to hang out with other musicians.  “The notes on the page are just suggestions,” he says.  “As are traffic lights.”

Happily, the cheap hotel across from the theatre actually had a room available, and the man at the front desk returned my passport after only one trip up and down the 95 stairs.  I returned to the theatre five minutes late for the concert, which is really two hours early in this universe.  This time warp gave me time to invade that most sacred of all Moroccan holy spaces — the all-male cafe — and fill myself with forbidden shawarma.  I also visited a pretty nifty bookstore, at which I purchased not a single book (another link in today’s glittering chain of small victories). I did, however, buy a mechanical pencil for a third of the cost of my train ticket.  It was necessary.

Standing in the lobby of the theatre waiting for the show to start, I heard my name, and that’s when I realized that my life has gotten truly happy.  I am in a strange building in a strange city in a strange country on a strange continent; I turn around and see someone I know from my choir in Casablanca, and I feel like all the world is mine.  I am not in isolation.  A fascinating web of people is developing around me — Moroccans, Turks, North Americans, South Africans — people from all over this round world of ours; and it makes me wonder that my web was once so small.

I love this feeling of openness, of stretching, of becoming what I once was not. I love it that I am turning into the sort of person that I used to envy.  I love these little growth spurts, when I actually feel the changing as it happens.  I love it, yes I love it, that I am blogging in a tower in Rabat.

Going Solo: Part 3

My “morning after” was remarkably unremarkable. I shopped for a phone charger, a fuzzy housecoat, and some waterproof footwear; finding none of these things, I instead purchased a funky cardigan, which I will actually wear, perhaps constantly.

I found my way back to the train station without asking anyone for directions. I found my way onto the right train without asking anyone for help. I got off the train at the right station, without double checking with anyone. I taxied to the taxi stand, and then to my campus, without saying more than a handful of words. And now I am in my breezy apartment, where my most pressing concern is whether I should have my nap before or after my shower, and whether I have any photos to brighten up this blog post.

It is good to be in a place where I don’t need to speak, or navigate, or fend off the overly-helpful. My little apartment needs some tidying, and it’s about time I do some laundry, but it can wait. I am home, I am safe, I am snuggled up in my bed. Tomorrow will be more or less predictable, as will be the day after that.

It is good to sandwich epic adventures between spells of perfectly satisfactory routines. It is good to have a change of clothes, and a bathroom that doesn’t smell like who-knows-what. It is good, it is good, it is good to be home.

And it is good to be home, knowing that I needn’t stay – that even in this restrictive and often-draining setting, I can come and go according to my whims. It is good to know that it is possible to have, and give thanks for, a largely uneventful day; in fact, it is this kind of day, more than the flashy kind, that shows how far I’ve come.

And the verdict on solo excursions to interesting places? Highly recommended.  One more world has opened up to me.